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About SteamDrunk

SteamDrunk is a capture the flag game featuring cartoon-styled, steampunk pirates and first person shooter controls. Players divide into two teams and take turns defending and assaulting an airship. To win, a team must capture and escape with the contested booze in a shorter amount of time than the competing team.

Players use unique steam-powered pirate gear including a steam-powered blunderbuss and jet pack to battle enemy players on the ground and in the air as they capture assault points on the airship. It is vital that players work together to destroy key components and escape with the booze in time.

Development Information

  • Total Project Length: 4 months, 2013
  • Team Size: 9 developers
  • Role: Level Designer
  • Weekly Work Hours: 15 hours
  • Engine: Unreal Development Kit February 2012

My Responsibilities

  • Work with other designers to construct a Capture The Flag (CTF) map that is fun to attack or defend
  • Script assault points and elevators using Kismet
  • Track personal work on Scrum boards
  • Iterate on lines of sight on both levels of the map to account for walking and air-borne players
  • Step up as acting lead level designer from Beta to RTM milestones following illness of original lead
  • Test all features over network to ensure the best experience for all players

Postmortem

What Went Right
  • Improvement in communication throughout the team over time
  • Committed level design department
  • Consistent art style
  • Iterated on conveyance in response to player feedback
  • Every team member put in extra work after major gameplay change, making up for lost time
What Went Wrong
  • Early in development, the level design department remade the CTF map many times, resulting in rework
  • Communication between departments did not improve until the end of the project
  • New features were not always tested on the network before being submitted, leading to significant bugs
  • Entire game mode was reworked halfway through the project, which caused rework for most of the team
What We Learned
  • Good communication skills are just as valuable as art/design/programming skills
  • If it has not been tested on the network, it is not done
  • Work on final user interface early with an eye toward conveyance of key mechanics to the player

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