Delivery At Dusk Design

Delivery at Dusk Design Synopsis

Delivery at Dusk is an Ian McQue flying barge simulator where you play as an Energy Deliveryman who must collect and deliver energy cargo to the Lighthouse before nightfall.

To create an immersive experience, the garage interior was designed to be dark, intimate, and enclosed, contrasting with the bright, vast exterior to create emotional range and spatial diversity. This contrast enhances immersion by framing a large exterior reveal that expands the player’s understanding of the world, encouraging a sense of exploration and possibility beyond the initial space. Immersion is further reinforced by allowing the player to enter the vehicle, while cinematic transitions are used to bridge spaces and narrative beats, maintaining continuity throughout the experience.

The exterior environment was designed to support the flying mechanics, emphasizing scale, clarity, and spatial readability. Open sightlines and large-scale landmarks provide strong points of reference while airborne, allowing players to confidently navigate the space, experiment with movement, and maintain a clear sense of orientation throughout exploration.

To ensure the level felt complete and natural , the project was structured with a clear narrative arc:

Beginning: Garage interior (intimate, character-focused exploration)
Middle: Energy cargo collection (engaging, ship-focused interaction)
End: Lighthouse rendezvous (cinematic, environment-focused conclusion)

To support the whimsical solarpunk theme, energy pickup locations were designed as large, megalithic sustainable energy structures. These structures not only served as narrative elements that reinforced a hopeful, renewable-energy-driven world, but also acted as clear visual beacons indicating objectives.

Delivery at Dusk Level Design Doc

Project Intentions

Demonstrate an understanding of how level design and environment art harmonize to create an immersive narrative experience that is communicated through space, shapes, mood, and player interaction.
Demonstrate that I can take an idea from concept to polished prototype that explores possible mechanics and style.

Level Core Statement

Ian McQue flying barge simulator where you play as a Energy Deliveryman that must collect and deliver the energy cargo to the lighthouse before nightfall.

Project Pillars

Immersive environment / experience
Satisfying drift / flying mechanic
Complete narrative experience
Whimsical Solarpunk world

Level Sequence

Take control of player in room as the radio receives a new transmission (player has new delivery job).
Player steps out of room - garage reveal
Ship is out of power and player needs to complete power transfer
Player explores garage for generator
Player finds generator and powers the ship
Player lowers the plank to board the ship
Player enters ship controls (Controllable Character switch to ship)
The garage door opens - vista environment art piece
Player takes off
Player learns controls to ship
Player searches for the cargo
Player gets the cargo
Player reaches rendezvous point
Game over

Level Requirements

Must see rendezvous point from the garage
Must see the pick up points from the garage
Must see the rendezvous point from the point you pick up the cargo
Must see other pick up points from any given pick up point
Must be able to fly from each poi to another poi (not one set path)

Approach & Production

I am responsible for all aspects of this project. This project was completed in a span of 30 weeks during my final three terms at Gnomon. The first 10 weeks were spent developing the ship flying mechanics and a level layout tool. Weeks 10 - 20 were spent developing the garage interior, the skeleton playthrough of the level, and lookdev of stylized post process. Weeks 20-30 were spent on the exterior level art/design and polish.

Weeks 0 - 10

This project is my first experience with blueprints and object oriented programing. A huge thank you to the Unreal Dev community for the amazing documentation and information that is put out on the internet for free. This project would not have been possible without YouTube channels like Pitchfork Academy, Visual Tech Art, and many more.

The flying mechanics were roughly based on Tiny Wings and Haste. My initial idea was that you would treat the updrafts like you would the hills in Tiny Wings or Haste.

As I developed the mechanics I managed to figure out an interesting drift feel. This also helped play into the narrative of flying barges because it started to feel like sailing/jetsking in the air.

Once I had the ship mechanics and updrafts more or less figured out, I built a track tool that would help me quickly iterate on layouts.

Originally my plan was to make a fully procedural level that would generate every time you play, but I quickly realized my hubris.

The track tool I made used a spline to generate a track the player would have to complete. This tool would auto deform the landscape to create a path and spawn updrafts along the track. At the time the tool would also spawn static obstacles, and "police" ships that would chase you.

This tool definitely did not give me any final layouts but it helped in experimenting with level layouts to test the flightpath flow.

Weeks 10 - 20

In order to keep this project scalable, I wanted to bring the interior to a relatively high level of completion before moving onto the exterior so if I ran into any major issues I would have an interior level piece where you just unlock the ship.

After completing the flying mechanics and level layout tool, I focused on making the experience more immersive. More specifically, I wanted to create immersion through interaction and exploration.

The most obvious way to add interactivity was to make it so the player could board the ship. So, I set out to design a space that the player can explore before boarding the ship. I considered player autonomy & choice, compression and release, and vertical layering in the design of the space.

In hopes of maximizing immersion, I set out to create seamless transitions between gameplay and cinematics. I found that this made the experience much smoother and made the transition of the player controller feel more natural.

I also sculpted a custom character and used Mixamo to auto rig and for animation cycles for the character animation blueprint. I felt that having a custom character was more immersive than the UE Manny.

At this point I wanted to set a visual bar for the rest of the level and figure out my initial workflows for how I would complete the level art. I spent a fair amount of time iterating on lighting and texturing to improve the design of the space. An example of this would be implementing a red motif for the objectives of the player. The radio is red when you load in, the ship is lit red when you have to power it on, and the Lighthouse (the end objective) is red.

After fleshing out the garage interior. I revisited the exterior and did a rough layout of the environment. I blocked out where the pick ups would be the general location for the Lighthouse Rendezvous.

I did not do a 2D map for the exterior environment because of how important the movement and speed of the ship was to the gameplay. I also had a level tool that made it very easy to find the initial flow of the map.

Weeks 20 - 30

The final 10 weeks of this project was more art heavy. I spent a lot of time on PCG systems that helped me stay flexible while designing the space.

Since I had most of the mechanics and level scripting done, a lot of my time was spent adding detail to the exterior, and polishing what I already had implemented.

I found that the read of the exterior became very muddy as I added level art into the environment. So I spent a considerable amount of time removing a lot of the initial detail I added in order to maintain clarity.

In trying to bring clarity back into my piece, I took a more conservative approach when adding detail, and tried to use the least amount of assets possible when filling out the exterior. I also simplified the read of my post process materials to emphasize clarity even more.

See art breakdown for more.

Retrospective

Deliver at Dusk was a valuable learning experience that deepened my understanding of how level design and environment art come together to create immersive, interactive spaces. Throughout this project, I focused on designing environments that support player-driven exploration, clear progression, and environmental storytelling.

This project reinforced my interest in building cohesive worlds where space, interactivity, and narrative are closely connected, and it pushed me to think holistically about the player experience from start to finish.

If you have any questions about this project or are interested in collaborating, I’d love to connect. I’m eager to continue creating thoughtful, immersive experiences.