Divinity: Original Sin 2 (2017)

Released: 14/09/2017

I worked as a quest design and scripter intern at Larian on the sequel of Divinity: Original Sin.

– Divinity Website
– Metacritic

Role highlight:
– Quest design
– Scripting quests
– Scripting behaviours

Engine:
– Divinity Engine

Detailed Development Role
In the game the player has a lot of freedom and thus as a quest scripter there isn’t a lot that is certain (A character could be already dead or an item already picked up, etc).

A large part of my time was dedicated to creating exceptions: “What if the player does ‘X’ instead” or “normally the user can use an item to do ‘Y’ so this quest item should have the same functions”. So when it came to quest creation I always needed to make sure the quest properly handled and reacted on every exception.

Quests should never be blocked and preferably the quest should still have a satisfying ending for the player and make them feel like: “Cool I could actually do that”.

Additionally I created global behaviours that are shared between many characters if they are not currently involved with something else (Like quests or combat).

Detailed Information
Full List Personal Role & Tasks:
Designing quests (Gameplay and Narrative)
Scripting quests
Creating detailed quest flowcharts
Discussing narrative with Writers
Implementing dialog logic and placeholder text for quests
Scripting character behaviours

Engine:
Divinity Engine

Platform:
PC
PlayStation 4 (2018)
Xbox One (2018)

Personal Software, Tools & Programming language:
Divinity Engine
Osiris (Divinity Scripting language)
Lucid Chart
Perforce
Google Docs

Personal time on team:
±6 months scripter intern

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The Automatician (2016)

Released: 24/07/2017

I worked on the Automatician as a technical designer to sort out and rework the existing quest system and implement designed quests.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/657700/The_Automatician/

Role highlight:
– Technical designer

Engine:
– Unreal Engine 4

About the game
The Automatician is a 3-Dimensional puzzle game with an emphasis on immersion.

In The Automatician, players will explore a Victorian mansion at their leisure, as well as design and craft Rube Goldberg Machines to solve puzzles and uncover secrets.

Detailed Development Role
I joined the team to sort out and rework the quest system and implement quests that were already designed.

The quest system created was functional, but the design team and Programmers never properly communicated which made the tool near impossible to use for the designed quests. Yet other systems were using the quest system so it could not be removed or easily altered.

I reworked the Quest system in Blueprints and created Actor Bases form which quest objects could inherent as well as Blueprint functions that in part still called the old quest system to set quest states. Additionally I documented the entire quest system so people knew how to use it and implemented 4 out of the total 5 quests using the new system.

Detailed Information
Full List Personal Role & Tasks:
Technical Designer
Reworked quest system

Engine:
Unreal Engine 4

Platform:
PC

Personal Software, Tools & Programming language:
Blueprint visual scripting
Microsoft Word

Total Team Size:
33 team members

Personal time on team:
±15 weeks

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Showcase Level Video

Game Design Document
– Acheron GDD [PDF]
Acheron_GDD_V3

Acheron (2015)

Dutch Game Awards:
Best Student Art Direction Nomination

On the project I was both lead designed as well as concept designer. I lead a small team of designers and additionally designed, prototyped and implemented gameplay.

Role highlight:
– Lead designer
– Gameplay designer
– Technical designer

Engine:
– Unreal Engine 4

About the game
Acheron is a 2.5D platformer game, designed initially for the PS4, in which the player simultaneously controls two characters who can exert forces on their surroundings.
Detailed Development Role
My main focus within the development of Acheron was being a design lead and the main vision holder. I was not the only one making decisions, but I was the main communication facilitator between departments. I made sure that final decisions were made, documented, and the overall vision was kept within scope.

I also conceptualised mechanics for the game and made prototypes (visual scripting) for testing purposes as a technical designer. Additionally I implemented mechanics created by the programmers and edited them where needed.

Detailed Information
Full List Personal ​Role & Tasks:
Lead designer
Vision holder
Communication facilitator
UX designer
Gameplay designer
Narrative designer

Engine:
Unreal Engine 4

Platform:
PC

​Personal Software, Tools & Programming language:
Blueprint visual scripting
Adobe Photoshop
Pivotal Tracker
Microsoft Word
Microsoft Excel

Total Team Size:
12 team members

Development Duration:
±15 Days (Over 15 weeks)

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Logo

Example Created Blueprint
Info
The following is a Blueprint example of the Conversation Manager I helped create.

Functions discription
-Gets dialogue from a Data table
-Enables the dialogue HUD
-Displays dialogue and character name on HUD
-Calculates words per minutes display time
-Seeks the characters that are talking to display icon above their head
-Auto next dialogue and end dialogue

-High quality link [PNG]
ConversationManager

Example Created Mission Design
Info
The following PDF is the mission design of the tutorial level. Note that the level has since gone to major itterations within the engine.

-Full view pdf [PDF]
FLO_MissionDesign_Mission1-Tutorial

Blank Slate (2016)

42 person project

In the pre-production phase I was the lead designer followed by becoming mainly a technical designer on the project as well as designing levels and gameplay.

Role highlight:
– Technical designer
– Level designer
– Gameplay designer

Engine:
– Unreal Engine 4

About the game
Blank Slate is an angled top-down, 3D, squad-based, action stealth game in which the player character can take over up to two enemies at the time and use them as pawns to progress in the game.
The game is set in a dystopian world on an alternative timeline in which consumerism took a turn to the worse in a totalitarian regime.
Detailed Development Role
My main focus on the project was technical designer; in this role I created documents covering mechanics in detail and in a practical sense for all departments. I conceptualised mechanics and gameplay features, and in many cases I have created prototypes, made adjustments or created new entities within Blueprints (visual scripting) – scripting mechanics, simple AI and gameplay scenarios.

Additionally I was a level and gameplay designer. I would take the existing narrative and use it to create a mission structure, following by translating this mission into level design and implementing mechanics and features in the level to make it playable. The main level I worked on was the tutorial level in which, additionally to normal mission and level design, mechanics also needed to be introduced in a natural way with a proper difficulty curve.

Detailed Information
Full List Personal Role & Tasks:
Technical Designer
Lead designer (Pre-production)
Gameplay designer
Level designer
Mocap actor
Writing technical design documents

Engine:
Unreal Engine 4

Platform:
PC

Personal Software, Tools & Programming language:
Blueprint visual scripting
Adobe Photoshop
Pivotal Tracker
Houdini (via in-house created Unreal plugin)
Microsoft Word
Microsoft Excel
Microsoft Visio

Total Team Size:
42 team members

Development Duration:
±40 weeks

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Game Design Document
– Monskey Skate GDD [PDF]
Monskey-Skate-GDD-v1.4

Monskey Skate (2014)

Client Project

Monskey Skate was a client project on which I was lead designer, I was in part responsible for making sure the the game maintained the vision of the brand as well as making sure the game was properly playable for the target audience of 7 to 9 year olds.

Role highlight:
– UX designer
– Technical designer
– Lead designer

Engine:
– Unity

About the game
Monskey Skate is a single player, 3D, 3rd person skate game developed for smart phones and tablets. It was a client project using the Monskey IP. The target audience of the game is children aged 7 to 9, and it is controlled using both the gyroscope and the touch screen of the device.
Detailed Development Role
UX design was one of my main focuses on the project. It was important that the difficulty and feedback was aimed at the young audience, so the main focus of the game was to reward the player for doing well, but never to badly punish for making mistakes. The player would always get some form of reward, no matter their performance.

I also worked as a technical designer, implementing mechanics created by programmers, editing these where needed and creating simple scripts for the procedural generation of the game.

Lastly, I was the lead designer. I held the overall vision, made sure the project was within scope, in part wrote documentation and acted as the main communication facilitator between departments.

Detailed Information
Full List Personal ​Role & Tasks:
Gameplay designer
Lead designer
Vision holder
Communication facilitator
UI designer
UX designer

Engine:
Unity

Platform:
Smart phone
Tablet

​Personal Software, Tools & Programming language:
Adobe Photoshop
Hansoft
Microsoft Word
Microsoft Excel
C#

Total Team Size:
11 team members

Development Duration:
±15 Days (Over 15 weeks)

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Game Design Document
– Rising Tides GDD [PDF]
Rising-Tide-Game-Design-Document-V0.4

Rising Tides (2015)

Mediterranean Game Jam

My main role was designing the game and to make the ideas of other team members practical and possible to implement as non of the other team members were game designers and they had never created a game before. Overall I kept track of the game as a whole and helped guide the team by creating various templates they could use.

Role highlight:
– General designer
– Scripting (C#)

Engine:
– Unity
– Physical card game

About the game
Rising Tides is a 5 player competitive card game with a supporting app that adds an overarching time pressure and random events. Each player can only do one action a turn. The faster the player ends his/her turn, the faster it is their turn again, but so is the opponents’ turn.
Detailed Development Role
Rising Tides was quite a different, yet refreshing, experience. Not only was it a card game, something I had not yet developed before, but the other team members had never created a game before.

My main role was to design the game and make the ideas of other team members practical and possible to implement. I created an easy to work with template to keep track of rules, alterations and help along with playtesting and the quick iterative process. Later I also wrote the GDD, if we want to further develop the game.

Additionally I scripted certain functions to help out the programmer who was creating the app for the game.

Detailed Information
Full List Personal ​Role & Tasks:
General Designer
Gameplay designer
Scripting (C#)

Engine:
Unity

Platform:
Physical (Cards)
Smart phone (App)
Tablet (App)
PC (App)

​Personal Software, Tools & Programming language:
Adobe Photoshop
Microsoft Word
Microsoft Excel
C#

Total Team Size:
5 team members (non-game developers)

Development Duration:
48 hours

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