William Bracho Blok
Level Design
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Designing Single-Player First-Person Shooter Combat Encounters to
Accommodate Various Combat Styles Based on Weapon’s Range of
Effectiveness
The goal of my thesis project was to effective range and behavior along with
player first-person shooter (FPS) combat design choices when building combat
develop mastery in designing single-
encounters, in which players can use level
layout to their advantage to leverage their
spaces.
weapon abilities and succeed in combat To demonstrate mastery in the subject
that players decide to bring into these level for Killing Floor 2, a wave-based
encounters regardless of the weapon type
encounters.
The intention of this thesis project is to
achieve this goal primarily from a level
design approach without altering game
design-related features of the game, as
well as to understand how much power
and control a level designer has in laying
out gameplay space to cater to varied
combat styles defined by the combatant’s
weapons of choice. This approach
focuses on analyzing the weapons’
36
level layout to aid the designer in making
LEVEL DESIGN
matter, I decided to design and build a
survival horror game, and show how
players can succeed while fighting against
enemies in this game regardless of which
character class they decide to use. Based
on the outcome and playtest results of my
thesis artifact, this design approach has
proven to be useful in designing combat
spaces for varied combat styles.