[ G.X. de Ruiter ]
Roles:
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Technical Level Designer on OUTRIDERS Worldslayer expansion (DLC)
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Feature owner for AI Ant Farms and SmartObject creation
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Responsible for managing Blueprint Wishlist for level designers and creating requested Blueprint tools and game features
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Bug fixing on Blueprints, combat arenas, and AI Ant Farms
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Reviewing Blueprints and network replication
Platform:
Steam / Epic / PS4 / PS4 PRO / PS5 / X1 / X1X | XSS / XSX / Stadia / GeForce Now
Engine:
Unreal Engine 4
Language:
Unreal Blueprints / C++
Tools used:
Unreal Editor, JIRA, Confluence, P4V
Duration:
Nov 2021 - Present
Team size:
500+
Current status:
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Expansion released | June 30th 2022
OUTRIDERS Worldslayer description:
With new horrors to challenge you and new weapons, mods and gear to discover, you’ll be further developing your build through the new PAX hybrid branch class trees.
Survive the campaign and you’ll face even greater horrors in the Trials of Tarya Grata, the brand new endgame. Which partnered with Ascension Points offers a new long term progression system for the most committed players.
Finally, push hard through the new Apocalypse difficulty tiers, with each step up to level 40 increasing the chances of obtaining incredible Apocalypse gear and its game changing third mod slot.
Task Description
Ant Farm refers to all AI behavior outside of combat. It usually involves characters idling and/or walking between locations, as well as stopping in specific places to play animations or perform actions. Ant Farm behavior also includes any potential transition into combat (grab weapon, play audio & animation), but doesn't include combat behavior itself.
On WorldSlayer, I was Ant Farm feature owner. My responsibilities included:
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Initial scope/risk assessment and technical feasibility checks of all Ant Farm requests from level designers
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Creation of all the AI SmartObjects (Blueprints) and related anim montages, usable by AI characters in the scene
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Creation of Ant Farm Goals (Blueprints), actors that control Ant Farm behavior on a higher level
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Technical design and bug fixing on the Ant Farm system itself
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Helping LDs with Ant Farm implementation on their levels, being available as a contact point for questions about the system
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Setting a quality standard and performing checks and improvements on all the Ant Farms in the game
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Functioning as communication bridge between all departments (LD, animation, tech Art, code-AI, audio, and production
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Created all in-house Ant Farm documentation (Tech docs, user guides, SmartObject documentation)
SmartObject definition: SmartObjects are specially prepared Blueprints that can be placed onto levels. On Run-time, AI can move into and “use” these SmartObjects. For example, a SmartObject could be a chair an AI can move to and play a “sit on chair” animation. Or it could be an animal carcass aliens can walk to, crouch down, and start eating from. Creating and combining a bunch of these SmartObjects helps us to create interesting scenes that make sense logically, and give the player a feeling of being in a living and breathing game world.
I was responsible for the creation of all new SmartObjects in the game. This involved a lot of cross-department communication, planning, Blueprint and anim montage creation. I also fixed old SmartObjects from the Vanilla game whenever bugs showed up.
AntFarmGoal definition: AntFarmGoals are Blueprints that control AI behavior in a scene on a higher level, such as to decide which SmartObjects to use in what order.
I created and implemented all the new types of AntFarmGoals for Worldslayer, and helped people with any issues in setting up the AntFarmGoals on their levels.
Scene with alien riflemen peeing off a cliff, patrolling, hanging around a campfire
2 Alien riflemen holding a behemoth on a chain
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On combat start, riflemen drop the chains and attack the player, but behemoth stays on Ant Farm
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Once all the grunts are dead, behemoth also breaks free from its chains and a boss fight begins
Wendigo biter hanging on ceiling and flying down when combat starts
Repairing the floor
3 Captains waiting for the player whilst looking badass
A Rifleman patrol
Biters munching on a corpse
Task Description
Blueprint Wishlist definition: a list of requests from the Level Designers on our team. Anyone in the LD department could add a request for game features or editor tools, which were reviewed and potentially created by us on the Technical Level Design Team.
I was responsible for scope assessment and technical feasibility checks, as well creating and documenting some of the Blueprints on our Blueprint Wishlist. Next to this, I performed iterations and bug fixes on any delivered Blueprints, and performed code reviews on Blueprints from co-workers.
I was responsible for creating:
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DestructionLauncher (system) - A highly versatile and modular set of projectile launcher, projectile, and hit reaction Blueprints. It is used in various parts of the game, for example on Statue of Liberty in the campaign. I made this system to be a fully standalone set of tools, meaning no level script or sequences are needed to set up many different types of missile barrages. Everything can be conveniently set up and tweaked from the Blueprint actors themselves.
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Falling Rocks cinematic Blueprint - I created and implemented a Blueprint actor for a falling rock sequence on Rho. It contains settings for LDs and artists to tweak.
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Alien Door cinematic Blueprint - An alien door with a timed opening sequence and some animated runes. I implemented all the assets and set up the door Blueprint logic with some settings for the narrative team to tweak.
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BP_NoiseMakingTrigger - A universally usable trigger that wakes up AI on Ant Farm and starts combat when the player walks through.
I also was co-responsible for: explosive MegaBarrel and PCF ActorArray (internal tool).
