Level Design - Cutscenes

To create a narrative experience, I learned how to make cutscenes to impliment into my level.

The first cutscene I made was for the opening of the level. This was mainly done as a scripted event, as I did not have to use the Take Recorder for this. Here, the player enters the level through boat as they plan to storm the Parliment Building. There is then a panoramic view of the building, along with a zoom into the window, before it fades out.

This was done through keyframes, where the boat moves from the edge of the map to the Cargo Ship. This meant it moves to a certain part of the map, with them reaching this part of the map by the time the keyframe is designated for. As you can see, the boat's path can be seen in the editor.

Additionally, I also used Keyframes in moving the camera. I did this to give a viewpoint of the area, similar to how levels start in 3D Mario games, in showing the player the enviornment around them, before hinting at their pathway through the emphasis on the broken window.

I had the player simply spawn in the boat to save the effort of using a Take Recorder for them, as they had no movement while in the boat. However, I was able to use the Take Recorder for the final cutscene, where the player escapes through the balcony after concluding their rampage.

To do this, I recorded the player's actions while in-game using the Take Recorder, where I had them jump off the building. Then, I pasted this onto a Subsequence Track, and had cameras view it from changing angles, while building tension in establishing the height of the player's jump.

For the final part, I used a Fade Track, which uses Keyframes to determine what strength and speed the fade should be coming in at, in order to trick the player into thinking the level is over. Then, I put the same skeletal mesh the player has onto a static mesh boat, and had them move similar to the one in the first cutscene, showing the player survived.

To impliment this into the level, I used a Trigger Box, where upon the player colliding with the box, they are hidden from view, and the cutscene plays with the player recorded from the Take Recorder, as there isn't meant to be any player input during this cutscene. Additionally, I also got the duration of the cutscene so the game knew how long to delay exiting the game.