Game: Payday 2
Platforms: PC, XBOX 360, Playstation 3, Nintendo Switch
Tools Used: Diesel
Production Time (Personal): 11 months
Team Size: 50+
Role: Level Design, Level Scripter
BASE GAME & HOLDOUT
PAYDAY 2 is a first person co-operative shooter where robbing banks and partake in other criminal activies is the name of the game, either solo or with friends. One of the core pillars is all about replayability.
BASE GAME
I joined the team in the last year of production and quickly learned the Diesel engine and the editor, mostly on my own accord. Eventually tasks led to fixing various bugs in already established levels and quickly accelerated to have the main responsibility over a new game mode to be released within a short period of time.
HOLDOUT
The new game-mode, code named Holdout, is a new end-game feature that is meant to be a long-term investment for our players. The whole idea is for players to return to iconic locations where they have been several times before, but this time they are dfending an asset, be it a laptop with intel or a VIP hostage, for ransom.
As players go into a Holdout, they are faced with waves of enemies and a variety of events can happen on set waves that either make it harder by spawning more special enemies or dynamically changing the play area.
I was responsible for setting up the shared instance containing the asset and make the guidelines for picking out levels as candidates, and if they fit certain criteria, I would proceed by looking at possible areas that could make for interesting combat. After I determined that a level was a good fit, I would start adapting it to the new game-mode and make sure that everything worked from scratch and that combat felt balanced, giving the player a fair challenge.
LEVELS
These are the levels that I found to be most suitable for the gamemode, setting each one up in terms of scripting and eventually released to our players.
Boat Load (Watchdogs Day 2)
First World Bank
The Diamond
Heat Street
The Big Bank
Post-Mortem (Holdout)
Being thrown in to the Diesel engine and a new editor was a challenge but it fit my interest in learning new things by myself, things quickly went by and fixing bugs for two weeks made me get a deeper understanding of how scripting works. Making four officially released levels for Holdout and more that have yet to be open to the public let me be more creative and actually take more responsibility for designing and scripting how the interaction with the asset would work.
HELL’S ISLAND
My first level made from scratch and officially released was the Bain Prison Heist, otherwise known as Hell’s Island, which was the first of a trilogy of new heists made for the 2018 Crimefest event for PAYDAY 2.
Following the great feedback of Holdout, I was excited to make my first commercially released level in the form of the third last level to bed made for PAYDAY 2.
In the Bain Prison Heist, players are tasked with infiltrating a small old abandoned prison on an island that is now under the control of the Kataru, the biggest threat to the PAYDAY team, whom have their main-man Bain locked up.
The goal; find Bain, release him and escape unscathed.
After my brief introduction to the level and what it was set out to accomplish, I started researching real prisons and looking at others made in various games.
The goal of the level was to deliver a naarrative that is imperative to the end of the PAYDAY 2 storyline while being full of action.
The estimated time for completing the level was around 10 minutes, where players had to fight their way through the prison to find Bain, release him and follow him throug the areas he had visited just seconds before playersarrive.
Post-Mortem (Hell’s Island)
With my first official level made from scratch I got a great insight to the workflow from beginning to end, how to quickly make a layout and transfer it over to a greybox to be tested. I adapted the design to the resources we had available, making good use of a smaller design with a variety of interactions and obstacles for the player while keeping the constant feeling of having to push through the horde of enemies to reach the ultimate goal.
A more complete and detailed post-mortem in PDF format will be uploaded in the future with more in-depth information of my process and how I approached the making of Hell’s Island.
BORDER CROSSING
A unique take on a level, to tell a story between countries, this project was a challenge in many ways but managed to surprise players and bring new interesting features into the mix.
After my work on Holdout and Hell’s Island I got to mov on to something more of a collaborative effort in the form of a new type of heist with many challenges to beat.
The idea for Border Crossing was to have it play out in both Mexico and the USA, essentially having players cross the border half-way through the level.
As for the player goal; infiltrate this biker hangout in Mexico, find the hidden entrance to their tunnel used for smuggling, and reach the other side where the big money is, then leave using one of their own airplanes.
I mostly focused on the latter part of the level, where players arrive at the secure base, filled with various types of loot.
This area has lots of randomization to it, more so than the previous area, such as players arriving from three different holes, which plane and hangar is active, what type of loot is available in all places and more.
I did the majority of scripting and prototyping for this part, also solving the end of the level so players had to stick around for a bit longer by fueling the plane.
Post-Mortem (Border Crossing)
This heist was one of the most technical and difficult level to pull off, many new ideas and lots more randomization made it a real challenge but we felt that we managed to sell the illusion related to the narrative.
We had one big area in this level, the smaller warehouse to the side in part 2, be more of an optional place for players to explore and could probably have been completely skipped but the area felt incomplete without that space being occupied by something related to the gang and place you infiltrate.
Another addition later on was the basement, mainly cause we wanted to have something more secret for players to find and also relate to achievements. In the end we could have skipped this completely.