RagBrawl
Team size - 13
Production Time - 7 months
Engine - Unreal 5
Level Designer
RagBrawl is a semi-competitive multiplayer party game where up to 12 players can battle it out in 4 unique game modes.
I was brought onto the team after greenlight as a level designer to take on the racing mode, which was one of three new game modes being developed at the time. The original goal was to create a racing mode that was just as fun and engaging as all the other modes, while maintaining the game’s intent, as well as the core mechanics.
Original Goals
The original idea for this mode was to utilize the already existing core mechanics, grappling, ragdolling, and gravity objects, to create a racing mode in a similar style to Mario Kart, including item pickups. In addition to this, two levels were going to be created based on the themes of the original levels, the bedroom level, and the newly planned bathroom level.
The core structure of the mode itself would have consisted of a three lap race, meaning the track design would be circuit style rather than a linear race. We started prototyping the functionality by starting with a spline that contained checkpoints to ensure the player would go through all of them. If a player did not go through all the checkpoints in a previous lap, the next one would not start.
I had started drafting out different level designs for the racing mode, focusing mainly on the bedroom map’s cardboard castle as the main structure for the track. My first concept was a fairly simple circuit, in which I started by creating a central point for the map to be built around. With this central castle structure, I came up with the idea of having the racing area itself be the surrounding walls of the castle. I played with the idea of varying the elevation in some areas, as well as a potential short cut.
One of the bigger problems with this design is that it doesn’t pose any challenges or obstacles whatsoever. In creating this map, I wanted to account for pickup items which at the time, did not really exist. Another issue is that this map, even played as a race with three laps, would likely be very short and uninteresting. Finally, I really didn’t design this map with the game’s main mechanics in mind, especially the grappling hook, which overall, was a design challenge for the racing mode in general.
Designing a Racing Map
The biggest challenge with the racing mode overall was how different it was compared to all the other game modes. With the three other modes having a focus on PvP, the racing mode was already at a disadvantage with being so isolated from the other modes.
At this point, I became stuck on creating concepts and only creating with the theoretical in mind instead of designing for what the game already has. I didn’t know how I wanted the map to be structured. Should it be a circuit? Should it be entirely a vertical race? Or should it be a linear track with varying amounts of verticality? The final concept I created for the racing mode was a linear track with checkpoints to mark progress. I made this as simple as possible just to get the idea across so I could show it to the other designers.
With the slow progress of the race mode, both in level design as well as functionality, there was an amount of concern among the team about whether the race mode was even viable at that point. With the concern about the mode being cut as a whole, we decided as designers, to make a quick prototype with the functionality we had and show it to the rest of the team, as a proof of concept.
Difficulties
In showing the new prototype, we found that the racing mode would still be worth continuing. In addition to this, a new approach to the level design was brought by our technical artist. The race itself would have to be entirely interior in that, we would have contained spaces, or rooms as we called them, with different obstacles using mechanics we already had in place. At the end of a room would be a checkpoint room, followed by the next room. We did this in engine by building out the rooms and checkpoints in separate blueprints, so they would all connect seamlessly when brought into the main level.
The Modular Approach
This is where the grappling hook comes back as a challenge in balancing the gameplay. With the spaces being so confined, and with the ability to grapple almost every surface, it made it really easy to bypass obstacles, and even whole rooms. Luckily, we were able to counter this with the already existing grapple cooldown system, and then giving the ability to have a total of three grapples that have a cooldown after each individual use.