Responsibilities
Technical Level Designer 2022
- After my Internship, the team was so impressed by my custom map work, that I was hired in 2022 as a Contractor; I was assigned various tasks for The Anacrusis at Stray Bombay.
- I designed holdout events for each level for the Episode 4 Campaign.
- Work closely with Environment Artists to communicate any 3d art asset collision & navigation issues
- Review & update navigation for the A.I to correctly use.
- Designed the Episode 4 Finale (The Engine Room) event
- Participate & bring up new updates every weekly playtest
- I worked with the entire team at Stray Bombay to do playtest and get some feedback. I even implemented some cool audio events with the audio director, Nigel Wilson.
Internship 2021-2022
- After being approved and signed on as an Intern for Stray Bombay, I was tasked with creating a custom campaign for The Anacrusis.
- Finish & publish my custom campaign “Stray Bay” before June 1st, 2021
- Design multiple levels that could be played from start to finish and participate in various weekly playtests.
- Work with the developer team at Stray Bombay to offer critical feedback in making the modding tools accessible and friendly to new users
- Create a trailer and do self-marketing with advertising across social media platforms
Technical Level Design
I was in charge with communicating with the A.I director to ensure each level for the Episode 4 Campaign was correct. To do this, I had to implement a ton of navigation, building, editing, and debugging for the A.I Director. I used the blueprint actor called The Level Context Debugger, to fix and debug item spawns outside the playable areas as well as enemy spawns that seemed out of place.
Entity/Actor Scripting
One of the amazing things with The Anacrusis and it’s toolset is it’s being developed to be friendly for Source Engine modders. A lot of the Actors have visual scripting in their properties so it’s easier to connect things such as buttons to doors and much more. I did a ton of this for the Holdout events to where players have to survive against waves and waves of alien hordes.
Navigation & Blocking Volumes
I placed around 300+ navigation & blocking volumes to communicate with the A.I Director for the in-game Aliens & Human bots to work. These navigation volumes help coordinate navigation as well for the in-game A.I to determine what path to go, where to spawn, and what places to stay out of. It was very important that the navigation was 99% correct or else the game would not spawn any enemies for the players to shoot at.
Designing My Own Mod & Custom Map
I was given super early access to the modding toolkit by the Stray Bombay developer team. Here they used a modified Unreal Engine 4 Editor, with all the features of the normal engine, as well as some additional things such as GPU Lightmass for rendering lighting. I created a new level inside the editor and got right to work for my very first campaign.
Custom Materials & Texture Editing
I designed a ton of custom materials & textures for the campaign, as well as adjusting them in Photoshop & Illustrator. These textures were imported and replaced some of the default textures the game had and I modified specific items inside Unreal Engine 4 to give them a brand new & different look for players who were familiar with the base game.
Communicating To The A.I Director
I was in charge of importing the actors and blueprints in order to set up the A.I director for Stray Bay. These actors were required for every single level as it was what built the A.I navigation, enemy spawning, item spawns, and the ability to start and finish the level.
Achievements
- Hired to be part-time & contract to be a Technical Level Designer because of my level design & modding experience
- My first AA Entry Level Design Job
- One of the first community modders to have their level showcased to the world and officially released by the Dev Team
- My first ever two cross-platform levels released (PC & Xbox)
