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Level Specifications

Engine: 

Number of Players: 

Genre:

Game Modes:

Development Time: 

Unreal Engine 4

Up to 32

First person PVP and PVE

Six different gamemodes and eight different layouts

Four months

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Map Gameplay
Designing Fair Long Range Engagements 

Bab (gate in Arabic) was partially completed when I was brought on board as it's final level designer. It was originally created as a singleplayer story map where players would fight through a city towards an ancient fortress. My job was to change this linear level into a map capable of supporting PVP, PVE and long range engagements. The map was additionally split in two due to it's large size, becoming Bab and Citadel. I worked on all areas, but my main focus can be found in the areas highlighted in the overview map.

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Bab was an experiment in opening the map design of Sandstorm, a highly lethal, tactical shooter, and giving long range players more opportunities. The interiors of the buildings were reduced, and open air objectives were added to increase the overall difficulty.

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This, of course, created many challenges and interesting problems to solve! How do you make these engagements feel fair?

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Advantage vs Disadvantage 

The largest challenge was providing fun advantages and disadvantages that worked for both PVP and PVE when opening the map to long range. A push pull of combat between players and AI.

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For Bab I designed four major points of long range engagement, built in a quadrant like system that surrounded the east side of the map. (See overview)

 

In Insurgency, most game modes go both ways across the map in both PVP and PVE, one of the largest modes being Push. All the designed height points needed to work as both a defensive and offensive position in interesting engagements that both sides could use in either direction across the map.

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Highlights and Clarity

To reduce feelings of unfairness I tackled long range engagements in the following ways:

  • Highlight and showcase where players can be at a glance so players aren't caught of guard asking where a shot is coming from

  • Cut sightlines and curate them severely so that unintended views can't be gained

  • Add a cost for the reward

    • For example: if you climb to the top of this roof you'll get an excellent view of the next objective but you'll have no cover at the top​

    • Another example: you gain the height advantage but the path to it is open, exposed and dangerous

It's also always important to make sure to add some fun moment to moment gameplay elements!

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