Role
Level Designer, Game Designer
1+ years
Platform
Windows
Engine
Unity
Info
Software Tool
Mass Multiplayer
Release
Steam - August 2023
Key Contributions
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Task ownership - fully executing across the pipeline from design concepts to release
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Collaborating with engineers to fully realize milestones
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Mass interaction design
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3D multiplayer level & game design
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Scripting game mechanics & level interactions
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UI & UX Design
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Design documentation
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Hosting playtesting sessions
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Third party asset optimization
Designing for a Live Stream
The greatest challenge designing for mtion Studio was that the number of people interacting with it at anytime could be widely variable. We had to consider how things worked to scale anywhere from 1 to 1000+ viewers as well as the nature of live stream audiences. This affected my approach to level & game design as I had to find balance to ensure space, pacing, readability & usability were not muddied during times of high interaction. All the while, times of low interaction should not come off as bland & needed to maintained audience intrigue.
I had the opportunity to design a variety of interactive toys & minigames aimed at engaging audience members and creating emergent interactions. My contributions include: the Ball Launcher & Plinko toys, Rooftop Riot - a PVP minigame, a variety of 3D environments, software wide UI, as well as an unreleased game.
Interactive Toys Game Design
When designing the Ball Launcher and Plinko toys I had to keep modularity, simplicity, user representation and engagement in mind. The goal of these toys was to give the streamer agency to create or enhance their own in stream experiences. In a way they can be thought of modular building blocks for a creating simple games. In addition to other toys built by my peers we sought to create a toybox of modular interactivity at a streamers fingertips.
Considering this, I took the approach of breaking down their key functionality into simple verbs. This helped to ensure my designs adhered to clarity as I needed to ensure ease of use for audiences en masse. After iterating upon the functionality of these toys I landed on their final designs as a good balance between clarity and user agency.
The launcher toy allows for anyone & everyone to interact with it continuously by giving each player their own projectile, unaffected by each others. Each provides user representation through a nametag & the users picture being applied to the models material itself.
The plinko toys work in a similar way to the launcher in terms of user representation, however providing additional visual flair. The purpose of the plinko machines were to give streamers the ability to have their audience participate in a raffle style event, for things such as prize giveaways. They also pair well with other toys to create a host of unique experiences, such as something akin to Marble Run or a randomized voting machine.
Rooftop Riot Level & Game Design
This minigame sought to create competitive engagement from stream audiences. It's target goal was to be used by creators for audience competitions/ rewards or as a time filler for breaks during stream. Another potential use case was to allow for a 24/7 stream where the minigame offers audience incentive to continue interacting and keep the baseline community engagement high.
In terms of level design, I opted for a Worms- style destructive environment. Having a level that dynamically changed based on player gameplay was key to ensuring replaybility and emergent play shined - these qualities being essential to maintain intrigue in the context of a live stream. The level is setup in a way to offer a fair spawn to each player, however if they want to acquire a potentially game changing power-up, they must venture out of safety. While powerups spawn at random across multiple locations on variable intervals, their spawn locations create points of contention for players. This drives different playstyles depending on how they respond to that contention. Most observably some players tend to opt for a more aggressive playstyle utilizing the unique jumping movement of the character controller to traverse the level & obtain powerups. Whereas, others lean more towards a sentinel sniper style, choosing to pick off enemies utilizing the precision shooting style of the character controller. Additionally, players who opt for a more passive experience can still interact and effect the level. I introduced the goo mechanic to allow for audience members who missed queuing up to play without having to wait for a new round. Audience members can slowly raise toxic goo to encroach upon character controller players creating unique combat scenarios.
In regards to game design, I wanted Rooftop Riot's shooting and movement to be satisfying to use. This was challenging as due to the nature of live streams, the only method of input is chat interactions. With this in mind, I knew I needed to lower the barrier of entry to counteract having to type out each action. Thus, after iteratively tuning, I landed on a diverse jump that could allow players to easily traverse the level and a shooting style that allowed for precise and strategic aiming.
The character controllers jump allows for players to quickly move both horizontally or vertically depending on the context of the jump. If the player is close enough to a wall that would otherwise block them from making a horizontal long jump, they will instead be launched with a greater upward force (and lower horizontal force) in an attempt to scale the obstacle. Both jumps are balanced so that the perceived feel of their strength remains the same. Alternatively, if the player needs to make a smaller more precise movement, they can use the basic movement mechanic, which will nudge them in the desired direction.
The character controllers shooting style pairs well with the jumps traversal ability as it gives players the agency to punish it through repeatedly predictable precision. It also has a decently wide range and can be used to keep space. Aiming is done by inputting the desired angle at which you'd like to shoot 0 - 180; these angles remain the same no matter which direction the character controller is facing. Furthermore, the last inputted angle is always stored, and does not need to be reinput if the player desires to continuously fire in one direction. Each projectile fired also has its own trail, giving players a visual feel cue when aiming.
In order to make shooting more exciting, I introduced the power up mechanic. There are a total of three different power ups - Ricochet, Big Bullets, and Shotgun Shot - each uniquely useful and satisfying in its own right. Ricochet allows for players to land shots otherwise impossible as the projectile can navigate tight spaces. Big Bullets allows for mass destruction effecting a wide area. Shotgun Shot gives players a better chance at hitting a target with extra projectiles. Paired with the visual feedback from shooting and hitting a target, each powerup is satisfying to use.
Note: All elements of this minigame were scripted by me with the help of my engineering mentors to clean somethings up.
Designing for Customization
Another challenge designing for mtion Studio was that any streamer curated environment of props and toys could be customized. This was uniquely challenging with the toys as we had to consider that they could be used in conjunction with all the other provided assets. Furthermore, they can be positioned, rotated and scaled, in anyway. To harken back to my previous design solution, the key was finding the simplest mechanic that provided the most fun, and then adding additional game juice and polish to give it intrigue.
Regarding a manipulatable transform, my solution utilized an objects local scale to act as a scalar value to correctly adjust forces and relevant values to ensure perceived consistency of functionality. This was necessary since streamers are allowed to scale objects very large or small, the perceived speed at which things move did not match the expected outcome.
3D Environment Design & Art
mtion Studio allows streamers to build their own 3D streaming environment using bundled assets, called a clubhouse. I was tasked with creating a few more detailed, prebuilt clubhouses in-engine. Their purpose to provide streamers with a themed template they could use instead of requiring to put time in to build something- or for potential themed events. Above are a few video examples of the environments I created. Each scene was constructed primarily using modular third-party assets. However, I spent time optimizing and modifying many of them to work in the context I needed them for. For each scene, I used a mixture of realtime and baked, lighting and reflections. I also created a few custom shaders in Unity's Shader Graph, most notably the electricity VFX in the Steam Punk environment, and the magical border VFX in the Gothic Castle.
To give some context to the magical border VFX, mtion allows users to place Display objects in their clubhouse, which can be plugged into a video source on your computer. Since crisp HD displays didn't exactly fit into a fantasy- medieval style world, I created the magical border to make them appear more as if they were "magic mirrors allowing one to peer into another world."
UX & UI Design
In addition to level & game design I was also tasked with helping to revamp the software's entire UI to be more user friendly. Along side my fellow designer we created a clean and straightforward set of UI standardizations including: color scheme, overall layout, informational fields, editable fields, buttons, hierarchal layouts and more. In addition we helped to design the user experience of mtion Studio's node based graph which allows users to setup customizable functionality.