Design:

• Boss Design & Polish — Rework and balance pre-existing boss and mini-boss fights to be more engaging

• Puzzle Design and Scripting — Design and script puzzles within pre-existing levels

• Attack Hit Registration — Adjust and implement enemy animation based attacks and tune hit registration timing

• Loot Drop Balancing — Adjust loot drop curve to give create a more engaging sense of progression

• Enemy Encounter Design — Add, remove, and reposition enemies to create a more engaging player experience when exploring

• Combat Balancing — Adjust player & enemy health and damage values to adjust difficulty level

• NPC Design — Design dynamic NPC interactions and quest rewards

QA:

• Ad Hoc & Exploratory Testing — Catch bugs that may have slipped through the cracks of previous test runs and have unique reproducibility steps

• Regression Testing — Ensure implemented bugs are verified as successfully fixed across all affected platforms

• Defect Documentation & Analysis — Document new bugs and open discussions with design when concerns arise

My primary role within QA was to ensure gameplay met release levels of quality. Since the studio’s primary function was developing a highly polished vertical slice intended to acquire funding from a publisher, it was critical our 15-30 minute slice of gameplay felt like a near finished product to give the best sense of design direction possible to interested buyers. I ensured this by running a series of test passes through the slice of gameplay ensuring basic functionality in addition to doing ad hoc and exploratory testing throughout all areas of the slice of gameplay. I was the primary point of contact for all bugs at the time as I championed the master bug tracking document and continually updated it to reflect and regressions that I had verified as successful fixes.

One of the more impactful ways I helped development was in my efforts to help redesign both the boss and mini boss of Dark Alliance’s vertical slice in preparation for upcoming meetings with publishers. I worked closely with the design lead to dissect each encounter and pick apart the areas that felt lack luster and the areas that felt thematic, in an effort to analyze where we had design space to play with. I was then tasked to draft design documentation outlining potential attack/stage behavior for each encounter given the constraints of the pre-existing fight that could be prototyped and further tested. These very preliminary reworks paved the way for what is Dark Alliance’s “The Chef” boss fight and to a lesser degree the “Kelvin” boss fight.

An area the team felt was lacking in the vertical slice was environmental interactions with the player. As it stood at the time the player would primarily interact with levers and doors in the environment but that was just about it. Feeling that this did not suit the world lore outlined by R.A. Salvatore in his “Legend of Drizzt” series or the exploration heavy themes the team was hoping for, we decided to introduce environmental puzzles. My task was to design and prototype a combination lock puzzle within a predetermined location. I utilizing the internal blueprints we used for lever door behavior to guide the bulk of the behavior for environmental interactions; requiring me to only write a simple script that handled the combination lock behavior. This puzzle eventually turned into the “Designs of the Duergar Puzzle”.

Enemy attacks in Dark Alliance’s vertical slice were animation based and used invisible sphere objects to calculate what entities to hit when striking. My task was to ensure that each enemy’s attacks registered at the appropriate time according to player expectation. This involved scrubbing through each attack animation and manually inputting the appropriate frame information into the attack script handler. I would then retest the new updated attacks in engine and gauge if this new behavior felt fair to the player. I ran through this process with all available characters at the time which included: duergar, gnolls, grey slaads, quaggoth, Drizzt, Cattie Brie, unnamed mini boss, and the unnamed act boss.

Loot Drop Rates

In preparation for pitching the Dark Alliance vertical slice to publishers, I worked to develop a natural feeling loot drop rate to deliver a satisfying play experience. I cross referenced the available items in the loot library across all rarity tiers and used that information to guide my adjustments of our internal curve tool. This curve tool allowed me to manually adjust a basic curve to alter drop rates for each tier of item according to the current player level. This helped me create a reasonable sense of drop rarity for each item type. After making these changes, I ran a few test runs to assess the feel of loot progression throughout the slice of play.