Mall of the Dead: “The Mall Interior”
“The Mall Interior” is the third level of Mall of the Dead, a four-part Left 4 Dead campaign made in Valve’s Hammer Editor by me and three other developers over the course of 12 weeks. In the campaign, the players must shoot their way through a zombie-infested mall in order to reach rescue on its roof.
As the sole designer of “The Mall Interior,” I designed the layout, built the world, implemented aesthetics, scripted a unique level mechanic, and iterated gameplay based on feedback, and wrote accompanying documentation. For this project, I focused on four things: having an easily navigable large level, implementing familiar mall aesthetics for conveyance, keeping the player intrigued using environmental storytelling, and utilizing verticality to maximize game space.
Project Details
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Postition: |
Level Designer |
| Engine: | Hammer Editor |
| Team Size: | 4 developers |
| Development: | 12 weeks |
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Design Goals
Conveying the feeling of being in a mall
In order to create the most immersive experience possible, it was important for the level to as accurate to a real mall as possible. I worked on putting in as many familiar mall elements such as stores, kiosks, escalators, etc. I also used popular mall stores, like Apple and Forever 21, to populate my map and make it more fun.
Telegraphing areas players would go to
One of the biggest risks of making such a big map is the possibility of players getting lost or disoriented. In order to prevent this, I would always try to visually telegraph where I wanted players to end up. By seeing their eventual destination, players are able to more easily orient themselves towards the critical path.
Telling a story behind the level
Due to the long playtime of the level, I figured it would be important to find ways of keeping players engaged. At the same time, I also wanted my level to have a history within it. I used envrionmental storytelling to create scenes that depicted how the mall acted as an evacuation center before being overrun. When players finally piece together what happened to the mall, the sense of discovery helps to keep them engaged.
Coercing players to go into stores
With the way the level is laid out, players can choose to ignore most of the mall stores if they please. To prevent this from happening, I placed guns and pickup inside many of the stores to encourage players to explore the world. I also worked hard to make each store fell distinct and based many designs from well-recognized stores.
Level Design
Level Map of First Floor
Level Map of Second Floor
Process & Construction
Block Out
My first goal was to get a firm grasp of my level’s size and scale. I used BSP and basic props in order to create a basic block out of the map. Then, I used placeholder assets to fill in the world with things like furniture and rubble. I would continuously test my level by going into it and walking around. If any area felt off, I would go back into the editor and adjust it until everything felt right.
Whitebox
Now that the map world geomtery was established, I began implementing gameplay. The goal of this milestone was to be able to finish the level with no game-breaking bugs. For Left 4 Dead, this meant adding in navmesh, implementing necessary back-end componenets, and beginning to place cover around the world.
Gameplay Complete
For this milestone, the goal was to implement all gameplay so that I could focus on aesthetics in the next milestone. This meant all gameplay elements had to be finalized. In this stage, I finished putting in all line-of-sight blockers, cover, and clipping brushes (aka blocking volumes). I also put in basic lighting at this stage.
Aesthetics
The goal for this stage was to have all aesthetics put in so that I can focus on bug fixing and polish for RTM. I first started by replacing my placeholder assets with in-engine assets. After, I iterated on the lighting in my level. Lastly, I added in non-essential elements like decals and VFX.
Release to Manufacturing
For this stage, my goal was to polish and bug fix as much as possible. The focuses for me were optimizing my level and squashing any show-stopper bugs.
Postmortem
What went well...
- Level ended up being very easy for players to navigate, despite large size.
- Used line-of-sight blockers effectively to make open areas not feel too safe.
- Used verticality well to utilize game world more efficiently.
What went wrong...
- Overall lighting in map feels very bland and uninteresting.
- Later in development, my map began failling to compile because I had failed to optimize my level properly.
- Aesthetics pass took longer than I had planned, leaving less time for bug fixing.
Even better if...
- Creating more ways for the zombies to attack the players from multiple directions.
- Added in a scripted event at the end of the level to make it more dramatic.
- Used more dynamic props, like breakable walls, to make level more interesting.