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Position: Level Designer

Engine: Source SDK Hammer

Team Size: Team Project

Development Time: 12 weeks (~160 dev hours)

Concept: "Dead Freight" is a standalone custom campaign set in the Left 4 Dead series. I was responsible for the finale level "Freight Yard" where the survivors work their way through a freight yard to catch a train to safety.

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Roles and Responsibilities

  • Designed and developed a Left 4 Dead level from paper map to finalized polish.

  • Maintained an LDD and made appropriate changes throughout development.

Screenshots

Gameplay

Design Goals

  • Interesting, memorable and diverse level settings.

  • Clear sightlines and conveyance

Interesting, Memorable and Diverse Settings

  • The first setting is an abandoned street where there is environmental storytelling to set the scene and tell a story.

  • This area's only light sources come from the street lights that line the street creating pools of light the player is drawn to that leads them to the next section

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  • The Street tells the story of a getaway bus that crashed through multiple security checkpoints and caused havoc throughout the space.

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  • The bus punched through the second gate leading to the extraction point, and survivors promptly used boxes to climb over the wreckage. This also serves as a valve or "point of no return" for the player.

  • The bar nearby was a place that many survivors didn't survive and there are stories to be seen within the space.

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  • The warehouse serves as a space where the cargo was used to great effect as traps in the survivors attempt to reach extraction.

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  • Finally, the freight yard serves as a makeshift path that was put together as survivors desperately tried to navigate through to the train tracks.

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Clear Sightlines/Conveyance

  • Aside from lighting, sightlines to the holes in the walls leading to the warehouse were lit up to draw attention and draw the player forward.

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  • Graffiti and tags were also used to further guide and reinforce that the player was moving in the correct direction.

  • Fire was also used for it's lighting and movement properties.

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Post Mortem

  • What went well?​

  • Smart Changes and Incremental Improvement

    • There were good changes made throughout the project and none of the changes were on as large of a scale as changes I've made in the past. Basically, I got away from an old bad habit this project.​

  • Lighting/Beauty Corner

    • Through my long time spent tinkering, I was able to get the starting area of my level to have high quality lighting and was able to use it as a "beauty corner" for screenshots.​

    • A lot of my lighting was used in intelligent ways (Grab attention, guide with subtlety, etc.) which increased the overall conveyance of my level.

  • Varied Gameplay

    • There were distinct changes in gameplay throughout the level and the areas were unique and memorable.​

    • Gameplay shifted from long sightlines to short sightlines throughout, giving the gameplay a dynamic feeling.

  • What went wrong?

  • Lighting

    • While the beginning of the level had nice lighting, there were areas that the lighting did not want to cooperate with me.

    • I ran out of time when trying to fix the strange model lighting in the shipping area and I had to ship with some strange dark areas that I wish had turned out better.

  • Lulls in Horde Combat

    • This may be more due to the director, but the gameplay during the finale horde event would have lulls that I spent most of the semester trying to iron out.

    • The ending sequence improved over the course of the semester; however, I think it could have been improved further as well as been made more cinematic with more time.

  • Clutter

    • When it came to the aesthetics, I had a hard time breaking my habit of adding too much to just fill the space rather than intelligently place just enough to make the space believable.​

    • The amount of clutter dropped significantly from the first aesthetics milestone; however, I think it could have been improved further to be more believable.

  • What I Learned?

  • References, References, References

    • Picking out smart references in the design phase and fitting the gameplay into the space, rather than the other way around, would have yielded better spaces from an aesthetic perspective.

  • Finalize your gameplay changes at Gameplay Complete and DON’T touch it again

    • I made a few changes to my level after Gameplay Complete that ended up affecting the nav mesh since I did not plan accordingly when I had proxy assets.

    • Since I had to make changes to the nav, I ended up spending a good amount of time dealing with new problems that arose to get the level to a playable state again. That time would have been better spent on the lighting issues mentioned above.

  • Respect deadlines when in a team environment

    • My team worked well to set deadlines in advance of submission times to allow for any unforeseen problems and allow time to test.​

    • Without this time, we would have had several milestones where we would’ve submitted with big problems because we only found them once we set to testing.

    • This is also helpful to maintain team anxiety since we could submit with ample time and not be stressed up to the deadline.

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