Chris Foster
- Level Designer
Haunted Jarvis
It's time to reopen the Jarvis Center following Spring Break. As the tech assistant, it is your job to ensure that all tasks are complete before the reopening of the Jarvis Center. However, as you're completing your tasks, you start to notice that things are in different places and that the Jarvis Center made be haunted...
Project Details:
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ENGINE: Unreal Engine 5 (VR)
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LANGUAGE: Blueprints
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DURATION: 10 Months
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TEAM SIZE: 20 people
Goal:
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Bring Haunted Jarvis to life by adding a playable level and haunts to demonstrate working in a studio as a student.
Assets Used:
None
Level Design Process
For the design of Haunted Jarvis, our team wanted to aim for our first project as a studio to be something related to our work area: The Jarvis Center. We were inspired by PT to create a horror experience where things inside the Jarvis Center seem haunted and it's up to the tech assistant to figure out what's going on.
To see a specific topic of the design process, click on one of the topics below:
1. Pre - Production
2. Paper Design
3. Blockout and Development
4. Full Playthrough
5. Iterations
6. Conclusion
Pre-Production
I began my process by gathering reference images and videos to gain a better understanding of what the level should look like. Since this game's level would be an exact replica, I took the opportunity while I was recording videos and taking images to utilize myself as the player to see the scale of the center to be as accurate as possible.
Paper Design
This is the paper design that was sketched to show the measurements and layout of the Jarvis Center. It served as the blueprint to start building our haunted Jarvis Center.
In this sketch, I laid out the Jarvis Center keeping in mind the placement of the chairs and tables while also listing out some initial measurements from the walls. This shows all the important details about Jarvis that's gonna make it unique for gameplay.
Blockout and Development
During the blockout phase, I turned my sketches into a playable Jarvis Center. Since the sketch was an exact replica, it was very easy for me to create in engine. It was super important that the metrics were correct and accurate. Since it's in VR, the player will be standing and moving around as if they're actually there but if the scaling is off then it would throw off the player's experience.
Three key components to enhance the player's experience were:
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Tasks: You work as a tech assistant and tasks are our way of bringing the player through the space to do different things like turning the lights on, rebooting the Wi-Fi, and many more. We wanted to be as realistic as we can to make the experience even better.
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Haunts: In order for the space to be haunted, there needed to be weird things that happened around the center like doors randomly open, spotlights falling over, chairs moving, and more. This gives that little hint of hauntedness without going overboard from the beginning.
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Smart Watch: To make the player feel more immersed with the space, we added a smart watch that was used for multiple different things like tracking footsteps, highlighting objectives, thermal vision mode, etc. This was our futuristic tech push on the game.
Each of these components were integrated into the blockout phase, serving as the fundamental elements to create a spooky haunted Jarvis Center.
To get the Jarvis Center in engine, I needed to create some of the modular pieces inside Blender for the first time. Because all of the structures were fairly simple, it was a little easier creating them and bringing them into Unreal. The reason I made it in Blender was because I wanted to learn how to properly use it. Once I made these shapes, I added them into the level and made it look super identical to the Jarvis Center.
Structure Pieces made in Blender
After finishing the level setup, my focus shifted to the haunt system. Haunts in the game was a blueprint created to play a sequence when the player collides into the trigger box. This system also sets the Haunt level for the Jarvis Center. We wanted to have different levels of haunts from very mild to very spooky to have a sense of progression with the haunts. Something that I took some time to understand was what do people get scared of the most? My roommate at the time gave me the exact answer I was looking for: things that you hear but can't see. This was perfect for the type of haunts I wanted to do.
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For this, I set up just a few haunts to get things going in the level based on task locations and where the player would be looking. My goal was to trigger things always behind the player to make them turn back and look quickly to see what it was that made a noise.
Evil Laugh Haunt
Door Opening Haunt
Lights Off Haunt
Locker Barricade Haunt
Moving Cylinders Haunt
Red Lights Haunts
Full Playthrough
Iterations
This project started off as something small but ended up big within our university. During my time on this project, I encountered a few challenges that helped shape me to be a better level designer.
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Since it was my first time using Blender, it did take me a few times to get the pieces right. Prior to this project, I did practice a little bit of Blender but never for a project. I had to step outside my comfort zone and learn to model simple things like walls for my blockout. I originally tried to stay away from Blender but I had to take on the challenge and truly learn. I was excited to see that my blockout pieces became the final assets once they were given textures later on.
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Originally the team was only about 5 people so progress was super slow. This gave me the reality that not all teams you join are not fully functional due to different reasons. All I could do was do my part and everything else would work out. Two months after I started, we ended up hiring more students to work for our college studio to increase productivity for our game.
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Conclusion
During my time with this project, it really challenged me to do more things within design. This gave me the internship experience I needed in college but it also was my first taste working in a studio setting.
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This project not only allowed me to dive into the modeling side of things but to also get more comfortable with sequences. As a level designer, learning level sequences is such an important thing and this project challenged me to get creative with the different sequences I was using.
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In short, I'm extremely grateful to my college for allowing me to be a part of the DePaul Originals Game Studio!
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