David Delseray

Developed on Unity 2019.

XIII is the multiplatform (PC, PS4, XBOX One) remake of the original and classic FPS XIII from 2003. I worked on the game as an Senior Game Designer for PlayMagic Malta.

During this project, my first mission has been to entirely design the AI of the enemies, creating behavior trees and working closely with the programmer in charge of implementing them. Once implemented, I was in charge of the entire balancing of the enemies and bosses.
It was a very interesting challenge for me as it was my first time designing AIs entirely. However, the lack of time and iteration cycles made it impossible to have a satisfying result in the end.
I learnt a lot about AI design during this project and hope to be able to return to it later on.

My second mission was to balance and improve the gamefeel of the weapons. I had to do some fine tweaking of the recoil, the fire rate, the damage of each weapon of the game.
The balancing was a challenge because I had to manage to find the sweet spot to make them feel bad-ass while not overly hard to control or, on the other hand, irresponsibly powerful. It was a constant back-and-forth between the animation department (to make sure that the recoil I was putting on the weapon was not breaking the aesthetic aspect of the game), myself and the various playtesters (to know if they felt like the weapons were enjoyable to use).
Looking at the result, I feel like the weapons in XIII are very flat. They lack some oomph. The damage are good. The handling is okay, it needs more fine tuning but none of the weapon is immersion-breakingly inaccurate or slow. However, the recoil is really where everything collapses. The weapons really don’t feel like they are heavy or powerful. The tool we used being made in-house, it would have greatly benefited from more development time that got cut due to a lack of production time.
If I was to do it again, I would push for the rework of the recoil tool to give the designer an easier and more straightforward to use.

My third task on XIII was to take charge of the main stealth levels of the game. I was to place the AIs, define the player’s path and make sure that the overall experience of the level was positive.
I must admit that it was the biggest of my challenges on the game and I feel like I failed it. Some of the ideas in place in the levels were interesting (as described by playtesters) but the overall realization wasn’t there and, therefore, even the good ideas were drowned in the mess.
My first mistake was to make the stealth levels too difficult. If the player was caught, he would barely have a chance to get back on his feet. Any mistake he would make would cost him a game over. I identified this issue as coming from the fact that I was constantly testing the level and had such a clear idea of the perfect path I wanted for the player that I forgot that the player would have to figure out the path. I knew my levels too well for my own sake.
My second mistake was to make these levels too dry. I made the stealth aspect mandatory since they were supposed to be working as « stealth mandatory » levels. However, I forgot to add any opportunity for the player to play with the stealth and have fun with it.
I corrected these mistakes after some time. I reduced the number of AIs and reduced a bit their viewcones to give the player a better chance and I added a couple of more « toyish » elements where the player could hide and assassinate the AIs without being seen. It took me some time to figure out the issues and unfortunately I wasn’t fast enough to correct all the mistakes I had made.

Overall this project has been a great teacher on many subjects and has given me the occasion to get initiated in a lot of domains I was, so far, unfamiliar with.