Role: Lead Level Designer
DLC: Doc Ketchum’s Muder Circus Boot Hill
Engine: In-house CTG Engine
Highlights:
Lead Level Designer: team of 5
Collaborated with a small strike team to plan out new Mode in a matter of months.
Planned out encounter regions and technical specifications of encounters.
Level designed combat spaces
Provided feedback and critique
Doc Ketchem's Murder Circus is a brand new battle mode separate from the main campaign featuring rogue-lite elements, randomized combat waves and fast-paced combat. The Boot Hill island, where the mode takes place, shipped with the main game. But everything else having to do with the Mode did not. As such, designing this mode came with a variety of technical and memory limitations, and previously shipped content to keep intact. Most of the playable space had to be completely redeveloped for this mode.Here is an example of some of combat layout work that I did for the mode. I built this first encounter as a proof of concept for the level designers to follow. It included a brand new interior layout for the warehouse, combat props/traps, and cover arrangements. Previous to the update this location was an empty trainyard and dilapidated building.
Trainyard combat space for Murder Circus. I laid out using mostly pre-existing assets. A couple of the wood structures I built as temp props. Later, environment artists went in and replaced my layout with more thematic props, but the footprints of the new assets didn't change.
I designed a new interior for this warehouse space. Previously it just a single floor and was full of trash. I added a 2nd level explosive traps hanging from the ceiling. I wanted it to feel like a rustic murder clown wedding with the string lights and hanging coffins
Upper floor of the combat interior. Plenty of barrel knock down on enemy or kite into traps
A map I made for the team to show where all the combat encounter region would be located, the size, names of space, and where previous content overlaps
This was my design pass, before the Art. Since this area of the city shipped with the game memory was a big concern. I laid out the combat using props/materials that were already in memory. Focusing on the space flow shape of cover.
Interior view of the 1st design pass. turning this empty warehouse into a combat space
Out of mode daytime shot
Out of mode shot of what you might see while just exploring the open world
The train yard and building interior are all part of the same encounter space that I laid out
Interior out of mode day time
out of mode daytime shot of the yard