Zombie Parkour

Level Summary

Zombie Parkour is a standalone level made for Dying Light. The player has to use their skills at parkouring to access the balcony of Drug Lord’s mansion. Once in, they will have to sneak around the numerous enemies, using firecrackers and their wits to find the key to the bedroom door and recover the antizin.

Dev Info:

  • Game: Dying Light

  • Genre: Parkour, FPS, Zombies

  • Mode: Single Player

  • Team Size: 1 Developer

  • Engine: Dying Light Dev Tools

  • Development Time: 60 hours 

Responsibilities:

  • Level Design Document Conception

  • Quest Design and Implementation

  • Scripting

  • Balancing

  • World Building

  • Lighting

Design Goals:

The goal of this level was to build a fun, thrilling spy-themed adventure level. So the exterior is a fast paced parkour section where the players must jump across moving platforms to get to their goal. Then the interior sections shift towards a stealth based level where the player uses firecrackers to distract the enemies while navigating the mansion.

  • Boss of the Level

  • Office in Mansion

  • Kitchen of Mansion

  • Construction Zone

  • Mansion Street

Post Mortem

What Went Well?

  • I was very adaptive to stakeholder feedback.

  • Measuring jump distances so that they never felt unfair or uncomfortable.

  • Prop layout looks realistic and aesthetically pleasing.

What Went Wrong?

  • Original planning was poor, I had originally planned for the mansion to be a factory with more parkour sections. But after shifting from BSP, I learned that the mod pieces could not support my original goals, so I had to pivot.

  • The physics of the game also doesn’t love moving platforms (it can feel like the player is being pulled in varying directions while jumping), so at times I was fighting the system to make the jumps feel good.

What I Learned?

  • That I need to size up the modkit I am working with before designing the level, because my work will be limited by the assets that I have access to.

  • Play around with the system earlier, determine what feels good and what feels bad and play into the strengths of the game and engine. I got too stubborn and tried to force this game to be a platformer originally and that was punishing in the early stages of development.