The Avengers
Project Time Scale: 12 months
Team Size: ~80
Role: Senior Game Designer
I was a combat and systems designer on The Avengers, responsible for PCs, NPCs, AI and level objective mechanics. I mainly oversaw Thor and Hulk but had a hand in the design, implementation and balancing of all player characters. With a programmer I implemented the team AI for all Avengers.
Team Size: ~80
Role: Senior Game Designer
I was a combat and systems designer on The Avengers, responsible for PCs, NPCs, AI and level objective mechanics. I mainly oversaw Thor and Hulk but had a hand in the design, implementation and balancing of all player characters. With a programmer I implemented the team AI for all Avengers.
Design reel
Game Description
The Avengers was a co-op first-person action game. It supported up to 4 players locally (split-screen), online or any combination of the two. The core playable characters were Iron Man, Captain America, Thor and the Hulk, with plans for additional Avengers Hawkeye, Black Widow, War Machine and Ms Marvel. Players would defend Earth in a last stand against the invading Skrull Empire, traversing iconic locations from the Ultimates Universe such as Manhattan Island, the Triskelion and the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier.
The core characters
The Avengers was under development during the production of the movie. Due to THQ's financial troubles, it was cancelled when our studio was shut down.
Platforms: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC (Steam)
Tools: Ned 2 (THQ in-house editor), Maya, ZBrush, Photoshop, Visual Studio
Tools: Ned 2 (THQ in-house editor), Maya, ZBrush, Photoshop, Visual Studio
Combat Design
In preproduction, the game began as a third-person brawler. After some months, a radical decision was made to distinguish ourselves from the long history of third-person action games Marvel had put out, by changing our game to be first-person. This gave players a never-before-seen perspective for an official Marvel game - seeing through the eyes of an Avenger!
Iron Man flies across an arena on the Triskelion, firing rockets at a group of Skrull
Each Avenger had a unique feel, but for accessibility reasons when switching between characters, we gave them several consistent classes of abilities. One such ability class was the Hero Boost.
Iron Man initiates a Hero Boost, buffing nearby teammates with temporary energy shields
Another such ability was an Interrupt attack, allowing players to save their teammates from a crippling enemy grapple.
1. Iron Man is grappled by a Super-Skrull
2. Thor uses an Interrupt attack - calling down lighting - to break Iron Man free of the Super-Skrull's grip
Another class of attack was the Disrupt, which temporarily weakened an enemy or group of enemies. This encouraged player teamwork to time their attacks and lay into weakened enemies all at once.
Captain America uses his leadership ability to mark an enemy target, increasing damage done to that target for a short period of time
Avengers also had an Assist and Multi Attack move, which allowed them to coordinate in order to efficiently take out groups of enemies. Damage and score bonuses were given to enemies that were combod by other teammates.
1. Hulk uses an Assist, stomping down an earthquake that knocks a group of Skrull soldiers into the air
2. Iron Man uses a Multi Attack, firing a cluster of rockets at a group of Skrull that Hulk has knocked into the air
Each Avenger also had his own unique Finishers, with variations for ground and air. These smoothly pulled the camera out into third-person, to view the full glory of the takedown.
Iron Man's air finisher
Iron Man's ground finisher
AI
With one other programmer I was responsible for the design, implementation and tuning of the co-op AI. Given the co-op mechanics, we emphasised the importance of the AI to assist players and seek combo opportunities as much as possible. For this we used data-driven behaviour tables, all accessible in our editor, leaving a lot of the implementaton and tuning to myself. In some stages of development, the AI was too efficient at its job of killing enemies, so we had to make them miss and delay their actions more often, in order to make them appear more "human".
Hulk stuns a Skrull soldier with a thunderclap, while an AI-controlled Iron Man combos him in the back with his repulsor rays
Mechanics
I was also responsible for some gameplay interaction mechanics and modes. To mix up the pacing, we had gates where players were locked into an arena for a period of time, having to solve a problem or survive an onslaught. One example was a King-of-the-Hill-style mode where Skrull were placing multiple beacons around an arena that the players had to coordinate to disrupt before they reached critical mass.
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