Landell Games

Project Worked on: Project Apoceus

Released: Undisclosed at the moment

Platforms: Pc

Skill focus: Level design, gameplay/system design, scripting, UI/UX design, team leading.

Internship length: 6 months

Engine and tools: Unity, Google docs, Krita, Photopea, Excel, Linear, Notion.

Project Apoceus

Project Apoceus is an RTS where players will have to defeat each other as the Dwarf faction. In this game you can play as the Dwarf race (more races to play as are planned) and the goal is to defeat the other player's in combat through the use of the units and buildings in the game.

The game is currently only playable by play testers.

Level design Work

In the level design department I worked from the first steps on designing two multiplayer maps for Project Apoceus.

These being: Arctic Conquest and Abandoned Forest.

Arctic Conquest:

So from a logistic stand point, this is the largest map I have developed in a game before and it needed to be large as the main first map for the game.

It was also the first map I developed for Landell games together with a game play related team.

The process started with documentation on what we would like to explore with the map. So I started work here defining what kind of features I think would fit the map + the first early sketches for the map and it's variations.

Sketches:

Some of the sketches for the first map I designed (Arctic Conquest), going from the top one being the first iterations and then going into newer versions. This map was designed to be a 4 player free for all or as a 2 vs 2 map.

Building the level in Unity:

Here are some early iterations of the map with basic textures made using the Terrain building tool in Unity.

This was the first time I have had a good use for this tool and I learned to use it to it's full potential. I also learned about some other in house tools that are unfortunately under NDA, but where useful in building the level.

I learned quite early on how important it was to get +proportions right from both the sketch stage and with getting map into the game itself.

Other things I tackled was introducing landmarks and breadcrumb paths in the environment to encourage X activities. These would be roads that lead to resources and highlighting enemy encampments using dirt areas to indicate that something valuable was close by. Example's can be seen on the right:

I also worked on the Narrative elements on the map together with our environment artists. These being ruins, bandit camps and bones surrounding animals camps which are supposed to tell a story.

Narrative Elements of the map:

We in the team wanted to Arctic Conquest map to show the aftermath of a ancient civilization and a war taking place on the map by having remnants of this in the environment.

Example of this would be weapons sticking of the ground at specific areas + ruins of buildings around the map. I worked on making sure these elements would fit gameplay vise and storyvise into the game. I also decided where they would be placed.

The buildings are placeholder for ruins and the white cubes on the left are supposed to represent a graveyard area.

Early blockout of the new map design.

Early set dressing of the new map design.

Set dressed area with tree's (placeholder cliffs) and rocks + texture's for roads tree's and mineral areas.

Corner updated with grass and updated texture.png

Road that (the grey texture) shows where their are potential resources while the brown area with bones shows that animals are nearby. You can also see that the road is leading to a highground.

Documentation.

I can unfortunately not show any documentation because it can't be shown to the public at the moment. The information of the map was documented in notion.

Abandoned Forest:

This map was supposed to be a smaller map for the players, that would be used for testing the game with shorter sessions then the previous map.

It still needed to support the scale of the units in the game.

It also needed to use no new art assets that where going to be made for the Arctic conquest map.

This is a 1 vs 1 map.

Sketch for the Abandoned Forest

The level in Unity:

Here is the blockout for the level.

The process was similar if not the same as the previous map. I did use a lot of the experience I gained in order to create a new and improved map as can be seen.

Still using the same type of landmarks used in the previous map.

I did also work on more easy expansion areas for the player to build bases to get more resources and I also worked on creating hot spots for player vs player interactions. These hot spots areas being the middle, and the button left and top right corner of the map.

Area without texture, this is supposed to be a ramp from the starting base and the first expansion area.

Another expansion area, where tree's where supposed to block the player from passing until they could remove them. This idea was discontinued because it did not work with both planned and with current game mechanics in the game. Therefor the tree's on the bottom of the screen was removed.

Area with texture, this is supposed to show roads that lead to specific areas of the map.

Documentation

I can unfortunately not show any documentation at the moment since it's under the NDA of Landell games.

System Design Contributions

Worked with updates towards the game by tweaking existing units, updating units, buildings and game mechanics when needed.

Worked with updating game systems such as the combat, resource system and the level design for the game.

Made documentation for upgrades for units and buildings and for the level design for the game.

Also helped with designing new factions for the game (non that can be disclosed at the moment) and other systems for the game.

UI contributions

Worked with improving the UI of the game. Mainly the grouping system for units and the general layout of the HUD and it's GUI buttons. (Can't be shown at the moment or discussed further).