Aeon Wars : Maschinen Crisis
Aeon Wars: Maschinen Crisis is a multiplayer turn-based strategy, tactical wargame.
Featuring true digital miniatures, it is set in an original sci-fi universe where you battle with your friends in epic diorama-style terrains. Collect, build, and customize your army.
Engage with your friends in large scale battles and deadly skirmishes. Deploy powerful mechs, special units and unique characters to save humanity or end its dominance on Leng.
-
Breakfirst Games Developement Studio.
-
In development
-
Using Unreal Engine 5.
-
Aimed for PC audience.
-
First indie porject of industry's veterans.
-
I worked on the level design of battlefields.
-
I worked on the game design of solo game mode.
-
I researched and explored different level design approaches.
-
I worked on my levels narrative.
I worked on Aeon Wars: Maschinen Crisis during a 4-month internship as Narrative Level Designer. This internship was part of my final year of a double degree program at the Institut des Arts Numériques in Montreal following the DESS in narrative game design.
Missions de Level Design
Playtests Pre-Alpha publics
Créer de nouvelles cartes
For the first open play test of the game I was tasked with creating new maps inspired by the original map.
​
I started by analyzing the original game map, breaking it down in order to create a Rational Level Design table in Excel.
​
Using this new tool, I created different columns tweaking a few variables and key points of the map to create a new experience for the player.
I also made sure to add a space for my intentions to make sure anyone that checks the document without me can understand what I meant and what my goal was for this map idea.
Rational Level Design Table used to create new levels playing around with some variables.
Implémentation
I presented the document to the lead designer, the CEO and the lead programmer to gather feedback on my work.
Each map was ranked according to its originality, novelty, and ease of creation.
​
When all was done and in order I started implementing the maps in Unreal Engine 5. This was a new challenge because only one map had been created and they had no pipeline for creating maps.
So I had to set it up and working to create and design a streamlined accessible map creation workflow.
Playtests publics
The levels were created a few days before the launch of the Pre-Alpha so they weren't deeply playtested and bug-proofed.
​
So the players could test them with a friend "at their own risk" to discover the other gamemodes and maps we could implement in the future.
​
After these playtests we gathered a lot of feedback on every aspect of the game, so I had lot of player feedback on my creations for the first time.
I took that feedback and used it to scrap, change and rework the maps to fix some issues we didn't see.
"Defence" with a single point that gives the attackers enough point to win in only one round.
"Hide & Seek" a huge map with lots of covers and few lines of sight.
First shot at a bigger map.
"River" made from a mix of the RLD table and a drone photo.
Exploration de Level Design
Recherches & Références
I started by looking for ideas and references from analyzing the maps of similar games : Warhammer et Moonbreaker as a starting point.
​
I also looked at similar games in a broader sense and even games that have few to do with Aeon Wars to look for new map ideas that I didn't find in other references.​
​
From these researches I created sketches of these maps on paper to present to the other designers.
relentlessdragon.com - Warhammer 40k Game Table 01
www.models-resource.com - Team Fortress 2 Archive
Prototype de nouvelles cartes
We knew the game was enjoyable with armies of five squads, so I had to do some research to find out if the concept was still enjoyable with larger maps and armies.​
​
I started by reproducing a map similar to the basic one, but on this larger map the number of rounds to reach combat was too long according to the lead designer.
​
I made a lot of plans to test design hypotheses, which allowed me to gradually get closer to the experience we were hoping for.
​
We reached an elongated map concept so that the player could place all these units but still be quickly within firing range of his opponents.
First map prototype - Too big and slow because of the units range and movement.
Closer to the final prototype: faster combat, but the snipers are too powerful.
Last map prototype - Fixing many issues and creating the desired experience for a ten units army.
Last map prototype - Fixing many issues and creating the desired experience for a ten units army.
Design Procedural
When Unreal 5.2 Preview was released, the Procedural Content Genetation plug-in came out as early-access and I was asked to explore it to see if it was a viable solution for level creation within the project.​
​
This mission was a real challenge: this tool being brand new, I had to understand it and work on it by myself, without any tutorials.
​
I started by taking inspiration from the cards I'd created in previous missions, trying to reproduce the "creation rules" procedurally.
​
Conclusion after five weeks' work: PCG is a tool that in its current state is more useful to artists, currently lacking certain features that would give designers more control.
Even if the tool can be used to create simple maps, the maps will remain basic and random.
Other Tasks
Campaign Design
During the production phase, I worked with the other intern on the design of the singleplayer mode roguelite campaign. We started looking at references and games the lead designer told us to dig.
​
With production in its early stages, we were free to imagine and create the mechanics we wanted to shape the player's experience.
​
We've created several documents: a creative brief on the campaign's features and mechanics, as well as various player's journeys to track the player's progress during the game.
​
We modified our documents based on feedback from leads and other colleagues before sending them out to become official documents presented to investors.
Different nodes, inspired by games of the genre, to create a map with.
Exemple of a randomly generated map with each node and a difficulty level attributed.
Conclusion
This internship was an opportunity for me to progress as a level designer by taking part in the production of an ambitious game still in the pre-production phase. I worked on different aspects of level design, narrative design and the design of mechanics and aspects of the game that will be integrated into the final version of the product. This has helped me to develop my skills in these key areas of game production.
​
I was able to hone my skills as well as learn new ones, particularly in level design, where I did a lot of research and production in level design, with the freedom to work the way I wanted.