Hateforge Manor
Platforms: Windows PC
Genre: First Person Shooter
Engine: Trenchbroom
Skills: Level Design, Encounter Design, Combat Design, Play Testing.
Roles: Level Designer, Encounter Designer.
Repo Link: https://github.com/JakeRe/Hateforge-Manor/wiki/_new
Hateforge Manor is a single player Quake level developed using Trenchbroom centered around a spooky and cold atmosphere around a mansion in the forests of [Redacted]
You have been wandering through the forest for several hours, it is cold and you are frigid. You happen upon a mansion here in the darkness, seeing your salvation you head in, however, things are not quite as they seem. Fight through to purge the darkness from the Heart of Hateforge manor and uncover its secrets.
Inspired by lovecraftian elements, I wanted this map to reflect the classic haunted mansion theme, as a result the walls are covered in portraits, has several hidden areas, and multiple secrets that are locked away and out of sight. The process for making this map was a fun one being perfectly honest. I started with the process of developing a theme and the Alice WAD by American McGee was the perfect source of inspiration. The portraits made me want to develop it into a mansion full of hidden passages. While it was ambitious for my first map, I felt that I met the challenge admirably. I plan on developing more features on this map in the future. Such as a secret in every room and maybe expanding the mansion to have an outside area at some point. The MAP file and BSP are both available for download in the Repo.
Beginning Ideas
Bubble Diagram
This is where the concept for the overall level began. I wanted to ensure that I had a solid layout and idea of how I wanted the map to flow before I truly got started.
1. The Foyer: Safe Area - No Enemies The foyer is where Terrance Hateforge would greet his guests, this area is wide and has a structure in the middle with torches that light the room. The foyer's purpose in the game will be to establish the tone and introduce the player to the setting, this is a safe area along with the original front forest that the player came from originally.
2. The Dining Room: 1 Combat Encounter introduces the swarmer. The dining room is where a lot of the engagement with the darker rituals that the Hateforge family delved into were conducted, as a result, it is more empty than before, yet offers clues to the darkness that lay deeper within.
3. The Study: 2 Combat encounters, 1 with 3 Knights and 1 with 3 dogs and 1 Wizard. The player Acquires the Undercroft Key from here. The study is where Hateforge had learned about the dark arts and their master, as a result of his experimentation, it is one of the more heavily guarded rooms in the manor.
4. The Kitchen: 2 Combat Encounters, Introduce the Heavy, 3 Swarmers One Combat encounter: The doorway seals behind the player and they have to fight an Ogre in close quarters. This room was where the Hateforge family would have their chiefs cook for both them and their guests, when the family began to delve into darker arts, the kitchen was also a place where they would bless their meals of other humans, particularly the homeless and lower class. Player Acquires the Ballroom Key in the Kitchen Freezer
5. Master Bedroom: 2 Combat encounters. 1 Wizard, introducing the wizard. 3 Knights and 2 dogs. Acquisition of the Study Key. This room was originally the resting place for Hateforge and his wife, in which the two of them would sleep. However, in the later years during Hateforge's experimentation, the room became little more than a solitary place for his wife to rest. As she would in time grow distant from her husband and engage in the more debaucherous activities of the family and their cadre of participants
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6. The Ballroom: 1 Combat encounter, introduce the Knights, 3 of them, Acquisition of the Master Bedroom Key The player enters this room and is one of the more intense combat encounters, as this is where the most engagement in the darkness occurred, hordes of dogs and knights attack them as they finally acquire the Master Bedroom Key.
7. Undercroft: 3 Combat encounters, 2 wizards, 4 dogs. 1 Heavy, 1 Wizard, 3 Knights. 2 Heavys, 2 Wizards, 3 Knights. The Undercroft is where all of this began and where all of it must end, delve deep into the heart of Hateforge to cleanse the darkness from this world and cast it back into the void. Hateforge sacrificed his family for ultimate power here, and he too paid the price, his body and soul becoming a part of the manor itself, having been manipulated by the Dark ones.
Study Top Down Encounter Map
After making that markup diagram of how I wanted the map to flow. I looked closer at the details of how I wanted the encounters to work for the more complex areas. The first of these was the study, and the second was the kitchen.
1. Unaware of the enemies within it, seeing the key that is on top of a desk in the far end of the room, the player enters the area.
2. The door locks behind them and the knights emerge from around the bookshelves and rush the player. The bookshelves allow the player to kite around the knights and push them into areas that make them easier to pick off.
3. After defeating the Knights, the player then moves up to the top of the desk to pick up the key, which triggers the spawn of the Wizard.
4. The Wizard spawns in and three dogs spawn in the room from three different angles to rush the player.
5. The player kills the dogs and the wizard and goes to look for a way out of there. The player will try to leave the way that they came in, but the door is still locked.
6. The player will have the option to look for and find a button to open the display case holding the armor.
7. The player looks around for a way out, when they find a button next to a book case that opens to reveal an elevator that leads them into the freezer of the kitchen and into the kitchen itself.
Kitchen Top Down Encounter Map
1. The player enters the space, seeing the crates in front of them leading toward a cabinet and a hall that swoops off to the left.
2. The player moves forward down the hallway. The player gets a large sweeping view of the kitchen, as well as seeing a new weapon on the table and a button that they can push.
3. The player moves to push the button which attracts the attention of the heavy enemy in the area and the player begins to fight. The player can use the massive stove island as a means to break up the distance between the heavy and them and use the cover down the hallway as a means to evade the grenade attack.
4. The player claims the Super Nailgun from the stove island locked behind a descended bar arrangement, while also spotting a long hallway which leads to a key.
4. As the player goes to get the key, they fall through the floor and into a large grease trap.
5. Four swarmer Zombies rush their way toward them as they come around the corner, giving the player an opportunity to play with their new weapon.
6. The player approaches a button that opens leading back into the kitchen.
7. The player spots a button after leaving the level and heads to go get the key.
8a The player pushes the button and watches as a pantry shelf moves off to the left.
8b The player enters the spot behind the pantry to acquire some bonus items to help them in their survival.
9. The player unlocks the door to the freezer and acquires the ballroom key, as well as some health in case they don't find the secret door.
10. The player then exits the area back into the dining room.
Metrics
What I wanted to avoid when I ventured into making this map was getting far into the process and realizing that there were areas that were too small. As a result, I created a small map that would allow me to experiment with the metrics of Quake and figure out what I wanted to get in regards to scale. This is a brief video that showcases the explanation of the metrics.
Graybox Pass One
After I had created the sketches, I decided to start off with the floors for the graybox. However, that process took a lot longer than it should have just because I was debating a lot on how the rest of the map should look. Ultimately, considering that I was too low on time to not make nothing, I started with the first three floors leading into a sketched out room of the level. Those rooms were the front Foyer, the Dining Room, and the Kitchen. The kitchen in particular was when my process had started to diverge and change, in particular with the creation of the Grease Trap segment of the kitchen encounter. In order to make it the best as I could, I found that I needed to make the walls and a gate just to get an idea for how I wanted it to work. As a result, I found a joy in making the gates, I wanted to make the gates for some rooms before I had the walls up. For the dining room specifically, I had a combat encounter that I wanted to have, but I ran into the same issue that I did when I was first drafting up the idea for the study, that being the creation of the "Door Problem." In which a player would enter a room, see a bunch of enemies and funnel them through the door. In rooms with lower amounts of cover such as the Dining room, I knew that I had to think of something creative. Since I was loving the idea of secret doors at the time, I decided to use a secret door to allow an enemy to come into the room. In future passes I might do the same thing in other aspects of the map just to make it feel more interesting in terms of combat.
For the most part, I stuck to the ideas that I had laid out on the sketches that I had made, but there were some issues that I had run into for some encounters, such as the introduction of the dog swarmer enemy. The issue that I ran into was that the player would enter the door and just funnel the enemy through it, so I decided to create a secret door that opens up and reveals the enemy to them. I used a lot of the structures of the map that I had already made to hide enemies from the player until it was too late for them to back out of the room. This was a philosophy that I had used for other enemies in this level too, making sure that they were out of the player's sight when they first arrive in each room.
Something that I was particularly proud of was the Study combat encounter. In which the player picks up a key and picking up the key causes them to be introduced to a new enemy: the wizard as well as the dogs. It took me a bit to understand how to use the info_teleporters and turning an entity into a trigger but getting that to work was another concept I used to deploy a heavy after a key was collected from another area on the map. After doing this adjustment with the monsters and spawning them in, I learned of an issue: the secret in the Study area hindered combat. So, I elected to remove it but keep the pick up from the secret in the room for the player.
What I had changed for the final encounter space was a lot, the first being the way that the room is set up. Based on some feedback from a player they suggested that I add more cover to the space and extend the columns to the ceiling. I thought that it was a good idea, in also I added some more pick ups and an additional floor for them to climb up to for some verticality to make the combat a bit more interesting. These also had the side effect of making the space feel large, but not empty, which was a problem that the original design had.
Playtest One
Playtest 1 Feedback Chart
(1 needs drastic improvement, 10 minor improvements can be made)
Play Test Date: 12/10/2020
Most Prominent Issue: Ammo: players were running out of ammo by the time they reached the final encounter.
Second Prominent Issue: Stagger Spawning In Final Encounter: One player was eager to finish the level however had encountered increased difficulty due to the enemies of the final encounter being present in the room all at one time.
Third Issue: Adjust the position of doors as to prevent Texture Overlap.
The feedback after the first playtest that was conducted using three individuals with some moderate experience in Quake. The individuals were asked to complete the level and I observed them as they commented on their decisions. The initial feedback was positive across the board with the exception of one particular field, that being the amount of ammo that the player gets as they move through the level. This is something that can be fixed by adding some more ammo packs throughout the space. The second issue was one that would require a bit more effort but could still be handled within a reasonable timeframe, as it would just be adding a teleporter and a new monster closet outside of the map. The issue of texture overlap is just with the doorways so that will take no time at all to adjust.
The questions asked for each category is the following:
Layout - the map included landmarks and good flow; platforming and paths were appropriately designed. I understood where to go next. There was appropriate cover and the layout supported well-designed enemy encounters.
Pacing - The level featured rising and falling action with clear "wow" or climactic moments. The difficulty scaled well with no spikes. Enemies and ideas were introduced one at a time and later layered together. Level includes verticality and lighting variety. Ammo, health, weapons, and other pickups were distributed to support good pacing.
Immersion - The level has a coherent theme and or narrative. Geometry, props, lighting and texture work support the theme. Scripted events and enemy behavior support immersion.
Engagement - The level is creative, interesting, and or fun. You don't want to quit before finishing. You would share the level with a friend.
Additional Comments: "My favorite part by far was the giant loop that leads back around to the kitchen. I would prefer if there was just a tiny bit more ammo, though."
"The pacing felt really good. I was slightly worried about my ammo count, however, as there were a few times when I ran out in a tough situation."
"Other than the doors clipping, the map is pretty great. I can't wait to see it with details. Perhaps in the last room stagger the spawning of enemies?"
Playtest Two
Playtest 2 Feedback Chart
(1 needs drastic improvement, 10 minor improvements can be made)
The most prominent issues are primarily aesthetic, such as stairs not being flush with the wall, and buttons not moving into spaces.
The data compared to last week's is an improvement across the board. The questions that were asked were the same as they were the previous week. However, the data trend showed an overall increase even with an additional playtester. In terms of what I may need to adjust is just these small things as addressed by one of my other playtesters. What the intent of this test was to compare the last week's testing data to this week, and see if adding the textures, lighting, and iteration on previous feedback would improve player reception. With that in mind, I kept the same questions from the previous form and kept the ranking system the same. The engagement rating, however, is a 1-5 rating as opposed to a 1-10. The reason that I had done this was engagement I saw as being more of a hardline stance than the other aspects of the map's design.
In comparing these results together, I found that the map had significantly improved.
Additional Comments:
There were some times when I couldn't really figure out where to go after picking up a key. However, the immersion and details were really good, so it was hard to get lost.
I really love how your interactions play out
incredible detail and furniture!
I would say all you really have to work on in this point is ironing out the little details like the occasional clipping door or what have you. Other than that, I think what you have here is a really solid map that absolutely lives up to its haunted mansion theme.
Lighting And Texturing
Lighting and Textures in the Dinning Room
After finishing up the graybox for this level I had started to look for a WAD that would fit the theme of a creepy mansion, as a result of that I had taken to Quaddicted for a wad that could fit. The WAD that I found was Alice, by American McGee, and taking elements from that and the original Quake WAD to make this map. One of the goals that I had in mind for it was making sure that the map's individual rooms all had different textures for the ceilings, walls, and floors. Each room had it's own furniture that made it distinct from the others to add landmarks to make it clear as to what room is which. Bookshelves and wood were used to create the furniture that is all over the map and to define the regions. The study for example has four freestanding bookshelves and a fifth hides a secret passage. The passageways I also made to be dark, damp, and dirty through use of moss and slime based brick textures. These made these areas look the way that they do. I also wanted to see what the map looked like before it was lit, so that I could properly make the lighting to show off the textures. The reason for that was because if the lighting was used on prototype wads, then it would look different for when the map was textured.