Third Person Shooter Kit - Open the Door
Genre
3rd Person Shooter
Tools Used
UE5.3
Role
Level Designer
Disclaimer
This level is being built using the Third Person Shooter Kit I purchased off the Unreal Marketplace. This kit comes with a large library of BPs that I did not build but do use in the process of building this level. This page is meant to showcase my design thought process, blockout/level design, and level BP scripting.
Overview
I was thinking of bite size design prompts that I could use to build some levels while exploring and learning UE5. So I came up with a list of player prompts or actions and “Open the Door” is one of them. How do you make a cool level with a prompt like “Open the Door”? Some key things came to mind:
Make the door BIG and cool/interesting to look at
Use the layout of the level to guide the player to the main goal which is to open the BIG cool door
Teach the player how doors are opened and then increase complexity for the BIG door
Verticality to create simple platforming sections but also to create interesting vista opportunities
Make sure there are shortcuts back to the main path from any side paths
With these thoughts in mind I set out to build the level. What is currently on this page is only the first section of the level. I will be adding more sections as I complete the work.
Level Map
Section 1: Guide/Teach
Overview
This first section is intended to show the player the main objective and then the first obstacle, a locked door. Doors in the level are opened when their power boxes have power. A power box is powered when the green power line coming out of the box is glowing.
I used the power line to guide the player to the power source. Turning the generator on makes the power line glow green indicating power to the box its connected to is on. The player can now return to the door and open to progress forward.
What I did:
Did the first pass level blockout and decided on what colors define what type of objects they are.
Brown grid = ground
Orange grid = man made object
Grey grid = Rock type X
Black grid = Rock type Y
Use the left turn at the start of the level to frame the main objective, the BIG green door!
Used greybox and blockout props to frame the door and point the player in the right direction
Prototyped the locked door/power generator BP
Created a BP spline mesh tube to create an organic shape for the power line geo and then converted it into a static mesh so that I could do a material swap via level BP
Using the button panel BP from the TPS kit I used level BP to keep the first button panel off until the button panel at the power generator was interacted with/the power was turned on
