Levis Umbra

Third Person Stealth Game | UE4 | 8 - Week | Team Size: 20 | 2020

Levis Umbra offers to bring back the Stealth genre to its roots.
We offer an experience entirely based on sneaking and stealth dynamics.
Armed only with a hacking device, the protagonist will have to open a way deep inside the core of an underground mining factory, taken over by a defecting AI.

Avoiding the enemies is the only way to survive.

Key Features:

Classic combat-less Stealth Experience.
Immersive Gameplay Elements.
Hack the environment to open new paths and distract your enemies.
Listen to an Original Dynamic Soundtrack that changes with the intensity of the action.
Voiced by professional actors.
10 minutes of stealth gameplay.
Inspired by Deus Ex, Splinter Cell and Dishonored

Documentation

Design Documentation

Since I was responsible for the Design of the Character I also took care of the input mapping.

Responsibilites:
– Design of Input mapping for Mouse & Keyboard + Controller
– Concepting of input methods

Narrative

We wanted to include a bit of narrative in the game to get the player more engaged in the actions the character takes during the game. We recorded Voice Actors for the beginning of the game and let the characters comment on actions within the game.

Responsibilites:
– concepting backstory and writing lore
– writing introductory scene
– recording Voice Actors & polishing audio files

Building & Iteration

3Cs - Character Creation & Balancing

To help out with the creation of the Player Character, we used the ALS Locomotion pack from the Unreal Engine marketplace and tweaked it to fit our game.

Responsibilites:
– Creating new movement capabilities for ALS locomotion system
– tweaking variables, adjust animation timing
– creating a gym level to tweak the character in
– Blueprinting a Hand IK system
– Blueprinting a responsive camera that adjusts based on corners
– implementing Character Model & Animation retargeting

Subtitle System

To tell the narrative of the game I created a subtitle system which could be used alongside the voice recordings.

Responsibilites:
– Blueprinting Subtitle system
– integration of subtitles in the levels
– writing feature documentation

Level Lighting & Post-Processing

Since I had the most experience with Unreal Engines lighting tools, I was responsible with lighting the levels in the game and tweaking the post-processing.

Responsibilites:
– Adjust Post-Processing to achieve a cinematic look
– Create believable lighting for cave environments

Playtesting

I tested the Character controller often to make sure the gameplay is as smooth and balanced as possible.

Responsibilites:
– Create Playtest form
– Conduct Character Playtests
– Balance Character based on Playtest results

Closing Thoughts

This was a pretty big project and I was able to take on quite a few roles in it. I’m proud of this project and very happy with what we were able to achieve in 8 weeks. Everyone in the team worked really hard on it.

I especially enjoyed working on the Character and balancing everything to something that feels as close to AAA as possible. Working on the enemies was really fun as well, I got to balance their behaviors to make them feel threatening.