Greg Armstrong | Duel: UDK Tactics

Duel: UDk Tactics
gameplay, Level, and weapons designer

This game was based on the concept of injecting element of turn-based strategy games (some of the slowest-paced games available) into the Unreal Development Kit (one of the fastest-paced game engines available). The game is a two-player, competitive, team deathmatch, where each player controls three units equipped with weapons of their choosing. My specific responsibilities and duties on this game were: the design of the combat system, the level construction and design, and the weapon designs / art / scripts.

The weapon a player selects allows a unit to excel in certain combat roles, and be found lacking in others. Shown in the picture above is a unit equipped with the healing gun (Front) a scout rifle ( left) and a sword (right). Each weapon has traditional attributes such as range, damage and ammo capacity, they all also have a 'mobility' attribute which represents how heavy or difficult that weapon is to lug around the battlefield. For example, the scout rifle, one of the lightest weapons available provides the user with eight seconds of mobility each time its that unit's turn. In comparison the the rocket launcher, one of the heaviest weapons, provides the unit with only 4 seconds of mobility each turn.

If you are interested in the underlying happenings within the game, please take a look at one of the team's scripters, Chris Motola's Duel:UDK Tactic's Scripting Webpage for greater details.

Weapon Design

There were a total of 7 different weapons designed for the game's 6 classes. They each had 4 specific statistics:

Range, Damage, Ammo, and Mobility. Range and Damage are pretty self explanatory. Ammo is how many shots the weapon can fire per turn. Mobility is how much time the player gets to control a unit equipped with the weapon. Additionally, some weapons required special abilities that operated outside of those four statistics:

	Pistol	Scout's Rifle	Assault Weapon	Rocket Launcher	Sniper Rifle	Sword	Healing Gun
Range	Short	High	Medium	High	High	Melee	Medium
Damage	Low	Medium	Medium	High	High	High	Special
Ammo (Shots / turn)	5	5	35	2	1	N\A	25
Mobility (Seconds)	N/A	8	6	4	4	8	6
Special Abilities	Basic back-up weapon available to all units.	none	Automatic weapon	Splash Damage	Zoomed scope for increased accuracy	none	*Weapon heals target

(The Sniper Rifle is a modified version of "The Plug-and-Play Sniper Rifle")

Level Design

The primary level for our game was called "Forest." The designing principals were to have two starting zones for each team separated by geography. The players would have multiple obvious avenues to their opponent's base, such as pathes and bridges. The level also rewards open-world-style navigation allowing the players to create their own routes to hide, take cover, or set up fire bases. It was these and other concepts that inspired me to create an outdoors level, as opposed to an indoor level.

I also used a great deal of landmarks. Players are always looking at some kind of visual refrence point in "Forest." The windmill, the Sun, and even the powerlines are all designed to help players navigate the map. However, getting to your opponent's start zone doesn't mean anything if they aren't there anymore, or if they're lying in wait for you.