Daemon: Tokyo 2099

Overview:

  • First person fps

  • Competitive Multiplayer

  • 15 person team

  • Unreal Engine 5

  • Developed over 4+ months

  • Secured 2nd place and a $15,000 prize at the Collegiate Games Competition (CGC), standing out among teams from leading universities across the country as one of Michigan State University’s two representatives.

Goals:

  • Create a competitive map that fit the constraints of the games core mechanics

  • Learn more about Multiplayer FPS Level Design

  • Playtesting and iterating on my design often to make sure that the map is balanced and it fun to play

  • Making sure throughout development that we are doing audience checks to make sure we are designing to serve our player’s needs

“Gameplay First Design”

The most important thing aspect of competitive shooters is that geometry is meticulously placed to ensure that players know where all obstacles are and where teach path leads to.

Making sure that sightlines are balanced and objectives were easy to reach was at my upmost priority when designing this level.

Step 1: Research

I started working on the project by analyzing other maps from different games that fit the genre like Call of Duty and Valorant. I already had a lot of experience playing these games but still wanted to take a deeper dive to really think about the decisions designers made when working on the different levels.

I took a lot of notes asking myself questions like:

  • What is the hook of this level?

  • How does the level challenge players?

  • What kind of playstyles do different maps support?

  • What are some common elements between maps?

Step 2: Documentation

Before getting into Unreal throwing cubes around I jump into Figma to start a very simple design doc. In my documentation I organize my references, take notes for design and metrics.

Step 3: References

After getting a good idea for how I wanted the map to be structured I went online to gather references of the different maps for the levels that I was inspiring my level off of.

Step 4: Top Down

When making my top downs I go through a lot of different iterations based off the notes that I took.

I make sure to follow all the constraints for the project and ensuring that the map fits our game’s mechanics and movement.

My Process

Feedback:

The feedback that I got after completing the first pass of the blockout made me realize that the map had these issues:

1. Sightlines: The map had super long sightlines that didn’t made the map super unbalanced during playtesting

2. Poor Level Flow: A lot of spaces felt super annoying to move around because it was hard to access the other lanes of the map forcing players to travel far lengths to get to an objective

3. Large Scale: During development we were utilizing an asset pack and following the metrics of that pack led to spaces feeling super big and empty

Iterations based off feedback:

1. Fixing Cover Options: I made sure to tweak the already existing cover to cover those sightlines and added new cover to help create a more balanced experience

2. Adding Pathing: To fix to level flow I added more paths for players to move through

3. Added Geometry: An easy way to fix the scale was to add more placeholder level geometry for props

Conclusion/Other Thoughts:

This project was a challenge for me because I was so used to making single player levels. Not only was I still early to making multiplayer levels I was also designing a multiplayer map for a whole new game with mechanics that were constantly changing throughout development.

Step 5: Blockout