Introduction
Skalv is an First Person Shooter game where the players need to shoot their way through demon-filled arenas in a castle environment. The gameplay consists of combat versus waves of enemies while traversing through three arenas filled with a specific event. The player has 2 guns that need to be adapted to the enemies to keep themselv alive and to slay your enemies.
Contributions
- Level Design
- Game Design
- Created Level 1 and 3 :
- Pre-Production
- Blockout
- Prototyping
- Balancing
- Event-Scripting
- Lighting and Proping
- Playtesting
- Support on other level including Events and iterating
Specifications
- Inhouse TGA-Engine
- Levels edited using Unity
- Scripting done in LUA
The Team
- Niklas Briselius(LD)
- Patrik Nilsson(LD)
- Oscar Blom(ART)
- Martin Vallin(ART)
- Niklas Hansson(ART)
- Patrik K.Hansson(PROG)
- Jonatan Svensson(PROG)
- Niklas Utterbäck(PROG)
- Olle Hagman(PROG)
- Björn Stenlund(PROG)
- Linus Axelsson(TA)
- Joakim Fridlund(TA)
Late CHanges in the design
Starting up this project we already had most of our modular kit set as a group. Me and my colleague started early to work and iterate on the direction of the FPS game and together we made the choice to make a linear Quake-like game. We had a nice idea what we would focus on regarding player-metrics and enemy-types. We decided to go for the double-jump for the player and a ranged enemy to match up a charger.
We started our now usual pre-production with LDD and top-down-designs and after the pre-production we started blocking out our levels. I was in charge of Level 1 and Level 3 and my colleague was in charge of Level 2.
After 6 weeks of the project we started to bump into obstacles when the charger enemy was finished. We did not have a design both matching the double-jump and the charger. This made the whole group anxious and we had a serious meeting talking about how we could fix this and I came up with the idea to just redo all level design and do arenas instead which also would be similar to Quake. The group liked this idea and I started to block-out again.
During this period my colleague fell ill for a couple of weeks and I had to take care of most of the level-design by myself so I decided all arena events for all levels. This turned out good and when my colleague came back he worked really hard and we finished the levels in time even though a tough deadline date.
In the Alfa-state before we switched design we had high-walls with no places to jump and narrow walkways making the charger a really buggy enemy. The ranged enemy had no place to stand or run away to make it an easy target.
In the alfa-state after we switched design, I lowered all walls enabling the player to traverse through the level easier. The charger had a big space to charge and the ranged enemy could go on different heights to shoot at the player.
The Level design
Since we had a big issue concerning the design and had to redo our design with just four weeks left we had to make easy and quick design-solutions to our levels. I decided the basic designs and scripted events for the levels while my colleague was getting better to come back and help the last weeks.
The basic ideas of the levels
- Level 1: A basic arena. You start an arena when a timer starts. You have to survive for three minutes to be able to move on and into the next level. The design and how to lead the player was simple. Gradually making the level harder and forcing the player to rotate around the level by taking health-packs.
- Level 2: Button-arena. You need to press 4 buttons to move on to the next level. When you press button waves of enemies to spawn and hinders you from pressing the next button. Take care of these and move on to the last level.
- Level 3: The last arena was a boss arena. But before you were able to go to the boss room you had to clear smaller versions of level 1 and 2 and by completing these open the last gate to a boss. The boss was a skull shooting fireballs to your position while spawning swarms of enemies.
The playthrough will show how we made all arenas.
Closing Thoughts
Skalv was a hard challenge for me as I was forced to take the decision to redo the design of the levels and the game. In the end, I was very happy with how the project worked out and our group was very happy with the finished project. We had a solid design in the end and our group worked really hard in the end to support me and my colleague. The game was also well received from play-testers and this made me really happy. Skalv is a game I'm really proud of, and I learned a lot from the design-mistakes at the beginning and how to fix them and work as a team.
