LEVEL CONCEPTS, EXPERIMENTS, AND PROTOTYPES

A sampling of work from the pre-production of several games

This was a heavily researched architectural/environmental style guide + speculative level design document, including preliminary ideas about harnessing the biome and vernacular building styles for gameplay, and potential ways of building modular systems to work with the urban form. This was an in-progress first iteration of the guide (some pages are rough or unfinished). the early Exiles project this was designed for was canceled when Insurgency: Sandstorm was greenlit.

A concept for Day of Infamy. Normandy environment.

Some 2d work to accompany level design blockouts, game design concepts, etc.

Architectural building and trim prototyping for Insurgency: Sandstorm. This was the first phase of development of the modular kits we would use in Insurgency Sandstorm. I would go on to design and build the lion’s share of the trim meshes for the game.

Narrative arc in an extraction shooter? This is a presentation I put together for a level prototype I led for a First Playable milestone. The idea here is taking a slice of a much larger map and demonstrating how a future AI Storyteller could utilize different map variables (lighting, pathing, weather and terrain conditions, objectives, etc.) to overlay two differing playthroughs on it. It was important that replayability be a product of this, but just as important was the narrative arc the Storyteller would create to maximize player experience. At its disposal would be a 1km² map and a whole host of variable conditions through which it would plot a route along a selection of the carefully designed array of POIs and interstitial spaces that become building blocks for the pacing of objectives and combat. In these examples, the spatial geometry, combat intensity, objective placement, and resupply form 2 clear 3 act arcs.

Lightbox images of the above slide show

Initial architectural building and trim prototyping for Day of Infamy (Source Engine)

Experimental gameplay ideas. An idea about territory and intel in a pvp game.