Personal Development Sprint: Mission Design Project

Vision

The game space takes place in a remote, heavily-fortified science facility overlooking the Mediterranean Sea where twin siblings are busily attending to their nefarious plots. You are a part of an elite and secret organization tasked to foil their plans and save the world!

The Tool: A Parachute

The parachute is only usable once. If you don't use it, you risk getting eaten by some rather nasty sharks.

Walkthrough

In the cover of night, you begin by falling to the earth. You press spacebar, allowing your parachute to open. Hitting tab will show you where the landing zone (LZ) is on the map. You float down to the LZ, noticing a small sentry overlooking the road. As you land, a new objective appears instructing you to take out the sentry. With only your fists, you sneak up behind him and take him out. A new objective appears telling you that you must take out a convoy headed down the road.

Somewhere close by you hear a scout has spotted you. You take the weapons and ammo from the sentry station... a sniper rifle and an SMG. Using the cover of the sentry shack, you take out the scout who is closing in on you and take his ammo.

The convoy is getting close. Using the sentry gun, you open fire as the truck and jeep approaches. The gunners on top of the vehicles open fire and the convoy stops. Soldiers get out to hunt you down, and you pick them off one by one. Once you have killed all 9 of them, a new objective appears instructing you to infiltrate the facility.

Fortunately, you managed not to completely destroy the vehicles. After salvaging ammo and weapons from the fallen soldiers, you climb into the truck and make your way to the facility. The guards in the watch towers spot you and sound the alarm. At this point, you think to yourself, "Hmm, I probably should have reserved some of my sniper ammo to take out the watch tower guards." Lucky for you, you're in a vehicle, but if you weren't in one, there is a convenient pack of sniper ammo located on the right wall close to the gate. You also notice that there is an explosive barrel sitting high up on the wall next to some rather large concrete pipes. You think to yourself, "I suppose if I didn't have a vehicle to get me through the gate, I could always try shooting the barrel to see what would happen."

Hitting shift to give your vehicle a little more gas, you plow through the gate breaking it down and are greeted by a soldier manning a machine gun nest, a jeep of baddies, and a number of determined men toting some rather nasty weapons. To get out of the heat, you veer the vehicle to the right as there is little cover on the left. You jump out of the vehicle and head for cover. You peek into some of the small buildings. Lucky for you, you're rewarded for your curiosity as you find a nice little stash of weapons with your name on it. Using the cover you have, you manage to make your way through the back of the camp where you see salvation in the form of a tank. Eagerly you scramble into the tank and start mowing down people on the way up the road towards the main facility. A watch tower up the road sounds off and you greet it back with a friendly cannon shot, blowing it to bits.

Another tank appears at the top of the road and you exchange fire. After taking the tank out, you pull all the way up to the main building where your next objective appears instructing you to take out the twins. You can hear an enemy helicopter approaching from the distance, and soon after a bonus objective appears to destroy it. You scramble into the main building for cover from the helicopter.

The building is crawling with enemies. Numerous supplies are being stored here, giving you plenty of places to hide while you sneak up on people and take them out. The helicopter circles the building trying to get a good shot on you and keeping you pinned inside. After killing a few guys, you see they were armed with some missile launchers. You peek outside and shoot, eventually taking the helicopter down. As you go upstairs to the second level, you are confronted by one of the twins. You blow him away with a shotgun. The other twin is waiting for you on the second floor armed with a rather painful chaingun. By using cover effectively, you manage to close the distance enough to take him out. Mission complete.

Screenshots

Design Notes

This level was designed to have non-linear feel to it. By using the heat of a firefight rather than physical barriers, players are encouraged to go down a route without feeling as though they don't have a choice. There are a couple of special triggers in place to allow for multiple outcomes, however due to time restraints, the main focus is on the core path. Note the following:

The Gate
You can plow through it with a vehicle (if there is still one working), or you can shoot the explosive barrel on the high wall to the left of the gate, causing a chain reaction of chaos that eventually leads to the gate coming down.

The Rocket Launcher and the Tank
There is a rocket launcher on one of the sand bags. Picking it up spawns a couple of guys in a bunker that run out and try to get in the tank. If you don't shoot them before they get to the tank, you have to take out the tank with the rocket launcher. Alternately, you could forgo the rocket launcher and get in the tank yourself-- but doing so will cause another tank to spawn up the road and will send the helicopter to come for you a little earlier to force you out of the tank.

The Helicopter
Although you are free to leave the main building after entering it, the helicopter provides enough heat to encourage the player to stay inside and encourages more close range battles.

All of the assets, with the exception of the final building and the terrain, were taken from art assets available in the game. Inspiration for the layout of the final building came from a photo of a firefight taken by freelance journalist Michael Yon during his time in Iraq.

Chosen Technology & Tools

The Crysis SB2 editor and Google SketchUp were used to complete this project. To play the level in Crysis, download the level files here (35 MB) and follow the instructions below:

Extract the zip file to the Crysis\Game\Levels directory.
Load Crysis and hit the tilda key.
Type con_restricted 0 and hit enter.
Type map csroby_2 and hit enter.

PLEASE NOTE: You must download the latest Crysis patch to correctly see the objectives.

Game Controls

Typical WASD / Mouse Setup
Z - Prone
F - Action / Pickup
G - Grenade
Space - Jump