Goals
My goals in creating 'Stacks' were to:
- become familiar with the Unreal level authoring tool
- create an interesting deathmatch level that demonstrates a variety of level design talents
- create a fun level that fits with the existing Unreal atmosphere
Design
The initial design fell into place quickly: I wanted something thematically like the demolition derby concept of a 'figure-8 of death' - a central axis of danger connecting two loops. As I fleshed out the blueprint on paper, each new element was weighed on how it could provide both an advantage and a weakness. I wanted towering sniping positions overlooking the central axis but I also wanted them to be vulnerable. Here I decided upon what would become the central theme of the level - the stacks. The towers would be massive smoke stacks and they would have just one window overlooking the central courtyard - their Achilles heel would be a lever in the center of the courtyard. Should an enemy manage to pull the lever the stacks would be vented with spouts of fire and kill the snipers. With the addition of health and armor pickups, there was certain incentive to brave the center courtyard. Now a player deciding to camp in the tower would be making a tough decision - should he fail to bring down his quarry quickly, the danger would be horribly turned on him. The task of balancing came down to determining the length of the courtyard (how much time the sniper would have to catch his quarry) and the field of view of the stack windows.
My observation of multiplayer fps LAN games has been that most levels are designed for 16-player online brawls: the levels are complex, tortuous and confusing, the best weapons are well-hidden and only players with many hours of level-experience have a chance at success. This may be optimal for dedicated online players but for more casual, friendly play (such as amongst office coworkers) I wanted to make a level that was more accessible
The further design of my level was dictated by my desire to have a level that was:
- Small enough that 3 or 4 players could have an intense gaming experience
- Intuitive enough that a first-time player could quickly determine the location of decent equipment
- Logical enough that a first-timer would not get lost
- Clear enough that the strategic decisions would be quickly apparent
- Balanced enough that no one area would be the site of all the action
Things I had to do
- 'Carve out' the architecture with addition and subtraction brushes
- Place and manipulate static meshes
- Balance the 3D space for symmetry and accessibility
- Create smoke and fire particle emitters
- Balance locations of weapon, ammo, health, armor and double damage pick ups
- Lay an intelligent AI path nodes network
- Script elevator movement and lever movement to proximity
- Script flames and explosion sound to emerge on lever proximity, burn for 10 seconds and reset functionality
- Script flames to damage victim 'instigators' entering or already within the targeted areas
- Lay out indicative textures
- Create a sky box for the outdoor areas
- Place atmospheric lighting
Things that went wrong
- Particle effects on client computers -
This is an issue I was unable to resolve. The level plays wonderfully on a host computer but clients can not see the fire particle emitters. This seems to be a bug involving the bhidden variable. I unhide the emitters when the fires are triggered and the clients do not seem to receive this variable change. A permanent emitter displays properly, but I needed dynamic emitters. I tried changing the triggering process to no avail. I had two more possible alternatives that I abandoned for lack of time and reasonability of success (is this a bug? can I solve it at all?) -I could spawn and unspawn the emitters rather than hiding them or I could move them up and down when the fires are triggered.
- AI favoring stairwell rooms -
The AI seemed to favor the two central stairwell rooms on each side of the level. This was because most of the spawn points were centered around these rooms and the bots are heavily weighted to quickly seek out enemy engagements. Their first priority is a better weapon, but with guns situated in these rooms there was no need to go elsewhere - particularly ignored were the upper tunnels. By simply moving the lightning gun and the shock rifle up into the tunnels, I reduced the traffic in the stair rooms and increased traffic to the tunnels. The level is easy for the bots to understand (pickups are proximate to the main path-node avenues) and can be enjoyed against any level of AI.
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