Title

Second Wind

Level Designer | Combat Designer

Steam Workshop

Overview

Tool

Dying Light Developer Tools

Platform

Development Time

~ 250 Hrs

Team Size

Individual

ABOUT

The "Second Wind" level in "Dying Light" is a side mission that does not affect the main storyline. Players are initially assigned to rescue members of an antizin search team. Upon discovering their bodies, the mission takes an unexpected turn, requiring players to find an alternate "second wind" to reach the endpoint. The level features a mix of indoor and outdoor environments and challenges that fit the game's theme, including melee and ranged combat, parkour, resource management, and exploration. The level design emphasizes verticality and varied enemy types, offering an immersive combat and exploration experience with clear guidance.

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Design Goal

Distinct Spaces

Transitions between interior and exterior, providing thematic differences and challenges tailored to each environment. (e.g., parkour outdoors and melee combat & cover shooting indoors)

Clear Conveyance

Employs a combination of conveyance techniques in an open-world setting to subtly guide players along the intended path, ensuring they don't get lost or feel a loss of immersion

Emotional engagement

Gives each scene a theme with lighting and layout to evoke specific emotions (like eeriness in a tunnel) and uses "WOW moments" to heighten emotions, making the goal more memorable.

Design Techniques

Distinct Spaces

Distinct variations between areas continuously stimulate players, introducing fresh themes and helping track their progression. Each area features a unique mood, ambiance, layout, and pacing for diverse challenges. For instance, the level starts with an outdoor goal, then quickly shifts to an indoor setting focused on melee combat. Near the end, players receive ranged weapons, followed by an outdoor parkour section and a distant enemy for weapon practice. Next is a rooftop electrical tower section to enhance ranged and melee combat skills and parkour. This leads to a larger, darker indoor area with more parkour space and cover, followed by an outdoor section starting from a disadvantaged position, moving to higher vantage points with enemies at varying verticalities. The finale occurs in a construction site area, integrating previous challenges against the final enemy. New enemies are introduced and arranged based on the player's acquired skills to maintain good pacing.

Clear Conveyance

The level employs techniques like lighting, motion, framing, leading lines, and FX to subtly guide players along the intended path.

To maintain consistency and reinforce the expected route, yellow flags & blue tapes are placed at key locations from the start, creating a cognitive pattern for players: seeing a yellow flag instinctively indicates the direction to proceed.

Advanced enemies are strategically placed at critical points, making them stand out among regular zombies and immediately capturing the player's attention.

The arrangement of cover and structures also naturally guides the player (through framing and leading lines).

Finally, by introducing the player's goal at the beginning and creating a twist (such as the player falling to a lower level mid-way through the level, triggering the search for a return path), the significance and location of the goal are emphasized. This ensures that players have a clear sense of direction in the latter half of the game.

Emotional Engagement

Each area in the level is imbued with an environmental theme, with lighting and structure settings enhancing emotional engagement. This approach fosters specific emotional connections to objects or areas, strengthening level recognition and blending with pacing to create an effective tension curve.

For example, the level starts by showcasing the goal, using light and shadow contrasts to create a bright, hopeful impression of the endpoint, drawing the player towards it. It then shifts to a dark office space to build tension. As players delve deeper, they encounter increasingly challenging enemies, releasing built-up pressure upon reaching a brightly-lit outdoor area. This outdoor section introduces new advanced enemies in a relatively relaxed environment while continuing to build tension. An unexpected fall then releases the pressure, followed by entry into a darker, cooler indoor area, further ramping up tension. The cramped indoor space intensifies the difficulty and oppressiveness of previously introduced enemies without increasing their number. The area culminates with a strong enemy encounter to release tension, before transitioning back outdoors to a brighter yet more complex structure with higher enemy difficulty, leading to the final comprehensive test.

Notably, the mid-level "Wow moment" of an unexpected fall while heading towards the final goal significantly spikes player emotions, maximizing surprise and tension. This moment deeply reinforces the presence and importance of the final goal in the player's mind.

Goals

Techniques

Design Process

Process

Level Design Document

Reference

Reference 2

Initially, I designed the level in LDD, focusing on the combination of indoor and outdoor environments, as well as parkour and combat. However, I soon realized issues in parkour structure rationalization and the seamless integration of indoor and outdoor areas, which only became apparent during white boxing (WB).

I quickly pivoted my approach, separating areas and giving each a unique thematic setting. I searched through editor assets for materials that fit these themes and organized them accordingly. Then, I looked up reference images online, using their structures for inspiration. I started designing specific structures based on the skills I wanted to test and my design objectives.

Throughout the iterative process, I focused on core objectives: clear guidance and paths, distinct contrasts between areas, and the interplay of indoor and outdoor scenes (aesthetics & challenges), along with enemy settings and progression appropriate to each area's structure. I maintained and continuously optimized parts that were effective from the start, such as the floor-breaking mechanic where the player falls into a ground station and must find an alternate path back, or the high-rise and antenna parkour sections outdoors.

Before and After Display

Postmortem

What Went Well

Overall Conveyance

The level's clear conveyance from the start, achieved through effective framing, texture, motion, leading lines, and lighting, allowed for more focus on refining other elements later on

Final Aesthetics Pass

Finalizing the aesthetics was challenging due to diverse indoor and outdoor themes and a large scope, but it was successfully accomplished with appropriate references.

Interesting and clear flow

The flow of the level was consistently praised for being both clear and engaging, as indicated by positive feedback from early playtests through to the final stages.

What Went Wrong

Early Design Issues

The initial design didn't fully consider structural rationality, focusing only on functionality and skills. This led to significant time spent later redesigning the structure to perfectly blend it with the theme and skills.

Mismatch Between Scene Theme and Lighting

The use of many highrises and low-height outdoor areas caused outdoor light to be largely obstructed, making it challenging to create effective, clear, and logical lighting and shadows.

What I Learned

Early Research

Conducting thorough early-stage research would have prevented early design mistakes due to unfamiliarity with the engine, such as not knowing about buildings fitting specific themes or parkour climb and jump heights, saving time later on fixing these issues.