“From Khaos to Kalm”

Project Overview

Software Used: Unreal Engine 4, SketchUp Layout Design, Maya

Team Size: Solo Project

Genre: Third Person Action/Adventure

Synopsis: After Defeating Sephiroth and escaping the city of Mako, Midgar. The five protagonists: Cloud, Aerith, Tifa, Red XIII, and Barrett must traverse the harsh arid landscape on foot to reach the town of Kalm. The road path goes around a large canyon and following this route puts the protagonists far behind schedule. The group decides to take the alternative route through “Khaos Canyon” to supersede the highway and stay off of Shinra’s radar. The canyon is off-limits for pedestrians due to its infestation of monsters and houses an old Shinra power station that has since been abandoned.

Level Design Document

Accomplishments:

Created a FFVII Remake level representation from concept to creation
Designed and implemented, lighting, environment art, visual code, animations, and dialogue through scripting
Gained an understanding of level streaming and organizing assets to improve performance

Timeframe: This project was completed over a course of 2 1/2 months. This project utilizes blueprint scripting with all environmental scripting being done by myself and the player combat element coming from the "Dynamic Combat” asset pack.

Conceptualization & Document Drafting: 7 days (~3 hours)
Whiteboxing & Blueprints: 2-week timeframe (~ 40 hours)
Set Dressing & Lighting: 1-month time frame (~60 hours)

Video Walkthrough

Quarry & Construction Zone

Quarry - This is where the player begins the game. This is the most “Safe” Zone where the player encounters all the interactable NPC’s. The only fight encounters in this area are monster enemies. When the player reaches the excavation outpost at the bottom of the map, they reach the next area.

Subterranian Lab

Laboratory - The bulk of the level’s gameplay. The player’s objective is to go around this area and restore power to the three generators in the facility. Once the three generators are restored, the player will be able to access the elevator to access the reactor level floor

Mako Reactor & Boss Area

Mako Reactor - This floor’s primary purpose is the boss fight. Once the player defeats the boss, they will be able to approach the reactor and take the power cell and access the crane elevator in the quarry.

Blockout

After I drafted a layout on SketchUp, I entered Unreal Engine to implement my ideas from paper into geometry. In this process, I created representations of the map to come and developed blueprints to ensure that level progression was possible from start to end.

Optimization

This level utilizes very contrasting environments and required lots of different lights and atmosphere modifiers to distinguish them. I found putting all the assets and lights into one scene impacted the frame rate, so I optimized the map through level streaming & controlled light density.

Assets & Lighting streamed into two zones:
Quarry & Underground Lab

Level Stream Switch Point

Blueprints

This project utilizes a variety of different blueprints written by myself. Functions include locked doors/elevators, generator functionality, music & sequencer scripting, item chests, & NPC dialogue.

[More info can be found on the Blueprints Scripting Page]