Development InfoGame: Reign of Blades
Engine: Unreal Development Kit (UDK) Team Size: 14 Developers Development Time: 8 Months / 24hrs per week Genre: Single Player Hack-and-Slash |
Responsibilities
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Reign of Blades Trailer from Jackie Huchel on Vimeo.
Game Overview
Overview
Reign of Blades is a hack-n-slash game where the player assumes the role of a princess on a quest to restore order to her land. The player must battle through the floating castle of the Gilded Empress, using the game's helmet swap system to take on different abilities to adapt to various encounters.
The main mechanic of the game is being able to swap helmets which change the player's weapons, strength, and special abilities. The sets are named Pawn, Knight, Rook, and Bishop. (The names of the helmets were to help during development and are not associated with chess pieces nor are they named in the game itself.)
My Role
During the pre-production of Reign of Blades, my role involved elaborating on the concept pitch by helping design the core of the gameplay and how the helmets worked. However, the team was too large and divided itself between the Combat and the World committee. I was assigned to the World Committee which was in charge of elaborating and building the environment and story of the game's setting. The world committee was a mix of artists and level designers and all worked together to schedule and implement meshes and cinematic events to bring the world of Reign of Blades to life. Later on mid-production, the lead level designer was more in demand by the combat committee to iterate on the gameplay and I was assigned as a delegate to keep the World Committee on schedule and keep him updated on our progress.
Design Goals
Reign of Blades is a hack-n-slash game where the player assumes the role of a princess on a quest to restore order to her land. The player must battle through the floating castle of the Gilded Empress, using the game's helmet swap system to take on different abilities to adapt to various encounters.
The main mechanic of the game is being able to swap helmets which change the player's weapons, strength, and special abilities. The sets are named Pawn, Knight, Rook, and Bishop. (The names of the helmets were to help during development and are not associated with chess pieces nor are they named in the game itself.)
My Role
During the pre-production of Reign of Blades, my role involved elaborating on the concept pitch by helping design the core of the gameplay and how the helmets worked. However, the team was too large and divided itself between the Combat and the World committee. I was assigned to the World Committee which was in charge of elaborating and building the environment and story of the game's setting. The world committee was a mix of artists and level designers and all worked together to schedule and implement meshes and cinematic events to bring the world of Reign of Blades to life. Later on mid-production, the lead level designer was more in demand by the combat committee to iterate on the gameplay and I was assigned as a delegate to keep the World Committee on schedule and keep him updated on our progress.
Design Goals
- Create and maintain a balance between the four unique helmet/weapon sets (Pawn, Knight, Rook, Bishop)
- Design environment spaces large enough for hack-n-slash type gameplay
- Lock the player inside combat spaces, but make the combat encounters engaging so the player does not feel trapped and overwhelmed
Level 1 - Garden
The Garden Level is the first level that the player enters in and doubles as the tutorial level. The player is introduced to the main mechanics of attacking, dodging, and helmet swapping ability. The encounters themselves were the main focus of the level with the environment being the second. Combat went through several iterations with playtester feedback ranging from too difficult to too easy. The encounters were re-designed and re-balanced to gradually introduce the player to each new enemy and trap at a steadier pace with pop-ups giving the player more information.
The Garden design revolved around the feeling of palace gardens. The goal for this was to incorporate movement with water flowing underneath piers and keep the level bright and sunny to let the player feel safe as they start the game. The challenge for cluttering the level was to have each location tell a story but keeping the center areas clear for movement during combat encounters.
For this level, the design team worked together to design the area on a whiteboard and I was teamed up one other designer to make the whitebox out of BSP. After the general flow and size was finalized, I added details in BSP to give the artists a general idea of what the space is going to be and what meshes we would like. I also implemented the first iteration of gameplay for the level because the two in charge of the combat needed more hands on deck to get it done by gameplay milestone. Afterwards, the combat was refined by the combat committee and I took charge of collaborating with the environmental art department about placing meshes in the level bringing elements of environmental storytelling to it.
After all the meshes were placed, attached the combat encounters with doorways so the player could not run past all the combat encounters. I used Kismet to make the doors and bridges rise and fall based on if an encounter has started or finished. Soon, we discovered that the doors cover the player and makes seeing the combat difficult. I had prototyped a fading material earlier in the project and it was revamped for the doors to fade out when the player was close by so they are not obscured by any meshes. I added more movement into the level by adding particles of leaves coming from the trees and dust particles within the garden.
One challenge we ran into was the water volume. The first design just had the water on one plane across a flat terrain, but the idea of the game was to have the player move upwards towards the sky. Due to the conflicting design of a flat terrain for the water or hill design, I came to the leads with a solution of breaking the river into 3 separate planes and reusing a waterfall mesh and several rocks as a cascading river bed that lead to a waterfall at the beginning of the level. This helped emphasis the game's story setting that the land is floating in the sky and the river floats from above to below.
For this level, the design team worked together to design the area on a whiteboard and I was teamed up one other designer to make the whitebox out of BSP. After the general flow and size was finalized, I added details in BSP to give the artists a general idea of what the space is going to be and what meshes we would like. I also implemented the first iteration of gameplay for the level because the two in charge of the combat needed more hands on deck to get it done by gameplay milestone. Afterwards, the combat was refined by the combat committee and I took charge of collaborating with the environmental art department about placing meshes in the level bringing elements of environmental storytelling to it.
After all the meshes were placed, attached the combat encounters with doorways so the player could not run past all the combat encounters. I used Kismet to make the doors and bridges rise and fall based on if an encounter has started or finished. Soon, we discovered that the doors cover the player and makes seeing the combat difficult. I had prototyped a fading material earlier in the project and it was revamped for the doors to fade out when the player was close by so they are not obscured by any meshes. I added more movement into the level by adding particles of leaves coming from the trees and dust particles within the garden.
One challenge we ran into was the water volume. The first design just had the water on one plane across a flat terrain, but the idea of the game was to have the player move upwards towards the sky. Due to the conflicting design of a flat terrain for the water or hill design, I came to the leads with a solution of breaking the river into 3 separate planes and reusing a waterfall mesh and several rocks as a cascading river bed that lead to a waterfall at the beginning of the level. This helped emphasis the game's story setting that the land is floating in the sky and the river floats from above to below.
Level 2 - Arena
The Arena level is the smallest level in the game. The level is a result of cutting another level and reusing assets already created. The encounters centralized around the lava arena space in the center and the environment around it was built with the idea that the outer areas were market stands promoting the battles within the arena. The primary goal for the encounters was to introduce the destructible spawners, spinning traps, and final bishop helmet. The challenges included incorporating the spinning traps and conveying to the player that they are a danger to themselves but can also be used against enemies.
Similar to the garden level, I was in charge of placing meshes and connecting the combat to the opening and closing of the doors. This level was small and after it was whitebox by another designer, I worked on forming the area myself using meshes from the Garden and Temple level. The focal point of the level is the lava pit and I built the areas around it as a marketplace for visitors or warrior promoting the contests in the arena. I continued the theme I started within the Garden of the Empress's golden shrine and placed her at the start and end of the level.
Level 3 - Temple
The temple level was the first level created during vertical slice. It established the style, setting, and encounter flow for the rest of the game. Playtester feedback from the gameplay set the production back and encounters had to be revisited several times and rebuilt to feel good. The design of the level was to give the player a sense of progression upwards, thus the interior had two floors so the player can see the floor below where they started. This is also the level where the material fade were tested and implemented before being incorporated to the other levels. It was more important in this level to flow because transitioning from exterior to interior and first to second floor had to be fluid.
This map was used for our Whitebox, Gameplay, and Vertical slice milestones. For those milestones I helped in the whitebox construction and mesh placement for the environmental storytelling. During the design process, the art team requested an area with verticality because they wanted to experiment with views. I came up with a whitebox prototype of an over hanging bridge over the shrine and brought it to the team. The team then incorporated the design into the finalized level with me in charge of putting it together.
I also experimented and implemented the level lighting. I asked the art team for a copy of their art warehouse for this area so I could experiment with the lighting system. I came up with the outer lighting and transition lighting between the exterior to the interior. I ran into several problems of certain meshes not accepting lighting evenly but I remedied that by reusing the textures on BSP, combining carpet, wooden beams, and tiles to create patterns along the ground to create smoothness in the light and shadow.
I also experimented and implemented the level lighting. I asked the art team for a copy of their art warehouse for this area so I could experiment with the lighting system. I came up with the outer lighting and transition lighting between the exterior to the interior. I ran into several problems of certain meshes not accepting lighting evenly but I remedied that by reusing the textures on BSP, combining carpet, wooden beams, and tiles to create patterns along the ground to create smoothness in the light and shadow.
Level 4 - Palace
The palace level is the final level of Reign of Blades. The interior level design held the same rules of wide spaces for combat but the team still felt that the player needed to be elevated to the final battle. Each combat space I connected to doors to open and shut the player inside until the combat encounter was over through Kismet. It was my job to set up most of the material mesh fade to the relevant meshes and encounter trigger boxes as well as place a majority of the meshes and clutter within the level. I spent the most time in this level getting the material mesh fade to work smoothly and cover every area that the player character might disappear on.
This level is the final and biggest level of the game. I teamed up with another designer to handle the environment. I took creative charge by designing the front of the palace and drawing out the garden overview area for the other designer to follow and design. I worked with the art department to set up all the palace meshes where they needed to be and constructed the garden pathway up the front. I made sure to carefully work with placing the meshes in the Whack-A-Mole combat room since that is the one with the most combat Kismet. I also worked with the art team to design the Empress's room and center the area around the massive center piece throne and the Empress herself.
Post Mortem
What went well |
What we Learned |
What I Learned |
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