R.A.V.E.N

Screenshots

Level Design & Game Design

The levels I had responsibility for was 1th, 2nd, and 4th. The 4th level was the last level, we wanted that level being the most rememberable one in the game. I thought of a way to re-use mechanics in a new way to add a unique element to the last fight. I asked the artists to divide the last enemy structure into 3 mesh layers. I made them into separate entities so they could be destroyed individually.This meant I could have different phases during the boss fight, when one part of the structure was destroyed I could trigger any event I wanted. A feature that was added the last days was allied ships, I made the whole boss fight revolve around allied reinforcement and taking down the structure layer by layer.

(Planet working as a focal point)

In R.A.V.E.N, you are introduced to the brand new prototype spaceship R.A.V.E.N. With this new weapon you make your way through space and battle the evil cult, that has emerged from the outer sides of the universe to once more gain control of the galaxy.

(Unity 3D as level editor)

In other game projects, the players usually had strict limitations on what part of the levels they can access. During a full 3D space shooter those limitations disappears, the players can move everywhere. The real question began with "How do we guide the player?". The most simple method for us was to create "fly-to" missions that triggered enemies, dialogue and other events. One of the most common problems we had was that the player rotated the main camera and the whole level turned up side down. The player instantly found it harder to navigate, the solution was to create strong focal points in the skybox like big planets.

When designing the levels I started out by making 2D paper top-downs. I quickly realized that the top-downs didn't say enough about the level since the gameplay is so three-dimensional. Instead, I created design documents for every level. They contained flow charts, dialogues and other things that helped understand the levels. Unity 3D was our Level editor during the entire project, I worked on export scripts that were created so we could get the level data from Unity.

Tools:

Specification:

My contributions:

L

Game design

Level dressing

Gameplay balancing

Quality assurance

Export tools - scripting

Mission design

Collision models

U

XML

Adobe Photoshop

Autodesk Maya

Notepad ++

In-house tools

S

School project: 10 weeks(half time)

Level editor: Unity 3D

Engine: In-house

Team size: 11

2 Level Designers

3 Artists

6 Programmers