The Ring Breach
Mission for a Third Person Stealth Action Adventure Game
Embedded Files
Development Information
Genre : Third Person Action Adventure
Engine : Unreal Engine 5
Context : Personal Project
Project Details
Mission Design and Pacing
Branching Level Design
Blueprints
Gameplay Ability System (GAS)
Behavior Tree, State Tree
Data Layer, Level Instance, Level Sequence
Gaea 2 - Terrain
Blender - Circular Building Blockout Kit
Project
Inspired by spy thrillers, this mission tasks the player with infiltrating a bustling annual tea market to track down a high-value helicopter pilot, before sabotaging his extraction at a fortified compound.
My goal was to design a cohesive mission with a strong emphasis on immersion, exploration, and pacing. By offering multiple options for every situation, the level seamlessly blends social stealth and stealth-encouraged combat arenas, all driven by a line-of-sight gadget system.
Mission Design
Pitch
A syndicate has occupied a rural village right in the middle of its annual tea market. They are preparing to extract a highly valuable cargo via helicopter from a secure compound located deep in the surrounding fields. As a covert operative, your mission is to infiltrate the bustling market, track down the pilot, and sabotage the cargo at the main compound by any means necessary.
Location: Inspired by the rural landscapes and architecture of the Fujian Province, China.
Characters
You (The Player): A highly skilled covert operative equipped with an gadget system.
HQ: Tactical support providing intelligence and radio guidance throughout the mission.
The Target: A helicopter pilot responsible for the syndicate's extraction.
Walkthrough
Reach the Tea Market
Drive
The mission opens with a driving sequence where the player navigates toward the annual tea market.
Hanging lanterns act as environmental leading lines, naturally guiding the player to the building.
Enter the tea market
First Encounter
Bluffing: The player can use a unique 'Bluff Token' to deceive the guards and walk through the gate.
Toxic Stun: The player can use the gadget's Toxin to target and incapacitate each guard.
Electrical Distraction: The player can use the gadget's Electrical mode to trigger a car alarm and draw the guards away.
Alternative Path
The player can spot an open window on the third floor with visual cues indicating a climbable route.
By exploring the surrounding area, they must find and push a movable platform to reach the window and infiltrate the third floor.
Choosing this route saves critical Gadget resources for later encounters.
Locate the Target
Social Stealth
The player can eavesdrop on civilian conversations to gather intel on the VIP pilot's location.
The player discovers the target is located near the "Tea X" stand and is in a hostile mood.
Reach the Target location
Second Encounter
Bluffing: If not used previously, the player can use their unique "Bluff Token" to bypass the guard.
Gadget Stun : The player can stun the guard.
Gadget Distraction : The player can trigger a radio alarm to distract the guard.
Hack the target's phone
Hack the phone
Hacking Initiation: The player must start the hacking sequence by targeting the NPC's phone.
Tailing Sequence: The player must tail the target. The hacking progress pauses if the player gets too close or falls too far behind.
Forced Interruption: The player cannot finish the hack entirely. Guards block the path when trying to follow the target into the private rooms, forcing the player to find another way.
Reach the private room and finish the hack
The target is secured inside a private room, pausing the hack. The player must find another way to get in range and resume the hacking process.
Bypass Guards
Bluffing: If they haven't used it previously, the player can use their unique Bluff Token to bypass the guards.
Gadget Stun: The player can stun the two guards.
Alternative Path 1
By eavesdropping on a conversation, the player learns the floor above the private room is broken. They can navigate to the third floor to get a line of sight on the target from above.
Choosing this route saves critical Gadget resources for later encounters.
Alternative Path 2
Eavesdropping on another conversation reveals a breach in a nearby storage room. The player can find a window, open it using their gadget, and reach the private room.
Choosing this route saves critical Gadget resources for later encounters.
Reach the compound
Pacing Break
Pacing Break: The player engages in simple traversal, providing a deliberate pause in gameplay.
Atmospheric Shift: Rain begins to fall, progressively introducing the final setting.
Building Urgency: The sudden arrival of the extraction helicopter overhead naturally creates a sense of urgency.
Infiltrate the compound
Main Gate
The main gate is the most obvious route where trucks arrive. This path offers a standard, balanced difficulty.
Window
A hard-to-reach window that requires gadget resources to open. The approach is more difficult, but rewarding as it completely skips the first floor.
Moat
A hidden, stealthy entrance. It is the easiest way to bypass the exterior guards, but it leads into a more difficult section of the first floor.
Neutralise the cargo
The final objective is to neutralize the cargo suspended by the helicopter. To do this, the player must navigate the upper levels and cut two stabilizing cables.
Cutting a first cable instantly alerts all guards on the second and third floors. However, because the player is positioned above them, they can use the high ground to quickly drop down and eliminate the enemies if they act fast.
Short Path
The most direct route, but very difficult to stealth. It is built for players who want an action-heavy, shooting approach.
Long Path
A safer, stealth-focused route. The player can access it by spotting a crack in the third floor from a safe zone (refuge space).
Hijack the helicopter
Set piece
For the climax of the mission, the player must neutralize the helicopter by disabling the lightning tower on the roof. Without this protection, the next lightning strike hits the chopper directly, shutting down its systems. The player can then hijack the helicopter to make their escape.
The final encounter is foreshadowed from the very beginning in the tea market, as the opponent is actually the helicopter pilot.
Level Design
Level Design Overview
Tea Market
Outpost
Compound
Design Process
Ideation: The setting was inspired by an upcoming personal trip to the Tulou Hakka in China.
Gathering References: Visual references were collected using both Western (Google) and Chinese (Baidu) search engines.
Mission Pitch: The mission pitch and the step-by-step player progression were drafted.
Terrain Generation (Gaea): The base terrain was generated before starting the paper design, allowing the procedural randomness to inspire "happy accidents" for the layout.
Blockout Kit (Blender): A custom blockout kit was modeled for the circular building to ensure precise collision.
Macro Level Design: The overall composition was established by placing the main buildings and tracing the road network.
Paper Layout: Designed the 2D layouts for the main gameplay arenas.
Blueprints: Created all Blueprint logic for the gadgets, AI cameras, and interactive elements.
V1 Level Design: The first full playthrough was built, integrating objectives, dialogue systems, rough Level Sequences, and the initial climax.
V2 Level Design: Extensive playtesting drove iterations across the mission pitch and all gameplay elements and sections, events, and the climax.
References
Blockout Kit and Terrain
Blender (5.1.2) Modular Building Kit
Gaea (2.3) Attempt at creating terraces directly in the terrain
Early Iteration
Final Iteration
Technical Implementation
Climax - Helicopter Set Piece
Helicopter Logic
Dynamic Target Tracking: The boss finds the nearest spline point to the player using "Find Input Key Closest to World Location" and adds a sine wave offset based on "Get Game Time in Seconds" to create a natural side-to-side strafing motion.
Seamless Spline Looping: To prevent snapping when crossing the spline's start/end seam, absolute distances are converted into 0-360° rotation values. An "RInterp To" node calculates the shortest path across the seam, and the output is converted back into an absolute distance.
Smooth Aiming: The helicopter continuously updates its orientation to face the player using "Find Look at Rotation", smoothed by an "RInterp To" node for fluid tracking.
Blind State: The player can target the helicopter and stun it for 10 seconds. When blinded, a local Yaw rotation multiplier is applied.
This coupled with the Wobble make the helicopter to erratically spin out of control.
Idle Wobble: A continuous relative rotation is applied to the Roll and Pitch axes, driven by a Sine wave, to simulate aerodynamic instability and hovering.
Stun State: It halts the active logic and systems, utilizing a Timeline and Lerp nodes to animate the crash trajectory.
Lighting Strike - FX Niagara
I built this modular Blueprint system to make a procedural lightning strike hit a lightning rod on a loop, and later strike a helicopter once. It extracts any target Actor's world location and feeds it directly into a Niagara emitter.
By managing timer handles, the setup seamlessly switches between continuous and single-fire strikes on the fly, ensuring the lightning hits the exact mark perfectly every time.
Using Data Layer to change the level design
To simulate the progressive collapse of the compound's roof, I dynamically loaded and unloaded Data Layers to trigger explosions and the structural collapse.
AI Camera
Modular Architecture
To ensure easily maintainable code, the architecture was divided into distinct components:
BP_AI_Camera (Pawn): The main actor. It handles the physical components and sensory components (AIPerception). It contains no complex state logic on its own.
ST_AI_Camera (State Tree): The hierarchical "brain" of the camera. It listens to AIPerception events and manages all state transitions.
STT_Camera_[State] (Tasks): A series of scripts (Search, Inspect, Alert, Investigate, Hacked). Each task is completely independent and making it easy to add new behaviors later.
State Tree
The State Tree is organized hierarchically to prioritize global events over standard behaviors:
Operational Branch: Handles the core stealth gameplay loop.
Search (Sweeping area) ➔ Inspect (Detection in progress / red flashing) ➔ Alert (Player spotted / alarm triggered) ➔ Investigate (Player lost, cooldown timer before returning to search).
Hacked Branch: A high-priority global state. If the camera gets hacked, the tree immediately interrupts any active task in the operational branch to disable the camera.
Using Level Sequences to create Gameplay Event and Cutscenes
To communicate key events to the player, I used several Level Sequences throughout the mission, using triggers.
The mission features 5 Level Sequences :
Helicopter flyover: Flies overhead to establish a sense of urgency.
Trucks entering the compound: Draws the player's attention to the gates and the level's layout.
Climax intro: A cutscene featuring the helicopter to reveal the final objective.
Roof collapse: Occurs during the climax to surprise the player while under pressure.
Outro: The ending cutscene that concludes the mission.
Gadget System
Description
A line-of-sight gadget system inspired by the "Q-Watch" and "Dart Phone" from the game 007 First Light, allowing players to hack electronics and manipulate NPCs.
The project features two distinct gadget powers.
Content
A modular, data-driven hacking system powered by Unreal Engine's Gameplay Ability System (GAS). It handles Raycast target detection, Gameplay Tag-based ability execution, and features a dynamic UI.
Content Details (Click to see more)
Core Blueprints
Overview of the core Blueprints of the gadget system.
AC_GadgetEmitter
Manages the player's core loop. It handles the Gadget Mode inputs, performs continuous Sphere Tracing to identify valid targets, and triggers the corresponding Gameplay Abilities (GAS) upon execution.
Note: Click "Graph" to fix the blueprint connections.
An example of a Spot Light with the "AC_GadgetReceiver". Designers can easily script unique object reactions, like turning off a light, in a clean and event-driven manner.
GA_Gadget_Base
The core GAS ability logic. Upon activation, it validates the Emitter's current target, consumes the required energy resource, and dispatches the successful event to the target's Receiver component.
Note: Click "Graph" to fix the blueprint connections.
WBP_GadgetUI
Widget that evaluates the current target's Gameplay Tags and Data to update the UI's visual feedback based on the gadget power.
Note: Click "Graph" to fix the blueprint connections.
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