2020 – Present
As a Principal Mission Designer at Respawn, I was hired as a level designer and scripter, and that has been my primary focus. I’ve made many levels for our unannounced titles which I can’t show.
I also worked with engineering to build our own scripting tool that extends Unreal Blueprint. I gave requirements and feedback, and developed the standards for using that tool, which was used extensively on a Star Wars FPS project.
However, I’ve also done so much more. I have been the lead on multidisciplinary teams focused on building core features of the game. I worked with engineers, artists, designers, the UI team, narrative, and especially with production to make sure we all understand the goals and stay on task.
I also discovered a love for tools. I worked to extend the Unreal Editor and increase productivity for other designers and artists. I made tools for quick geo blockout, editing lighting, starting a level at a specific checkpoint, editing navigation, and more.
For example, many of our level designers like building blockouts with brushes since brushes remain as objects in the editor and can easily be edited. However, Unreal Engines brushes are legacy and no longer perform well, so we stopped using them. Unreal’s modeling mode is very powerful, especially Cube Grid, but any changes made to meshes are destructive and the history can’t easily be edited. This was used by level designers on my team and other teams.
To help with this I made a dynamic mesh actor called the Non Destructive Boolean mesh that allows a designer to perform mesh boolean operations (union, intersection, subtraction) on a mesh and keep the history so it can be edited at any time. This allows a designer to easily adjust a doorway or the size of a room or any other such change with a few mouse clicks.
Ryan Pendant - Level / Game Designer 