Assignment Brief
This was a piece of group work done for a University Assignment. The team was made up of five members and the work split into two sections, the first of which was to create a development tool which deconstructed a particular
element of a game to help designers recreate similar elements in other games. The second part was to use the tool to create a level/mission. The first step we took was to decide as a team what kind of element we wanted to look at; finally we decided to look into the pacing of an escort mission. Once this was decided we chose to use the StarCraft II engine because of its ability to allow us to break down a current mission for accurate data, and then recreate it in our own levels.
element of a game to help designers recreate similar elements in other games. The second part was to use the tool to create a level/mission. The first step we took was to decide as a team what kind of element we wanted to look at; finally we decided to look into the pacing of an escort mission. Once this was decided we chose to use the StarCraft II engine because of its ability to allow us to break down a current mission for accurate data, and then recreate it in our own levels.
The tool we created was done inside Excel and used information we gathered from data mining the editor as well as video recordings of ourselves playing the level on every difficulty. We looked into a number of different layouts and visual ways of displaying the data to enable a designer to pick up and use the tool with ease. Two versions of the tool were created for the final piece, one using the StarCraft data and then an abstract version which could have other games data inputted and give the right amount of enemies to spawn per wave.
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Once the tool was created the team split into smaller groups to create multiple levels using the tool in different games. Dysons Decent was the group's main level and so two team members worked on the project. I was the team member in charge of the level and created all of the in-game UI, scripted the bots spawn/AI, changed the units where appropriate as well as placing the path and helping to create the levels layout. The players stops at a number of bases so instead of recreating buildings, units drop pod to the last base the player stopped at.
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Due to allowing the player to choose which race they play meant that the certain things needed to be changed about the level, such as the units given to the player, the amount of buildings the player starts with inside the base and the convoy unit itself. This is because each race is balanced differently within StarCraft, for example the Terran light ground vehicle which they escort can be healed by SCV units and so to balance this, the Zerg convoy was given increased armour and health as they could not heal the unit mid stage and the Protoss unit was given a shield.
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Once the level was complete, the team tested the levels to make sure there was no bugs/issues as well as checking the level felt as though it could be found within the main StarCraft campaign. To help the player feel as though this was an official campaign map, pickups as well as sub-objectives where added into the level with the harder difficulties also having death constraints added to the win/lose scenarios. Once the level was fully complete it was published as Dysons Decent on Battle.Net.
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Once the Dysons Decent level was completed, I started to look into different ways the tool could be used to create other game modes. I came up with a Hold Out style mission where the mobs spawning would be spawned in at the same point they would spawn as if triggered in the escort. However due to the mission being a hold out style, downtime was minimized to keep a constant stream of enemies spawning. Finally I used the data editor and unit editors to create a custom hero and HQ for the player to spawn different unity to help defend the base. Each enemy race in StarCraft was given its own level and the maps made for 4-player co-op.
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