Zackary Henderson
Technical Designer
Top down isometric co-cop twin stick shooter
Role(s): Lead Designer, Programmer
Team Size: 14 people
Engine: Unreal Engine 4.12.5
Platform(s): PC
Made 08/2016 - 12/2016
Scrap is an isometric local multiplayer twin stick shooter set in the future after robots turned on their human masters.
As a mercenary fight your way through four levels full of killer robots using guns, grenades and the bottom of your boot. From singularities to duck grenades there is no shortage of ways to stop any enemies in your way.
Scrap was made in 12 weeks with the intention of getting published through Steam Greenlight. It was a success and is on Steam (click here for store page). It also received the "Best Art Style" and "Best Overall Experience" award at Indienomicon 2018.
Trailers made by Nathan Trimboli
Defined and Oversaw the Level Design Process
I oversaw all mechanical elements in the game. I worked with the Creative Director, Lead Programmer, Project Lead, and Lead Artist to ensure that the design of the game fit with the visual style and world of Scrap as well as fit the scope of our project.
To better communicate my ideas to the art team I drew concept art for the level elements I thought up. It helped our communication and saved a lot of time discussing what I wanted to implement in game. Quick feed back on whether ideas would work or not saved a lot of time when testing new game play ideas.
I oversaw the designs of levels 1 -4 and personally designed and built significant portions of level 1 and 3. I white and grey boxed every section I designed. The design philosophy for level gimmicks was the player was introduced to a gimmick in a simple situation that shows how they work without taking control away from the player. In the following sections the situations become more complex so that players are able to keep control at all times.
Level Design Process
Every level was split into separate combat sections. Each section was built with specific intentions. The goals ranged from teaching the player a new mechanic to teach new strategies to the player. Every section was first laid out on graph paper, then white boxed.
Level Layouts
Designed and Set Dressed Levels
I also implemented a lot of art assets, mainly clutter, to help out the art team and make sure that all the art assets in level 1 and level 3 were functional within the level design. This helped the art team to achieve more artistically and make the levels feel lived in.
Car placement
Random foliage placement
Random foliage and hazard placement
Car placement
Level Set Dressing
Created Basic Concept Art to Better Communicate with Artists
To facilitate better communication between the art and design teams I would create some basic concept art. This helped streamline the level concepts between the artists and designers. We avoided wasting a lot of time trying to understand each other and came to agree on the final level concepts much faster as a result.
Level Concept Art
Created Tools to Speed up Level Iteration
I made level creation tools that were used to build the levels. These mostly included game play assets and core level functionalities. The level hazards I created were two types of monster closets, landmines, explosive barrels, crates, shock traps, sniper towers, hazard enablers. I wrote the code that opened the doors when all the enemies in the area were dead. Everything that explodes will fracture into chunks and dissolve before destroying themselves.
Combat Encounter Tool
Explosive Barrel and Landmine
Both explosive barrels and landmines will damage everything in their explosive range when the explode. Landmines will explode if any player or enemy steps on it, while the explosive barrel needs to be damaged with a grenade, melee attack or gun. The explosive barrels assign a random texture to themselves so they have some visual variety.
Landmine Demonstration
Explosive Barrel Explosion
Sniper Tower
The sniper towers elevate enemy snipers so that they can get a view of the player from most angles. These will kill the sniper if destroyed.
Shock Traps
Shock traps will damage anything between the two fences. They are setup to turn on other shock traps so designers can build patterns using them.
Shock Traps Demonstration
Hazard Enablers
There are two types of hazard enablers. One is activated by players entering a trigger and the other is activated by damaging it.
Monster Closets
There are continuous and spawn on death monster closets. Both will multiply the number of enemies spawned by the number of players. The continuous variety spawn all of the enemies at once, while spawn on death monster closets will only spawn additional enemies after the previously spawned enemy dies. They were built with the ability enable specific behaviors:
1. Set enemies on patrol and set their way points for navigation
2. Whether to spawn an infinite number of enemies
3. The number of initial enemies to spawn
4. How many are currently spawned
5. The type of enemy to spawn
6. The state to spawn the enemy (Idle, Patrol, or InCombat)
7. Whether to multiply number of enemies spawned by number of players
Various Tasks
I wrote the code that saves player(s) health, weapons, grenades and ammo count every time the player(s) enter a checkpoint. This involves writing the requisite data to the relevant player controller. I also wrote the code that respawns dead players at checkpoints.