Hi guys! So I'll cut to the chase, I'm the Project Lead for a game called Wolves. It's a multiplayer fangame of the OG Xbox game, Mechassault by Day 1 Studios. Development is speeding along at a breakneck pace and everything is going well, the reason I'm making this thread is because I'm kind of at a loss when it comes to conceptualizing maps for games that aren't Halo. The hope is that by surrounding myself with a community dedicated to map making, I can learn some theory that I can carry over to this project. The first big puzzle is this: maps in games like Halo are built with one (or two) player movement speeds in mind. Well in Wolves, almost every mech has it's own unique speed depending on the weight class. (For example, light mechs can full on sprint but assault mechs can only jog. Some can't go any faster than just walking.) So in this case, if we were to speculate, would it create a more enjoyable experience to balance maps around the fastest possible movement speed? Or the slowest? Another good question is how do you create good verticality for a game where only like, 50% of the mechs can jump? I don't want my maps to be flat, but I don't want to create an environment where the only viable option is to pick a mech with jumpjets. So yeah, I just want to pick your guys' brains about concepts like that. Get a second opinion from an external source. Thanks!
I think Hawken had some pretty cool maps for mechs. Titanfall kind of does the counterstrike style of design for their mech pathing. I gues the biggest thing is the type of comabt the game has and what your goals are for the multiplayer experience as a whole. I would try to build maps that promote a variety of styles. If you are going to build something vertical. You can't let that point be to advantageous if there is no direct path to the high point. Try to make it so these high points are more situational positions rather than a defining feature of the maps macro. Play with overlap in your maps as well because this can create verticality without ruining balance if done correctly. It can also improve spawning. Hope that was helpful and if you got any questions just shoot me a PM.
I was thinking something similar. We had a few people play the game and we took some feedback. I'll show you the changes we made. As of today, the beach surrounding the island flows much more naturally with lots of rising and falling areas in the sand. Mechs with jumpjets can freely enter and exit the city area from any point, but there are still lots of direct paths for mechs that can't jump. I also added rocks to create a staircase route to the elevated area. But jumpjets are more than strong enough to take you all the way to the top and so the rocks don't actually help in any way. We moved some buildings around to accommodate streets. Lastly, we added this section. It's the only divide in the entire beach. Mechs with jumpjets can easily go over it but mechs without will have to go around.
so one thing I can tell from that map is that on the beach side it wouldn't be a bad idea to have tunnels that went under the map towards the center that came up top. and that last picture where the jumpjets can go maybe have a path going under the ramp. It could also not be traversable but just a los that the players can shoot through. There are lots of micro things you can do to balance out the discrepancies between mechs.
from the bottom left corner how do people get into the middle? Also from your on map screen shots and also by looking at the overview the map seems to have a decent amount of deadspace. I would play with the idea of having slight elevation changes throughout man made part. So besides the buildings you can use the maps own geometry to manipulate sightlines.
So about the negative space, it seems like there is a lot, but because mechs are so large and tower over buildings, we can't fill up the space with a ton of solid objects without restricting the movement of the player. It's kindof like when you drive into a forest in Forza Horizon and wonder why there are so little trees. I like your idea about changing the elevation in the manmade area and I think I know how to do it.
Here we are. It looks pretty silly that the stairs are so huge when you think about the scale but the map needs to be fun before it makes sense. Still lots to polish.
Obviously could be deceiving but it looks like about 5 units. I was going to throw something together in unity real quick but if I can't get units, I'll just guess relative to other objects and then it can be rescaled later.
Because the stairs are at their original modeled size, they show up as 1:1 I'm not sure where else to find the unit value for these.
That's perfectly fine. I threw together a quick block-out playground. I'm not sure if it will help you but I added a bunch of variation that you could mess around with, see aspects that you like and maybe try to emulate them if you want to. If not, it's no big deal, it only took me about 10 minutes. By the way, obviously I have very little info about the game and this isn't by any means a level that I think could play well. Literally just a test level to mess around with to see what kind of scenarios are fun, balanced, or whatever to potentially help you define a style without being limited to design theories of other games. Do you have a discord so that I could send you the OBJ?