Roger Gonzalez - Game & Level Designer

Eternal Night is a Dark Fantasy Action Tower Defense Game. The goal of the game is to summon various defenses to keep hordes of enemies from reaching their goal within the level. This is a solo project with most roles done by me, including the game design, level design, and scripting within Blue Print. Most assets are purchased and some created by me, but with many of the the purchased assets retouched or altered in Maya and Photoshop to more properly fit Eternal Night's aesthetics.

 

"A black curse has befallen the land, casting it within a wicked night. Vicious creatures seek out ancient places and portals to spread the curse and bring down the light of mankind. You are a Tactician, one who is capable of summoning mighty defenses that can push back the legions of the night and to bring back the day."

 

 

 

 

 

 

Design and Development ​

• Designed & Scripted various tower types that include range seeking missiles, cannons, ballistas, and allies

• Designed & Scripted different types of enemies for the player to face

• Designed & Scripted enemy spawn system that allows for an easy mix and match of different enemies to be spawned

• Designed & Scripted enemy pathing system for them to follow and reach their goal

• Designed & Scripted enemy wave system that spawns specific enemies within different waves

• Designed & Scripted a World Trigger that keeps track of the number of enemies still alive, enemies escaped, number of enemies on the screen, what wave number the player is on, and shows that information within the UI.

• Designed & Built levels that contain both organic and hard surface routes

• Modeled and textured towers, cannons, and ballistas using Maya and Photoshop

• Created unique materials for all the defenses to reflect a spirit look.  

• Converted pre-existing textures for a more stylized and unique look (guide is found lower on this list)

 

 

Features

• Enemies – Different types of enemies that will keep you on your toes and make you rethink your plans.

• Enemy Waves – Large waves of enemies, where each increase in both size and intricacy

• Action combat – Move freely around the level, use heights and ledges to your advantage, and literally jump into the fray of combat or keep a safe distance away.

• Summon different types of Defenses – Each defense has its own use, strengths, and weaknesses. Learn each one and come up with how you want to use them.

• Freedom of planning - Place your defenses almost any you wish in each level, mix and match various defenses, and come up with different strategies from the combinations and placements you’ve come up with.

 

 

Gameplay

• Primary goal is to kill hordes of enemies that are spawned in wave while also keeping them from reaching their goals.

• To keep the enemies from reaching their goals, player must place defense in various places throughout the map.

• Players can choose which defenses they want ahead of time, but each defense requires points required to be summoned that the player only has a limited amount of.

• Players may also fight the hordes of enemies close range and with their various types of spells.

 

 

Game Loop

• Set up defenses -> Defeat the waves of Enemies -> Reach the end of the round -> repeat until end of level

 

 

Main Aesthetics

• Fantasy, Challenge, Submission

  • Fighting large amounts of enemies at once

  • Dynamic gameplay

  • Player choice to select their defenses and deciding where to place them

  • Pre planning on what kind of strategy player wants to use

  • Resource management for towers and manna for spells

  • Attention management between immediate gameplay and making sure the hordes of enemies aren’t advancing too much from any of their possible various routes.

 

 

Technical goals

• Large amounts of enemies on screen (not unusual  to have up to 100 towards end of most levels), so optimization is high priority

  • Stylized art allowed for lower texture size without noticeable difference

  • Lower poly assets

  • No shadows from assets and only 1 dynamic light source per level

• Created Enemy spawner that spawns hordes of enemies. Spawner was designed to spawn enemies within a random range (example, enemy 1 has a 70% chance of spawning while enemy 2 has 30%), while also having the option of placing specific enemies to be spawned at a specific time, as well as the option of spawning no enemies to give a slight pause to the player during combat. Multiple spawners can be placed in a level.

• Each level is created through sections of Blueprints actors to keep level file size down.

 

 

Level Design Philosophy

• Eternal Night’s levels are grouped into different areas (castle, town, etc). Each area has its own design flow to keep the levels from feeling too familiar and static.

• This is a game that must have multiple routs and potentially multiple goals that the enemies can reach.

• Defeating the enemies with close range combat will be a relatively easy, as long as the player knows to do it in smart places. The real challenge comes from keeping enough attention on the other enemies on the map be and the ones that pass the player.

• Ultimately the real challenge will come from resource and attention management.

• Players will need to put up barricades to keep enemies on certain parts more occupied, but have to figure out a good combination of where to put them and if they want to use points for something that will just be temporary vs something that won’t.

 

 

Level difficulty

There are a few main aspects that greatly affects level difficulty.

• How many points for the enemies to spawn from.

• The average starting and scaling difficulty.

• Number of enemies to be spawned.

• The types of enemies to be spawned.

• The probability of each type of enemy to be spawned.

• The distance the enemies have to traverse/the amount of time they take to reach their goal.

• The number of points the player has thats needed to summon defenses.

• In general. If there are multiple enemy spawn points, and their paths are not of relative equal length, then enemies that spawn on the shortest path should be easier to play against.

 

 

Convert Realistic textures to Stylize guide

Stylize main texture

• Filter Gallery - Paint Daubs

  • Primary texture/Albedo - Blends and spreads color to get rid of high detail and get a very stylized color base.

  • B/W Outline – Good at getting rid of the smaller outlines for a cleaner look

• Optional – Go back and forth between Poster edges and Paint Daubs – Poster edges will give you edges while Paint Daubs will blend out the black edges but still leave nice bumps for more rough textures like rocks

• Brightness/Contrast & Hue/Saturation – Good to help the image pop more

• Layers(where all the textures actually are) -> Overlay -Overlay two of the same images to get good poping of colors

 

Get Outline – Use Normals of image

• Poster edges (Optional) – This will get the outlines from the thick normal - Usually highest settings will do

• Brightest/Contrast (Optional) – Possibly instead of Poster Edges, use Brightness/Contrast if the image is not strong enough by itself to get good outlines. This will bring out the shadows

  • Image – Adjustments – Brightness/Contrast

• Threshold– Converts image to Black and white (Can skip Poster edges to this step because it will still get the outline, it depends on how good it looks with or without that step)

  • Image – Adjustments – Threshold -> Normals: Convert Normals to black and white image. 

• Maybe Palette Knife to – Very low setting, high softness. This stylizes the outlines by getting rid of some of the parts that look like dirt and making them more blotted out.

• Put it on the Multiply Layer

 

 

Future updates will include

• More types of defense that will allow the player to come up with even more strategies and play styles. Some defense include

  • Slowing down, freezing, poisoning, pushing back enemies.

  • Others will directly help the player such as healing fountains, damage bonus areas, and teleporters, some of which will also help your Sentries.

  • More Sentry types - Ones that will seek out more enemies, summon multiple at once to watch your back, and giant walls to keep enemies at bay.

• More enemy types - Challenge the player and their strategies even more by having to quickly rethink their plans in order to adapt with the ever-changing threat.

• More Spells – Right now, the player only has the single attack spell, but more will be added.

• A more fleshed out story for players to experience alongside the great gameplay.