C-Engine Editor Level Designer User Experience Case Study
Team Size: Solo Project
Time Spent: Two Weeks
Introduction
C-Engine Editor Interface
C-Engine Editor is a map editor released by Techland for making custom maps for their game zombie parkour game Dying Light 2. It is accessible through Steam and targeting the general player's community. This case study aims to research the user experience of the map editor for beginner-level mappers and suggests solutions for the issues found.
Understanding the Problems
To understand the nature of the problems, a user test was first conducted to explore the potential user experience issues of C-Engine Editor.
Test Set-Up
Test Subject
Name: Bigby
Work Experience: Collaborated with level designers as a narrative and game designer with experience in grey boxing and set dressing. No full-time level designer experience.
Goal: Want to be a full-time level designer.
Test Process
The tester was asked to make a level from scratch in the C-Engine Editor with total creative freedom. The tester was encouraged to think aloud about issues and experiences he was facing. The tester was notified at the one-hour mark and the level-building process stopped at the same time.
Issues Found
Choosing an NPC preset n C-Engine Editor
Ladders in C-Engine Editor.
Issue A: To identify an NPC preset as a zombie or a human character is very time-consuming.
“I’m not familiar with the engine. So sometimes I gotta take some time to figure out which NPCs are zombies and which are humans. I usually judge them by names.”
“It doesn’t feel very good. I think unless you are the developer, you would then know how assets are named. But I don’t know which is a zombie and which is a human character most of the time.”
Issue B: Not sure if an NPC preset has gameplay or if it is just serving narrative purposes.
“I’m not sure if the NPC has gameplay or it’s just a narrative NPC.”
Issue C: To find a zombie that runs faster is also time-consuming.
“I wanted to know if changing the tier level would make the zombie run faster.”
Issue D: Unable to determine if the ladder is climbable or not.
“I can’t tell if the ladder is climbable or not. I did it once but I can’t remember how to do it again”
Exploring and Materializing the Solutions
Issue A, B, and C Analysis and Solution
New preset selection design with categories radio buttons
Analysis
Issues A, B, and C stem from the fact that all presets are mixed into one category. The tester also suggests that finding out how much faster a zombie runs is not really that useful. More often than not they just want to know if a zombie can run to not.
Solution
The proposed new design adds AI Type and AI Logic categorizations to speed up the searching process. A [Run=True/False] note is thus added to preset names for clarification.
Issue D Analysis and Solution
New ladder selection design with tooltips
Analysis
There is no clear indicator to show if a ladder is climbable. To make a ladder climbable requires setting up and scaling a volume indicating a climbable area and aligning it with the ladder mesh. This knowledge might not be immediate to many beginners of the engine. The ladders in the “Groups” section all have the volume built-in. The tester might used one of the ladders from the “Groups” section when he said he managed to make the ladder work once.
Solution
Add tooltips direction users to pick ladders from the “Groups” section.
Reflection
Minimize user’s gap to the tools
It’s common to see game studios release their in-house tools to the player’s community for content generation. However, players are not part of the development team and they are not aware of the knowledge such as naming conventions that are shared among the team. Lower this knowledge barrier is crucial for the usability of the tools
Balance efficiency and robustness
Adding more categories for assets could always speed up the search process. But it also loses its robustness quickly as a certain way of categorizing things might not work for another type of game project when the theme changes. Finding the best trade-off point according to the current project needs and making the adjustments should always be the priority