Lathe and Roguard and the Curse of the Deadwood

Development Summary:

• Game: Lathe and Rogard: Curse of the Deadwood

• Engine: Unity 4

• Development Time: 8 months (my time on the project)

• Genre: Twin-stick Shooter, RPG, Action

• Platform: PC

• Released: July 28, 2022

Responsibilities:

• Designed two large levels filled with multiple paths, hidden objects, and dozens of unique, challenging encounters

• Collaborated alongside art team to clutter the levels with beautiful assets and add in multiple instances of environmental storytelling

• Outlined, advocated for, and implemented the design for the starting tutorial, insuring players gained a firm foundation on the basics of play

• Planned and scripted several enemy encounters, specific objectives, and quest lines

• Found a work around through scripting that saved us a lot of time and effort

Level Design:

When I joined the project back in May of 2020, one of the first things I commented on where the sizes of the levels. The two levels that I would be working on, Level 01 and Level 06, were thousands of Unity units long and wide. I knew that the levels would be difficult to load and operate, and brought the issue to my boss’s attention. However, my concerns were put aside and we focused on creating the necessary objectives, combat encounters, and dialogue we would need to make these levels what the team wanted them to be.

Following the plans set forth by one of the previous designers, I took brush to terrain and quickly sculpted out the mountains, rivers, and lakes as set forth in the plan. Each map was meant to be a linear path with large explorable arenas. And while the original plans definitely met that goal, they arguably went above and beyond, leading to players getting lost and losing sight of the objective. Even when adding in an objective arrow for players to follow, our players still got lost and confused in the swath of trees, logs, and paths. I worked with the various members of my team, as we had no senior level designer, each of us worked to simplify and refine our maps and improve the flow still working to keep the exploration we all wanted, but always finding ways to loop the player back to the main path.

Later on into the project, with our artists already taxed and wanting to ease their load, myself and the other level designers were given the task of cluttering the levels. This involved scattering countless rocks, logs, benches, and other assets around the levels to make the spaces feel both real and “lived-in” making the spaces fill full and vibrant. We were also encouraged to tell fun or grim narratives through the use of environmental storytelling. What kind of story would our players piece together from the discarded hatchets, turned over card, and still roaring fire of a logging camp? We could only encourage. Not to mention, many of these environmental storytelling pieces, became landmarks for players to further guide our players.

Scripting Overview:

One of the more cumbersome issues the level design team faced with the project was the scripting system. Built upon Unity’s scripting tools, there were certain additions and extra features that made managing an objective and spawning enemies reliably both difficult and time consuming. Thankfully, my team and I worked very well together and double checked each others’ work, helping each other catch the one box we missed, the one spawner that was out sequence, or any of the other plethora of issues that could cause a spawner or objective to just not trigger.

To give an example of some of the types of scripting issues we ran into on Curse of the Deadwood, we were given an objective system that could not keep track of multiple objectives. The original design was that once a player reached a trigger volume, the objective marker would go from the main/current objective to the trigger’s side objective. And once the secondary objective was complete, the system would switch back to the main series, kind of like a train track with a Y branch off. However, upon receiving the system, we designers quickly figured out that the objective did not have the ability to go back to the main objective track, meaning that once players completed the secondary objective series, the arrow disappear, the objective message would go blank, and players would lose any idea of what would happen next. Further more, because we wired our content in a series, if the objective tracker broken, then the next trigger volume would not fire correctly.

After realizing this, our project lead explained that the already overworked programmers would be held back even further, leading to concerning delays. Having taken a look at the system, I decided to take some free time and see about a different implementation method. Instead of wiring the secondary objectives as part of a sub objective relating to the main objective series, creating that Y train track branch off and another Y to go back onto the track, I decided to wire up the sub objective as if it were a separate main objective. In this analogy, players would never switch off the main objective, but would essentially reach out with a pole and hit the lights and signals of the sub objective track, there by firing all the necessary triggers, waves, and other pieces. After testing it in a small way, I went further to push my ideas and soon wired up a main objective with three sub objective tracks. It took some doing, but I was able to prove that the system was able to hand the idea and ended up saving the programmers a lot of time in potentially reworking the whole objective system. Now we just needed some simple reworks and refinements.

Tutorial Section:

After figuring out the issue with the objective system, I felt confident enough to push the team for the need of a tutorial area. At the game’s current design, Players were treated to a simple opening cinematic to explain what was going on, then players would suddenly appear in a forest area, no prompts for what to do or how to play, no message even informing them that they could find the controls in the options menu. Just an arrow pointing them with an objective. I knew our game needed some sort of tutorial, something that slowly taught players the major mechanics of the game so we could build upon that foundation for the rest of the game.

I was met with push back at first, sighting how the project was already tight as is and how the team didn’t have time to make anything special or unique for the hypothetical tutorial section. And while some would view that statement as a “No.” I viewed that statement as a set of guidelines.

After about a month, I presented my idea again to my producer and explained to him how my proposed plan for the tutorial met the following goals:

• It did not call for any new, special assets or content

• It could be delivered in a short amount of time

• How it could all be done using our current objective system

• Introduced the major pillars of melee combat, ranged combat, puzzle solving, and exploration

• And how it gradually presented players with the information they needed to play instead of just dropping them in with nothing

My initial design went through a few iterations, but the core of the design remained and a few weeks later I was given the green light to proceed. A few days later the tutorial was in game and playable for whole team. I received quite a lot of praise for my work and ingenuity, and while the design would still some tweaks and minor changes, the tutorial shipped pretty much as is in the final version of the game.

End of Project and Return:

Around Thanksgiving of 2020, the news came down from above. Steamroller needed to tighten its belt and some members of the team, contractors, were going to be let go. I was selected to leave the team and while I was frustrated to have drawn the short straw, I left knowing the project was in good hands.

The following months I made inquiries, and soon caught the attention of a few different companies. One of them was Amazon and after a quick interview and turn around phase, I accepted the position and was set to join Amazon Valentines Day 2021. The day after I accepted the Amazon position, Steamroller studios called. They had made their case and were able to bring me back on. Not sure what to do as I had already accepted the job at Amazon, I informed Steamroller of what happened and kinda off-handedly said, “Well, I could give you a month’s worth of work.” They responded with an loud, “We’ll take it!” and I rejoined Steamroller the following week.

The next few weeks flew by. During the time I was off the project, the team had decided that the levels were indeed too big and needed to be trimmed down to about half their size. Taking a pair of garden clippers to my two levels was no easy feat, but we quickly brought each of our levels down to a more manageable size. I was soon handing the levels back over to the other level designers once more as I made my way to Amazon.

Working at Steamroller Studios had the feel of a small, scrappy team, trying to dodge the blows of a big fighter and make something out of a debacle. We were constantly encouraged to think big, but design lean, leading to us having to find little work arounds here and there, or finding unique uses for tools beyond their original intention. It was a small, dedicated team that wanted to make the most of everything it had and we succeeded. Curse of the Deadwood released in July 2022.