Angela Wu
Game/Level Designer
Plague Crisis - CREATION KIT
Project Summary
Plague Crisis is a mod for Fallout 4 containing one main quest. The story is about a villager named Olivia that escaped from Goya Village, a small village infected by a plague. At the time of her escape, Olivia’s husband Baron was not home, so Olivia needs the player to help her return to her village home to find her husband. Players face a variety of monsters, challenges, and an exciting boss battle as they explore the place and gradually penetrate the secrets of this plague crisis.
Engine: Bethesda's Creation Kit
Game: Fallout 4
Download here:
Playthrough Video
Synopsis
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1 main quest
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5 unique NPC's
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Interesting boss fight
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Horrible mansion with traps and ghouls
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A touching story
In-Game Screenshots
Design a Horrible Mansion with an Effective Jump Scare
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Designed a creepy mansion with lots of monsters.
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Set a jump scare with an ambush from behind.
I took inspiration from the Resident Evil games and wanted to design a horrible mansion. I developed my Level Design Document (LDD) and then implemented it into the engine (Creation Kit). In order to help create dread for the player, I designed the mansion to include a lot of dilapidated walls and floors with blood and dust effects to add more visual interest.
For some dynamic level design, I set enemies to play dead on the ground at first. However, whenever players pick up props or weapons in the area, the enemies stop playing dead and attack the player. I utilized these designs to help create an atmosphere of horror and increase the player’s sense of tension.
Level Layout Screenshot
Mansion Screenshot
Ambush ghouls trigger when player pick up weapon
Designed a Challenging Boss Fight
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Challenging, but interesting boss fight.
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Built an arena space where players can circle around and have some place to hide from attacks.
I designed a boss battle and associated arena. Players can use stairs to dodge the boss’s attacks or use the terrain to force the boss to fight in circles. Here, I wanted the player to experience a challenging battle, as the boss’s HP and attack power are very high. Under these circumstances, the player will die in after receiving around two to three attacks. However, I adjusted the boss’s attack speed and movement speed to be particularly slow in order to help players have more time to strategize. At the same time, in order to balance the difficulty a little bit, I also added Matthew, my custom NPC companion, to help the player in the fight.
Boss fight room screenshot
Boss fight room screenshot
Crafted a Reasonable Story to Fit My Design
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Tuned AI behavior and scripting for the consequences to make NPC’s more realistic.
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Designed a touching story that didn’t rely too much on dialogue.
Plague Crisis tells a story with love and friendship, the whole story line is divided into 2 aspects. The first aspect is the dialogue information of NPC. Olivia and her husband separated because of plague crisis. After accepting the task of helping Olivia find her husband Baron, the protagonist went to the village. After meeting Baron, he learned that he was injected with plague virus. If he doesn't find the cure, he will become ghoul. Players build relationships with Baron by continuously advancing the plot, and also generate sympathy. Later, villager Matthew took the initiative to help them and let the players feel friendship and kindness.
The second aspect is mainly expressed in environmental storytelling, which tells the background of the story. The scientist who invented the plague virus was to save his seriously ill wife and conduct experiments in the village. He didn't want to hurt others, but the slow development of the virus gave his wife no time to wait, so he decided to experiment on humans. But in the end, the experiment was still unsuccessful, and he finally decided to use himself for the final experiment until he became a monster.
first meet Villager Matthew
Final choices with Olivia
Post-Mortem
What went well
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My goals and designs were completed in the level. At the beginning of the design documentation stage, I was clear about my ideas and goals, which led to good planning and successful completion of each milestone.
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I created a highly polished horror mansion.
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My story and combat flow was balanced.
What went wrong
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I found it difficult to control the behavior of the ghoul style of enemies. It was sometimes difficult to control the movement of ghouls and the timing of their attacks.
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Less feedback led to a harder time testing the levels. Due to time issues, multi-person testing couldn’t be performed well, which reduced the chance of finding errors and getting suggestions.
What I learned
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The first thing I learned is to consider the actual feelings of the players when designing levels. When I initially balanced the boss battle, most players found it too difficult to fight. Later, I added a companion to help the player and, as a byproduct of their struggles together, increased the emotional connection the player felt with the NPC.
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I also learned that designing a good level requires extensive, timely testing and that many details that tripped up others were unnoticeable when designing by myself. Asking others to test was very helpful to the integrity of the level.