I am designing levels/locations for ‘Off The Grid‘ – an online third person game that mixes elements of both Extraction shooter and Battle Royale genres. The game is being developed using Unreal Engine 5 and is released on PC, Playstation 5 and XBOX Series X/S.
Here is some of the released work that I’ve done on the game:
‘SALTIE’
Typical for the Battle Royale genre, the game is taking place on a large map made up several key locations (and the ‘skin issue’ in-between). One of these locations is an abandoned desalination plant named ‘Saltie’.
Design ownership of this location was transferred to me during early whitebox stage. I worked on it on and off until its release with a number of different LDs who contributed to its development so shout-out to them (and all the other departments who worked on this): Timo Bron, Barbod Nili, Laszlo Domjan, Jaume Sanz Sempere, Vitaliy Avdyeyev (and Eugen Ionica as Lead Level Designer).
Saltie is an abandoned desalination plant on the coast of the island. It is made up of cylindrical clarifying pools, silos, industrial buildings, worker accomodations and giant salt piles.
Whitebox:
Biggest Design Challenges & Learnings:
- Cover is not as crucial in BRs – and especially in Off The Grid – as I expected. Industrial themes lend themselves quite well to fill them with pipes, silos, machinery etc. that provide cover and break sight lines. But firing at other players across large distances doesn’t automatically mean that you achieve to hit them. In any case, you will be making a lot of noise and exposing your location to other players. The extremely agile traversal mechanics of the game also mean that Sniper Rifles are not as powerful as in other shooters. All these factors meant that I eventually stopped worrying about sightlines and removed a lot of the objects blocking fast player movement and perception.
- Loosely connected to the previous point: less cover doesn’t mean ‘no cover at all’. This gave us some interesting challenges during the design of the giant salt piles that this location was going to have. Due to the nature of salt any type of foliage was out of the question. Reference images didn’t show many objects on such piles, in general. We arrived at a mix of trenches between the piles, big conveyor belt towers and vehicles scattered across the piles to fix this problem.
- We had to let go of the idea that players could get inside some of the pipes running through the area. It appeared like a promising, novel idea, but even with a lot of exit points it isn’t fun to be bumping your camera in a 3rd person game against the inner shell of a pipe and having your fast movement mechanics be so constrained while inside.
Final Result
‘OCIO’
The theme of this location is a high-end holiday resort called ‘Ocio’ – a stark contrast to the rough neighbourhoods on Teardrop island – built for those who can afford it. The inspiration was/is an artificially built island that is an extension to Teardrop. Long lines and hard angles reminiscent of circuit boards was the shape language that was established early on.
I worked on Ocio mainly during the paper design and whiteboxing phase together with my colleague Barbod Nili. I transferred design ownership of the location to him to free up time to act as interim Lead Level Designer. He developed the majority of the location and brought it to release. I was only brought on again with other LDs during the final push as support. But the areas in the center of the island (the pool, the exterior of the hotel’s main building, the maintenance area) remained very close to my original whitebox designs.
The area is comprised of of the landmark hotel building that consists of single rooms, a reception, lobby and dining hall. Following a concept pass I adapted the whitebox of the building to match better the concept. The pool area follows a zig-zag shape for less long sightlines and more cover. The two-level buildings on its side create interesting opportunities for firefights across the pool. Other POIs are a pool bar, tennis courts and a storage area in the lower levels.
Whitebox
Final Result
Region Design
The world (or better: ‘island’) in Off The Grid is divided into three regions. Gamma, Beta and Omega. Beta is the region that is released and can be played in OTG today. Gamma is the region I had ownership of in designing. Part of that work included:
- Terrain elevation and biome design
- Placement of main locations in the region under consideration of terrain, distances to each other and landmark visibility
- Division into sub-regions and high-level design of their contents and attributes (points-of-interest, loot density, engagement ranges etc.)
- Infrastructure (main and secondary routes)
- Design ownership of one of the main locations in Gamma
Gamma (and Omega) region have not been released to this day and the details of my work are under NDA.
Buffer Zones
‘Buffer zones’ is the term we use for the areas that are in-between the main locations of the map. They often consist of natural environments and open spaces. They are intended to let the locations ‘breathe’ but they shouldn’t be empty. Points-of-interests offer loot opportunities and lead players from one location to the next.
A few examples of this, which I have worked on, can be found in-between ‘Stork City’ and ‘Ocio’. A gas/charging station next to a highway and a vehicle workshop that allow players to loot items before they venture further into Stork City. Additionally, cabins for construction workers that serve as a stop-gap between Stork and Ocio.
I designed the layout of the area and the whitebox of the vehicle repair shop. I used Joshua Ellis’ whitebox of the charging station and assembled it with final art assets. He finished the vehicle workshop for me. It was important to me that there is a nice flow between the POIs, enough loot opportunities and (soft and hard) cover when players are entering the city coming from the direction of the highway/monorail station
More work samples available upon request.