Level and scenario design are a key part of many games. Join us online April 23 as we share level design tips for use with Unreal, Unity and more. Check out our stellar guests as they share how they went about designing their own levels.

Noon-1 pm: Victoria Lyons, Building Levels Fast: An Intro to Editor Blueprints in Unreal

Unreal's Blueprints gives users a great deal of power and versatility. This presentation looks at how to use Blueprints in the editor to develop a faster, stronger, better level

1-1:30 pm: Joe Cassavaugh, Building a Puzzle Level in Clutter

1:30-2 pm: Dean Velez, Building 360° Environments using Daz 3D, Cinema 4D, Photoshop, and After Effects

2-2:30 pm: Kevin Stevens, Teaching Through Level Design

2:30 - 3 pm: Chris DeLeon, Level design processes on Boom Blox (Wii, EA 2008)
Boom Blox was an unusual game for a AAA studio: a relatively smaller team, new genre with undefined expectations, and then-unexplored motion controls led to unique opportunities for the design team. A technical game designer from the projects will share the processes used, discuss the interplay of the systems and design, including how creative back and forth worked between departments led to new features and innovations. Though ideas will be grounded in game-specific examples, the takeaways will be  design techniques that can be applied either individually or for producing small levels and puzzles as part of a bigger team. The presenter's time with the team did not overlap with the controversial industry figure recently discussed by People Make Games, so he is unable to address questions around that subject.

3-4 pm: Shane Canning, Building and Prototyping Levels Veteran Level Designer Shane Canning shares his experiences building levels for games like Spider-Man, Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart, and more. Join us as we talk all things Level Design and peel back the curtain on how some of these games get made.

Speakers

Chris DeLeon has been making computer games since 1997, professionally off and on since 2005. In addition to his time at EA on Boom Blox and Medal of Honor Airborne as a Technical Game Designer he was a fourth hire at the startup that later became PopCap San Francisco, co-developer of the best selling early iPhone game Topple, and released well over 100 freeware games. He's a former speaker organizer for IndieCade, helped plan the first IndieCade Europe, and today is involved as IndieCade's Alumni Lead. He currently teaches game development independently full-time by advising members on year-round remote team practice projects being developed in HomeTeamGameDev.com

Shane Canning is a veteran Level Designer who has been working in the game industry for almost 14 years. He spent the first part of his career at Disney Interactive where he had the opportunity to help create Disney Infinity among other games like Toy Story 3 and Cars 2. Later, Shane got to work on Marvel's Spider-Man after joining Insomniac Games as well as Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart. He is known for his exciting layouts and set pieces. After making the jump to Japan, a couple years at Square Enix, now Shane has joined Ikumi Nakamura’s new studio UNSEEN and is helping build their new IP

When: Noon-4 pm April 23

Where: www.youtube.com/GeorgiaGameDevs (GGDA members can meet with presenters in our Discord server)

How much: Free!