Adam Cohen - Seastadt

First pass of the opening shot

Most recent pass of the opening shot

Roles: Level Designer Time: 12 days

Team Size: 1 Tools: Maya 2018

Seastadt is a blockmesh project made entirely in Maya 2018 and uses metrics based on the Uncharted series. My goal was to try and emulate the style of a third-person shooter like Uncharted, without directly rebuilding a level from the series. At the bottom of the page is a screenshot tour of the whole level.

Metrics:
   Player Height <2m
   Player Jump 2.5m
   Half Cover 1-1.5m
   Full Cover 2m
   Doorway 2x3m
   Wall Width 0.5m
   Single Story 5m
Road 6m
Stairs 2:1 slope (length to height)

Location: Seastadt
Premise/Theme: Evading capture and running from mercenaries.
Major Goals: Reach the boathouse
Tempo: Urgent. Players will disturb ransacking mercenaries in the first action bubble and spend the remainder of the level fleeing from and fighting the remaining forces.
New Mechanics Introduced: None.

Unfortunately, the only working boat is on the other side of town. And due to some of the fighting, chunks of a nearby cathedral have fallen into town, creating debris that have blocked the way. This place is falling apart, fast and you only have so much time to escape. Just your luck, eh?

Basic 2D Map Layout

I always try to do a basic sketch idea of the level I want to make in an image-editor like Photoshop. A 10 minute blockout like this can help me understand important things like direction, and help me pace the action bubbles and valves appropriately. While initial maps aren't always entirely accurate, I find they help ground my process and represent the core flow layout. Seastadt is a lakeside town (literally meaning LakeTown) and is based on the town of Hallstatt in Austria. I wanted to reference that sort of sloped verticality by having lower sections closer to the shore, and higher up sections closer to the mountain footsteps. In the event of unforseen scope cuts, knowing this early on helps me prioritize critical moments of the level and make sure whatever version makes it to the final playable is consistent with the game's intent.

The opening of the level gives the player a mix of platforming, wall sliding, and climbing sections to establish the rhythm of the level and create a transition between the two contextualizing shots (one from the cliffs and one from the right of the house)

Better destruction moments. Some roofs given chimneys.

I spent a bit of time figuring out this establishing shot then, as I continued to work on the level, would check back with this shot to see how elements lined up and supported the idea of a slope-side town. I wanted the player to see their goal (the boat) on the far left, and their immediate solution (house entrance on the bottom right to upstairs balcony). I ended up moving the actual establishing shot back to the higher cliffs location in order to have better flow and an even more compelling establishing shot.

Fixed the road, added some enemy vehicles for more tense presence. More town destruction.

Really focused on action rhythm on this pass, with more moments of movement input

A cut-away of the first house. On the first floor, players engage in a small firefight with some bad guys, who use the couch as cover, while the player uses a small side-table as cover. The player then fights their way upstairs, and to the room with the balcony. The design of this building was to emphasize how tight these buildings are, and to build a logic for why Nathan should avoid going indoors as much as he can, even if some of the buildings are more stable. The player has to use the balcony, as opposed to the front door, due to some fallen debris causing the porch canopy to collapse and block the entrance. This could collapse while the player's inside to give them better urgency.

The main marketplace of Hallstatt (the inspiration for this level) is actually quite large, and paved with stone. I originally had a road circling around the center fountain but found the pop-up shops and stands gave the town a much more rural feel. The player can use a repair scaffolding on the left to get up onto the roof and climb along them as they make their way past foes. I've considered adding a second hidden path that avoids the start of the firefight and gets the player into a higher position before enemies spot them.

The ground would be stone here, but for the sake of readability I used an asphalt black, as the white tones of the ground and the houses became hard to read clearly without relying on lighting.

Paths out of the marketplace and to the boathouse (and the rest of the town) are blocked off by a crashed, on-fire semi-truck, that lost control when the earthquakes began.

Interior of the Sturmadler Hotel. Players could go upstairs to find secrets.

Truck used to help emphasize the cracking ground and larger town.

The heights action bubble right before the final slope. Make up of a narrow firefight section, a mild platforming moment (to keep the tempo) and an interior fight, this is the penultimate moment in the map. The mountainside is beginning to crumble underneath our hero, with large pits opening up, all while fighting foes who care more about capturing Nathan than their own safety. Enemies will emerge from the houses and keep the pressure on the player as they leap onto the slope into a climactic sliding moment.

I imagine the ground crumbling away around them and blocking off potential paths upwards into the even higher sections of the town I've built.

A beat that sounds particularly exciting to me, and something I've included features the sliding mechanic in Uncharted 4. I love the idea of Nathan, sliding down a slope, only a few dozen meters from his goal and with the whir of gunfire and rumbling of crumbling mountainside all around him. To his right is more town, framed as an even larger cavalcade of destruction, to urge the player towards the boat.

A screenshot tour of Seastadt, following the player's path with some establishing shots to help provide context.