Diablo IV

Dungeons, and procedural content

On Diablo IV, I was part of the Dungeons team. We were responsible for designing and implementing the game’s procedural dungeon content. We focused on defining how each dungeon felt from the layout and flow of whiteboxed tilesets to the unique gameplay events and monster encounters that brought those spaces to life.

A huge part of my role on the Diablo IV team was the dungeon event pipeline. Being early in development I was afforded the opportunity to not only create cool dungeon events, but to lay down the foundations for the system itself! How do we procedurally create events? How can we leverage procedural systems to build events that can be repeatable and reused without being stale and repative? I owned the full lifecycle of dungeon events, from ideation and design to implementation, scripting, polish, and documentation. Events ranged from ambient storytelling moments to high-stakes, multi-stage encounters, all tailored to Diablo’s dark, dangerous atmosphere. All the while leveraging monster factions, behaviors, environmental themes, and pretty much anything else we could think of, to create procedural events that people would be excited to find in the world! I also scripted environmental interactions, monster behaviors, and AI using LUA and the proprietary AXE editor, and created countless monster abilities specifically for dungeon use.

This position afforded me huge amount of daily callobration with other departments. I worked with artists on asset creation and dungeon theming, as well as closely with engineers to maintain performance and system integrity within our procedural pipeline. I also spent as much time as possible with QA to ensure stability, and most importantly, to help keep the fun front and center. I've found that I often get extremely excited by other people's ideas and I would seek feedback and collaboration as often as possible. I believe great ideas can come from anywhere, and I strive to always be open and attentive to what people can bring to the table.