The Ninth Circle
The Ninth Circle
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Summary
Fight your way through your Forest of Hell and defeat the Seven Deadly Sins to free yourself in a fast-paced FPS roguelite.
About my Level
Unreal 5, Git
Capstone Project
Level blockout assets were created using Unreal's landscape, modeling, and foliage tools.
Inspired By
Alan Wake
Doom
Halo
Development
During early production, many of the core mechanics weren't made yet so I created two level blockouts using Unreal FPS template as a starter. The first two levels I developed were to test out movement as well as experiment with the types of levels we wanted as the team. The team was still developing the core mechanics such as super jump and enemies.
The goal was to develop an arena that allowed players to move around freely by providing different opportunities to utilize their movement mechanics. One of the primary inspiration early on was maps from Doom Eternal and Halo.
Early Test Levels
Various of Future Developed Maps
Around the development of the third level, we had our basic enemy. During this period I took feedback from playtest sessions where I received feedback on the first two maps. Most of the feedback where I could improve on the maps was adding more details in trees, and getting more colors and different meshes in the blockouts to get a more appealing and interesting level.
These pieces were modeled by me and uiltized to achieve the final state of the blockout.
Level 3 Blockout Progress
Metrics
Metrics gym used to establish scale
Dash
Super Jump
I looked into how we can transition players to the next map. The approach I created is to have a cave prefab that players will enter that will act as a teleporter. I measured the distance between the caves of the different maps and teleported the player using that distance and the player's location. This was later made by me into a blueprint to dynamically calculate the distance to allow map order to change per playthrough.
Measuring the distance between the two maps to teleport players as seamless as possible
Design/Lighting
Lighting
I added 3 types of torch lights.
Blue Lights (Point of Interest for movement mechanics)
Orange Lights (Environmental lighting)
Purple Light (Cave Entrance to next level)
Blue and Orange torch lights
Affordance
Later through development, I added skulls around ledges that were lit with blue to indicate to players areas that afforded them the ability to use their movement mechanics.
Compositional Design
When the player spawns I have logs, trees, and rocks that point towards the center where the player picks up the gun for the first time. Afterward, it leads to a vantage point where I utilize the Rule of Thirds with the main focus of a dead person with a blue highlight.
Leading Lines leading to Rule of Thirds
Scripting
Scripted spawners to activate after player drops from vantage point
Slippery Surfaces are applied to areas where players aren't suppose to be
Cave
Caves are used to teleport players as seamless to the reward room as well as the next level
Maps are separated, allowing the map order to dynamically change each playthrough
Statue
Designed and scripted a statue to break apart when enemies were killed around it. Scripted the statue to slowly fade out before revealing a random perk.
Boss Room
Here's a glimpse of a early build of the Wraith boss room. The floor was scripted to break when the boss reached half-health, bringing the player to a new arena underneath. Unfortunately, boss AI never reached full implementation.
Post-Mortem
Things that I would've done differently today
Looking back, I wish I trusted my gut instinct and developed several of the larger maps at a smaller scale. It was a requested feedback that I incorporated and ended up developing maps that were too big. While one of the maps ended up looking impressive, I think I would have been able to develop several smaller maps that would have increased the number of permutations of map ordering for players to experience while also allowing for faster iteration.
If I had more time I would have probably looked into making the caves a bit smaller to lessen the time between each map transition and quickly throw players back into gameplay.
The Ninth Circle was a great learning experience as a level designer and scripter. Learning Unreal 5 has been a fun experience and I look forward to future UE projects.
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