Contributions & info
Level Design
- Scripted events
- Randomized zombie spawns
- Custom tailored gauntlet event
Gameplay Design
- Level Pacing
- AI navigation
- Clear goals
User Experience
- Custom difficulty adjustments
- Visual feedback
- Environment art
Details
- Solo project
- Genre: Action & Horror
- Duration: 16 Weeks
- Platform: PC
- Engine: Source Engine
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Last Breath
Throughout this campaign they will have to survive a journey filled with deadly obstacles and punishing environments. Each map comes with it’s own challenges and is what defines the campaigns identity.
Planning and development
Last Breath was designed with a higher difficulty in mind. All levels have their own niche and unique crescendo locations.
While planning this campaign, I wanted to manage a variety of locations within a single campaign. Each with their own hazards and holdout locations. The first iterations, had a variety of simple scripted events. Which eventually were playtested and then narrowed down to the most intuitive and fun crescendos.
The final crescendos include breaking into a fitness center, enabling sprinklers to clear a path through fire and burning down a barricade in the subway to progress.
4 map campaign
The campaign is set in a collection of 4-maps that are stitched together. Each map has it’s own starting location and ending saferoom. These saferooms are the next levels starting area.
This allows me to pace the chapters just how I like and introduce new threats in a very delicate manner. It also allows me to have each level be more detailed, as only the current levels entities, functions and scripts are present for the server and player.
The levels are divided into four chapters, Fitness Center, Underground Facility, Subway and Escape.
They all come with their own theming and encounters. Each of them carefully playtested and adjusted to work together in a story, but to also be individually challenging by themselves.
The Gym Crescendo
The Fitness Center is a major component in the first level. It is the main crescendo event that turns up the difficulty for the survivor team.
The survivor team is forced to enter the gym via the side-entrance. This results in an alarm going off and attracting massive amounts of zombies. This alarm can be turned off on the 2nd floor, forcing a high intensity running event.
The building has three floors and has obstacles placed throughout, forcing the survivors to take a unconventional route. Survivors can choose between multiple routes that lead to the same location eventually. Some more open and some more compact to offer the player a choice in how they want to play. Survivors have to keep rotating around the building, facing zombies on their way to the top floor. The first two floors consist of general workout areas, with some different utilities available. This includes a treadmill section, free weights, a running track and offices.
Zombies keep spawning in an endless loop until the alarm is turned off. This allows for infected players to strategize and attack the survivors in advantageous areas, to prevent them from reaching the alarm button. This event does also incentivize the survivors to split up if the situation calls for it. A very dangerous move in Left 4 Dead, as the infected thrive when the survivors can’t cover one another.
Layout
The first floor, is the most challenging, as survivors have to traverse a longer path, where infected have plenty of positions to spawn from. They traverse through the main gym section, locker rooms and the free weight section to reach the escalators for the 2nd floor.
On the second floor, things are a bit different for the survivors. They can choose to walk through the running track, or the backrooms to progress further into the building. As they get closer to the alarm switch they also encounter parts where the railing is missing. Giving infected the opportunity to drag them down to the first floor again.
The escalator to the third floor, is on the side of the building, leading directly in to the administrative offices and security room. This more compact setting, changes the pace and gives the survivors a bit of breathing room. They then traverse back out to the main gym section on the third floor and traverse to the exit. They exit through the Gyms second main entrance on the third floor.
Survivor path during crescendo
Visual storytelling
Each of the levels feature notorious landmarks and areas that tell the players of previous events. Throughout the levels you can find old graffiti written by previous survivors, dead bodies and abandoned holdouts. It all indicates to the inevitable infection spreading throughout the city.
To create a sense of atmosphere I utilize all the players senses. This includes the path, visuals, sounds and obstacles. They all contribute to the general feeling of being the last standing group of people still alive.
Flow
In Left 4 Dead 2 all the AI moves on something called a Navigation Mesh. This consists of a series of smaller boxes, in all kinds of shapes that connect in various ways. The game then uses this NAV to understand how the players travel from point A to point B.
This is called the Nav Flow. The game then uses this information to see how far survivors have made it through the level. This is something I utilize in my campaign, in a variety of ways. I can for example check the current status of the survivors. Such as how healthy they are. This then lets me tell the level if it should spawn some helpful items or not.
The picture below showcases the attribute “Escape_Route” This is the intended path for survivors to traverse further in the level. It is also something used in the competitive gamemode for Left 4 Dead 2. Versus scoring. It checks how far the survivors have gotten on the escape route paths from the starting area to the end saferoom.
Versus Gamemode
The campaign comes has been designed for three different gamemodes. These are Coop, Versus and Survival.
In Coop and Versus the survivors traverse from point A to B on each of the levels. The difference between the two is that Versus allows for a total of 8 players over the default 4.
In versus there are two teams. While one team plays as the survivors the other plays as the infected and try to stop them from reaching the end saferoom. After the first round the previous infected players are now survivors and vice versa.
To accommodate to Versus each of the levels have been equipped with some specific things. This includes ladders for infected, so they can setup a better attack. Customized boss spawns, that are consistent between both teams rounds and versus specific scripts.
Each level has a set of maximum achievable points. I’ve had it setup with Map 1 giving 500 points up to 800 for the final chapter, Map 4. This allows teams to have of a comeback possible if they have fallen behind early in the campaign. This keeps players on their toes and trying their best.
Optimization
To maintain high framerate and a smooth experience for all players, each of the levels were planned with optimization in mind.
One of these methods include areaportals. These are entities that check how far away each players camera is from the “portal” If far enough away it closes the portal. This forces everything behind it to stop being rendered.
This does for example mean that nothing inside the Fitness Center effect the performance during the other parts of the level.
Each level also utilizes fog and after a certain distance simply cuts the geometry and meshes too far away. This is hidden by the use of 3D skybox.
3D Skybox
The 3D skybox is used to create a sense of larger scale for the players. This miniature is in-game scaled 32x times as big and makes it feel like you are surrounded by a city.
This means that it barely affects performance at all. The marked buildings in the screenshot is actually a miniature replica of all the buildings players encounter in the first level.
What this does it that it hides the transition between the real building and the miniature that replaces it when the player is far enough away from the object. It prevents pop-ins.
Survival Gamemode
When players enter one of the levels in survival mode, things are different.
They spawn at a different location, that has a been armed with weapons, throwables and health items to prepare them for their holdout.
This is achieved by having the game check what gamemode the map launched with and spawning the required entities.
The survival gamemode consists of endless hordes spawning and trying to kill the survivors. The survivors are in an enclosed area that they can’t leave. Since these maps normally are for Coop and Versus, parts of the map gets blocked off. This is achieved by blocking the exits with either meshes or brushes.