Nighthaven is the newest expansion to release into the supernatural-themed sandbox MMO New World Aeternum, shrouded in mystery, where the dark holds sway over the light in an entire new zone, raid, and Catacombs game mode. Set on the mysterious island of Aeternum during the Age of Exploration. Players can customize their look, skills, and abilities, gather resources, and grow in power while playing solo or teaming up with others in variety of PvE and/or PvP battles across over a dozen distinct zones.
Team:
Amazon Game Studios
Roles:
Level Design, Set Dressing, Optimization, NPC Lighting, Playtesting
Ownership:
Various POIs, NPC Lighting Rig
Tools:
Azoth/Lumberyard, Maya, Photoshop, Substance Painter, Premiere, Perforce, Jira
World Builder / Environment Artist
Harmonized level design and set dressing with gameplay by working closely with Design, Quest, and Environment Art Teams
Owned multiple points of interests from concept to creation including the entrance island to the new zone, two small town layouts, a handful of graveyards, and more
Explored and Defined visual guideline and created a kitbashed modular kit to be used with new procedural Catacombs feature
Worked with quest and tech teams to create modular rooms and components for both open world and procedural catacombs
Grivaros
Grivaros went through a few layout changes before settling on the current layout. I worked with quest designers to establish layout and flow of the first quest upon entering Nighthaven. During the blockout phase, I put emphasis on the establishing shot of entering the town to see the church and placed normal buildings in the front to seem like a normal town with the further back buildings being destroyed to indicate that something has gone wrong the longer you are in the town. I also created a beautiful corner to set the set dressing standard that was later done by Tom Aleot and Brian Patenaude.
Mar Amar
Mar Amar is a small vassal town to Castle Dracul that I worked with the quest team to blockout a layout based on narrative and quest beats. I used a modular housing kit and some foundations to blockout the main crossroads and focus on the entrances establishing shots. To accommodate for quest beats, I broke down one of the houses to platform onto the neighboring house’s roof and tightened, blocked off, and added platforming elements to some side paths for a chase sequence. Set dressing done by Tom Aleot and Brian Patenaude.
Graveyards
There are various graveyards throughout Nighthaven that are different from the graveyards through the rest of Aeternum. I made the blockouts of various graveyards throughout Nighthaven using Joshua Stubble's graveyard kit. I started with foundational blocking out for the upper class mausoleum areas then worked outwards with the pathing and fencing and littered them with more mausoleums and regular gravestones. Additional set dressing done by Michael Bacon.
Catacombs
The Catacombs are a procedural dungeon crawling activity new to New World Aeternum Nighthaven. I explored visual development and created a modular kit/style that influenced the Catacombs by altering meshes from an existing kit to save time and resources. I made the kit to work on a 4m grid. Block outs of these halls/rooms were done by Nixx Du using my kit and I did additional set dressing along with Baro Park.
Esagila
Esagila is a long forgotten castle that has been overrun by spiders. The deeper you go, the more tangled the webbing becomes creating a feeling of claustrophobia. I set dress Esagila with all the spider webs, props, and lighting using the web mesh and decal kit made by Jonathan Tucci. Building up the layers of webs took great patience and attention to detail to fill in just right. Design and Blockout done by Jonathan Tucci and Daniel Keating.
Crang Sacru
Crang Sacru is haven where uncorrupted werebeasts and humans gather to plot to fight back the corruption. I set dress all the areas shown to give them more structure and feel lived in after Jonathan Tucci designed and blocked out the space.
Cronewell Cathedral
Cronewell Cathedral is an abandoned site that has started to become reclaimed by the Angry Earth through the Azoth Daughter Well that it was originally built around to harness its power. I worked with Quest Designer Ben Barker to bring Cronewell Cathedral to life from blockout to set dressing using Joshua Stubble's cathedral kit.
