Unity | November 2023 - April 2024
Ground-Zero
Level Designer | UI Designer
Ground-Zero is a precision-based first-person shooter set in a subway where you play as Agent Crane, a soldier who must use a modified Semi-Automatic Rifle with a sticky grenade launcher, to kill infected monsters. You can defeat the monsters by shooting their weak points or shooting at destructible objects in the environment. Your mission is to reach and destroy the monster’s hive to prevent the infection from spreading.
Itch.io link: https://vfs-gdpg.itch.io/ground-zero
Design Process
When coming up with Ground Zero, we focused on each of the team members’ practical skills, our character artist was great at making 3D monsters, the environmental artist was great at realistic human-made props, and our programmer felt very confident in his Unity C# skills, with 2 level designers, we focused on a long linear level that we could tune for the best player experience, in addition to all this, all the team members are passionate about FPS games and had a wide variety of experience of different shooters. Originally, Ground Zero had many crazy mechanics, but we decided to make a classic FPS with simple mechanics focused on smooth and satisfying gunplay, rewarding precision, and quick thinking, thus the weak points and destructible environment were the main mechanics in our game.
Level design process
2D Layout and Block Out
In preparation for the block out, I utilized Adobe Illustrator to make a 2D layout, the objective was to have a base layout to reference so my teammate and I were on the same page when blocking out, indicating optional paths, critical paths, and enemy/pickup placement.
once the layout was done and reviewed by my teammate we set out to block out the level in Unity, allowing us to start playtesting size, distances, mass, and void.
2D layout and First Blockout
Final Version
From the block out to the final version many things changed, the most noticeable of them being 2 areas (station mall and cave area) that were cut from the game, since having them meant less polish on art props and assets.
The other big change is the longer but tighter tunnels of the level, this helped the level to support the core aspects of the game, the longer distances played into the strengths of the gun, as longer ranges meant players had more time to aim and take enemies before being overwhelmed, the tight tunnels, aside in aiding by making enemies be closer together also helped in giving a sense of claustrophobia and giving the players the feeling that they had no space to run, playing into the horror aspects of our game.
Final Version
Balancing
Once the general geometry of the level was satisfying I focused on balancing the encounters, enemies, and pickups. Balancing Encounters took many playtests and tries, but the end product feels very balanced for both new and experienced players of the FPS genre, one of the key things I did was hide enemies on the sides in a way that they would come out in groups only after a single revealed enemy was attacked. enemy positioning helped the game feel easy enough so newer players were able to progress, while difficult enough so more experienced ones weren’t able to trivialize encounters, running through them, by forcing them to take their time and think about what they were doing.
UI design process
UI was a first for me during this project, I took care of the Design, Coding, and Art of it. When designing the UI of ground zero I focused on keeping it to a minimum, communicating what was needed, without overwhelming the player or taking away from the gameplay. The Heartbeat sensor health bar is one of my favorite parts, I decided on it based on my playtests, players usually felt overconfident when they saw their HP at full often rushing through encounters, many times getting overwhelmed by enemies because of it. With the heartbeat sensor, players didn’t know much from their HP aside from “healthy/fine/weak” which meant players were more cautious even at full HP and played more safely when the sensor’s color and speed changed. This meant players played more safely and slow-paced, which was the intended feel of the game.
Different HP States
