Baoze "Wilbur" Wang
Level Designer
Summary
District 8 is a single player quest in Fallout 4 made by Fallout 4 Creation Kit. This quest takes place in a town called District 8 where a UFO crashed. Players need to go to this town to investigate the truth about the alien invasion and the disappearance of residents.
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Game: Fallout 4
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Engine: Fallout 4 Creation Kit
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Development Time: 14 Weeks
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Play Time: 25 - 40 mins
Meaningful Choice
This is a story-driven mission where players need to make difficult choices in the end. Different choices can often have different impacts on the fate of different camps.
Clever Layout
The level design of this quest should have good vertical design and reuse of space and can also effectively use landmarks and pinch points to control the player's line of sight.
Environmental
Storytelling
As part of the narrative, the environment should enhance the narrative experience in this quest. As soon as players enter the main place where the story takes place, they should notice the huge UFO on the distant facility, which allows players to immediately figure out what the story is about and where their objective is.
Design Iteration
1 Environment Storytelling
In order to achieve the goal of making the environment enhance the narrative experience, I strived to let the players know at the first time that the story is related to aliens from the environment setting.
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Aliens’ Body
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When the player first teleports to the Red Rocket, the player will be able to see the alien corpses scattered on the ground and be guided to a truck filled with alien corpses. This gives the player some tips about this quest related to aliens and fully intrigues them and arouses their curiosity.
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A Big Crashed UFO
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Players can notice the crashed UFO on the distant facility as soon as they enter the town, which reminds the player that something about aliens is happening in the factory.
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Transforming Machine
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Players can witness the transforming machine transforming humans into aliens in the factory, which allows players to verify their ideas that they learned through talking to NPCs.
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Design Iteration
2 Conveyance
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Light
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Where there are supplies, there will be oil lamps to attract players' attention.
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Spotlights of different colors and brightness will remind players of the path to the next goal.
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Red and green emergency lights are used to indicate the locked status of the door.
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Sightline
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The position of each window has been carefully designed to ensure that players can obtain information about the next target and have a preview for the spatial layout of the next area.
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Landmark
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The crashed UFO in the distance and the nearby tree growing out of the building ruins serve as primary and secondary landmarks to inform the player of the target location.
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Decal & Props
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When players get lost, decals and props can often help players find the right path to the next subgoal. In exterior spaces, glowing decals will guide players to the factory, and in interior spaces, pipes with arrows will guide players to the next room.
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Design Iteration
3 Combat Pacing
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Waves
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The outdoor battle is divided into three waves. In the first wave, players need to fight with ranged enemies on the ground at higher locations. Good covers and the advantages of high ground create a better combat environment for players. In the second wave, players need to fight melee enemies on the ground, which increases the challenge, but the containers on the ground provide players with circles to deal with enemies. In the third wave players need to deal with both melee and ranged enemies, and some enemies will appear unexpectedly behind the player, which makes it the most challenging wave.
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Advantage Point Conversion
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The encounter in the second floor of the computer room provides players with a transition between combat advantages and disadvantages. The first time the player enters, they need to fight the enemies on a higher platform in a relatively open space. However, when the player takes over the high platform, another group of enemies will rush into the house. At this time, the player can take advantage of the height and cover to easily fight with those new enemies.
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Supply Trap
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There will not be many enemies on the first floor of the computer room at first, which provides players with a chance to breathe. However, if players try to approach the supply area, more enemies will rush into the room from the stairwell, giving players an unexpected blow.
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Reuse of Space
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The player needs to enter the warehouse twice. The first time the player needs to deal with melee enemies on the ground and the ranged enemies standing on the high platform at the same time. When the player reaches the second floor of the warehouse through the stairwell, the player can use the high ground advantage to attack the enemies on the first floor. But compared to previous encounters, players need to worry about the risk of falling to the ground while taking advantage of the high ground, which increases the challenge of the encounter.
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Extra Bonus
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In addition to regular supply locations, I also added some hidden bonus rooms, which either require players to take some long detours or require players to do some skill challenges, such as hacking terminals or picking locks. These hidden rooms provide players with some fun to explore outside of combat.
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What Went Well
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Lock down the level layout early on.
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Use lights and decals to make the conveyance effective.
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Unique and interesting story with depth.
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Use the environment setup to tell stories.
What Went Wrong
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Didn’t accurately assess the level scope.
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Development progression did not follow the timebox priorities.
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No pre-completion of quest script outline.
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Wrong estimate of how long it will take to implement
What I Learned
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Get familiar with the new editor as early as possible.
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Follow the timebox priority.
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Control the narrative beats in quest design.
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Control the pacing of encounter design.