Angela Wu
Game/Level Designer
ENCIRCLE AND SUPPRESS - CREATION KIT
Project Summary
Encircle and Suppress is a mod for Fallout 4 containing two quests that happen in Cherry Town. The main quest is about helping Carl avenge his dead sister, Nancy. As players discover the truth of Nancy’s death, they will be faced with different decision points.
Engine: Bethesda's Creation Kit
Game: Fallout 4
Download here:
Playthrough Video
Synopsis
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1 main quest
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1 side quest
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8 Unique NPC
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1 customize exterior space
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1 customize interior space
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400+ Lines of dialogue
In-Game Screenshots
Design Narrative with Meaningful Choices
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Player can choose the end of the story.
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Both choices have their advantages and disadvantages.
This mod tells the story about Carl’s revenge for his sister’s death. The accused culprit, Ben, is the leader of the Brotherhood of Steel in Cherry Town. As the player dives deeper into the matter, they discover the truth. Ben established a factory in Cherry Town, which grew in reputation and brought huge benefits to the town’s economic development. Nancy, Carl’s sister, worked there, but was accidentally killed by another factory employee. In order to save the reputation of the factory, Ben covered up the whole thing and let the killer go. After unveiling the circumstances regarding Nancy’s death, the player makes the choice on whether or not to kill Ben.
Branch choice dialogue
Set up Good Conveyances
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Set land marker that helps the player navigate.
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Companion that keeps reminding player about their goal.
One of the goals I had was good communication between the game and the player. Players needed to understand what the game goal was and the smaller goals at each stage. How does the player determine the direction or location after knowing the target content? I heard this question every time I got feedback at my different milestones. Players often got lost in subway stations and didn’t know what to do, so I found ways to improve. I added landmarks (see Figure 3 for an example) or lights as visual guides.
Because the player has an NPC companion in my level, I designed the companion to always remind and guide the player to the next target point. I found this to be very effective because the NPC giving the player guidance felt more realistic and created a more human experience.
Showing the land marker - factory
Scripted AI and Camera to Make Cinematic Scenes
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Set cinematic scenes that had consequence to auto-start and focus on the character that’s speaking.
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Scripted AI behaviors and set different animations for them.
I wanted to create some cinematic shots to create scenes when telling a story. By adjusting animation and AI behavior for different NPCs, I found you can create lively and interesting scenarios. For example, when the player first meets Ben, they enter the camera state I set, which allows you to see Carl and Ben’s first confrontation. This scenario allows the player to feel the authenticity of the characters and the story. After the conversation, Ben escapes from the scene due to his guilty conscience. I wrote a script for him to make him escape and disappear after the conversation in order to increase the dynamics of the scene.
Carl and Ben first confrontation scene
Make a Small-Town-Style Exterior World
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Designed a small town called Cherry Town reusing spaces that exist in the game.
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Designed a circle-like layout that allows the player to easily see their goals and go around the town.
LDD map of Cherry Town
Screenshot of top-down view Cherry Town
Post-Mortem
What went well
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Did a good job of balancing the story’s branching point and setting the characterization of the game characters.
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Every milestone I got sufficient feedback, which prompted me to improve the level.
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Successfully made a functional level with various complex functions, dialogue trees, and scripts.
What went wrong
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I often couldn’t grasp the point of the problem, so I didn’t prioritize actions well, which led to wasting lots of time re-doing work.
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On some milestones, I didn’t meet all the requirements, which led to more things to do on subsequent milestones.
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I failed to establish a project backup in time. This led to frequent.
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loss of work, which impacted my progress and efficiency.
What I learned
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Built a good player experience. Players often feel like they are forced to do certain things or are forced to accept a lot of information, which is typically viewed as a bad game experience. In fact, most of what I found worked was involving the players in the story and letting them drive themselves to discover new information.
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Always remember to check the details. The experience I gained in Creation Kit taught me to check every detail. A small, seemingly insignificant option may keep the entire game from running.
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Focus on the big picture. I also learned that levels need to be improved in important directions. Sometimes I would focus on details and waste a lot of time modifying unimportant things. Other times, there were so many ideas and I wanted to put them all into my level, but this is obviously impossible and could also make it easy for the player to get very confused. I found what I need to do moving forward is focus on the important points.