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Level designer | audio designer | Multiplayer, CTF | Unreal Engine 4 | 50 Developers | 4 months
Game Summary
"Auxilium" is a competitive 4v4 capture-the-flag style multiplayer first-person shooter game developed by Pantheon Studios, a group of 50 student developers from Cohort 26 at SMU Guildhall.
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Players can side with either the mercenaries or the rebels and choose from four different classes: infiltrator, sniper, juggernaut, or assault. Each class has a unique weapon and special ability to support teammates or wreak havoc on the competition.
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The game is set in a pristine, fantastical futuristic realm that consists of four different, dynamic maps: Magic Academy, Railways, Cargo Hangar, and Atrium. Magical energy flows throughout the environments and powers the characters and their weapons/abilities.
Railways
Cargo Hangar
Atrium
Magic Academy
DESIGN GOALS & GAME TRAILER
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Levels that encourage dynamic strategies
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Unique classes
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Contextual flags
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Technology powered by magic
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Visual and audio feedback
DEVELOPMENT
GAME: Auxilium
ENGINE: Unreal Engine 4
GENRE: First-Person Shooter, Capture the Flag Multiplayer
SETTING: Sci-fi, Fantasy
DEVELOPMENT TIME:​ 4 months​
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RESPONSIBILITIES
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Level Design for "Magic Academy", including map design, "propulation", and kitbashing
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Developing Gameplay Flow and Balance
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Environmental Design
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Finding and Editing Audio
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Wwise-to-Unreal Integration of Audio
DOWNLOADS
Auxilium
The "Magic Academy" map was the responsibility of my sub-team of 10 people, Team Athena. Of the four level designers, another team member and I worked primarily on designing, building, and tweaking the map design.
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The map's contextual setting was an educational academy that flowed of magic, an aspect that was weaved into the design along with its primary functionality as a CTF map.
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FINAL MAP DESIGN
The final design of the map underwent many iterations to accommodate a 4v4 map and make sense contextually.
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The "mid" of the map featured two side paths differentiated with altered sightlines and placed props. It also featured a section in the center (where the statue is) that featured a rotating "magic ring" (the green ring), an upper level, and a more secluded level underneath, giving the mid plenty of pathways for players to traverse.
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While still a team effort, my individual design contributions were in conceptualizing the rounded side paths, the rotating magic ring, and the small two-floor configuration of the middle statue section.
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One team member and I did the primary work on the design, including developing the design itself, building, placing assets, and making the appropriate alterations to enhance both gameplay and contextual aesthetic quality.
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DESIGN GOALS: Create a map balanced in gameplay, aesthetically pleasing, and that makes sense with the other maps in the game.
One of my largest contributions to this project was what I call "propulation" - populating an area with props and assets. This stage was not just placing assets for the players to move around, but also about representing the magical and academic context of the space.
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A challenge with this stage was finding and placing objects that both fit the space and the context of the space. With limited assets to choose from, I did a fair share of "kitbashing," which is taking assets and using them in ways they were not necessarily intended to be used. An example of this in the above image is the whiteboards in the center of the room, which were actually made up of door frames and stretched out boards.
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PROPULATION GOALS: Make the space feel real and appropriate for the context - really sell the space as a Magic Academy.
LEVEL DESIGN
INITIAL MAP DESIGN
"PROPULATION"
AUDIO
Another thing that my subteam Team Athena was responsible for was all the audio for Auxilium. My level design lead and I did the bulk of the audio work by not only finding appropriate royalty-free sounds that fit for weapons, movements, and UI/HUD elements, but also by editing those sounds and integrating them into the engine through Wwise.
A challenge with audio was learning how to properly find and integrate sounds within a large team setting. Because this was a relatively new role for me, I had to take extra time to research the nuances of audio design and to learn the Wwise software. Apart from addressing more direct criticism about specific audio choices (due to the main audio team consisting of just my lead and myself), the major learning points were properly editing and balancing sounds, attenuation, and the necessity of near-constant iteration to account for how audio played back on a TV and across a network.
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AUDIO DESIGN GOALS: Integrate sounds that were both appropriate for the associated assets/situations and gave solid feedback for players; to understand audio design processes better and integrate audio efficiently.
Post-Mortem
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Flexibility and Variability
Due to my sub-team's responsibility for construction of 1 of 4 of level maps and for audio for the whole game (acquirement and integration), I took on a non-specific role that allowed me to remain flexible and switch between level design tasks and audio tasks depending on game and level needs. This also meant that versatility was important for the role I played as 1 of 2 primary level designers in my sub-team and the role I played as 1 of 2 sound designers for the whole 50-person team.
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In-Team Communication
Because of the variety of my tasks, I had to be sure to let those involved know what I was working on and give major progress updates on those tasks to ensure quality and efficiency. Working on Auxilium kept me proactive about keeping good communication with key people in each discipline within my team, especially when working collaboratively on audio or in the level - this fostered understanding not only for others in knowing what I was doing but also for myself in making sure I understood my duties correctly.
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Learning New Things Quickly
I knew how to work in Unreal Engine 4 already, but the Wwise software and a proper sound design pipeline was new territory for all. Quickly learning Wwise and developing a viable pipeline for finding, editing, and integrating audio (which included both designers and programmers on our sub-team) made whatever audio-related mistakes less production-stopping because we were able to iterate early and more often. Because of this, I could reliably switch between tasks, which contributed to my flexible and versatile role on the game.
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Top-Down and Cross-Discipline Communication
This game was the first time most of my teammates had worked on a project with 49 other people and due to the size and scope of the project, a hierarchy was necessary to keep things organized and moving. A problem I ran into often was frustration with how information was communicated from those making the big decisions down to those working on the ground and communication across teams and disciplines. What I learned from this was that I was not helping anything with my passivity and about how these frustrations I had were due in part to my lack of understanding of those in other roles. I learned to let go of my pride and force myself to be proactive about asking more questions and physically standing up to go talk with others. This helped not only my outlook on my peers, but also on how much more I had to and still have to improve myself in speaking up and out.
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Letting Go of Personal Contributions
Something I've realized about myself is that for me to feel as though I've made a personal contribution to a project is for that contribution to be either explicitly credited or visible in that project. In the "Magic Academy" level my sub-team worked on, I filled out a major section of the map to a visual quality that later became the example for other sub-teams to work towards for their own maps. I felt a great sense of pride from the praise I received due to that personal contribution, which I didn't feel was necessarily a bad thing - that is, until every sub-team received instructions from stakeholders to strip down the decorations in each map. I remember my upset at the decision, my pride telling me that that was others' faults for not "getting on my level" in terms of visual quality. What I learned was that in the grand scheme of things, it didn't matter. It didn't matter if it was my fault or another person's fault, what mattered was that it was decided for the sake of the game to remove that personal contribution I had made and I had to learn to let it go. From that experience I realized how more I need to improve in letting go of my work for the greater good.
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Focusing Out to Focus Better
I tend to focus on the details of designs, which does not usually facilitate speed when building and iterating. I found myself encountering that issue when I was on level design tasks when I was not working as quickly as my design partner - this led to moments where I finished my work later than previously intended, which was more due to my own lack of insight on how my speed affected others' workflow. From this realization, I learned not only that I needed to work faster so that I wouldn't slow down the overall process but also a better understanding of my work speed capabilities so I could more accurately estimate how long it would take me to complete certain tasks.
LESSONS LEARNED
THE GOOD
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