Quest for Valor -
Lower Vela Overworld
The Lower Vela Overworld map was created using the Quest for Valor project, an Action/Adventure game framework put together by an instructor at VFS in Unreal Engine 4. This level serves as the predecessor area to my other Quest for Valor level, the Royal Castle Dungeon (which can be found here).
Overall, the project took around six weeks to be finished after many iterations. My goal was to provide a fun area that prepared players, both narrative and gameplay-wise, for the dungeon that follows while offering a variety of unique environments, storytelling and challenges. This also served as an opportunity to practice and improve my skills with Unreal Engine 4 and its Blueprint system, both as a Level Designer and Mission Designer.
Platform:
PC
Genre:
3rd Person Action Adventure
My Roles:
Mission Designer
Level Designer
Cinematic Designer
Videos
Level Flythrough
Complete Playthrough
Level Features
Overworld containing five unique areas: Forest, Town, Graveyard, Mines and Mountains, each with its unique BGM to enhance the moment-by-moment experience
Custom-scripted events designed to flesh out the narrative and immerse the player
Cinematic to enhance the narrative-in moment
A mini-boss encounter that allows for multiple ways of dealing with the combat
Puzzle design that iterates on a single idea and twist it to challenge players
Collectibles carefully placed to invite exploration
Checkpoint System
Creative Process
First Steps:
In my Royal Castle Dungeon map, the main narrative behind it involved the Skeleton King kidnaping villagers, and it is up to the player to rescue them and beat him at the end. The idea for this map came from the simple question, "Where were these villagers before?" That and the fact that I wanted to challenge myself to work more with the Landscape tool and Blueprints gave birth to Lower Vela as an Overworld.
After initial sketches in my notebook, I jumped into the Layout Plan. While working on it, I experimented with the engine to see how far I could and wanted to go with the events and geometry in the level, given my time constraints. This part of the process was relatively easy, as I had previous experience with the engine and the project at Vancouver Film School. As such, after a couple of iterations, I arrived at a solid plan and was ready to get started.
To keep my documentation constantly updated after validating fun ideas, iteration on the layout plan didn't stop until I was out of the Whiteboxing stage, with the geometry locked. As I built the level and playtested it, many changes were necessary to achieve the level of fun I was looking for, be it by removing elements that weren't working or adding new areas.
The most notable example of this happened in the Graveyard section. In the early stages of development, the area was smaller and had the Mayor in plain sight on a hill for the player to see. However, this didn't encourage the exploration I hoped for and made the combat encounters too close together. My solution was adding a small area called The Tomb of Beric, reachable by crossing a bridge.
After the player has committed to crossing the bridge to reach the Mayor, they are surprised by a Grunt that slowly starts to make his way toward them. Here I offered two choices for the player: They could either fight the enemy on the small circular island or use the nearby pressure plate to lower the bridge when the enemy is on top of it, ending the conflict before combat even starts. Below you can see the Blueprint I scripted to realize this sequence (it takes place at the 3:07 mark in the walkthrough video.)
The Whiteboxing Process
I honestly loved working with BSPs/Geometry in UE4. It's a very straightforward process that allows for quick iterations inside the editor. For this level, I decided to start my Whiteboxing with only the playable space in mind, adhering to the previously established metrics to get a good idea of playtime, intensity and difficulty.
Later I added the landscape, replacing some sections with the proper terrain. You can see the difference in the pictures below.
Given the fact that I was working with pre-made assets, I had to ensure my scale would be adequate with the assets I had at my disposal and vice-versa, so I added some meshes during this phase, adjusting them and my environment in order to get something harmonious and consistent with my design. This is the end result as seen from inside the editor:
While shaping the landscape, I also took into consideration elements outside of the playable area that would compose the vistas. I wanted to have something interesting to see in every empty space in order to give it meaning (though never detracting from landmark structures in the critical path), and if I couldn't, the space would just be removed. A good example is the huge drop and the waterfall that can be seen in the Mountain Path section seen below.
Design Challenges
Cave and the Landscape Visibility Tool:
Since the very beginning of the project, I wanted to have a Mines section that the player would enter through a cave. Because of that, I spent some time figuring out the Landscape tools in the UE4 to create a cave entrance in the terrain properly. The solution came in the form of the visibility tool, which allowed me to essentially paint a hole in the landscape by having two versions of the materials used in my painting process and giving one the properties of a mask.
The Bridge Battle:
When I decided that the Graveyard section would be augmented, I thought about adding something to make the Grunt battle a little more interesting. I greatly support having multiple solutions to combat situations since that serves various play styles. For this particular moment, I added both the option of having a regular fight and a "smart" way out by using the environment and lowering the bridge the moment the enemy walks through it.
Checkpoint System:
Given the size of the map, I needed to have a checkpoint system. Implementing this one was an exciting challenge because I had to work with persistent objects in the Blueprints to save the information I needed when the player died and the level reloaded.
The Elevator:
This ingredient marks the halfway point in the level, and as such, I decided to make it a point of no return as a way of reducing the cognitive load that comes from players memorizing the entire map. I wanted to ensure the moment was believable, with the elevator getting stuck. For that, implementing the right SFX was key. The challenge came in the form of figuring out a good way of playing the SFX at the right moment. Fortunately, the elevator blueprint had an event ready for when it finished its movement.
Scared Townsfolk Scripted Event:
The first time the player entered the town, I wanted them to feel like something was amiss. And so, I created a scripted sequence where, as the player approaches, the local villagers would run inside their homes in fear. This was accomplished by setting trigger boxes and giving the villagers a patrol path leading into the houses when the player hits the trigger. I also had to turn off the NPCs’ collision with the house meshes to get them inside. Initially, I wanted to make their models vanish when they touched the doors, but I settled instead for a well-placed SFX to help convey the idea that they are entering the houses and closing the door.
Flythrough:
This was not a design challenge per se but rather a good experience of working with the legacy Matinee editor in UE4. My goal was to keep the fly-through short but still showcase the most interesting structures and landmarks of the level.
Custom Meshes:
As much as I tried to stick with the assets available to me, there were two that I was required to create in order to achieve my design goals: The bridge and the castle. The castle was particularly interesting because, given its scale, I decided to work only on what would be visible to the player.
Lighting:
When designing the level, I purposefully chose to have it be in the evening so I could emphasize point-to-point lighting rather than just ambient lighting. Still, it was important to find the right balance because as much as you want little natural light at night, you can't have it pitch black. The Sky Sphere also played a part in this. I wanted it to feel more surreal and pleasant to look at, and I achieved that with a mix of playing with its settings and a global post-processing effect. The level also had a mix of indoor and outside areas, which allowed me to practice with UE4's lighting.
Narrative Implementation:
As far as narrative design goes, I had to work around some limitations in the project. For starters, the only way to deliver it was through dialogue speech bubbles. For that reason, I tried to keep the dialogue as short as possible and delivered in intentional moments of exposition so as to not disrupt gameplay and help break the pace between sections. In the narrative-in dialogue, which lasts around 30 seconds, I decided not to take away the player's control because I wanted them to choose to engage with the story being presented.
Final Thoughts:
I am pretty happy with how this level turned out, and I believe I accomplished my goal of improving my skills with Unreal Engine 4 within the scope I set for myself. There is room for improvement, however, and some things I would change include making the narrative-in sequence more dynamic using cinematic tools, better use of terrain for combat situations, and additional dynamic events to make the world react to the player’s actions, thus making it feel more alive.