Guest What We Are Up To - Level Design and Evac

We’re hard at work polishing up one of our exciting new maps named Evacuation Point. The polishing phase is much more than just “tightening up the graphics on level 3”. At this point in a map’s development we have to add the icing on the cake and take the map the final 10% so it goes from “good” to “great”.

• Collision: making sure the player will be able to smoothly move around the map without getting stuck on anything.
• Pathing: specifying where zeds are allowed to walk, and where they aren’t.
• Audio: adding triggers that play different sounds based on what the player is walking on (rubble, newspapers, etc.)
• Spawning: setting the speed at which zeds can spawn, and where they can spawn from.
• Dosh bling: placing collectible dosh bling through the map for achievements.

Here’s a good example in Evacuation Point:

Spoiler!

When a level designer is presented with a situation like this, there is a lot of fine tuning to make sure that this plays well. For example, we have to make sure that the rubble piles are smooth to walk on top of, so players don’t get snagged and can easily shoot zeds. The large hole in the wall has also presented some issues where large zeds have trouble fitting through the hole at the same time. We solved this problem with a few methods:

• A larger hole that gives plenty of wiggle room.
• A special “chokepoint trigger” that turns off collision between zeds as they walk through the hole.
• Smooth collision on the rubble that prevents players or zeds from having to jump as they walk through.
• Force the pathing network through the hole so that zeds will not hesitate to walk through.

There are some other ways to add polish to this situation. We’ve been experimenting with a “triggered audio” system which has actually been used in many games for years. These are the green boxes that you see in the screenshot above. When a player walks through one of those boxes on top of the rubble pile, we play an audio file that sounds like someone walking on top of rubble. These little touches add to the realism and immersion of the map.

When it comes to spawning, we have a “spawn rate” that determines how fast zeds can spawn during gameplay. This is part of a more complex algorithm that spawns zeds at “peaks and troughs”, so the action goes from relatively fast to relatively slow, with rest periods so players don’t get exhausted.

Let’s look at how level designers can spawn zeds around the map. In the first example, we use a “spawn volume” which contains a green cylinder for every zed that can spawn inside of it. We can specify which zeds can spawn inside of a volume, such as fleshpounds, crawlers, or a boss. We also have a “portal spawn”, which allows zeds to spawn inside of air vents and sewers right next to the player! These can already be seen in other KF2 maps.

Spoiler!

These are just some of the important aspects of level design in KF2. Stay tuned for more!

Guest What We Are Up To - Level Design and Evac