In The Black

 
 

Info

Platform: PC
Engine: Unreal Engine 4
Time on the project: 4+ years
Company: Impeller Studios

Description

In the Black is a simulation game set in the not-so-distant future. Humans have expanded out into the solar system but not beyond it. The solar system has become the domain of several different corporations. The player takes the part of a private military contractor flying different space fighters at the behest of these corporation, completing their contracts and earning money to buy new ships and weapons.

Realism

Realism is important to In The Black. Every ship and every weapon must be plausible as something that could eventually be invented. This also extends to the games levels and narrative, which need to be based in real locations in the solar system and reflect what they might look like.

Player Abilities

Players’ abilities are diverse, as they can fly a variety of ships equipped with different weapons and weapon mounts. Atop of all this, the player is a flying fighter in three-dimensional space, which allows them to shoot from almost any angle and position. Each ship has its own acceleration, and deceleration. Each weapon has optimal ranges that need to be planned for. For instance, some weapons can shoot across the entire map. Finally, player ships have sensors that can detect enemies’ ship locations from a long distance away if they are not behind some sort of cover.

Levels

While creating levels for In the Black, I have to consider realism, firing angles in 3d space, cover placement around those angles, effective player ranges, and travel time from one location to another. Finally, I must determine what ranges and firing angles are desirable to players. For instance, if a player is in danger of getting sniped by a ship from half the map away, they need to have the ability to see the sniper before they are in range.

The Belt

 

Info

Game: In The Black
Platform: PC

 

Contribution

Position: Level Designers

  • Designed and implemented the initial level design

  • Supported the level through bug fixes, testing, and updating art assets.

 
 

Design Challenges

  • Objective: The objective placement for this map needed to be closely considered, as it dictates the match length and the areas that are fought over.

  • Cover: The cover in the map needed to be laid out to prevent sniping from half the map away, while also creating engaging gameplay.

Conquest Game mode

This map mode is a multiplayer conquest game where two teams compete to capture three objectives across the map. Each objective captured grants the team points every few seconds as long as they hold it. The match is over once a team has enough points.

Summary

This level was created to take place in the asteroid belt and was built to be a conquest map. It was a challenge to design this level with sufficient cover for players because asteroids are spread out, not clumped together like portrayed in a lot of science fiction. Additionally, I scattered manmade structures across the battlefield to imply that these few asteroids were clumped up for mining purposes and not a natural arrangement.

 

Objectives

On this map the two teams have one objective near their respective spawns. The third objective is close to the middle of the map at a different elevation from the other objectives. The two objectives near the respective spawns speed up the game by giving each team an easy capture at the start of the match. This makes the central most objective the most fought over. However that is not to say the objective near the spawns do not get captured by the opposing teams, this mission is in space and player ships can move very fast.

 

Cover

When placing the spawn areas and objectives, it was important to make sure that each spawn area did not have lines of sight to each other, and that each capture objective had positions that had cover from either of the spawn areas and other objectives. This meant that while players could not hit one another from two different objectives there was very little cover outside of that, leading to a lot of very long-range combat. Mixed with some very short moments of close-range combat when the players would contest the objectives.