GAME TRAILER
PROJECT OVERVIEW
Released in 2018, Overkill's The Walking Dead is a first-person shooter with an emphasis on cooperative gameplay. The game features four characters, namely Maya, Aidan, Grant, and Heather. Each has their own unique skills and abilities, and players must work together in order to complete their objectives. Set in Washington D.C., a post-apocalyptic environment which was overran by zombies, the game features stealth, survival horror and role-playing elements.
MY ROLE
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I joined development during the concept phase until late into the production phase.
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Level design - contributions to a lot of different levels at various stages, pitching, scripting and level design
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Whitebox assets & level creation in Maya
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Sole design owner of one big level from concept to release, a coordinated effort with various art outsourcing companies
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System design, contributions to a lot of systems, some made it in, some were cut
LEVEL: The Last Stop
The Last Stop is one of the last levels of the game, narratively your group is chased away from your home camp by other factions. Forcing you through the zombie infested subway tunnels of DC.
Design highlights
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A big theme for the level was to have it feel like the factions were still around, looking for you as you're delving deeper underground, various interactions with them take place during the road there.
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All big narrative levels have something referred to as a "youtube event" - a low chance twist that turns the level on its head. In The Last Stop, the usual way forward stops working, instead an alarm is rung and an emergency exit is opened, giving you a quicker path forward but the alarm is bound to attract attention.
Player Objective
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The players know that there's a lift somewhere that will take them to a friendly face, they need to bypass any obstacles in order to get there.
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SCREENSHOTS
Start area, the previous cutscene showcase the players fleeing underground, but they haven't lost their pursuers yet.
The layout. All areas are based around the subway theme, some untouched since the collapse of civilization while others have been refined into camps.
Train maintenance area, the players have to search the area for fuses in order to lift the train and open the path forward.
An entrance point of the enemy faction, they've put up bear traps and can be found searching the area up ahead.
Underground corridors where the players need to bypass a switch puzzle. The switches are scattered throughout the area, a specific interaction sequence is required, the order is randomized each time.
Monster closets could react to noise. A feature I spearheaded and eventually became a game wide thing.
Subway train tracks filled with water that makes noise when traversed. A shortcut can be used if the players spend valuable craft reagents on it.
The subway trains include pickups for those that dare to go offpath.
Throughout the level are randomized trap rooms that players can fall into. The means to get back up can be found within.
One of the maintenance areas turned into a survivor camp. Overrun by zombies. Or did they become the zombies?
Ambush site, the enemy faction initiate a fire fight with you, attracting zombies from the tunnels behind. There's a side path that can be taken by spending reagents that lets players sneak up on them.
In order to escape the zombies from the ambush, the players need to lower a drawbridge.
First signs of the crescendo area, a subway construction site turned survivor camp.
...Infested by the enemy faction. Once they spot you, they will engage loudly and zombies will eventually swarm the scene.
The players need to keep the elevator powered in order to escape. The generators can be found by following the yellow wire and can be turned off by the enemy faction in order to thwart your progress.
PROCESS:
I felt like including a process section for this project as it's taken so many different forms. From working exclusively in Adobe Illustrator for months on a procedural level generation system to a sudden engine switch to Unreal Engine in the midst of the Production Phase. The switch to Unreal meant starting over, few assets were re-usable, meaning most of the things had to be made from scratch. The least painful option for the level team to at this point was deemed to whitebox levels in Maya in order to whitebox levels and create whitebox assets.
I had no previous experience working with Maya so it was a great opportunity to familiarize myself with 3d as well as using Maya as a whiteboxing tool. All levels lived in Maya as modular pieces for a long time, however the whiteboxes came into Unreal as one big piece during the iteration process as it was the quickest way to conduct playtests early on. Eventually all modular kits were exported in order for the levels to be remade within Unreal directly, in preparation for artists to be able to replace them with their own modular kits. A big hurdle was ensuring that all LDs used the same metrics and shared sets since everyone was working isolated for a long time. Some LDs moved over to asset maintenance / creation over creating levels themselves in order to combat this.
Bumpy process aside, I think the level turned out good and I'm pleased with the result.
SCREENSHOTS
Early Maya whitebox of the entire layout of The Last Stop.
Cut sewers section.
All combat areas were built in a modular fashion to make it easy to move around entire sections.
Ported into Unreal, all assets such as cover and path defining props were soon moved from Maya to Unreal for quicker iteration.
A sewer section that made me realize water's interesting level design applications due to the game being about noise avoidance.
The Art Director translated the iterated whitebox into art sets. This is when spaces started turning into places and the whiteboxes became much more refined.
Final state of the whitebox - end area.
Final state of the whitebox - end area.