DM-SpaceGallery — mixing arena shooters and modernism
Converting a communal space into a competitive arena
The Task:
Create a DeathMatch level for Unreal Tournament 4, while emphasizing on a specific theme and setting. [modernism]
Development Time: 4 weeks
Engine: Unreal Engine 4.15
The Idea:
Starting out with architectural research into post-war modernism, and taking inspiration from buildings like the Dominion Tower by Zaha Hadid. From there, the idea of recreating a communal space inside Unreal Tournament formed, and it was clear that such an idea would presents challenges from the get-go. UT’s movement is built around utilizing dashing, sliding, jumping and side-strafing from cover to cover, thus level geometry needs to support that. However communal spaces are all about the openness and their negative space. Thus the type of building which would be represented was really important, as it could make or break the idea.
Moving forward, a modernistic gallery was the chosen civic structure. This would allow the use of art in this gallery as cover for players, whatever this art might be. Movement is key in Unreal Tournament, and the newest addition to the franchise makes adds wall-runs and expands the dashing to utilize geometry as a boost when executed correctly. Therefore a gallery setting would also explain the placement of unusual geometry, which players can utilize to their advantage. Both for cover and movement.
Movement Flow:
- Players shouldn’t be able to see/cover all exits of a room whilst standing idle anywhere in it
- Any cover geometry should be reachable via a single movement ability [dash], and a combination of abilities [dash+slide] in wider areas
Technical Level Design:
Movement:
In order to keep each area of the map fresh, ground boosts are introduced as an alternative to jump-pads, keeping the ground-first floor flow fast and executable from all over the map. Because Unreal Tournament is a highly skilled competitive game, it is important to provide players with multiple pathways, while visual hierarch makes sure that the number of pathways doesn’t overwhelm the player. The ground booster pads were part UT editor’s files, probably to be used in future game modes and maps. And while they are not in any of the official maps, repurposing them to work for DeathMatch wasn’t hard, and the community has positively responded to them, some even using them in their own custom levels.
Teleports:
Lastly, because the map does not have a circular flow, I decided to add two standard teleporters on each side of the playable area outside the gallery. What I also ended up creating was a custom teleporter, it teleports the player to one of three predetermined locations at random. UT is a game which players will play the same levels over and over again, and playtesting showed that these three locations are easily memorized by the players, and since there is 3D sound being played on entry and exit, if a player chases a player that went through the teleport, they can distinguish where their pray ended up based on sound.
The PowerUPs:
Introducing a brand new PowerUp within 3 weeks, wouldn’t yield a balanced experience, therefore the classic UDamage is the main powerup found in the level. But for the sake of experimenting. This bundle of ammo suspended in zero-g spawning every 30 seconds. It holds ammo for each weapon found on the map. So far the community likes it and there are no reports of it being overpowered.
The weapons:
Unreal Tournament has a teleportation weapon which all players have access to all the time in the CTF game mode. Because my map has unique vertical gameplay across two floors, I converted the weapon as a pickup, with 2:30 minutes as cooldown, this is particularly useful in the 1v1 Duel game mode (which is available for every deathmatch map), in this game mode having control over the Translocator weapon, becomes just as important as control over the PowerUp.
Theme and setting:
You might be wondering, why is all of this in space, and what does modernism have to do with it? And the answer to that would be:
42, maybe, I don't know.
But the space setting was a really nice way of explaining the edge of worlds.
The shift to space gave the map its flavour, and architecturally nothing changed. Having that planet ring one side helped orient players playing for the first time. It also helped sell the lighting of the level, as now the light source was visible on the skybox. One player from the community approached me with the proposal to have the art in the gallery be some alien geometry, and he used Rorschach’s inkblot. And this is really close to what I had envisioned myself when it came to the art of the gallery. And since this level won’t leave its white-box phase, I am glad that its space setting is pleasantly accepted by the community.
The Community:
Those green and blue designs on the lifts and speed pads are pretty cool. Haven't seen them used before, but I like them a lot. — UT community member, who asked me for permission to use the boosts in their map.
The map is very nice. I thought the space theme would fit something like an intergalactic art gallery with weird stuff on display. — UT community member reaching out trough Discord
I can see myself playing this in eliminations. — One of the first community playtesters
Here is a short gameplay clip, from the first community, playtest I set up for me and all the other design students in my class. This was during the second week of development. Warning: Language is not PG-13! :)
The level can be downloaded and played with bots via this link
It has also been uploaded to a few community servers, UT4Pugs being one of them
