SOLARBORNE LEGACY (2024)
Level Design | Game Design | Cinematic Design
Level Design | Game Design | Cinematic Design
"In a not so distant future, humans have unlocked faster than light travel and are now rapidly colonizing star systems. A new industrial boom has arrived, and you are an independent outlaw ready to forge your path in this new action RPG inspired by Mount and Blade and Everspace 2!"
Game Engine: Unreal Engine 5
Development Time: Ongoing
Team Size: 7 Core developers
Genre: Rogue-lite, 3rd-person aerial combat
My Work
During my internship, working on Solarborne Legacy, my main roles was Game, Level and Cinematic Design. I have highlighted what I can and really want to showcase of the project here:
Level Design
I had a lot of fun with getting to create levels for an aerial space game. It was challenging, designing in space and not having any ground to base the design around, but in the end I figured out a pretty good way of doing it:
Prototyping
The process starts in my "playground", where I could place out things like rings to try out what layouts feels good to navigate in.
Advanced Level Design
I then started placing out actual obstacles instead, and a dynamic visual point that is saved in the game instance from the over-world.
Finished Level
The level features hand placed and generated asteroid groups, and a white star from the star system the player selected the mission from.
In-Game Cinematics
I got to create a lot of cinematic content for this game. Both marketing material and cinematics. Here's a breakdown of one example, the game's opening cinematic:
Storyboarding
I started with creating a rough idea in my head of how the shot was going to play out. I then created a storyboard for it.
Level Sequence
I framed the shots in the over-world level and created a sequence with spawnable cameras and breaks for each frame.
After setting up the sequence through the game instance and level blueprint, the cinematic plays at the start of a game. | FULL VIDEO
Trailers
Other than the trailer above I also made this one. Similarily to the process of making the opening cutscene, I recorded footage using unreal's level sequence, and then edited it in Davinci Resolve. The trailer is censored since the game went under a different name back then and the NDA prohibits me from showing it.
Content Design
I worked on many other things during the production of Solarborne Legacy. Here's some of the other areas I delved into, losely categorized as Content Design:
Abilities Using GAS
I have both flowcharted and worked with integrating many different abilities in the game using UE's GAS.
Event Design
I have designed random events that pop up, mission objectives & briefings, as well as NPC dialogue. Also their menus.
World Design
I worked a lot with the over-world, visual elements, the star systems and the placement of obstacles... etc.