Design
Technical Design and Level design are two halves of one whole - one gives functionality and purpose, and the other gives it a stage to play on.
Aecoria: The Forgotten Kingdom (Personal Project)
“The Forgotten Kingdom” was a level I designed from the ground up as an area that would feel right-at-home in a third-person adventure or RPG. Aside from creating a beautiful-looking environment, I wanted to tell exercise my environmental storytelling skills - telling the tale of a once-powerful kingdom that lost a decisive battle, becoming nothing but a distant memory.
My vision for the final product introduced a few obstacles I had to overcome:
Ghosts that appear in the gravesite during night time
Accomplished by a opacity slider that controls a material collection parameter. This can be called and modified in Sequencer, or even as a trigger in BP for gameplay.
In addition, the mesh used for the ghost knights did not work correctly with the transparent material I made to give them their appearance (their eyeballs were showing!), so I had to do some further modifications to the mesh in Maya to fix this issue.
Dynamic environment changes when diving underwater
Accomplished by triggers and a post-process volume
Establishing different kinds of mood for the respective time-of-day
Emphasized torch/natural light for dusk and used multiple spotlights and reflection prisms to soften the lighting around the level, giving it more of a “glow” and less of a static lit appearance.
This really complimented the eerie nature of a village built upon the ruins of something far greater.
Primary inspirations when concieving, drafting, designing, and set-dressing this level include Nier Gestalt/Replicant and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
Created in Unreal Engine 4.19. Asset credits are found in the video description on YouTube.
Tyto Online (Immersed Games)
Designer first, a variety of roles second
While my primary role and responsibilities at Immersed were as a designer, I pinch hit on multiple teams including QA, content marketing, technical art (asset optimization for our target platform), and even generating sales leads alongside the CEO.
Design That Entertains and Educates
Designed, prototyped, and performed QA on six quests for an educational MMORPG. I overcame multiple design challenges including the limitations of in-house tools, alignment with the NGSS Science Standards, and the nature of open-ended quest content that uses inquiry-based learning to teach scientific concepts.
(Pictured: “A Tale of Two Alleles,” one quest I worked on in which players had to determine why a pack of kits looked differently from their parent foxes.)
Gamedev Housekeeping
Co-managed JIRA backlog with product owner and game designer, following-up with teammates on blockers and status of cards. Organized existing cards and cleaned up backlog of old / obsolete cards.
(Photo credit: Atlassian)