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STAR WARS: The Old Republic (PC Windows) Released: Dec 20 2011

Combat Designer / Spawner / Worldbuilder       

 

Responsibilities:                                                            

  • Part of a four-man team responsible for creating and balancing all class and open world combat on 17 entire planets including transitional and story areas

  • Worked with Spawning, Scripting and Writing teams to populate ambient and combat spaces

  • Designed and scripted a dozen unique boss fights

  • Designed, scripted, and assembled VFX / SFX for new abilities for combat NPC’s

  • Create Whitebox / Greybox levels for Rise of the Hutt Cartel Expansion

Combat Design on SWTOR meant creating individual abilities for NPC's: combining raw animations, VFX and SFX, with scripting damage / buff / de-buff affects, ability limitations to create both the affect and visual of the ability. Once the abilities have been created they are placed in an abilities package where I specify the abilities in the package, the skeleton type, weapon, ability cool down and priority.

The video below is an example of one of the many boss fights I designed. Inspired by the environment's sense of verticality, I created a combat package designed to potentially throw an unsuspecting player off the cliffs if they did not retreat from the blast radius of Darth Praven's attack.

Darth Angral's main mechanic is companion locking. Companions (at the time of shipping) increased the players chance of surviving difficult encounters by 40 percent. By adding this companion only stun, the players had to rely on their own skills and made the encounter harder. 

The Lord Rathari boss fight created an opportunity to have a staged encounter with each side calling for reinforcements. To balance this encounter I with created aggro packages for the enemies that took the focus away from the player until the certain NPC's died. This let the player take on more enemies and feel powerful. 

Gallery
Abilities for multiple skeletons

Abilities for multiple skeletons

Many combat packages could be used across multiple skeletons thanks to our great animators. Examples: humanoid / droids / quadrupedal / hexapedal / octopedal

Creating Diverse Combat Packages

Creating Diverse Combat Packages

I created combat packages across all weapon types including, staff / blasters (single and dual) / blades (single and dual) / cannons / force (light and dark side) / sniper / knife.

Scalable Combat Encounters

Scalable Combat Encounters

Most combat is scalable up to 4 players

Populated Ambient Spaces With Life

Populated Ambient Spaces With Life

Each space needed it's own personality. Creating a waiter taking drink orders and going to the bar or children playing tag in a secure part of the city helps the believably of the world.

Implemented Fast Travel

Implemented Fast Travel

Making Fast Travel a more enjoyable experience by scripting enjoyable rides throughout the planet and help establish the environment.

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