Chris Foster
- Level Designer
T0-B1 Through Time
Take on the role as the engi’s robot apprentice T0-B1 as you fight the Ancient Cult through time. Collect artifacts and unlock your full potential by traveling through different eras of time to truly understand who you are.
Project Details:
-
ENGINE: Unreal Engine 5
-
LANGUAGE: Blueprints
-
DURATION: 6 months
-
TEAM SIZE: 11 people
Goal:
-
Create a game from scratch that reflects everything we learned from our college career (Senior capstone)
Assets Used:
-
Stylized VFX Starter Pack (VFX)
Level Design Process
For the design of this Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart inspired game, our team wanted to combine two different ideas: time travel and Iron-Man like combat design. We wanted to do something that's never been done in the school's history of capstone projects.
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 to gain a better understanding of what I wanted the levels to look like. I was in charge of three different levels: The Timeless Library (A Library outside of the timeline), The Future Laboratory (An Advanced Laboratory that discovered new robot technology), and the Final Boss Battle against the Ancient Eye.
The Timeless Library
Future Laboratory
Boss Battle
Paper Design
These are paper designs that were sketched and cleaned up in Canvas to determine the different eras in our game. It served as an initial idea to start building out the different levels.
First sketch of the first floor of the Timeless Library. The library is the central hub in our game so I wanted it to feel grand and pristine since it's a library outside of time.
I aimed to incorporate points of interest within the library to show that this library is not just a normal library. The player has to complete tasks within the library as a tutorial. This allowed the player to learn the core mechanics, explore the library fully, and get some subtle hints about what's to come.
First sketch of the laboratory. This level is surrounded by the mechanics: rocket boots, plasma shield, and hand projectiles.
I aimed to incorporate engaging combat encounters in different rooms. This allows the player to feel well equipped with everything they need to defeat enemies.
First sketch of the Boss Battle. This battle is broken down into different phases that will be explained further down.
I aimed to incorporate all the strongest traits from all the other eras of time to make engaging combat encounters into this level. This allows the player to feel like they're fighting through time to protect the timeline from the Ancient Eye.
Blockout and Development
From the start of the project, I wanted to design a seamless transition between the different eras of time so we designed a portal system for the player to open portals where they can choose what era of time they wanted to go. The most important part was making the narrative connect with changing eras. I wanted to play with how the levels connect with each other like in Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart.
The narrative of the game unfolds as follow:
-
Narrative: Tobi discovers the library he works in is run by an ancient cult that is trying to destroy the timeline. In order to defeat them, he must travel to the Past, Present, and Future to collect significant artifacts to defeat the Ancient Eye who is in charge of the cult.
-
Timeless Library Objective: Complete tasks around the library like putting books back, repairing computers, and restocking paper in the printer.
-
Future Laboratory Objective: Deactivate shields blocking the Statue of Excellence and collect the vial inside to gain a new power.
-
Boss Battle Objective: Defeat the Ancient Eye and restore the timeline for good.
The Timeless Library level begins with the Engi (janitor by day, engineer by night) giving Tobi some tasks to complete around the library. This introduces the mission objectives and the background around the Timeless Library. I designed this to introduce the tutorials for basic movement and interaction. This gives a slow start to the game to not immediately throw them into any action. I wanted the player to understand the basics about the game before they start engaging with the different periods of time.
I scripted the task system to show the current and completed tasks. This system allowed the player to keep up with the tasks they had to do around the library. This system was taken over by a programmer who made the system work for the different eras of time.
Within this return books task, I foreshadowed the different eras of time by the books. If the players notice this, they will understand by the end of the game that the cult went to these three eras in the timeline.
After the completion of the tasks, the player discovers the hidden truth about the library: The cult is trying to find the artifacts to destroy the timeline once and for all. The player learns about the artifacts and that they have to travel to different time periods to collect them all. I wanted the player to have a reason to travel to different time periods so we place a major artifact in each to give them new abilities to take out the cult.
Blockout of the Timeless Library
Throughout the blockout, I was thinking a lot about spacing due to some camera issues we were having with the third person character. I wanted to ensure that the player had clear routes that made traversing through the levels engaging and compelling. I had to make some changes in the library originally because everything felt too linear and tight. So I created some compelling layouts for different elements on the first floor to give more open space and to break up the linearity.
Final Look of the Timeless Library
After traveling to the Present (New York Train Station) to get the graffiti painting and then to the Past (1920s Jazz Speakeasy)(Both done by different designers) to get the vinyl record, the player returns to the library to gain their last new ability: Plasma Shield. Then they head to the Future Laboratory to find the Statue of Excellence as their last artifact. The reason we decided to have the future be last is because it turns out that in the future, Tobi learns that if he doesn't defeat the Ancient Eye that Tobi will be cloned into a robot army that no one will be able to stop. Tobi sees a factory that is creating more and more Tobis. It makes the player feel shocked, but even more determined to defeat the cult.
Blockout of the Future Laboratory
With the future blockout, I wanted to be sure that it was a good mix of combat encounters but also some puzzle solving for the player to take a break from combat and use their problem solving skills to advance in the level. Since this is the future level, I wanted to play around with holograms so show the advancement in technology over the years.
Final Look of the Future Laboratory
After collecting the last artifact, the player returns to the Library to return the last artifact but was halted and taken out by the cult. The cult takes the artifacts back to the Ancient Eye to destroy the timeline. However, the player realizes he never truly needed artifacts to gain powers but it was the journey that helped him get to where he is. He then looks to go end the Ancient Eye once and for all.
Blockout of the Final Boss Battle
The Final Boss Battle we incorporated were broken down into four different phases:
-
Phase 1: Future Laboratory - The player starts in one section that has elements of the future. They must defeat the enemies to bring the Ancient Eye from hiding. The Eye only shoots standard projectiles.
-
Phase 2: Present Train Station - Once the first 25% of the Boss' health is gone, the player gets teleported to the present section where they're in the middle of a train graveyard. Now the Ancient Eye is shooting trains from his eye that does a lot of damage to the player.
-
Phase 3: Past Speakeasy - Only 50% of the Boss' health remains and the player gets moved to the past where they have to avoid lava by flying on the platforms to avoid it.
-
Phase 4: Final Phase - Now with only 25% left, Ancient Eye pulls out all the tricks and combines them together. The player must avoid lasers, trains, and lava to finally put an end to Ancient Eye.
We wanted the player to feel the intensity of the battle for the timeline by having them experience all the highs and lows of each era of time but to also use them to their advantage. The most challenging part about this was making the transitions seamless between the different eras of time.
Final Look of the Boss Battle
Within our levels, I created some blueprints to make our levels more engaging and fun for the player. These were added to create some compelling and unique puzzles for our levels:
Piano Door with playable keys
Keypad Door based on a code
Elevator
Full Playthrough
Iterations
During the design of this game, we encountered several challenges that really help shape me into the level designer I am today.
​
This was the first time that anyone in my group has worked with a big team (at least for a capstone) and that came with communications issues. As our lead designer, it was up to me to ensure we were all working cohesively to get our vertical slice down for the showcase.
​
Another big challenge we faced was with level streaming for our portals. We would spawn an object that would stream the level through it that the player could collide with that would place them in that time era. This came with an issue of performance because the maps were spawning on top of each other. We ultimately decided to not allow the player to spawn the portal themselves but to do it through the story.
​
With having three different eras, it required our artists to create every single thing that we needed to populate our levels since we couldn't use marketplace assets besides VFX. Our lead artist and I sat down for a few hours to discuss how we can maintain the stress on artists while also making our levels look beautiful. We decided to scale down our levels and reuse different assets for multiple different things to save on time.
Conclusion
The development of this game was not only an eye opener but was a huge learning experience. This was my first time leading a game project and it was definitely even more pressure because it was my senior capstone project.
This project showed me how important agile development is and tracking tasks to keep up with deadlines. Without this, we wouldn't have scaled down to meet deadlines and we wouldn't have finished the project. Agile development requires honesty, hard work, and consistency to be done properly and I'm happy to have learned this during this project.​
​
This project also allowed me to dive more into the technical side of things. Up to this point, I've done the most basic blueprinting but I wanted to challenge myself by doing even more for this project. This has helped me to take more challenges with programming as a level designer.
​
In short, I'm grateful for this experience and it has helped prepare me for making games in the future up to this point. Looking forward to continuing to apply this experience to future opportunities.