What is this project?

Engine : Unreal Engine
Level type : Multiplayer map/compound design
Status : Work in progress

Personal project based on Hunt: Showdown, an extraction shooter FPS game made by Crytek. A game I love for it’s ambiance, unforgiving gameplay mechanics and excellent level design.

Learning objective?
Tackle a new challenge that is multiplayer PVP map design, integrating Hunt’s main design principles, adding environmental narrative elements and improving my own design workflow.

Intentions

Steamboat in the center of the harbour
  • Making a map around a steamboat in the middle of an harbour area, where the boat would be the boss arena
  • 180°+ approach to the compound
  •  Multiple open and closed combat clusters, favoring from close to long range combat
  • Providing several traversal options to get in the compound and navigate within it
  • Taking in consideration how Hunt did their levels and applying the principles I’ve gathered as ‘core design‘

Metrics & tools

What did I need?

I wanted to begin the project with consistent metrics rules for elements that I’d be using a lot while building the map.
I also needed some basic interactable elements that would make the scene playable.

What did I do?

I took all basic metrics I needed from the game Hunt: Showdown and recreated them in my own project. Including openings (door, window, crouchable…), covers, jumping height/distances, character height, max slope angle etc.

Gym scene

Organised by little workshops, I can easily test my metrics and prevent fastidious changes that could have happened.
This allowed me to make rulers and basic guide shapes that would help me build the level more efficiently.

For a better testing experience and easier sigthline checks, I created blueprints for the most basic interactable elements, using visual scripting.

Doors and windows have 2 states and are animated. Added a hovering UI widget, appearing when the character gets close to it.

I also made a ladder blueprint that automatically create meshes to meet the modified ladder height value. This value can be changed by using the associated in-editor widget.

It uses a simple teleport script that will take you to the associated destination marker that you can modify in-editor.

What's next?

  • Adding details to the map including more environmental narrative elements
  • Makind the building’s insides (already sketched out ideas)
  • Placing interactable elements at key places including barrels, refillables and sound-related elements (Animals enclosures, crispy alerting ground zones, etc.)
  • Improving traversal possibilities through the compound
  • Adding ground textures maps

W I P