"Below the Thunder" - Crysis Warhead - singleplayer level
"The mines are an on-foot rollercoaster, with beautifully gloomy shadows in which enemies can lurk, and fights erupting when you least expect it." - Christian Donlan, Eurogamer (Sept 08)
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'Below the Thunder' is the only completely-indoor level in Warhead. The level had just been substantially cut, and I was brought on to do two main things; to make the first third of the level purely atmospheric and cinematic, and then to re-do all of the combat AI setup and encounters in the second two thirds.
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I approached this primarily by playing through what already existed in the first non-combat part of the level and trying to find ways to pace a number of scripted sequences I had in mind. These varied from an Alien Trooper jumping across players' views having just killed a North Korean, to rocks falling, to bats flying, to a large scripted battle high above.
The scripted battle had a number of Alien Scouts fighting against a squad of North Koreans and losing, and the intention here was to make players feel like they were still part of something bigger while in this claustrophobic cave.
All of this involved playing with the timing of triggers, careful use of sound and lighting (and shadows), placing and triggering particle effects, and creating animated trackview sequences.
I also used tricks such as low ceilings forcing players to crouch so they would look through wooden planks down to corridors below, and particle effects to attract players' attention to things I noticed they missed - such as the short electricity effect attached to the knocked-off helmet of an unlucky North Korean impaled by Aliens.
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If there's one main takeaway of Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli's famous design mantra 'Veni Vidi Vici' (I came, I saw, I conquered) it is that players should never simply react to an enemy. It is this aspect that I wanted to bring to the combat in the second part of this level. I wanted to "do VVV indoors".
I set about to achieve this by allowing players to start most of the encounters on their own terms. There are a lot of places where players will happen upon a soldier with his back to the them, and this is quite deliberate. I really wanted players to feel much more stealthy than they might be. I wanted players to sneak up to a group of North Koreans already in combat with Aliens and decide when to engage.
In fact, the first enemy encounter in the level involves players about to enter the mines from above when they see three North Koreans firing at an unseen Alien foe. I weighed this encounter to go one of three ways, randomly. Either the Alien Trooper kills all three soldiers and comes over exhibiting its search beam (added in Warhead for Alien AI readability), or the Alien is spawned facing away from the soldiers almost-guaranteeing it is killed, or the Alien is spawned further away and when the soldiers kill it they go into their search behaviour and start walking forward into the darkness, away from the player, alert and searching for other enemies. Of course, it can actually go infinite ways, since players can intervene at any point.
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I also wanted to provoke players to flank an enemy Machine Gun emplacement in quite a staged way so that later, when they saw MG nests, they would attempt to make use of this tactic.
To achieve this, I actually had to rebuild part of the underground mines to add extra corridors, but I believe it was worth it.
I scripted an explosion in front of players, further down the corridor, where Alien Troopers had breached a mine tunnel and were getting mowed down by an out-of-sight MG. Of course, players have complete freedom to walk straight into this battle and face well-armed angry Koreans on their left, and spawning Alien Troopers on their right. However, because the explosion is triggered when players are at a T-junction there is an obvious path on their left which suddenly looks much safer, and obviously leads around the chaos to the side of the MG nest, flanking it.
The main thing I learned while working on this level was how to pace combat well. After working on the same level for a while, it's easy to start filling it with more enemies than necessary to make it more of a challenge. However, this has the danger to cause combat-fatigue and boredom in players; sometimes darkness and a spooky sound is better than a room full of soldiers.