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The Living City
"The Living City" is an immersive level design project inspired by Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, where players explore an abandoned slum, uncover hidden chests, solve puzzles, and engage in thrilling combat encounters within a visually and narratively captivating experience.
ITCH.IO PROJECT PAGE
LEVEL DESIGN DOCUMENT
LEVEL WALKTHROUGH
Summary
Narrative and Setting
During one of Nathan Drake's earlier adventures with his brother, they stumble upon a map that leads to the possible location of a long-lost treasure, known as the Fate's Mantle. Though it isn't something of critical acclaim, both brothers decide to hunt in for fame and fortune. Though by the time they get to the location of this treasure, it's been overrun by a private military set on destroying the land in hopes of finding it. While surveying the location Nathan trips on a rock, stranding himself not far behind the enemies he was planning to face.
Required Elements and Limitations
Early on in this project, I set myself some elements that I believed to be required to have that "Uncharted" feeling, as well as some limitations on the project to keep in manageable and fairly achievable for my current skill set.
Some of the required elements were already included in Jakub. W’s ALS system, these include:
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Climbing mechanics
A swinging mechanic
A working combat system
Assets that could be included within a AAA-level editor
A movement similar to that of Uncharted 4: A Thief's End
Various interactables like doors, pallets and roller doors
A stealth system that is visible to players
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No new or tweaked game mechanics, using only what is currently available in the ALS project
Restricting unneeded mechanics and keeping to this list:
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Climbing
General Puzzles
Interactable Pallets
General Combat
2 ziplines max
No extra set dressing and clear pathing
Linear Level Design
Simple objectives that are easy to grasp
Project Goals
I focused on having both personal and general project goals while completing this level, as this helped guide me, keep me on track and support me when I was having a designer block.
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A playable level that follows in the footsteps of the theme, core principles and level design philosophies of the Naughty Dog game Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End. This project should also serve as a learning opportunity and a pathway for growing my Level Design skills. These goals include:
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Learning about and applying Naughty Dog’s Level Design Philosophies and Principles
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Practising and actively applying my Blockout, Scripting and level flow skills
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Focusing on key weaknesses within my skillset and building confidence
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Designing the level with intent and quality to the best of my ability
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Having multiple playtesting sessions with a wider group of people
Level Layout
A general top-down view of the level, with each section outlined and tagged with their respective name:
Level Objective(s)
The objective is to steal the Fate's Mantle, a crystal found at the top of the large tower at the end of the level. This objective isn't directly told to the player but rather visually presented at various areas around the map. These "Landmarks" help support the orientation, direction and overall "mission" for players. I replicated a common theme that's found throughout the Uncharted Series where players will be orientated to show a point of interest(s) that they can use as a goal. The background landmark (the level's ultimate goal) is a large clock tower, and the foreground landmark (the next achievable goal) is a smaller generic building that is visibly closer.
At the start of the level, players can see both objectives clearly
Workflow
Documentation and Prototyping
Following along with my notes, I made a Level Overview document, going over the goals, required elements, layouts, narrative, etc that needed to be in the project, keeping in mind the information I gathered from the playthrough.
Once this was completed to a workable point I started with my mock-up narrative to gain some inspiration about what the level would look like, what the architecture would be, and how it might flow from one section to another; plus I needed that wow factor for an end goal.
Some examples of the Level Overview Document
I then got to sourcing references from in-game places, namely the City Chase environment in Uncharted 4, concept artworks from Naughty Dog, slum environments in real life as well as a few other places. This then spawned a reference for the level's style. This search for references led me to a video from Naughty Dog's David Shaver, who at the time of the video worked as Level Designer on Uncharted: The Lost Legacy and The Last of Us Part II.
"Level Design Workshop: Blockmesh and Lighting Tips"
My reference board
Once I had an overview to source and a reference board to refer to, I set my sites on prototyping. This was by far the hardest part of this project, as I decided to use IWALS (Interactions With Advanced Locomotion System), a custom project from Jakub. W that includes a large amount of variety when it comes to movement systems and mechanics that were similar, if not identical, to the way Naughty Dog games play, which I utilised to make this level the best it could be.
Greyboxing and Iteration
When I first started greyboxing, I decided to reference a few levels within Uncharted to get a good feel as to how pacing and player flow is designed around. This led me to focus on the levels "Madagascar", "Scotland" and the "Colony". Through this I was able to find out that the levels are usually split up into segments, these being:
Traversal/Exploration
Narrative Cutscenes
Combat
Puzzles
Though this changes from level to level (like how Scotland introduces combat early) and usually sways depending on the current progression narrative-wise, each level stays true to this formula. By providing players rest in between combat encounters, puzzles to split up the sometimes repetitive traversal and a sprinkle of narrative disposition throughout, it becomes a sort of closed loop; a level loop.
Through this discovery, I was able to lay myself a foundation. I greyboxed areas for these specific segments and mixed some of them together to provide a more seamless transition between areas, as well as providing enough time to focus on how the player might flow.
Another thing I've kept in consideration from the very start of this project was landmarks, navigation and scale. The one thing that is widely known about the Uncharted Series (apart from the narrative) is its massive sense scale, which I tried to replicate with recognisable landmarks, scaleable environment pieces and a linear experience.
​Below are a small collection of pictures and screenshots of early prototypes and the current state of the level.
Early Greyboxing Prototypes
Final iteration
Screenshots of Scale and Traversable Enviroment Pieces
In regards to iteration when I finished the end-to-end gameplay, I went back through each segment and found most of the climbing was either difficult to traverse or annoying to move around in some areas.
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on the left is the first encounter with climbing. This started out a little more complicated with more dynamic movements and climbing that hadn't been introduced yet, so I decided on a more simple and understandable approach. The red line indicates the direction players will travel, which before iteration was shaped more like an upside down V. I also added some tips on the lefthand side.
With the foreground landmark (AKA Tower Climb), I found the area shown on the left was hard to traverse and had no real indication of how to continue upward.
I fixed this by simply extending the area outward, shown by the non-arrow line, and testing the flow to be as understandable as possible while also staying fun.
Early on with AI, I noticed that the range it could detect players was overly large. I was able to change this, leading me to iterate on the previous sections a little. Below you can see the previous and current distance the AI can detect, as well as the general changes I made after this change too.
Below shows the changes made to the level, which includes before and after screenshots.
Green is the player's expected path, taking into account deviations from the critical path.
Red are the boundaries that were changed and or moved.
Orange signifies changes that were made possible due to the rework of the AI.
Before
After
External Playtesting
Early on in my playtesting I came across a recurring piece of feedback, checkpoints. This became a large problem during gameplay as you would restart the level from the start every time you died.
Current BP of Checkpoints
Checkpoints in-game
Positioning these around the map also presented problems, either being to far away from each other or too close, so after another playtesting session I was able to find better positions for them.
1st Puzzle Section
This first puzzle works by having three interactable objects scattered around a cave, where players need to hit the correct order of levers and valves to then open a large door.
The first puzzle section also needed a major rework due to the puzzle breaking if not done in the correct order. Through playtesting and a few self-assessments, I added a "barrier" to the final lever to stop players from breaking the loop.
The Platform off
The Platform on
1st Combat Encounter Segment
I also gained some valuable feedback for the first combat encounter area, leading me to add a few more enemies, more cover and some environment set dressing to add some extra playability and depth. It was also one of the lesser-liked areas, so with the changes I made it turned over and started to pull its weight a little more.
Here I added some extra cover, a small centrepiece for a pseudo-landmark and an extra building on the left side. Though not much changed it fit the theme and highlighted the area, as well as cementing itself as an introduction the rest of the level.
Post Mortem
I have learnt an incredible amount of things during my time making this project, not only level design techniques but game design, combat, puzzle design and bits and pieces of environmental set dressing. I am quite happy where this project is am greatful for the experience!
Improvements
There are many things I would have done differently during this project, and many more things that I wish I took into account during its production.
Firstly, I would have started with paper prototyping from the get go and not just jumping straight into blockout. This slowed my ability to think critically about what each segment/area meant to the overall design as well as extending my scope by a large margin as I had no reference to bounce off. To improve this in my next project I will focus on the laying down the fundamentals before jumping head first and gain feedback on my documentation.
Secondly I would have given my self a date to complete the project by. This slowly became more and more drawn out, which both demotivated me and increase the scope of the project by a considerable amount. To negate this later on, Ill focus on creating a set schedule, finish date and milestones for a project before blockout and documentation begins.
Lastly, I would have set my self goals for this project at the very beginning. By the end of the project It became something that I wasn't learning from or improving my skills with. To avoid this I would start each future project with a specific goal in mind, whether that be to improve my combat encounter understanding, upskill my level design techniques or even to flesh out my creative thinking and problem solving skills.
Misc Images
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