Kyle Rasmusson
Technical designer
KYLE
RASMUSSON
COMBAT
Scripting behaviors for a puzzle based enemy type. The goal was to create an enemy type that didn't focus on using traditional combat. There's no health bar, no bullets, we simply had to focus on using encounter based puzzle solving.
The enemy has a variety of behaviors that roughly boil down to "Wander" , "Chase point of interest" , "Charge at player" , "Shoot projectile at player". In response, the player can dodge the enemy's attacks, or deflect the projectile to inflict a stun state.
Chasing the point of interest is the player's moment of opportunity. The player has an item this particular enemy is searching for, so if the enemy is wandering or has just come out of stun, this item is the only thing they'll be searching for. The player can throw that item, causing the enemy to follow after it.
This allows encounters to be set up as puzzles for trapping this enemy, rather than killing it. This creates more unique and dynamic encounters as the design of the surrounding space heavily changes what that encounter is going to play as.
Worked with lead to draft up animation needs to ensure the AI had proper tells for each state.
LEVEL DESIGN
Owned the level design process for ACT5, the game's final act. Implemented narrative and gameplay mechanics throughout several sections in the rest of the game.
ACT5
This area is the underground lair of the game's main antagonist, it was also home to many unfortunate citizens who were put to work in the mines and foundry nearby, and lived in squalor in the cramped caves of the village. Resting not far away is a hidden tower with a temple on top that has long since sunk into the ground.
The player's ultimate goal is to break down a door into the inner chambers if the main antagonist, the false prophet. The player needs to raise up the temple tower so they can throw stone buffalo off the top, and break open the doors to the antagonist's inner chamber.
To get the tower to raise, the player must destroy oil rigs at the end of each of the three sub areas, which can be completed in any order.
THE VILLAGE
This is where the workers for this area lived, resting in cramped cubbies embedded into the walls.
The player's main objective in this area is to open the big door right in the center. I'm a strong believer in contextualizing goals, so this door is the very first thing player's see upon entering this space.
AIR VENTS
Simple enough timing puzzle. Air coming out of the vents will blow players to their death, so they need to find ways to close off the vents. The buttons near the edge (bottom left of the screenshot) close the panels and halt the wind. The middle panel can be prevented from lowering again by having the player throw 'The Artifact' at it (a special tool they always have), this will create a special platform. Then the player must press the two buttons and jetpack across the gap.
What I'd do differently: More inspiration from narrative heavy games. Given more time, I'd have played through The Last of Us 2 during the construction of this area. Seattle Day 1 would have been an amazing reference. TLOU2 has many puzzles that are contextually relevant to the narrative at the time, for instance the power cable generator puzzles. The Village in Eclipse 2 could have used more narrative context. I would have blocked out beds, tables, eating areas, restrooms, and spent more time designing puzzles with the narrative trappings of the village.
THE MINES
This section tells the story of the rugged working conditions that the workers of the mine were forced to endure. Harsh rocks and mountains of ore abound in this space.
This area took reference from some of the weight puzzles in Tomb Raider (2013), but in a super simplified form. Players use telekinesis to put heavy objects on pulleys lowering the pulley platform and allowing forward progress.
FIRST PULLEY
This puzzle is relatively simple. Player uses telekinesis to put the minecart on the platform, it lowers, players steps on, and pushes the minecart off with TK.
What I'd do differently: I added side tunnels to show that the mine tunnels went to different spaces, but I really wanted to give the player tools to break down walls, and access to stories of the miners. You see all this heavy machinery, but nothing that really says people were here.
THE FOUNDRY
In the foundry, the player fights against timing in order to make it through the deadly crushers. Then makes their way through the underground rivers of lava, solving puzzles so they can get to the oil rig.
I wanted this area to take a break from the heavier puzzle solving and focus more on high intensity gameplay moments, so we put the player on a conveyor belt and send them towards the pistons.
PISTONS
Piston puzzles are simple. Player is confronted with closed pistons in the first puzzle and must power it on with a battery obtained in the same room as the battery plug (through the doorway in the above screenshot) the player is not being pushed along by the conveyor belt at this time, so they're given time to adjust into the mechanic. Then it ramps up with the next piston being a timed event, and the third piston being one the player needs to stop by using the artifact to block the piston.
What I'd do differently: This area is really rushed through, the main entrance hall feels very grand, and then immediately pushed into the conveyor belt section, none of it feels like a realistic space, and there's nothing that indicates actual people would have used this space, there's again a lack of narrative content.
THE TOWER
Now the player has broken all three oil rigs and is ascending the tower. Here they'll complete simple puzzles to get to the top. I wanted to focus on very light, quick interactions so the player could feel good about progressing and solving simple puzzles. The player mainly interacts with breakable objects that open the path, and telekinesis puzzles.
THE ASCENT
When at the top, the player throws the artifact through the U-shaped divot, the Buffalo at the top then hurl themselves off the tower and onto the door.
What I'd do differently: The goal of this section needed to be framed better. There's currently nothing that tells the player that they need to go through the blue door, or that they can throw buffalo off the tower to break the door, or that they can destroy the oil rigs to raise the tower. The player doesn't need to know all of these goals at once, but they should at least know their next goal. For instance, players should know breaking the oil derricks will raise up the tower. Then the player only needs to know their goal is at the summit of the tower. Given the opportunity, I'd restructure the goals so goals can be more easily delivered to the player, and they stand a better chance at deducing things themselves.
I would have started with the tower already raised, the oil rigs instead are either powering on a generator that is keeping a gate up, or the oil flow from the rigs itself is pouring into a river the player needs to travel down to get to the tower (callback to a moment in Eclipse 1). This would be a clearer obstacle for the player to overcome.
At the top of the tower, throwing the buffalo off is also not the clearest goal, but we wanted a moment of sacrifice. We could have spun up a portal to the main antagonist's inner chambers, and required a ritual sacrifice of the buffalo as the means of opening the portal.
NARRATIVE TECH
Narrative heavy game needs narrative tools.
The core system I worked on was how we used NPC's to help deliver the narrative. We needed a system where we could quickly implement narrative content.
The system I built allows designers (myself included) to call task nodes (like add animation, navigation, delays) and use them in a fire and forget manner. Each task gets added to an array, executing in the order it was called. Tasks are also given keys, so if you need to fire an event when a task has started or ended, then you can listen for an event with that key and have the world react.
Additionally, NPC's can switch between the task behavior, and behavior trees, so an NPC can be told to move to a point, play an animation, and then revert back to attacking the player.
GAME DESIGN
Maintained and improved several key gameplay systems. For instance our battery system and telekinesis.
Telekinesis: Used vector math to get the appropriate direction a TK object should move. Simple, a TK object the player is looking at should move left, when they move their left hand further left of their right hand, the further away their hands are, the faster the object will move.
Batteries: Simple, put a battery in a receptacle and it will activate a system. Remove a battery and it will deactivate the system. Take a drained battery, put it in a recharger, flip the lever, and it will charge the battery.
Additional: I worked on several other systems, including tuning wheels, extending their functionality, and making them feel heavy, and many more systems.
*Was permitted to use images, but not video in the creation of this page.