SPENCER SIMONS
Single-Player Level Design Intern / Associate Level Designer
Sledgehammer Games - May 2023 to December 2023
I earned the opportunity to work as a Level Design Intern on the single player team at Sledgehammer Games in May of 2023. I was able to quickly on-board to a proprietary engine and programming language and assist the team on a multitude of tasks in a launch year, so efficiently where they offered me a contract that I accepted to help ship Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 and work until the end of 2023.
After on-boarding, I started with more basic but essential tasks in our sandbox levels such as fixing and creating smooth player collision, AI cover interaction in major combat locations, AI nav mesh, and Player/AI Object and geo interactions. I worked closely with my peers and lead in ensuring I was performing quality work that met or exceeded COD standards and would reach out with examples any time I saw something outside of my tasks that I felt might need addressed and would fix on my own with their approval.
After gaining trust by showing my ability there and continuing to study the engine and scripting from other levels that were further along, I was given more complex tasks like scripting robo VO to prepare lines for narrative to replace that would trigger depending on context to the mission, combat, or story moment in a given level. I was also able to perform block-out to create a combat space for one of the objective entrances in our sandbox map, looking to create an engaging experience that catered to stealth and non-stealth playstyles and that can be approached from any angle. I took ownership over other necessities like scripting a functional minimap for our sandbox among other tasks I would be provided along with ones I would find important to work on to help ship the high-quality product Call of Duty is known for.
Gora Dam
This was the first level I worked on after on-boarding. I was given a variety of tasks to polish the level and get AI to take different paths when pursuing the player. I also took the opportunity to look for other issues related to my tasks or JIRA tickets I was working on to proactively fix anything else that was bugged or working improperly. I did this first by providing screenshots, vids and info to who it concerned in Slack as well to make ensure a fix was needed until I became more comfortable with my role. I also took ownership over certain tasks that were essential but had very limited documentation and was not a typical requirement for the LD team and researched, tested and worked with peers to produce a result that others could use as an example for their own needs.
Reactor
With Reactor, I was given more responsibility while also becoming more time efficient with my workflow as the level required 3+ hour compile & build times due to being borrowed and re-worked from a Warzone map. I performed block-out for creating COD-level combat spaces within this sandbox level and implemented my skill to help guide the player to the final objective. I also did a great deal of scripting, having to resort to various documentation and update my own, along with research existing scripts from other levels in our game and older iterations, to come up with efficient scripts to perform functions in what was one of the biggest Call of Duty SP maps ever.
Personal Projects
Guardian Heroes
A 2D Beat'em Up Prototype
Using the Unity Engine, I spent about 8 months creating a game that closely resembled one of my favorites for the Sega Saturn, Guardian Heroes. I focused on emulating the combat of a Guardian Heroes game at a basic level as well as some of its important mechanics that made it stand out. The project won Academy of Art's 2023 Runner-Up for Best Full Game.
A Smooth, Impactful Combo
One of my processes was continually tweaking a responsive 4-hit combo the player could initiate and easily break away from and not feel "locked in the animation" when trying to react to enemies. This proved to be a trying process since I was working with pre-assembled sprites and was making my own animation with them, ensuring the contact felt right at various distances as well as ensuring the speed of each attack matched evenly and did not cause the player to slide from their origin point.
Changing Lanes
An important mechanic to the original Guardian Heroes game is a system that allows the player to change "lanes" in the battlefield. A "Far", "Middle", and "Near". I decided to make this game in 2D at the time so had to do a great deal of C# scripting to create the perception of perspective, transforming the character's size gradually when they change lanes to make them appear farther or closer and changing which tags they can interact with when it comes to Game Objects.
Fun Combat Experience
Combining these along with tuning enemy reactions and attacks to be readable to the player and place them strategically to generate an engaging combat experience was a lot of fun to play around with. Using certain enemy attacks to force the player to change lanes quickly to dodge fire tornadoes or laser beams as well as making certain enemies be able to change lanes too to hunt you down.
