Level designer
In 2021 I joined the team at Roll7 to work on Rollerdrome, which launched in August 2022.
I spoke at GDC! The talk aimed to give some insight into the processes I use when adapting to a new genre as a designer, using my experience on Rollerdrome as a case study.
If you have vault access, you can watch the talk here.
Alternatively, please find info about the talk on the GDC Schedule here.
Post-launch, I was part of the team delivering Classified Assignments to The Division 2, a series of DLC missions included in the Year 1 Pass. I was responsible for researching, planning, pitching, designing, implementing and polishing the missions in my remit, acting as the caretaker for this content from inception to release.
In this video, I walk through the mission and give some insights into the intentions behind the design:
Very special thanks to the environment artist for this mission, Patrick Metz.
Continue readingMy main responsibility on the base game of The Division 2 was being the designer for one of the open world zones, researching, planning and implementing activities within that zone, including side missions. These are small linear missions, usually set inside one building or block, intending to provide around ten minutes of gameplay.
In this video, I walkthrough one of these side missions, Rooftop Gardens, and provide some insight into the intentions behind the design:
Thanks to environment artist for this mission, Patrick Metz.
Side missions like this were only a part of my responsibility on The Division 2 – for a more general insight into my role at Ubisoft Leamington, please visit this page.
Continue readingI joined Ubisoft Leamington in 2017, working as a level designer on Tom Clancy’s The Division 2, working on the open world in the base game and then mission content for the Year 1 Pass. After a few months prototyping on an unannounced project in 2020, I started working remotely for Ubisoft Toronto, inheriting mission content as the project approached its final deadlines.
The major project of my final year was for my dissertation. I chose to research the effectiveness of dynamic learning algorithms in providing an adaptive, real-time finite state machine in a game environment. After doing a literature review to get up to speed on Bayesian networks, artificial neural networks and genetic algorithms, I chose to focus my research on the latter. I felt genetic algorithms could offer a working solution, and I was interested in programming one and seeing for myself exactly how it would work.
Week 7! Bit of a mixed bag this week. Download and play here.
I decided to start simple with my first Game a Week by taking an old classic and putting my own twist on it. The result is this weird hybrid of Space Invaders and Super Hexagon, which you can download and play here.
I included a God Mode functionality just in case you don’t have the patience to play the game cautiously, simply complete one run and start the next by pressing ‘G’ instead of the space bar.
I decided to start this week as I knew I’d have a lot of spare time, without any university work or other commitments to worry about, but even so I ended up spending a lot longer on it per-day than I expected. I feel that it paid off, though, as I think the end result is a half decent experience.