Overview:

  • Genre: First-Person-Shooter
  • Platform(s): PC, PS3, XBOX 360
  • Role: (Junior) Level Designer
  • Release Date: November 13th, 2007
  • Metacritic-rating: 91

Crysis is a single- and multi-player first-person-shooter game released on PC, PS3 and XBOX360. It is set in a future where a massive, ancient alien-built structure has been discovered buried inside a mountain in the fictional Lingshan Islands, near the coast of the east Philippines. The single-player campaign has the player assume the role of U.S. Army Delta Force soldier Jake Dunn, referred to in-game by his callsign, Nomad. Nomad is armed with various futuristic weapons and equipment, most notably a “Nanosuit” which was inspired by the real-life military concept of Future Force Warrior. The player fights both North Korean and extraterrestrial enemies in various environments on and around the island.

Responsibilities

  • Mission & Game Design: I contributed to the game design process and creation of level concept documents during pre-production.
  • Support roles: I supported one of the Senior Level Designers during the development of the vertical slice demo and the first-pass-versions of the missions ‘Relic’ & ‘Recovery’ (layout, basic geometry, AI navigation & behaviors).
  • Design ownership: I became the design owner of the missions ‘Core’ and ‘Ascension’ and designed these levels.
  • Cross-collaboration: I worked with all departments to realize the vision for these levels. One collaboration that stood out to me was the one with AI Programmers on the behaviors of the Alien enemy AI to make sure the behaviors would fit the environment and vice versa.

Levels:

‘CORE’

The challenge: The level creation process of Core was a special challenge because there was little experience to fall back on for this kind of environment I was tasked to create (unlike the outdoor missions which strongly resembled many of the levels in Crytek’s previous game ‘FarCry’). Nobody had done this before.

The vision: a scary, Alien-looking zero-gravity environment where the player needs to engage Alien enemies in their natural habitat. There, the player would learn more about the Alien species that has begun to transform Earth into a frozen world (similar to their home planet).

Player-leading: A big challenges was to lead the player through this alien environment while they have 360° freedom of movement. Since the development of a 3D map was out of scope, I mitigated the issue by strategically placing landmark objects, lights, particle & sound effects. The glowing tentacles that power the Alien ship are a common theme throughout the level and lead the player in the direction of the exit. Additionally, I found out that gravity streams didn’t just make an interesting ingredient for puzzles but they are also a good indicator to give the player a sense of direction (like a wind breeze gently pushing the player).

Enemy Encounter Design: Another challenge was to create interesting combat encounters under consideration of the AI’s requirements. They could put up interesting fights, but in open space, they were sitting ducks. Fun encounters were achieved by adding tunnels and bridging large empty spaces with objects that the Alien AI can take cover behind. This also helped to facilitate surprise attacks and the kind of cat & mouse gameplay I was aiming for inside the ship. The sci-fi zero-g environment allowed me to create some extraordinary encounters like a room that’s split in two halves by a layer of fog that aliens pop in and out of.

Scripting & Animated Sequences: I also took care of the scripting and animated sequences of the mission.

‘ASCENSION’

On this Crysis singleplayer mission I was tasked to work on the gameplay-logic, AI, cinematics etc. while a colleague (Michael Kolkau) took care of laying out the geometry. The narrative backdrop to the mission is that the sphere that emits from the Alien ship has begun to rapidly expand and the island needs to be evacuated. The player and his squadron of VTOLs need to get back to the aircraft carrier and help allied forces on the way to escape. The action-packed, cinematic theme of the mission made this one of the more scripting-heavy and linear missions in the game. Good teamwork and focus resulted in an exciting, unique mission that we were able to create in relatively short time.

Scripting & Animated Sequences: The wingmen of the player could not be supported by the AI Programmers due to lack of resources. This meant that the flight paths of the player’s wingmen, in addition to the expansion of the freezing sphere and events along the way, had to become animated sequences that I created and that I triggered via the mission script based on the player’s progress. Keeping the player’s, the wingmen’s and sphere’s progress in sync was only feasible through clever use of triggers and multiple sequences.

Enemy AI Behaviors: I worked with the AI programmers to come up with the right behavior for the flying Alien exosuit enemies during air-to-air combat. This was a special challenge because these enemies were originally never intended to attack anything else but ground units.

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