ROBOT WIPEOUT
GAME DESIGNER
Project role
UNREAL ENGINE 4
Engine
8 WEEKS
Duration
Robot wipeout is a 3rd person beam 'em up game(show) where you fight against hordes of nasty bots and doge deadly hazards, all for the entertainment of the gullible public. Smack your way up to the top, where Buff Marley, Heal Armstrong and Steve Knock a.k.a. The Bosses, are waiting for you to give them a beating!
PAGE NAVIGATION
ABOUT
FIGHT
Fight a variety of enemies in ever changing setups. Get to feel the power as you unleash powerful combo attacks.
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ARENA
Use the arena to your advantage as you lead enemies into traps, break boxes to heal your robot and make your way as fast as you can to the top where the boss will be waiting for you.
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ARCADE
With arcade like fast paced gameplay you can set new record times for each of the levels and aim for the high score as you increase your combo and gain more points.
PROJECT ROLE
In my second year of university I joined the project of Robot Wipeout after the project I had previously been working on got cancelled due to lack of students wanting to work on it and low output. When I joined the team of Robot Wipeout the game already had a solid concept so most of my work consisted of helping set up pipelines for level design and implementing new content for the game.
As a game designer...
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Creation of a level streaming pipeline and technical implementation
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Setting up enemy waves to fight inside of the arena
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Blueprinting of interactable objects in the game world
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Locked gate that opens when you kill enough enemies​
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HP Box that restores some HP when you break it
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Video screens that show the player camera​​​
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LEVEL STREAMING
Level streaming as a tool
I implemented a level streaming pipeline in the project in an effort to help the project move forward quicker and more efficiently. By using level streaming we were able to have a single level designer focusing on creating the arena and polishing that, while the other level designers could work in streamed levels to place enemies, objects and traps around the arena.
Level streaming document
Opening stream levels
Level streaming was also used to promote a multi-disciplinary workflow by setting up new streaming levels for artists to do their set dressing in while level designers could still work on the general layout of other parts of the arena. I made sure to later merge unnecessary streaming levels together to not clutter the project too much.
BLUEPRINTING
Enemy gate
From the first initial playtests it became clear that we needed something to stop the player from running past all the enemies and only really fighting the boss and thus completing the level. I ended up creating a solution for this problem in the form of a locked gate that only opens once all of the enemies in an area have been defeated. This way I could force players to finish a battle before moving on the next battle.
Gate as it looks in game
Gate blueprint
Healing box
We also needed a way for the player to regain health if they took any damage. As the game is supposed to be a fast paced beat 'em up a passive regen did not feel like the right way to go. Eventually I settled on creating objects around the game world the player could break to regain some health.
Box as it looks in game
Box blueprint
WAVE DESIGN
Small contained fights
Early on we made the decision to keep fights contained to smaller numbers of enemies. This meant that every fight should be it's owned contained encounter with traps, healing and enemies. By designing the counters in this way it become easier to playtest and iterate as I could test individual encounters and assess a relative difficulty. Then later all of these encounters could be stringed together in the arena for a nice difficulty progression and balance.
Final look of arena
Various enemy setups