Deadman’s Tales is an Unreal Tournament 3 mod created by 40 students
in the Game Wizards’ production team at the Art Institute of California -
Los Angeles.

Inspired by the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction concept art by Marc
Davis, Deadman’s Tales is a team domination multiplayer map. A unique
end game cinematic would play depending on which team wins the match.

I came up with the initial concept, pitched it and over a nine month
pre-production and production schedule, worked as both the project lead
and art director. I oversaw both the creation of assets, from concept to
finished as well as level and game design. Managing duties included tracking
the progress of tasks and milestones using the SCRUMM process, organizing art
asset packages, and supervising lead artists and designers.

Other production duties included lighting the entire map, creating all the
matinees for the end game cinematics, creating blockouts and gameflow
of the map using BSP or placement of art assets, importing assets into engine
and applying/creating Unreal materials to those assets.

During an 11 week pre-production schedule, my team had to prove that the game not only could work artistically, but
that it could work technically. This required making two maps, one for art and one for tech. The first four weeks
were spent creating a working domination game and cinematics. With only a team of two artists and myself, we were
able to accomplish this with myself creating the entire level, making a few assets and the cinematic. The art map was
made in under 4 weeks by a team of 4 artists with myself overseeing their work as well as all the level duties. This
included importing/placement of assets into the engine and level, materials, lighting, and cinematics. The screenshots
below are of the art level. This turned out to be a great learning process for when it came to actual production.

The challenge of lighting this entire level became a trial and error process. My idea for the lighting scheme came
from the sense of immersion I felt from th dark night time lighting in Pirates of the Carribean attraction. In keeping with
the stylized and cartoony feel of the art direction, I also knew that the lighting would need to be colorful and
saturated as well. This proved to be a challenge to balance both of these contrasting ideas. I also felt that the
starting areas for both teams needed to have distinctive lighting as well. The pirate side was lit with cooler, more
sickly colors and the civilian side was lit with a variety of warmer colors.

Technically, I knew I couldn’t use a lot of lights if the map was to play at a high framerate. Creating lightmaps,
using a directional light as my base helped tremendously. During the production phase we had the lights set on
their own separate streaming level so it would be easier to make changes to. When baking the final map, the
lighting level was integrated into it with no performance issues what so ever.

Our main goal was to create a map that matched the cartoon and stylized feel of the art and characters. The
gameplay and map needed to encourage fast-paced traveling and constant action. Vertical gameplay, including
roof jumping and multiple building levels were also needed. The level designers made a new map every week for
the team to playtest through. At one point, there was a struggle trying to get the map size just right, so in about
two hours I created a BSP blockout that worked for our goals and was fun to play in. Another challenge that
came up was a balance between art and design. At times during the playtesting phase, the map would play great
but wouldn’t lend itself to the art sense and direction we needed. Other times the level looked great but played
horribly. Eventually we found a great medium between the two principles.

The mermaid fountain I used to set the humorous tone I wanted for the game in pre-production. It was modeled inside
of Max with a holy poly version made in ZBrush. The normal and ambient occlusion maps were projected using xnormal.
The concept behind the fountain was that it was taken by the pirates in a raid at one time and while they obviously loved
the female appearance of the mermaid, they thought it would be amusing to have the water sprout out of her nipples. So
they sealed off her mouth, where the water originally came from and made holes in her nipples. I encouraged the art team
to come up with details and backstory to assets when appropriate.