Four of a Kind
Colin PARK
Level Design
Four of a Kind
For my project, I wanted to explore systems design and technical design, specifically creating a progressive combat model that adapts to the player’ s skill and to recruitable NPCs( Non-Player Characters) that the player interacts with. I wanted to look into balancing combat encounters for multiple characters at a time and how that can change based on the number of characters supporting the player.
I chose this project to further my understanding of how player combat interactions can stay varied and fun when designing for not just single-player combat encounters but also unique multiplayer encounters. Using Starfield as my base allowed for a certain amount of flexibility in terms of customizing both the player’ s and NPC’ s combat stats and systems, which allowed me to create combat interactions that progressively change according to the player’ s progression through the quest and the amount of NPCs that the player has recruited.
This project took me three months to complete, from concept and planning to full functionality. I started with testing and creating proof of concept for the recruitable NPCs so that I could ensure working combat involving multiple friendly NPCs. From there, I created a custom space station in Starfield that would inhabit my quest.
Creating a standalone space for my quest allowed me to work toward the strengths of friendly NPCs when designing a level. This was a beneficial project for me as a designer because it was one of the most complex projects I’ ve worked on so far from a systems and technical perspective. I was able to learn a lot about combat balancing for not just the player but multiple characters at once, which could be beneficial for designing combat for single and multiplayer games.
54 LEVEL DESIGN