Ruins of Patala (Dungeon) Designed for Bless
Using Unreal Engine 3, proprietary AI Editor and datasheet based XML
Video Created By
Bless - a MMORPG being serviced in Korea by Neowiz Bless Studio
Bless is an AAA MMORPG currently being serviced in Korea, and comming soon in Russia, Japan and on.
Ruins of Patala is dungeon for 5 players of level 43 to 45 (the game's current maximum level has been raised to 50).
The dungeon was focused on recognizing patterns, cooperation and appropriate movement, instead of gear check.
It received many positive feedback on it's experience and was updated a couple of times to fix bugs and possible exploitation.
Objective of design
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Let the players experience multiple boss encounters, each using different mechanics
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Reward the players who understand the mechanics of each encounter
Goal for players
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Infiltrate the dungeon and defeat the boss
Level design challenges
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Designing new mechanics for each boss - which hasn't been introduced in the previous (low level) dungeons.
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Designing ways to provide hints on how to overcome the instant death skills.
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Finding ways to make the mechanics work - the mechanics were not supported by the AI system. Had to combine and tweak multiple systems.
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Using the AI tool and Kismet together to visualize environmental changes - the original system was designed, not considering the usage of Kismet, and had only one hook connecting the AI tool with Kismet.
System design challenges
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Adding new variables and functions for the AI tool - so that they could be used with most of the functions that already existed.
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Finding a way to prevent people from cheating by tweaking the client - designed functions that connected different AI systems (such as NPC AI, system AI) to track events happening through the whole dungeon