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HYENAS

Lead Designer

Foundational World Design

I came in early on the project as lead level designer to help develop the foundational principles of what makes a good Hyenas level to play, and to build a team to produce those levels.

Hyenas was a challenging game to design levels for, and I was excited to take that challenge.

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A Hyena level has to support an objective based Game Mode, 5 teams of 3 players each, enemy NPCs, systemic gameplay, and an out-there narrative to suit the creative direction of the game, all set within the complex interiority of SPACESHIPs!

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To achieve many of these goals, it was important to start with a clarity of purpose of how level design would serve the game, and understand how level design should serve the purpose of the game direction.

Level Design Pillar

 

Establish

CLARITY OF SPACE

as a foundational element of how level design builds spaces of play.

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  • Gameplay

    • ​What is this space?​

    • What is the primary gameplay purpose of this space?

    • What Actions the player do here?

    • How does that benefit the game mode?

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  • Environment Art​

    • What's the key function of the space?​

    • How does it fit the World?

    • How does it feel to be in this space​?

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Primary World Gameplay Pillar

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  • The primary gameplay expression worked out with Combat Design is MOVEMENT.

    • Players are at their best when they master movement.​

  • As such the Core Concept ​the powers the underlying concept of Hyenas level design is one of ROTATION, recalling the level designs of old school Quake.

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Level Design Structure

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  • 4 Foundational spaces are designed to serve the purpose of the game and supports the gameplay.

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  • Each space serves a core purpose within the Level Design of the game.

    • HUBs:

      • Multi-team Skirmishes & Visual Resonance​

    • CAMPs (Areas of Interest):

      • Gameplay Encounters & Objectives

    • TRANSITIONs:

      • Control, Pacing, & Optimizing level performance.

    • SERVICE CORE:

      • ZeroG Area for high speed navigation. 

      • The Service Core became the central conceit of all ships as ZeroG was the key USP for Hyenas as a shooter.​

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  • Different Ships would have different configurations of how these spaces would be arranged against each other.

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CAMP Spatial Breakdown

Designing Gameplay Area of Interest

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  • The Camps bore the weight of the majority of Gameplay within a Hyenas ship. As such, camps had to have strong foundational elements to their layouts to support the players abilities to engage with the challenges.

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  • The spaces supported the following gameplay elements

    • VAULT:

      • ​The primary gameplay objective of Hyenas. Players had to Breach this to secure merch loot to win games.​

    • BUNKER:

      • Players had to Defend​ this area against NPCs and other players, while they breach the vault.

    • COMBAT:

      • Layout here is designed to favor rotational combat against players and NPCs.​​​

    • EVADE:

      • Players with better movement abilities can use this to gain advantage against others.​

    • THRESHOLD:

      • Connects primarily to the Hub, has to visually indicate itself as an entrance / exit to the rest of the ship.​

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  • Level Designers were encouraged to experiment within this framework and even break it where appropriate to create interesting and memorable gameplay.

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Level Design

  • Level Design for F02 Playable Ship, from BlockOut to Beta as a Benchmark Hyenas Map.

  • Core Level design of moment to moment gameplay within levels, including

    • Spatial Navigation and core Spatial Design

    • Navigation Sign posting​

    • Encounter Setup Design.

    • Environment, Art, Lighting and Sound Design intentions for working collaboratively with other departments

    • High level Layout Intentions for ALL Levels in development, including future ships.

  • Leading a team of developers, including level designers, environment artists, lighting, sound, and gameplay designers to bring to the playable ship to a polished Beta and release quality.

  • Early Level design exploration to discover the core formula of a Hyena's playable Map.

A fly through of F02: Greed is Good level, the level that was "released" for the Hyena's Closed Beta.
Responsible for: Block-Out, Layout, Gameplay Design Benchmark, Quality Control.

Level Design Images

A selection of images take of various levels throughout development of Hyenas

WHITEBOX

Whitebox, and Blockouts to establish the foundational flow and spatial compositions of play.

BETA

Implementing Lighting, VFX, more detailed assets, and other gameplay elements

Leadership & Team Building

Building a production design team means establishing a culture of expectations and work that empowers developers to contribute creativity and passion to the project. Establishing a learning and development culture incentivizes and motivates developers to work well.

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This is my foundational belief of team-building, that clear process and communication allows teams to be more collaborative and cohesive, and understand each others goals and can thus help each other when things go awry. 

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Establishing Process

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  • Establishing a process of level design workflow to ensure smooth production.

  • Establish Key requirements at each stage for benchmarking production progress

  • Collaborate with relevant Development Disciplines as a collaboration to ensure holistic development.

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Production Management

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  • Developed and support Feature ownership through members of the teams.

  • Team task management through setting milestone goals, backlog grooming, and review structures.

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Team Leadership

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  • Establish Design Discipline Culture

  • Developed Level Design Discipline Matrix for skill developments

  • Ensure intra-team sanity checks for building team cohesion and collaboration.

  • Advocate for Developer well-being and creative voice.

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Learning and Development

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  • Champion Learning and Development Initiatives

  • Facilitated and conducted Design Workshops to skill up design team on key design knowledge.

    • e.g. Data Maturity, Rational Design, Storytelling, Running Playtests.​

Gameplay Design

Design ingredients, NPCs, and systems to provide challenging and thrilling gameplay. ​

Being early on the project, as lead level designer, I got heavily involved in designing the eventual game mode and how that would play out in the levels. As I transitioned more to a holistic design role, I lead teams to address feature issue that would be expressed as part of the game mode's gameplay.

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Game Mode​

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  • Develop key gameplay beats for a PvEvP Plunder Game Mode.

  • Design Systems to ensure Game Mode variety session to session.

  • Worked with Game Mode design team to implement, iterate and test various designs to support game mode goals.

Camp Experiences

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  • Design Camp Experiences as part of the Core Plunder activity within the game mode.

  • Designed the Spatial State Machine System for gameplay reactivity.

    • A powerful run-time logic that responds to complex Player interactions within a space to create systemic gameplay.

  • Prototype various Gameplay Activities within the camp experiences.

Encounter Design​

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  • Design moment to moment encounters for player gameplay experiences.

    • NPC Encounters:​

      • Tactical Squad gameplay challenging shooting & teamwork.​

    • Ingredient Encounters:

      • Navigation enconters challenging movement and exploits.​

    • Game Mode Events:

      • PvP Encounters challenging strategy and teamwork.​

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Gameplay Ingredients

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  • Design ingredients for use in Encounters, and systemic setups.

    • Barriers, Traps, Destructible​s, Switches, Turrets

  • Design ingredients to be systemically reactive and communicative to other gameplay elements such as the Spatial State Machine.

System Design

Develop system design to power game mode and gameplay encounters.​

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Ship Director Framework

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  • Developed a framework for core gameplay features that governs how the ship plays during a session of Hyenas to provide match to match variety

  • Framework would have be LIVE SERVICE editable with key data variables that allowed rapid responses to player feedback

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Spatial State Machine (Ship Reactivity)

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  • Technical design of the Security Area State Machine, a powerful run-time logic that can dynamically change the gameplay state of pre-defined areas of the map.

  • Team Lead for State machine application into various other gameplay systems for gameplay logic.

Permutation System (gameplay variety)

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  • Designed a foundational system that allowed for multiple permutations to be initialized during game sessions.

    • Creates variety and surprise in Game Sessions.​

  • Technical Design of Permutation System to be LIVE Capable, to ease content workflow​

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