FORTNITE FESTIVAL

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BRINGING THE MUSIC TO FORTNITE!

Fortnite Festival is just one of the many game modes added to the immensely popular gaming experience that is Fortnite. Festival sees players taking the stage to play along to their favorite songs on the Main Stage (much like Rock Band), or mix those songs together on the collaborative Jam Stage (much like FUSER). And of course, there's plenty of instruments to pick, whether that's singing your heart out on vocals, shredding on guitar, slapping the bass, mastering the keytar, or slamming on the drums!

FACTS

Developer

Harmonix Music Systems

Publisher

Epic Games

Role/Development Period

QA Analyst (7/2022-10/2023)
QA Tester (11/2021-7/2022)

Engine

Unreal Engine 5

Responsibilities

QA
Level Design
Documentation

Platforms

CONTRIBUTIONS

One of the key parts of Main Stage's gameplay flow is Backstage; the waiting area that players spawn into before and after gameplay. Here, they can add songs to their setlist, calibrate their audio and video, explore the environment, and interact with other players in more traditional Fortnite gameplay.

Early on in development, we didn't have a dedicated level designer to work on the space. And because of that, a lot of the team felt that the path from Backstage to starting gameplay wasn't very clear. I had also felt that it didn't really reflect what backstage at a concert looked like, so with all that in mind, I used some free time to build my own level design for the space. It started out with making sketches of what I though would make the space look good and properly guide players to the key progression points. After that, I taught myself how to properly set up a level in Fortnite's version of UE5, and used pre-made assets to build everything.

Once I had my design in a good place, I presented it to our lead to see what he though. He'd give me feedback and notes for how I could improve the design, and I would do another draft with these notes. Eventually, we got to a place where we brought in our lead artist and UX designer for their thoughts, and after some discussions, they decided to have me do a full level design exploration. For this process, our UX designer made a few design sketches that were passed on to me. It was my job to take the sketches and build each of them in UE5 like I did with my first design.

While none the designs I made were the final product, the work I did had a big impact on the Backstage that was released. In particular, I thought it would be awesome to have a balcony where you can look at the stage from below. Seeing that in the space when Festival released made me beyond happy, and reminded me that the work I did was super important for helping that space be the best it could!

While QA was my primary responsibility on Fortnite Festival, I always made an effort to help out on the game design side where I could.

Game Design

Wrote design specs on potential features, and presented them to team leads.

Built various level design concepts as part of official level explorations.

Learned how to use Unreal Engine 5 through classes that I also began to help teach.

QA

Built testing tools in Unreal Engine 5.

Planned and organized testing sessions with the entire team.

Coordinated with production and other developers to triage and prioritize bugs reported by the testing team.

Wrote test cases, build test requests, and risk assessments of owned features.

Participated in daily scrum meetings with other developers to stay up to date with each other's work.

Much like FUSER, I took charge of organizing regular playtest sessions. Every week, it was my job to compile a list of new features and changes since our previous session to prepare for our team-wide playtests.

Using this info and my own knowledge of the build's current state, I would create an outline for the sessions. This would include:

What build we were testing
A short guide on setting up the build
A short description of what to look at (modes, features, etc.)
Any bugs to be aware of
Directions on how to properly report new bugs in Slack

During these session, I elected not to play most of the time and acted more as a moderator/note taker. Then once the session concluded, I would write a short report on feedback that was given, bugs that were discovered or showed to block testing more than expected, and a list of suggested actions the team could take in response to the feedback.

My final step was starting discussions with a few other team members after the sessions. First, I would notify production and the team leads about the report I'd written and see how they wanted to respond. Afterwards, we would turn to bugs; if any already known bugs proved to a large blocker, I would start discussions on escalating a fix. Lastly, I would compile a list of new bugs that were reported and write a Build Test Request to investigate each one. This would be handed off to our testing lead, who would then verify and assign the BTR to testers.

Following Harmonix's acquisition by Epic Games, we had a lot of team members that weren't super familiar with Unreal Engine 5. So to help resolve this issue, one of our new technical designers started teaching classes on learning the basics of the engine. I was beyond excited for these, and always made an effort to attend when I could.

During these classes, there was never any homework, but I always wanted to make sure I understood what we went over as best as possible. With that in mind, I always did a personal exercise after each class, which often ranged from getting the 3rd person template character to jump higher, changing the color of a box, or learning how to build and use a Structure. And eventually, it got to a point where I even started prototyping features and tools for Festival.

As it turned out, people really started to take notice. Shortly after the classes started, the teacher invited me to a separate meeting for continued learning among Harmonix designer, which I immediately said yes to. During that time, we often showcased anything we were working on, but also helped out with planning the main class. I even got to teach an entire section of the class on Enumerations, which has always been something I use a lot in Blueprints.

POST-MORTEM

There were a lot of things I took away from working on Fortnite Festival, both from a game design and QA perspective:

GAINING/SHARING KNOWLEDGE OF NEW TOOLS

The more I pushed to do design work on the project, the more I found myself picking up new tools. I started teaching myself how to use Figma for visual game design documents and also Perforce to make check-ins to the build, but the biggest example of this has to be my experience with Unreal Engine 5. I got to learn a lot about setting up levels and creating blueprints, but I also took time to learn about standard assets already in Fortnite. Pretty soon, the rest of team took notice of this, as I had a lot of instances where people were coming to me to show them how I set up assets. Overall, this reminded me how helpful it is to share knowledge with others, which is something I always want to do in the future.

PRESENTING MY DESIGN IDEAS TO LEADS

I pitched quite a few design concepts to our leads during development, whether that was the level designs I did for Backstage, or writing specs for new game mechanics. I think it showed me a lot about I could improve the level of clarity I use in my documents and pitches, and because of that, I feel like the design documents I write now are a lot nicer and cleaner. On top of that, I feel like these experiences did a lot for my self-confidence. For a long time, I was scared to talk to the team leads about ideas that I had, but the more I did it, the more comfortable I got, and a lot of pitches I did lead to next steps, such as explorations, design discussions, and more.

PRIORITIZING MULTIPLE PROJECTS

I was in a pretty unique position while working on Fortnite Festival, as I was also a member of Harmonix's "Legacy Projects" team that continued work on FUSER and Rock Band Rivals. Because of this, there were a lot of times where I had to switch gears and balance a lot of different work. During this time, I found that there were a decent number of miscommunications about where my focus should be, and I could definitely see the impact it had. In the future, I want to make sure I'm more prepared for that if I find myself in a similar situation, but on the whole, I'm really grateful for this experience. It taught me a lot about my own time management and knowing what I should work on first, so I'm confident I'd be able to handle a situation like this again if it arises.

BILLY BEANLAND
Game Developer

wcb482@gmail.com