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Footage of work in progress
Child of Lothian
Project information
Project details
Engine: Unreal Engine 4
Genre: 3rd person, stealth, adventure
Project duration: 3 blocks of 8 weeks (4 blocks when done)
Project size: 27 (currently)
Status: Early Access on Steam
Project summary
The streets of 18th century Edinburgh disappear beneath the shadows of witch hunters looming in the streets. Hushed whispers appear in every corner and suspicious gazes of townspeople fall upon their neighbors, as friends become enemies.
Among the townsfolk of Edinburgh, there is a young orphan called Katheryn. A helpful man, who she now regards as her new mentor, is teaching her crucial survival skills to evade the evil witch hunters and survive the streets of Edinburgh.
Project info
my contributions / responsibilities
Level designer
Concepting:
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Explored re-usable level design through prototypes
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Conducted competitor analysis: RPG elements
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Created a prototype for the player hub to test viabiltiy of indoor environments for environment art
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Explored lighting setups for tone and mood
Pre-production:
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Conducted competitor analysis: stealth
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Set up and maintained a level design Miro board for the LD team to store all of the work
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Set up level design pipelines for the production phase
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Worked with environment art to set up metrics for art assets and created prefabs from the levelkit
Production:
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Worked on act 5 of the game (quests and level) until I was needed on act 1
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Took over responsibility of act 1 and reworked it based on feedback (quests and level)
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Implement level content (see next column)
Game & Quest designer
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Was actively involved with the creative process: going from a vague concept to a solid plan
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Helped rework the dynamics of the core gameloop
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Helped improve performance with UE4 editor action scripting
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Prototyped quest breakdowns on paper during all phases of the project
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During production, used in-house quest and dialogue tools to implement quests for act 1 and act 5
Contributions
Production
Work in progess:
Proprietor's Square
My main production work thus far has been focused on:
Taking ownership over all of act 5:
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Develop level geometry and set-dressing
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Design the main quest for act 5
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Implement the main quest for act 5
Due to priority changes by the team's leadership, act 5 needed to be moved to the last block of the year. I complied, understanding the project's needs and that I was needed somewhere else: see the right column.
early access content:
Onboarding
My main production work thus far has been focused on:
Re-design the onboarding in act 1:
Due to lingering issues in another part of the game, I was needed there to help make changes in order to efficiently solve these issues before the early access launch.
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Redesign the geo of the level in an efficient but effective manner
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Use set-dressing to give the area a theme and immerse the player in the setting
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Solve existing issues (skippable quests, missing player guidance etc.)
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Re-designed the onboarding quest and implemented dialogue, quest functionality, and various mini-cinematics for polish
Work in progress - Proprietor's Square
This is a high-level overview of the progress made on Proprietor's Square before I agreed to work on another section of the game (explained above).
Due to the short amount of time I had, art assets needed to be implemented quite fast so every playspace could be tested and adjusted based on how much room the buildings and props would take up and how much room was comfortable for the player.
This one-pager shows the progress of the level and where they are located using the top-down map.
Act 5 work
quest and node map design
Designing the map and quests for ACT 5 - Proprietor's Square
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My goal was to design a part of Edinburgh that contained residential buildings with a group of shops and bars in the middle. Primary and secondary paths connect all of the streets.
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The level had a focus on re-usable level design: this part of the map could contain multiple quests: both main and sidequests. Shortcuts can be unlocked at the end of those quests to make it easier to circle back to the main streets.
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Special attention was paid to make each area (North, East, South, West) distinct from one another to that the player would be able to understand their location at any time, especially when exiting one of the secondary paths in the middle of the map.
Act 5 would have one main quest assigned to it. Initially, it consisted of two parts and they were written with the intention to let the quest-givers and NPC's immerse the player more into the world.
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Important quest-giver: Brian is a man who feels shame about not standing up to the Witch Hunter and battling a guilty conscience for letting an acquaintance lose their lives.
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Important NPC: McTavish is a man with everything to lose if his secret about being one of the executioners come out: primarily his good social status and his succesful tavern.
quest design breakdowns
Since we were using in-house tools for setting up the quests and dialogues, quest breakdowns were written beforehand. This made it easy to first get feedback and make improvements before implementation.
Especially planning out dialogue trees beforehand was a good way to ensure that no unnecessary files would be created and the risk of creating bugs was mitigated.
After getting feedback on the quest synopses, quest step breakdown, and dialogue tree planning, I developed the top-down map for this area. This way, I knew roughly what I was going for when I started to block out the level.
Working with a levelkit
We had very little time and all environment artists were needed for other tasks. Because of this, level designers had to create most of the houses, landscapes, and set-dress until an artist could help. In the case of Proprietor's Square, I did everything by myself.
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I blocked out the initial geometry: this had to be very rough due to the small amount of time we had.
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I quickly started creating buildings out of the levelkit and prefabs I had made during pre-production.
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I was in contact with the environment artists to get feedback, check for oversights, and get additional pointers on how to improve the environments.
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I set-dressed some of the narrow-er spaces to test whether the playable spaces were still in line with the metrics.
Everything in these timelapse gifs was put together by me, using environment art's levelkit.
The timeframe was roughly 1,5 week.
Examples of quest & dialogue implementation
These are some screenshots of the quest implementation using tools by the system designers.
The dialogue tool we used is called Talky and was created by Jordi van der Hulst.
Act 1 work
original situation
What was in engine when I took on the task:
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Many 90 degree angles
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Very straight paths
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Monotomous environment (only alleyways)
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No player leashing or points of interest
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Inaccurate placement of geometry and props
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Quest could be skipped
Rework result
Rework result
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Due to the very limited amount of time, I had to make a more interesting playspace efficiently, keeping most of the geometry the same.
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I decided to therefore add a small area in the upper part to break the repetition.
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This way, only a few buildings need to be moved and added. The rest of the geometry inside this area was built with smaller assets and props.
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I gave it the theme of market storage. The player is met with large crates and towering buildings, immersing them in the experience of being a small child in a large, busy city.
Early access result
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Due to scope and time pressure from the Early Access deadline, the onboarding quest needed to take place in a small section of Grass Market
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I worked together with the supervising designer to prioritize which elements needed to be introduced in this section
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I rewrote the onboarding quest, adding more context to the narrative
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I made sure the player could not skip onboarding steps or leave the area without having seen all of this vital content
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I kept these above-mentioned 'restrictions' natural, connecting them to the context of the story: i.e. the player being blocked by cityfolk who tell them that they were told by the witch hunter to close off the area until the witch is found.
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I added polish to these events by using the dialogue system to insert mini-cinematics to guide players in the right direction
end result for early access
Due to the very limited time-frame I had left to improve the onboarding, this is the final result that was used in the Early Access build.
In May, we will continue to iterate and polish all of the existing content in this build. At this time, I will continue to work on act 1 of the game and will try to implement a larger quest that would replace the current iteration. This would give the player more freedom to explore.
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