Aliens Vs Zookeepers
Aliens Vs Zookeepers is a multiplayer competitive game where players will take the roles of either a zookeeper or aliens. As an alien, aliens will try to capture the target about of the labeled animals before the timer ends. Aliens have a range of abilities to help them get around the zookeeper like shape shifting into an animal or using meerkat burrows to jump around the map. As the zookeeper, players will need to catch the aliens before they abduct the target animals.
My Role
My Role was as a Level Designer, I designed the zoo and adjusted it to accommodate for the animals and gameplay.
Block Out
The zoo was first designed using Pro Builder where I made fast rough mockup of how the zoo should look. I made the six enclosures and put five animals of that type in each. I adjusted each of the enclosures accordingly so there would be enough space for the players to move around them.
A big challenge that I faced was how big the paths should be. The aliens have the ability to change into any of the animals, and the animals can walk around the zoo. This gave me the max size that I need to accommodate for which is the elephant. I keep the scale a little more of a tight fit as to use the animals a walking hazards to help the aliens a little more.
Finalizing the Zoo
Once we got the finalized art assets, the map had to be adjusted once more. The zoo was scaled up to make up for the space being taken from the props.
I decided to upscale the zoo further than needed as from the testing results the original scale proved the tighter paths were too much. There are still tight paths as I think it makes gameplay more interesting if the players need to work around the AI as well, but not as much as the original layout had.
Another design condition that I added was to include obstructions to block the player's vision. This was mostly intended for the zookeeper who plays in first person. The aliens could still be affected by the obstructions, but them being in third person allows them to peek over or around the walls.
Originally the obstructions were flat geometry I placed around the walls of the enclosures. Once the art was in, this gave us taller walls and windows to see through. This gave another design challenge where players could see each other in some locations but will be safe from one-another. This helps the zookeeper locate aliens faster, but keeps the aliens safe from the zookeeper temporarily. This also helps give the aliens time to react to the zookeeper if they had noticed they were spotted.
I positioned the windows according to the location of the zoo's center. The more central the walls face the less windows, the further away from the center, the more windows. This helps the zookeeper if they are on the outskirts of the zoo (where they would be at a disadvantage at catching aliens), they get a larger window to look into enclosures. Where as if they are in the center of the zoo (where they have the advantage of catching aliens), there is more obstruction to their vision. I made sure not to have a single location be the golden spot where you can see every enclosure.
Once we had the layout finalized I went in for the last time adding in some more decretive details. We had two ground textures that were not being utilized. I made a custom mesh using Pro Builder to create a ground floor for each enclosure as well as small dirt clumps to give more character to the enclosures. Neither of the two have collision, thus it doesn't affect the players nor the AI.