PROJECT DETAILS
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- 2 Week Personal Design Challenge
- Dungeon Design
- Time & Deadline Improvement For Level Design
- Solo Project
- I wanted to improve upon my Level, Narrative, and Encounter Design.
- Unreal Engine 5
Thal’fall is a custom dungeon made for up to 5 players and for smaller groups that wish to use Followers to progress and complete the dungeon.
All 3D Modelled Assets that you see that are located in the project are also owned by Blizzard Entertainment. This project was designed and created for a personal project piece & challenge. No Assets were sold, redistributed, or sent to any other individual and were used only by the individual, CJ Sharkey for this personal project.
This project was informed by publicly available design resources, personal research, and insights from industry professionals based on their publicly shared experiences and general game design principles.
Thal'Fall Overview
Thal’fall is a custom dungeon designed for up to 5 players and for smaller groups that wish to use Followers to progress and complete the dungeon.
With the Earthen assisting the champions of Azeroth on Khaz Algar on their own free will, some returned to Thal’fall, an old Titan Facility created by the Titans to do experiments on their assigned Earthen. Inside, they found a source of the Old God’s Power…the blood. Inside Thal’fall, Earthen who explored and discovered found imprisoned vials and sources of the Old God’s Blood tempted them to drink it, causing them to transform and be warped into flesh, similarly to the curse of flesh. This flesh was not the same curse that our champions and all of our races on Azeroth experienced today, it corrupted them, defiled them, gave them power for sacrifice, causing pain, agony, and imprisonment to follow Xal’atath into opening the void to our Titan Azeroth. An escapee, Talgren ran as far as his heart could content to reach out to someone for help after finding out what the blood was doing to his fellow Earthen. With this emergency called to our Champions of Azeroth, it’s up to them to dive deep into Thal’fall, stop and destroy the Old God’s Blood, and see hands on what this blood can do to those not just made of flesh, and to prevent Xal’atath from gaining any more advantages to kill Azeroth.
Pencil & Pen 2D Prototype
Ever since I got into Level Design I’ve always wanted to motivate myself to do a time challenge in designing and setting up a World of Warcraft Level Design Project. I gave myself a 2 week challenge timer in creating the best possible and highest quality prototype before the timer. I started immediately off with a hand drawn 2d Prototype using grid paper.
Digitalizing The 2D Prototype
After Sketching & Drawing up the 2D prototype, I wanted to make an enhanced version of it in Photoshop with references from locations currently in The War Within. This will allow me to communicate a bit more clearer with my ideas for boss locations, enemy placements, and as well as the Environment Design & PureRef references.
PureRef Reference Gathering
Speaking of PureRef References! I went to where the best place is to get references for a World of Warcraft project…and that is the World of Warcraft itself! Set in the Ringing Deeps, there is a dark and corrupted zone that is just all around beautiful that Blizzard had made for The War Within.
Encounter Design & Documentation
Please Give This A Read, This Is The Best Part of The Encounter Design!
One of the things I really wanted to improve with this project was to work on my Encounter Design. I wanted to create unique bosses that players had to face throughout Thall’fall and I spent a couple days writing down ideas and referencing past encounters throughout World of Warcraft’s history. The documentation goes over the entire dungeon, its boses, the abilities, the difficulties, as well as the reference board and 2D prototype above. There was also a short narrative designed as well for the dungeon and it’s reasoning for The War Within.
Grayboxing & Landscape Prototyping
Right off the start, I went straight to Grayboxing & doing the Landscape sculpt for Thall’fall. One of the first things I did was I took my 2D Prototype and put it on a really large plane to help me have a really good scale. You can see to the picture to the right there’s the 2D Prototype and I’m landscape sculpting around and for it!
World Design
Right off the bat I had to match the atmospheric fog and colors for the Environment. On my second monitor I had World of Warcraft opened and running while sitting in the zone to gather up the colors for immediate live reference. I did a ton of Atmospheric fog blending and colorization to match the Dark Eerie Void & Black Blood look that WoW has as well! With the Landscape, I had to blend a ton of Textures & Materials together to create the paths that are being blended into the ground. There was a ton of Materials and Texture Assets
Ready, Set, Dress!
With a couple of days remaining I had to quickly decide how much set dressing and narrative detail I was going to add for this project. I added Titan Statues, Foliage with spikes, Mushrooms and Fungal life, as well as some Titan Facility Structures collapsed underground and being crushed by Azeroth’s Dirt. The entire zone is located in Khaz Algar.
RESPONSIBILITIES
- Sketching & Drawing my own 2D Prototype on paper
- Narrative Design, Encounter Design, Level Design, World Design, and Environment Design.
- Get as far as I can through a self 2 week challenge for Encounter Design, Level Design, Dungeon Design, and some Narrative Design.
ACHIEVEMENTS
- I got to a really really awesome state with this project for a 2 week challenge!
- I love the landscaping work & blending that I did with the pathing for the players to go through.
- The fog and atmosphere color was really close and sync’d with the zone that is currently in World of Warcraft.
- For all the documentation I did, it took me a while to think of fun fights but I got through it! I kept thinking about what I expected from the players when there were certain mechanics designed for the Encounters from each boss.
