On Marvel’s Iron Man VR, I was a mission designer. My duties included:
Building and maintaining systems for optional missions
Creating 15 optional missions using those systems
Bringing 2 main story missions and those optional missions to final polished states
Worked directly on multiple levels for a publicly available demo
Working on combat and score tuning across the game
Primarily, I spent my time scripting in Playmaker FSM, editing levels, and collaborating with teammates in every department.
combat challenges
When I was brought on, the main story missions were already underway, and some ideas for optional missions had been iterated on for a bit. A simple idea was to have “combat challenges” where the player would fight waves of enemies.
I started building these out by having levels where you had a set amount of time to clear a set number of waves, and if you failed to do so, you would fail the level. We found this was a bit too harsh on new players, so I reworked them and came to our final version. Now, you have to clear 5 waves of enemies, and you are scored based on how quickly you accomplish this task.
These required a decent amount of iteration and tweaking to get the encounters to feel relatively unique and challenging, while also feeling like you deserved the score you got.
Flight Challenges
Another early idea for optional missions was flight challenges, wherein the player could practice flying and attempt to beat set times. I built the base system for this setup, along with all of the different types of waypoints, which help test the player’s different abilities.
These also required quite a bit of iteration, with a focus on getting the paths to feel smooth and interesting, while also letting the player go as fast as possible. The scoring on these also had to be tweaked continuously, as its all based on the time it takes to get through the course. As we changed the player’s top speed, acceleration, and boost settings, these had to be tested and adjusted to match.
I truly feel that they have ended up in a solid, highly enjoyable state, and I find them all fun to race through multiple times, trying to get the best time I can.
Main Story and Post-game
I also got to build one main story mission from scratch, and I took over another from one of my coworkers partway through development. One was a tutorial mission, and the other took place right at the end of the game. Along with those two, I also got to work on a post-game challenge, which is meant to be for highly experienced players.
Working on a level for new players and two other levels for players who had made it through the entire game was a really enlightening experience. The tutorial level had to be as player-friendly as possible, and take its time making sure that each player had ample opportunity to learn and get ready for the main game. On the other hand, the other two missions expected a solid understanding of all techniques and abilities, and expected the player to be fluent with everything.
It was really interesting to get to develop such disparate missions, and it really helped me better learn how to get into different mindsets of players.