On this project, in addition to the responsibility listed, I was tasked to work close with coders to develop our “Living World System”. This added faction bases which the factions fight to control and added dynamically spawned encounters based on the factions needs and war with each other. I was also responsible for numerous smaller features like our narrative hologram feature called "ECHOs", the logic for puzzles that spawn the infamous enemies called "Hunters" which the community worked together to solve, contextual enemy spawning, and many more.

Early in this project I started out as a Level Designer with a focus on scripting complex boss fights in a brand-new engine, that was still in development. As time progressed the need for a more technical roll became apparent as I got more and more responsibility regarding to the engine’s node script. So eventually a Technical Level Design team was formed that took on the more advanced and technically heavy parts of the Level Design team. Together with a few other Tech Level Designers I worked closely with the other disciplines to empower the Level Designers and help improve the pipeline.

This was the first project I worked on after joining Massive Entertainment. We were a small team that worked on the "Desmond Journey" for "Assassins Creed: Revelations". Our focus was on telling Desmonds story while he is trapped in the abstract world of the Animus.

Originally this project was only supposed to be the DLC to tell the story of "Subject 16" and during the pre-production we spent most of our time just experimenting with fun and interesting challenges. These challenges were then saved into small collections for later use.

My most successful experiments during this phase involved vertical rooms to free-fall past obstacle or room with lots of motion and a sense of urgency limiting the time players had to plan and react to the environment’s movement.

Once we entered production, each level designer was assigned a couple of levels with different themes. I was assigned to a level that would introduce players to the disintegration wall which would break the platforms placed by the player and a level with focus on more difficult challenges with the red laser.

Since the disintegration was introduced before the lasers, I could focus that level entirely on teaching the players how to handle it together with features introduced in previous levels.
So, when the player would later play the more difficult level, I was able to bring out a few of my experiments that included both the wall and the lasers.

But during the production the management really liked what we were doing and thought it would be a perfect way to tell Desmond's story, while trapped in the animus.

So, we quickly put our DLC tasks on hold and got the new manuscript for what story they wanted us to tell. With this in hand we all worked together to figure out what kind of gameplay and challenges we could use to represent the different part of the story. Then together with the artists we refitted many old puzzles. Instead of working on separate level all level designers focused and built each level as a unified strike team to get everything together in time for the short deadline. There was no longer any real ownership, and everyone did something on everything in the end.

With this challenge completed, we refocused our efforts back to the DLC and we realized the difference of quality with the Desmond Journey. The DLC had way more content but felt a bit too long and filled with unnecessary segments. So, we cut down the numbers of level significantly and took only the best parts of each level and put them together with the same workflow we used when working on the Desmond Journey.

During this project I oversaw the world development and most content that went into the game. As the only level designer, I had a huge world to fill with beautiful and challenging environments for the players to explore.

When I started, the overall sculpting of the continent was already done. So my task became to start making it come alive with villages, forests and dungeons.

The Myrland continent, as it was called, had a big variety of biomes that made it a joy to work with and each biome had their own challenges I needed to overcome. But the biggest challenge that was present in most areas was the strict performance budget I had.

”A map of Myrland created by the community.”

Since I was the only level designer, I knew I would never be able to have everything to final standard of quality for when we would let players start testing our game. So, what I had to do was to make a quick pass on the natural environments in each zone to have a base to work from later. Then I focused on getting the villages more polished fist since that is where most of the players would be gathered in the beginning.

My focus with the villages was to make sure the flow of the streets would feel natural and the best route to take when walking around and have some more open central area for players to gather for talks and trade. That in turn gave thief some cover by the crowds so they could find new victims to try their luck with. The result became even better than I suspected with lots of player roaming around doing their business and thief stalking their prey from rooftops or hidden in the crowded squares.

With the villages and starting areas completed I shifted my focus to get some caves and dungeons up for them to explore. Since dungeons and cave are more confined spaces the amount of propping and artistic work I could do here increased significantly and allowed me to use baked lighting in certain areas. The caves and some parts of the dungeons was completely dark, so torches were required. But in the more lit areas the baked lighting could finally make use of the powerful features the unreal engine has to offer.

The closest and first dungeon most players would encounter was a prison underneath a tower just outside one of the starting villages. On the first floor I imagined there was still some lighting coming from vents in the roof and a few prisoners might still be barely alive and wailing from their cells. The lighting effect and sound from the prisoners caused an overall eerie feeling when exploring the abandoned halls and became immensely popular with the players.

At this point during the development players was starting to populate the server and roam the world for a place to build their houses. So I started to divide the world into a grid system and made up priorities on what zones players found least attractive and used that to direct my task to bring the rest of the world up to the same artistic love I gave to the starting areas. By doing this I managed to attract the players out into the world a lot more and slowly but steady the Myrland continent became filled with beautiful and interesting environments.