"Another Day, Another Dollar"
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Project Summary
The Project
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"Another Day, Another Dollar” is a single-player, Dying Light quest that takes the player through a day in the life of a security guard at a lab. In the interior level, the player collects supplies and looks into maintenance issues for their supervisor while warding off biters and volatiles using firearms, bait, and traps. Just like many other days, bandits raid the facility, and the player is tasked with securing the laboratory.
Role: Level & Quest Designer
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Genre: Survival Horror
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Editor: Dying Light Developer Tools
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Platform: PC
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Process: Level Design Document, Map Diagram, Whitebox, Gameplay Iterations, Aesthetic Pass, Launch
Design Goals
Multi-part objectives
Significant
Mod-kit Use
Dynamic Changes
in the Environment
I began the design of this level with a level design document that included level design maps, narrative beats, contextual information, aesthetic references, and a skill progression chart. In the image, I show one of the detailed maps of a floor in my multi-floored building the player progresses in.
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In this level, I wanted to incorporate objectives that had multiple parts. So, instead of requiring the player to get one item to complete an objective, for example, they would need get several items to complete the objective.
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I included several of these kinds of objectives in the level:
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Flip 3 Breaker Boxes
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Locate 2 missing vials
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Clear the area of all enemies
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Acquire the key card and rifle
Many of my portfolio pieces include outdoor areas and mechanic scripting. For this project, I wanted to create a more advanced piece with mod-kits. My immediate goals were to:
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Make visually distinct spaces
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Research which pieces already fit together and use them in the map as they were designed
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Kit-bash other pieces together to make new-looking spaces that weren't originally designed to be used together.
What I Learned
One of the things that I have learned on this project is that it can sometimes be challenging to create a larger building interior, and have it still look like the same building on the outside if that was not the intended goal at the beginning. I did not originally intend to have an exterior area, and my stakeholder was later interested in having an exterior area. After a conversation about my design goals, scope, and the progress I had already made, we decided together that an outdoor space would not work well for this level. If I were to add one though, I would likely have the player load into a new exterior map to save heartache since I have mesh walls extending outside of the playable space in strange ways in some cases.
