LEAD
PRESENTATION
Each team lead presents the monthly results to the entire studio every month. I decided to create a retrospective of our first PVE mission, codenamed Endor, which we developed for Warface.
The presentation is made in a bit of a comical manner, showing how the team should've gathered references for the mission, but that is just me on vacation :D
*English captions included
WORKFLOW
I specialize in optimizing routine processes, directing the team's attention towards productive aspects of experience creation, rather than expending valuable time on tasks suitable for automation. In the accompanying slide, I've developed an Excel spreadsheet enabling designers to efficiently tally and generate an adjustable combat flow map for Armored Warfare missions, all within the confines of mission creation guidelines.
SCHEDULING
Thorough planning stands as a cornerstone for every project. To ensure teams are safeguarded from excessive workloads and the dreaded "crunch," I employ all available resources to anticipate diverse production scenarios. It's paramount to maintain a contingency plan (Plan B), readily trim non-essential features if needed, and effectively communicate these decisions to the team in a way that fosters unanimous support and understanding
DESIGN
RESEARCH
Research and planning is the key to preproduction. It’s an important development stage that if overlooked may create significant obstacles in the future.
That is why I do my best at the preproduction stage to gather as much strategic information and Ideas as I can get for the levels and game elements I and my colleagues are creating.
FLOW
Setting up the right flow of the level is the supporting pillar of immersive gameplay. But getting the right flow is the question of staying true to the established principles of the game, the right visual mood, and a believable Environment of missions and quests, which comes with a lot of iterations and Experimentation.
Armored Warfare mission flow example
BALANCE
Balance is the word a lot of devs and players refer to when talking about cheats and exploits and fair play.
But there is more to it, balance is also the supporting pillar of Immersion that is guided through a variety of mechanics that through the right flow add up to the immersion of the gameplay.
MECHANICS
CREATIVITY
Creative mechanics that players didn't experience before or a new look at old mechanics is something that I like to experiment with to make players experience memorable and unique.
Mothership
Mothership is the final boss fight that puts an end to an epic story arc of high-tech faction in the world of Armored Warfare.
It is a five-stage fight, with growing intensity, when each next stage introduces a new feature and when combined with previous one makes the encounter more challenging.
Mothership ability to AOE Air Strike forces players out of cover, if failed there is a Direct Shot ability that will finish them.
The Direct Shot ability of the Mothership will devistate the player if he will not be able to Find Cover in time
Between stages, players can get a rest with their common fights with regular tanks that come from the base indoors and drop via dropships.
Mothership ability to AOE Air Strike forces players out of cover, if failed there is a Direct Shot ability that will finish them.
Mantis
Mantis boss was quite unique for Allods Online the ability of big spread of Orbs that force players to constantly move and at the same time pay attention to incoming other Orbs while controlling Spiders that can put a slow debuff on players
The boss throws out a bunch of explosive orbs at a random point, forcing players to spread.
The boss spawns spiders that work in synergy with Spread and Run ability. If not killed spiders, will put a slowing web on players making it harder to run away from orbs.
The boss throws out a bunch of explosive orbs at a random point, forcing players to spread.
AUTHENTICITY
Designing and producing mechanics to create an authentic atmosphere of the quests, missions, and the game overall is the challenge that I take on myself. I believe that authentic mechanics is the key to make player care, engage, and remember the world that we create for them.
Crysalid
Chrysalid is a final boss referenced to Starcraft Kerrigan made for a group dungeon in Allods Online The dungeon also featured a lore-friendly AI companion, that players save from insect inhabitants. The companion follows players and comments on the island's POI and reveals its story, secrets, and his own journey.
The first spell is an AOE that does devastating damage to ones the are not close to her at the moment The second spell is a spawning of bombardment insects from the ceiling that do AOE damage on impact with each player The third is a Swarm and a Worm miniboss spawn of insects
Cacoon is being protected by her Swarm till enough damage is made and she drops out.
The first spell is an AOE that does devastating damage to ones the are not close to her at the moment The second spell is a spawning of bombardment insects from the ceiling that do AOE damage on impact with each player The third is a Swarm and a Worm miniboss spawn of insects
Worm
Chrysalid is a final boss referenced to Starcraft Kerrigan made for a group dungeon in Allods Online The dungeon also featured a lore-friendly AI companion, that players save from insect inhabitants. The companion follows players and comments on the island's POI and reveals its story, secrets, and his own journey.
Ability to Burrow and move towards the farthest player push everyone on his way Swallow On reaching the player swallow the player and spit him out after 6 seconds Put an acid DoT debuff that needs to be healed of by allies The player is not stunned he can still attack from the inside of the worm
Ability to Burrow and move towards the farthest player push everyone on his way Swallow On reaching the player swallow the player and spit him out after 6 seconds Put an acid DoT debuff that needs to be healed of by allies The player is not stunned he can still attack from the inside of the worm
TOOLS
On my latest project, I oversee the usability of our level designers and the World Design Team and always try to enhance either game mechanics given by programmers to be more user-friendly or create my own helpful tools for better communication through the editor by making valuable guidelines.
Player activity guideline
A guideline tool I use to mark player interactions with the world, mainly for communicating gameplay to Level Artist. I can show different gameplay activities we desire from the player and also markup viewpoints with a point chooser and the ability to check
view blockers
Objects along spline
We have an escort activity that is made with a spline. The gameplay presumes to have checkpoints along the path and a reward at the end. I've made a prototype tool for programmers to showcase how we want this mechanic to behave for faster implementation of multiple gameplay elements in the level
Select overlapping actors
It was extremely simple but saved a ton of our team time when we needed to move large compositions around the big map, especially when others forgot to combine them in groups or level instances. The tool does what it says: it can multi-select actors overlapping with already selected ones and has a radius scaler
Player path guideline
Spline has options for visualizing three path types I use to showcase player navigation. The tool can switch between paths, copy spline points from other splines, reset pivot point, and even optimize itself if it becomes too long. I also feed these guideline paths into PCG logic for gameplay element distribution.
EXPERIMENTATION
Experimentations in personal projects allow me to keep abreast of new technologies and solutions that may be essential in the future.
Investing in these side projects gives me the opportunity to talk with different departments in their common language.
Houdini
After finishing Anastasia Opara tutorial on procedural lake village I decided to reinforce my knowledge with creating a project of my own.
I decided to experiment with a way that a procedural river or waterfall would appear on a given terrain.
I also reinforced my knowledge in Houdini's own scripting language VEX
Fellowship
An ongoing prototype of an adventure game I'm making in my free time. The basic idea of the game is to focus on player's collaboration with three of his companions in solving environmental puzzles and developing relationships with them through conversations, managing them to survive.
The inspiration for this game comes from Oxenfree and Inkle games but with a focus on more action-adventure similar to Plague Tale
I've used a Dialogue plugin that I heavily modified, including using C++, Scripting level, creating interaction systems and AI logic for interacting with the world. Dialogues written using Inky editor of Inkle Studio, Сharacters voiced using Replica Studio
ART
ENVIRONMENT
Creating the right environment comes with several Iterations, mine is a rule of three iterations. If you need more than three iterations, you better revisit your core idea and concept.
The trick at this point is not to lose focus of your game, your level, and your visuals.
ITERATION
Creating the level comes with several iterations, I usually have a rule of three iterations in a development stage. If you need more then three, you better revisit your core Idea or a previous development stage to question what went wrong. It will be an unpleasant and hard thing to do, because of the time and resources invested, but an alternative may ruin all the effort.
IMMERSION
The stage is static, for immersing the player you need to give feedback on his actions.
Reactive mechanics and in-game cinematics and events can show the the player consequences of his actions delivering a visual reward and adding to the Authenticity of the moment.