BENEATH

This is a note to you and to myself that I need to start publishing notes on my level design work again. I'm currently at work converting Residential Evil into a brief single-player experience called BENEATH. It's been an interesting project, changing around a freeflowing, open multiplayer level to make it a linear, directed single-player level.

The process goes something like this: Create a multiplayer map with a free flow of player movement in all directions, allowing for dynamic firefights between multiple combatants. Think up a story that could be told in that space. Decide on the path that the story would lead the player through the map. Close off extraneous doorways and stairwells, creating a linear progression through the map for the player to follow. Add extra spaces not present in the original level as needed to flesh out the single-player experience.

That's the step I'm at now. I've added a small cubbyhole in the attic of the mansion, rearranged the passageways in the whole map, and now I'm adding a large fourth, subterranean sublevel to the basement, where a miniboss fight will take place and from which the player will exit the map. Once all the spaces are laid out and dressed up, I'll need to go back and script in all the enemy encounters, AI navmeshes, story elements, interactive objects, and so forth. I've already put in some new doors and triggers, and an industrial lift that gave me some problems for a while. Right now I'm dressing up the sub basement. Hopefully that'll be at a point I'm happy with before the end of the week. Then it's on to scripting, scripting, scripting. Fun stuff.

Oh yeah, and recording new voice samples. Wouldn't want to forget that.

I'll have some screenshots in here once I get home.