Divided Skies
About
Divided Skies is a Third-Person Flight combat game where you play as an outlawed Cyborg who flies around on a Hover bike completing missions and leaving an impact on this ever changing and dynamic city of futuristic Mumbai.
Primary Role:
Level designer
Engine:
Unreal Engine 5
Team Size:
20
Duration:
25 weeks
Platform:
PC, Steam deck
Software’s used:
- UE 5
- Jira
- Perforce
- Miro
- SketchUP
- Confluence
Main Responsibilities as a Level Desginer
- Introducing and setting up two multidisciplinary level streaming pipelines such as the traditional UE level streaming system and the new more optimized world partition level streaming system
- Full ownership and management of all levels and their streaming systems aimed at facilitating the needs of different strike teams
- Ownership of the introduction level and multiple districts of the map
- Direct link with the procedural artists from outsource while maintaining a benchmark level simultaneously testing and iterating on their procedural tool
- Develop open world level design maps in collaboration with mission, combat and environment art strike teams
As a strike team lead
- Strike team lead and management of level designers and other game developers
- QA of the game whilst organizing playtesting session and events with various groups
Navigators:
1. Concept phase
1. During research phase I dove deep into the culture, people and history of Mumbai as a city and was able to plan out the open world city layout based on districts
1. Link to research into Mumbai city?
2. Link to city planning in Miro
3. It was my job to build everything you see in the video based on a team wide decision made on the city layout for our concept phase. The map had to accompany multiple districts and facilitate the deep narrative and its many unique companies/buildings. The division between poor and rich had to also be something that stands out. We also used real map data of building locations from the city of Mumbai.
2. Pre-production
1. During pre-production I focused on a lot on gym investigations and providing other disciplines with the necessary gyms for testing and developing their features like for example a combat gym for the programmers working on enemies.
2. Explored various re-scoped city layouts. (everything I have built)
3. This phase of the project I also worked with the outsource procedural artists on the initial set up of Houdini and how to use the plug in for Unreal engine.
This was also the beginning of a long iterative process for the tool between the artist and me the level designer.
Essentially, we requested a tool (designed by the procedural artist) that would generate slums on any mesh (designed by me) in order to save time during production phase. I learned a lot about the pipeline of creating such procedural tools and using them in Unreal itself.
4. I also blocked out the buildings from my sketches and this was the final result after an artist went in to set dress the blockouts.
End of the pre-production phase and a collection of our work done
3. Production phase
1. During the production phase as a lead, I did a lot one of which was the housing district which can be seen below with a few iterations based on feedback. The video shows how the blockout for the open world level design for VTOL feels and plays.
2. One of my other responsibilities was the introduction level of the game. I had to make a plan and proposal based on the needs of the narrative team. For the onboarding level I also added a sewer like system that made the space feel a lot bigger than it actually is.
3. Made a plan and overview of the playable space which I iterated on based on feedback and then distributed between teammates. I also worked on the upper district which is not playable or reachable but serves as that division between poor and rich.
4. On top of managing the team I also made sure everyone can work in a multidisciplinary environment by setting up a level streaming system.
4. Release Phase
1. During the phase we often did build reviews and live bug fixing sessions. During this phase the people who fix the most bugs depending on the severity in Jira gets points. I finished second place! Here are very few of the many bugs I went through during this phase.
2. I organized this playtest event with the help of the teachers and got to opportunity to host this session with urban design students and had wonderful discussions with professors from which I got invaluable insight into how cities are designed and how to be mindful of the traffic that occurs in them.
3. Since a level streaming was already set I was really excited to learn about the recent new system. World partition.
I made this HOW-TO document on it and also played around with it in engine.
World partition
Personal Post-Mortem
On the project:
From the very beginning of the assignment, you could tell this was a recipe for disaster. You put together a group of students many of them kids not professionals and you expect them to concept an open world game in a short period of time. There were so many conflicting opinions about what it should be and the team lacked vision and overarching leadership from the start. This led to a lot of issues and “drama” and many times it felt like dealing with children rather than professionals especially when it became more personal for some. Overall, I enjoyed working on this project and I got the opportunity to learn a lot about game development in a large team environment.
On my work:
Felt like had to change constantly and I often found myself even without much direction. Right around the end of the project is when things started to kind of come together but at the point it was too late. The lack of vision in the team and the disagreements on what it should be was definitely impactful on my work. A side from that I think I was very onboard with trying out and experimenting what streaming systems work best for the game and I got the chance to set up and explain both the traditional level streaming system in unreal and the world partitioning streaming system to my team. After testing and fixing a lot of model’s LODs we were able to bring the game to a stable state.
Peer Reviews
When asking you anything about the level you always know what's going-on and you often have a take on what's causing a problem and your always quick to respond and give great feedback and tips on anything
You have been working hard to get a level standing that facilitates the gameplay and the team's opinion, which was a hard job with the constant changes in direction. I believe you have been holding on well and going with the flow without losing yourself in that. I have noticed you have been actively asking Matteo for his opinion when he was feeling down and not valued, which shows much compassion and love! <3
When it comes to solving anything in the level, you have a great perspective on how to solve it. It's very easy to work with you, discussing the missions and additions of zone 0 and 6 on the whiteboard and their flow was very fun :D. Your work is always up to quality, you have a very strict and good standard for work, and you always try to find feedback and improve. Your work has impacted large parts of the project. You clearly put effort into being a feature team lead and getting the level up to par. You're improving the project majorly every day, in engine and also in Jira.
You made sure that multiple people were able to work on the same level, which was of great help. You always prioritized solving problems (or helping people) and solved them very quickly and efficiently. You gave very good input when it came to set dressing and yet trusted us with doing it ourselves, which was great. It was also amazing that you decided to help us set dress with the tool. I think your improvement in level design was very obvious during the block. Each iteration of a level was better and better because of all the feedback you always seek from everyone.