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Bummer Camp Screenshots

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Bummer Camp Playthrough

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Design Goals

• Create a Dense and Lengthy Level Full of Diverse Locations
• Surprise and Delight Players with Scripted Interactions
• Use Custom Assets to Elevate World Building
• Offer Uniquely Designed Gameplay Events for Players

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Create a Dense and Lengthy Level Full of Diverse Locations

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• Not having much experience with displacements, the blockmesh of the map intentionally avoided heavy use of this feature in favor of quick BSP construction
• While this saved time in the short term, the rock walls should not have been used to block in the maps edges. Building the map in this way required a lot of reworking as once the rocks were turned into displacements they no longer prevented leaks demanding new geometry to fill the gaps they left.

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• Considerable thought went into diversifying areas through their setdressing and lighting.
• The activity area of the camp players pass through is defined by massive spotlights that illuminate the volley ball court and surrounding playgrounds.
• The block mesh for this section of the level was flat and straightforward. Players enjoyed climbing up the bleachers but awkwardly had nowhere to go once at the top. The aforementioned playgrounds fixed both of these problems offering new elevated routes off of the bleachers while also giving the area an even stronger visual identity.

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• A big challenge for building this map was how to place a section of the level at the edge of a lake without massively increasing compile times. This was a difficult problem to solve but key to the location’s unique sense of awe.
• The block mesh shows the first attempt to fix this problem. In the skybox was a large plane of water that in theory would connect seamlessly with the water in the playable space once the elevation was aligned. In practice having the seam between playable space and skybox so close to where players walk proved completely fake looking.
• To improve the transition from playable to non-playable space the seam was pushed much farther away from players, the skybox water was given cube maps to make it look more real, and the seam was covered with buoys.

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Surprise and Delight Players with Scripted Interactions

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• Designing these interactions created the opportunities to dive into Hammer’s physics entities.
• A successful example of this experimentation is the tether ball entity. During playtests players often get distracted hitting the tether ball back and forth with their melee weapons.
• While the tether ball scripting wasn’t essential it helped push the feel of the activity area to the next level

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• A more consequential interaction comes with the fishing pole entities in the level that observant players can actually reel in to gather new items.
• Two of these fishing pole interactions were added into the level and iterated for conveyance.
  • Originally players had a random 1/4 chance to “catch” a grenade launcher by lowering and raising the pole but players weren’t clear that the action would ever yield a reward so most only activated the reel once. The final iteration of this fishing pole starts above the water and is lowered on one activation and raised back up on a second to reveal the weapon upgrade which has had a much higher completion rate for players.
  • The second fishing pole has the player slowly reeling in a defibrillator caught on the fishing line by activating the rod three times. The conveyance of seeing the item get closer on each activation made this a very easy event for players to understand.

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Use Custom Assets to Elevate World Building

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• Following work on Mall of the Dead, development of this second Left for Dead level was focused in part on selling the map’s theme with custom assets
• In playing through Bummer Camp players will see custom logos in the form of the level name and camp branding
• Players will also find custom weapon skins with a nerf gun theme, adding to the overall summer camp silliness on display.
• A few distinct meshes have also been given new materials to support the summer camp fiction such as a “Welcome Campers” banner and a customized camp bus.
• While relatively straightforward to produce, these element push the level’s polish to new heights

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Offer Players Challenging and Unique gameplay Events Throughout the Experience

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• Another change from the development of Mall of the Dead is a greater focus on crafting handmade experiences.
• In the playground area exists a scripted encounter with a witch whose position is randomly selected at the start of the map.
• Wherever the witch ends up spawning so too does a powerful weapon nearby to encourage players to get close to the dangerous mob creating engaging risk reward gameplay.

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• In the mess hall is an improved version of the gate panic event from Mall of the Dead’s Department Store where raise a gate to the kitchen while fighting the horde.
• At the end of the common infected waves a tank will spawn in one of three locations before crashing through the walls creating a great surprise for players to overcome.
• Once the tank is dead the cafeteria gate quickens its pace slightly to ensure players aren’t waiting around.

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• The finale sequence for the level creates an engaging gauntlet through treehouses and elevated bridges requiring custom in engine scripting in addition to external scripts that modify spawning behaviors.
• This event is kicked off when the players press a button to open a gate forward connected to the camp’s speaker system. Once the button is pressed the speakers kick in blaring trumpet music as the players mad dash for the rescue boat across hanging logs and down blood soaked slides.

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Post Mortem

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