Project Type:

Personal Project | Level Designer

Introduction:

I have been a fan of the Black Ops series ever since the first installment in 2010. I have countless memories of playing with my friends after school, playing either Capture the Flag or Search and Destroy for hours on end. Being able to vote on maps was always fun, because my friends and I would always vote for Nuketown whenever we had the opportunity.

As the newer Black Ops games were released, a remade version of Nuketown was also released. Each of these remakes had different themes. As a level designer, I thought it would be a unique opportunity to try to recreate this exquisite map.

Software Used:

• Unreal Engine 4 – UE4 was used as the game engine.
• Black Ops 1 – Used as the primary reference for the creation of the whitebox.
• Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop – These two softwares were used to create the reference board, and the minimalist level layout.

Responsibilities:

• Gathered reference imagery in Black Ops.
• Whiteboxed Nuketown in its original state.
• Modified the Character Blueprints to edit player speed and height. I also made adjustments to some of the GameMode Blueprints, such as where respawns occured, how long it takes to respawn, etc.

The Process:

Step 1: Creation of the Reference Board

For this project, creating the reference board was pretty easy. I opened up Black Ops 1 through Steam and started a private match where I was alone. I started over at the blue building, and started taking screenshots of the important areas. I did this step simultaneously as I was whiteboxing, because as I was whiteboxing, I’d realize that I needed more specific imagery of particular areas. In these instances, I’d go back and and take more shots. I’d say I probably took about 20-25 screenshots at a time.

As I was taking the images, I was trying to look for specific things that line up. For instance, the end of the exterior stair cases lined up with the left side of the door opening of the blue building. Small stuff like this really helped me stay as true as I could to the original scale and shape of the original Nuketown.

Below you will see the 190 images I compiled as I was working during the whiteboxing stage. As a note, I do not own any of the images, they were all screenshotted from Black Ops 1.

Step 2: Whiteboxing

This step was a lot of fun. As I previously mentioned, this step was done simultaneously with the previous step. Even though I planned on arting this level out in a different theme than what has already been made, I thought it would be best to whitebox to the original layout, and then expand on those ideas in the art phase.

I started whiteboxing the exterior area of the blue house first. I thought it would be easiest to understand the scale of the map by starting with the small objects outside. Stuff like the fences and the bushes helped me understand the scale of the level. I spent a good portion of time scaling these up and down.

Once I got the basics of the exterior down, I started to work on the blue building. I started with the exterior stair, and working my way from the back to the front of the building, focusing just on the exterior walls. I figured once I had the exterior of the building setup, then the interior would be a lot easier. Surprisingly, getting the scale of a single door helped me scale the building very easily. Once I got that down, the rest of the exterior came together nicely.

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The process for the rest of this phase was pretty similar. Once I finished the area of the blue building, I moved on to the central space, and then the yellow building. After finishing the play space, I started whiteboxing the outside of the map. Even though the player cannot reach this space, I thought that it was very important to include these elements, to keep with the same look and feel of the level.

Key Takeaways:

Reverse Engineering – As a level designer, I think it is a really important skill to be able to understand infamous levels, and what about them works well. While I was working on this project, I was noticing how the scale of spaces really impacted the overall feel of the level. As I was remaking this level, I was starting to understand how and why certain decisions were made when the level initially came together. Ideas like this really helped me grow as a level designer.