top of page
HighresScreenshot00006.png

DISSERTATION TITLE

Exploring Procedural Level Generation using both new and old techniques within Unreal Engine 5 to create a 3rd Person Shooter, Action-RPG experience. Project named internally by myself as "Speedie Generation".

DURATION

29th January 2024 - 17th May 2024

GENRE

Third-Person-Shooter, Action-RPG

ROLE(S)

Level Designer, 3D Artist, Environment Artist, Scripting

PLATFORM(S)

PC

TIGA: Graduate of the Year 2024 Accolade
I was honored to recieve the TIGA: Graduate of the Year 2024 Accolade Award for my final year project.

My Supervisor had put me forward for this and being recognised with this award was a great affirmation of the amount of effort I put into the development / research of it. 

The awards ceremony will be taking place on October 10th 2024 and winners announced.

More Info Here:

Link: TIGA 2024 Awards

GOALS
  • Gain a better understanding of the newly introduced PCG Plugin / Tool added to Unreal Engine 5.2​
  • Create 5 Coherent Blockout "Chunks" which can be slotted alongside one-another randomly to create a seamless experience​
  • Learn how Procedurally Generated Content is designed​ for
  • Better improve how we design for Procedural Generation​
  • What are the Pros / Cons and the Drawbacks of Procedural Content Generation currently​
  • Ensure a consistent and fun experience for the player through playtesting
ABSTRACT
This project is aimed to equip myself with the necessary knowledge and techniques of using Procedural Content Generation and how to design with it in mind in regards to Level Design.
 
By joining my current understanding of Level Design with the new and upcoming Procedural Content Generation technologies I will gain a much better understanding as to how it can be used in conjunction with one another. This project will be focused on and take a large amount of inspiration from “Remnant: From the Ashes” and “Remnant 2”. Particularly their gameplay and approach to procedural generation. The outcome of this portfolio piece is to create a procedurally generated gameplay experience each time it is played, develop a deeper understand of Unreal Engine 5.2’s new introduced PCG Plug-in and how that can be used in regards to future level design.
Challenges and Limitations of PGLD
Despite the potential benefits of PGLD (Procedurally Generated Level Design), it poses many challenges for Game Developers both indie and AAA. Things like Maintaining Level coherence, ensuring a fair and balanced gameplay experience and preserving most importantly Player agency.
Generic, Un-original Content:
Procedurally Generated Content tends to look very samey, generic in most cases. Prime example referring to the Diablo series developed by Blizzard Entertainment. Throughout playing the game, it becomes increasingly apparent that it’s just a bunch of different meshes, blocks etc all rapidly stitched together with next to no detail or design. This may not be an issue on the first playthrough, the second, the third and so on but regenerating a few times you will begin to notice a very different but inevitable bland generic level. This is where Procedurally Generated Level Design really is tough, most if not all generated levels lack a meaningful structure, progression and “Critical Path”. These are very crucial design choices that impact players’ experience and without it the levels can feel just very empty and or soulless. Compare this with beautifully handcrafted levels from the Hollow Knight series. Hollow Knight is praised to this day for it’s incredibly designed levels, providing a direct sense of where to progress whilst offering up the freedom to go where you like and a very original take on the design of Metroidvania’s.
bottom of page