CYBERHORROR is one of the recent works that I have put a lot of effort into. Starting as a first-person shooter class project, it had gradually become a personal project to demonstrate my skills related to level design and game design overall.
The initial layout of the level. It was originally called Project: Zombietown and switched to CYBERHORROR during the development.
I started this project with paper designs of the level layout. Many major aspects of the game, such as the three encounters, basic visual settings, and enemy types are decided in this stage and finalized in the following steps. I am using FPS Game Starter Kit as my starting point for building this level. The Starter Kit includes multiple weapon choices, several enemy types, such as soldier and zombie, which have different AI logics and different attacking animations, though all of them share the same default mannequin model.
Three encounters are included in this level, each of them being more demanding than previous ones, and the player is given new weapons for each encounter as well.
As a horror game, it is influenced by Left 4 Dead 2 (L4D2) and the Resident Evil series. I am greatly impressed by the use of edges to create tension in the Resident Evil series, though I am not a big fan of the player being powerless to an extent (e.g., zombies in Resident Evil: RE 2 are very hard to kill, thus many players, me included, decided to save some bullets and use knives to kill them, or simply to shoot their legs until they fall down thus the player can pass by them). I would like to learn from the level design of the Resident Evil series while making the game more newbie-friendly and enjoyable to explore, which in my opinion L4D2 have done this extremely well.
I went into the white boxing stage after revising the paper design, blocking out volumes, and see if the level layout needs changes. I decided to use the built-in objective system from the FPS Game Starter Kit. It will help the player to understand the objectives for each stage of the gameplay. Other changes were made to the HUD, player character scripting, and the sound system.
After that, I replaced the basic geometries with art assets found in the Unreal Engine Marketplace. Most of the meshes I brought in are from a free mesh/texture pack from the Marketplace called the Factory Environment Collection. Others are from cgtrader.com and some other art packs on the Marketplace. With that done, the level evolved from empty rooms to a logistic company with a control room, several storage rooms, and an office.
Final render image of the office.
I have also added a lot of sound effects and background music to the level, creating a more immersive gaming experience. All sound effects and music are downloaded from freesound.org and are edited to fit the overall atmosphere of the game.
You can download the game from the link below.