Portfolio | Margaretnielsen Com

Projects

Fallout New Orleans

(Only Showing Solo Contributions):
2 Weeks
UE 5.3

For this whitebox, the goal was to create a whitebox based on the block the LaLaurie Mansion in the French Quarter of New Orleans.

To start, I began by creating rough approximations of how large the buildings on the block would be in the real world. This was done using Google Earth for measurements which wasn't perfectly accurate, but gave me a reasonable ballpark to work with.

The next step was working on LaLaurie's Mansion, as I wanted her house to be the most important part of interest on the block. I took a lot of inspiriation from Cabot House in Fallout 4 for this mansion, due to its relatively good condition for the time period its in as a metaphor for covering up a dark secret, and how it manages to be next to some relatively dangerous areas while still being peaceful.

What was interesting in this area was learning how to manage the different expectations of scale. As Fallout uses a modular kit, I used modular pieces as well, which aren't necessarily at the same scale as the actual building. This required a lot of judgement and balance between matching the scale of Fallout, while still ensuring that the building still felt like LaLaurie Mansion which is an iconic building in New Orleans.

From there on, I started adding in the rest of the buildings which aren't as iconic as LaLaurie Mansion, but could still be interesting in their own right. Due to the scope and time frame of the block out, I had to choose which buildings would get interiors and which ones would have to be boarded up and inaccessible to the players. I ended up choosing the botanical garden which allows for a difference in feeling for the player after leaving the mansion. Because while the mansion is more winding and narrow, and the danger is lurking more than in your face, the garden is more open and the enemies are more visible.

The other main building added in was a larger private residence. Due to the fact that there was no information on the building in my research, and it would fit the themes of rampant consumerism in Fallout better, I made the choice to convert the private residence to a store.

Finally, I ended by adding in some area appropriate street lights, added in enemies, and with some of the extra buildings, I added in extra areas for the player to explore and pick up items and supplies without having to be in one of the main three areas in the world.

Fantasmagorie

Group Project: 8 months
UE 5.3

For this project, I made approximately 1/3 of the levels from whiteboxing to set dressing.

The goal was to create a level that told the story of a puppeteer who lost his daughter to tuberculosis and couldn’t handle the grief, through the lens of his favorite puppet that he abandoned.

In order to achieve this, I focused on two main things: distorting the area physically to adjust player perception, and adjustments based on feedback and team needs.

For the physical distortions that I focused on in this level, I started with research on how stages were originally made in the past. Typically they were angled downward so that audiences could see better.

This allowed me to build further back while still keeping foreground pieces without entirely losing the player character, and came with the added benefit of the player getting a sense of discomfort as they move further back from the camera.

This is juxtaposed with another room where, in order to feel uneasy about the room, the floor was angled to the side, the roof was angled down, and the back wall was angeled forward to make the right side of the room significantly smaller than the left side.

That way, as they player made their way through the room, they would start to feel more claustrophobic, especially as they were surrounded by ragdolled puppets right after learning that inanimate objects are capable of coming to life and attacking the player character.

The second area of focus was on interation. This level had a lot of collaboration with the camera designer, animator, and programmers.

Firstly, the initial chorus puppet room was changed from looking like a dressing room to a sea of puppets. In the initial change, the player character would've used a box as a boat to sail across the puppet sea, but due to scope and programming considerations, it was decided against, adding vanities back in for the player to cross.

The rigging room has an interesting change in building. In order to show off the versatility of the camera system the programming team created, we adjusted the room so that the player would be completely surrounded by the ropes and the camera would follow behind the player. In adjusting that, it changed how wide the floor would be for the player, and it also changed how we went about breaking up the space. Now there was more vertical negative space that we played around with adding swinging object in, and on the sides, framing the player, we added in puppet hands that reach for the player.

The last major area that got major iterative changes was in Jean Pierre's chase sequence. Through feedback we found that the original planned route was approximately 2.5x too long. The ideal timing that we were looking for was around 40 seconds before the fear of being chased wore away. So we reworked the chase sequence to be much shorter.

Then, when discussing camera angles, we found that the walls that had been placed blocked the player's view of the main character and it was hard to keep her lined up where she needed to be. So the walls were adjusted to ensure player visibility.

The next consideration was that our animator made a very interesting animation of Jean Pierre jumping to the lower level, but with how the camera was facing, the player would most likely never see it. So I readjusted the chase sequence to guarantee the player being able to see it.

Finally, our programmer's developed a very interesting AI for Jean Pierre to grab the walls and floor to move himself forward. This led to the very challenging, but interesting design constraint of breaking up the space in the chase sequence without putting anything down that he could possibly get caught up on. This led to a moment of vanity for Jean in his final moments were his last moments are of him as a star before he plummets down to his death.

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Projects

Fantasmagorie

Group Project: 8 months UE 5.3

Group Project: 8 months
UE 5.3