Atlas Falls takes place on a Federation controlled Oil Rig located in the Drake Passage. The Ghosts are sent in to destroy the rig in order to distract the Federation fleet. The mission was designed to be an intense assault on enemy territory. The mission begins with the Ghosts observing the base camp of the rig from under the ice using a snake camera. The team explodes the ice creating an awesome moment of enemies falling into the water as our team assaults the base camp. A few friendlies split off to locate and commandeer a getaway chopper. The goal of the mission is to override the pressure regulators on the rig to blow the derrick and hopefully cause enough damage to make the oil rig inoperable. Once the players team accomplishes this, they head to the main Pipe Deck area to disable the water suppression to spread the fire and destroy the entire rig. Our team of Ghosts make a daring escape by jumping off of the collapsing rig and catching the safety ladder of the chopper just in the nick of time.

I worked on this mission for a large portion of Ghosts production timeline. Initially I was responsible for building out the intro, the base camp, and the main refinery area on the top of the rig. During the blockout phase I redesigned the catwalks, and the pipe deck area at the end of the mission that were originally blocked out by an artist. I made the spaces accommodate a better combat experience and added raising cargo holds around the catwalks to make them more visually interesting as the player fought through the space. The end pipe deck was especially fun to work on. Having an enemy on an MG at a raised center position gave me an opportunity to use the area as a really nice CQB encounter. The parallax of pillars mixed with the bundles of piping made for some nice chunky protection as players navigated the fire and oil spattered environment.

Concept Art by Simon Ko | Kevin Chung

• Researched Oil Rigs | Gathered Reference with Artists

• Designed Mission Structure | Collaborated with Narrative Team

• Blockout of Mission | Combat and Narrative beats

“The Ghost Killer” is the last mission in Ghost campaign. One of the more challenging aspects of designing this level was the fact that train missions generally deliver a more linear and straight forward experience. The idea from the start was to hang the train from large support structures to help vary the look. I tried to break up the standard monotony myself by adding as much verticality and diverging paths as I could. There are also areas where the player can raise or lower the catwalk paths that surround the hanging missile parts to deny enemy pathing. Once on top of the train, players were able to navigate the ridged machinery and fend off an enemy helicopter as an enemy fires an RPG at the train suspension.

At the start of production, the mission constantly had technical hurdles since we didn’t have any moving platform tech in CoD at the time. A programmer (Ben Kutcher) had to create and edit countless systems in the CoD engine to make this level possible. The mission had a fast turn around as it was one of the last to go into production, and the train BSP had to be converted to models in order to work with the moving platform tech. Despite the technical hurdles, I feel we were able to deliver an experience players would remember. In fact, the cliffhanger moment in the missions final beat is still consistently discussed on and speculated about on various CoD community sites. The cliffhanger moment was developed and scripted by Cody Pierson, and I laid out and built the space.

Concept Art by Simon Ko | Kevin Chung

• Created Level Pitch with Lead Designer for Directors

• BSP Design for Suspension Train and Level Vista

• Worked with Programmers for adjustments in collision system