Overview
For the upcoming spy/action-MMO, The Agency (PS3/PC), I was the primary single-player level and mission designer. On this project my responsibilities included writing mission overviews with interesting gameplay elements, encounters, and pacing; drawing the paper designs considering player flow, building the white box level shell, building proxy art and placing it in the level to help define spaces, directing concept art paintovers, placing all gameplay-related elements such as spawn points, scripted events, and cover; running iterations of the level with the test team for balance and pacing, and overseeing the final art passes from both our internal art team and outsourcing teams.
Of the many responsibilities I had on The Agency, the one I'm most proud of is being the product owner on the E3 demo which I designed, directed, and built. My responsibilities for this demo included:
- Collaboratively writing the general overview and back-story of the level with the writers.
- Writing the moment-to-moment gameplay document describing in great detail the specific mission objectives and events throughout the level.
- Drawing the entire paper design of the level layout on graph paper showing player flow and corresponding objectives to the gameplay document (I considered a great deal of variety and depth in gameplay when starting this level including exploration, secrets, stealth enemy encounters, information gathering, hacking and pacing puzzles, and of course, explosive action!)
- Building the white box level in maya considering performance, streaming, and sight-lines.
- Building all necessary design-related proxy art and placing it within the level (which is replaced later with final art).
- Concepting and implementing the placeholder cinematics/cutscenes (most of which were kept for the demo, including the intro cutscene).
- Creating the scripted events and all gameplay-related elements (triggers, spawners, enemies, walls blowing out, music changes).
- Writing the concept and the script for the cutscene where the wall blows out when you're talking to "Ian" in the secret room of the library and built the entire segment with Unreal's Kismet scripting using existing game assets.
- Taking screen shots of key areas of the design-locked map and handing them over to the concept artists for "paint-overs". I also directed many of them to fit the mood I envisioned when building out the space ("blue moonlight streaming through the windows in the secret library room filled with antique furniture covered in sheets").
- Worked very closely with every other department (including audio, animation, environment art, systems design) to ensure smooth integration of each incoming element.
- Driving in to Valkyrie in downtown Seattle on several occasions to help oversee the outsourced environment art coming in to make sure it was on track and did not interfere with design or gameplay in any way.
- I designed the concept of having the level transition from "public space" to "private space" once certain objectives had been met. This way, lighter missions or mission elements can take place in the level while there are lots of other people running around (giving you the ability to team-up with friends), and then transition smoothly to a private instance for more complex and unique moments.
- I also designed the lock-picking minigame you will see in Part I of the walkthrough video (wrote the feature request document and created the visual prototype).
- Lots of iteration and balancing of enemy encounters.
- ...and much, much more!
Below are the walkthrough videos of The Agency E3 demo in 3 parts.
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