Level Design for Hogwarts
Fast Travel
At Avalanche I was in charge of placement and design direction for Fast Travel for Hogwarts. Working with the programmers, other designer, and artists in charge of creating the Fast Travel System I was the person in charge of figuring out how many Fast Travel Points were needed for Hogwarts and the regions and locations where they would be placed. Working with the U.I. team and Fast Travel tech team I made sure all of the Fast Travel Points would be sorted into the regions we set up. I also worked with the writing team to brainstorm the names and bounds for each of the regions and set up the FTP Blue Prints within Hogwarts in collaboration with the writers to have player facing names that correlated to the intended destination.
In addition to the FTPs I also set up the location tags to display the location that you were entering as you entered into the location volume. I worked with the streaming volumes that were set up to have the location display in the lower right hand corner using the tech that the streaming team had created for the LDs to use. Setting up what keys the volume would pull from in the database to show the correct player facing name. An example would be how when you enter into any classroom it’ll display what class you are entering near the mini map in the lower right.
The Knowledge Pages
Knowledge pages could best be described as the meat of Hogwarts Lore. The system itself was driven and implemented by the Systems team. My role in this feature was to work with the Hogwarts team in coming up with the total number of pages for Hogwarts and collaborating with the writers on what each of those objects would be. I was also in charge of deciding where each of the decided objects would go and setting up the Knowledge Page BPs to work with the Field Guide and Challenge systems that were created.
When we went about selecting things that we could have as pages we took the approach of coming up with every special little detail in the books about Hogwarts. From there we then narrowed down this exhaustive list into the ones that were the most interesting or important to fans. We really wanted to make sure that each page in Hogwarts correlated to something that fans wanted to see. From there we then went into a lot of effort to make each Knowledge Page stand out and be of interest to players as they were exploring. Some of the extra work I did was working with the lead render artist of Hogwarts, Boston Madsen, in making sure that as many of the Knowledge Pages were more than just art pieces thrown into the game. It was this work that created things like the Gorgon Statue painting that would petrify the player if they chose to interact with it separately from the Knowledge Page. This was done because we wanted these Knowledge Pages for Hogwarts to be something you could touch rather than a static image that had some text thrown in describing what it was. Some stand out Knowledge Pages I helped set up or set up myself were the Gorgon Painting, the Werewolf Tapestries that reacted to Lumos, as well as the Book and Quill of Admittance among others.
Placement of Loot and Collectibles
As Level Designer for Hogwarts one of the largest jobs that I was tasked with was setting up all the collectibles and lootables within the castle and school grounds. Examples included Demiguise Statues, Conjuration Recipe and Wand Skin Chests, which doors had Alohamora Locks and at what level and what rewards can be found behind said locked doors, where the lootable containers where hidden, and where these were all located in relation to all the other gameplay that we made in Hogwarts.
Another big part was making sure that the placements of all the objects in the game were consistent with everything else in the game. This included ensuring that all the Knowledge Pages were at the same height at player eye level so they were easily spotted, that pages from spell interactions came out at the correct orientation, etc. It was these small details that made sure gameplay flowed seamlessly into a cohesive experience and was an objective I was tasked with managing inside Hogwarts. I also coordinated with the other LDs to make sure it lined up with the Open World and Dungeons as well.
