Level Designer
Ark: Aquatica
A tropical adventure that takes you to the depths…
On Ark: Aquatica, I worked as a Level Designer, being brought on as the first to the project. In this role, I designed and built the initial Aquatica open-world map. I got to work closely with a team of designers, artists, programmers, and QA technicians in order to deliver a beautiful multiplayer world!
Foliage and Environment
I often found myself setting up and implementing lots of foliage assets, not only limited to grass, trees, and rocks, but also lots of underwater assets such as corals, seaweed, and massive kelp forests!
I set up the foliage assets using Unreal’s Foliage tool, and I had to work in depth, adjusting a large amount of settings such as resources gathered, vfx played when harvested, and assigning models to foliage settings.
Integrating Open World Tools
This project involved creating a massive map where thousands of players could play at the same time. This presented a lot of challenges in regards to making it play smoothly and allowing the entire world to be seen. To alleviate these issues, I used Unreal’s World Composition system to allow for Level Streaming between distant areas. In addition, I helped set up LODs for larger objects, allowing the game to render a smaller version of the particular asset, allowing a distant volcano or city to be viewed from your seaside hut across the ocean.
NPCs and Bosses
In Ark: Aquatica, there need to be thousands of Dinosaurs roaming the map. This required me to become familiar with setting up spawning NPCs, creating spawning groups, and designing a spreadsheet to help distribute dinosaurs across the map in a layout that provided a challenging difficulty curve. An extra challenge was added because in this underwater map, NPCs could attack from any angle. This required us to be very careful about what creatures we implemented in each area.
I also got to work on the bosses for the game, designing arenas, summoning locations, and playtesting the boss fights numerous times.
If you’re interested in seeing more of my work, you can scroll through the examples below, or get in contact at vancoremichael@gmail.com for more in-progress work!
Open World Design
One of my first tasks was to create the open world layout. I had to think about player progression, difficulty, and exploration in every step! For this game, I created and blocked out a large number of new biomes, including a sunken kingdom, a submerged volcano, and the terrifying abyss…
Creating Fantastical Worlds
I love to create interesting and exciting levels, and being a level designer on Ark: Aquatica gave me the chance to create some out-of-this world locations. Combining the sci-fi themes with an underwater world opened up so many possibilities for level design, including floating islands, the stomach of an enormous whale, and ancient Atlantis!
