Vindication
Platforms: Windows PC
Genre: First Person Shooter
Engine: Trenchbroom
Skills: Multiplayer Level Design, Combat Design, Play Testing.
Roles: Level Designer
Repo Link: https://github.com/JakeRe/Vindication_Quake_Map
Vindication is a two to four-player multiplayer map with two floors, taking place inside of what appears to be some sort of cathedral in a circular format between the player spawn zones. This is intended to be a free-for-all map, with the intent of being a sort of eerie place without being outright scary. The reason for picking this particular location is I think that it fits the scenery and the style of Quake, as being a sort of temple. Quake features a lot of this in its tile sets, thus making Vindication feel like a natural addition to the map pool. This is a map that will be easy to understand, as it will be largely symmetrical with a spire around the center which will act as both a landmark and a piece of cover from players on the bottom floor looking up.
In starting the Vindication project, I knew that before I began, I should familiarize myself with Quake and how the player can move within it. I figured that considering I had played the modern incarnation of Doom, in both Doom 2016, and Doom: Eternal (2020), I would be prepared for the speed at which the player would be able to move. I was half right. While yes, the player could move fast in both aforementioned titles, Quake was a different animal entirely. I could move incredibly quickly in relation to the enemies of the level and to previous games that I had played.
What I knew then, was that the map needed to support this fast movement speed. Not necessarily making it a large map, but by making movement and elevation changes a central theme. Verticality, and a circular flow, I felt would do the best to utilize both of these features. As for color palette, I wasn't entirely sure, until I checked out Trenchbroom's texture library. Trench broom had a large variety of stones and fires, but what drew my eye was the stained glass windows. This, was where I found my inspiration, and I would go and make a sort of gothic cathedral for the map. Albeit with a circular design.
Beginning Ideas
Bubble Diagram
Trench broom had a large variety of stones and fires, but what drew my eye was the stained glass windows. This, was where I found my inspiration, and I would go and make a sort of gothic cathedral for the map. Albeit with a circular design.
After I figured out what I wanted to accomplish I started to draft up the first design of the map. I wanted to use an octagon as a base and have an obelisk at the center. So I made a bunch of the map into a network of octagons. A large amount of the cover in the map would be the pillars that held up the ceiling on both the top and bottom floors. To mix things up, I also wanted to have an element of lava on the map to give it more of a foreboding theme. As a result, I made the first draft of the map, with a total of sixteen pillars and eight staircases, one for four sides of the octagon and four for the player spawn areas.
Graybox First Pass
10/12/2020 marked the start of the Grayboxing process for Vindication, this aspect of the design was a bit tricky, as I am new to the Trenchbroom engine, however rather than start with the center of the map and working my way out, I am starting with the player spawn zones. The reason that I am doing this is twofold, the first is to give myself a sense of scale as to how large the map is going to be. The second is that I want to get an idea of where I want the first floor to end and the second floor to begin. The octagonal shape of the spawn room also gave me an idea as to how I would make the much larger central chamber. Something that I had noticed during our time in playing Quake's deathmatch mode, is the pathing in relation to health pickups and weaponry. When I figured out where the Grenade launcher was on the map, that was the weapon I found myself sprinting for the most. As a result, I am making an addendum to the obelisk idea. The obelisk is the centerpiece of the map from the bottom floor, but it is also where the most powerful weapon on the map is going to spawn.
What I noticed after going through a first pass with the graybox is just how open the map is. Quake has a fast-paced playstyle, and as a result, a lot of the maps are smaller, tighter, and with more enclosed space. Whereas Vindication has a ton of longer sightlines. What I am going to do to fix this is change up a bit of the upper level to fit more of an enclosed design like a cathedral balcony. With some windows peering down onto the lower floor in some areas with walkways up top leading to the tip of the obelisk and leading down.
After noticing the issue, I decided to leave the map as laid out on the original design plan for the sake of testing, and I have added some nail gun placements just to enhance the longer distance combat that this map offers. The idea of having the power weapon on top of the obelisk still stands, however, I will wait to see how people play the map first and foremost before I make any additions.
Playtest One
After running a playtest from a match with a few players, I had learned a few important details about the design overall. The first thing being that the items on the map felt as if they were placed at random to a majority of the players. That being the ammo on the lower floor and health on the upper floor. That is one of the more important aspects of the level that need to change, as it was one of the lowest rated scores on the survey that I sent to my testers. Players did find it easy to find others, which is good, however an issue that I have with the map is there are areas that the players would go to that would be death traps later. So, I'm thinking I'll make aspects of them more playable. Potentially adding a teleporter to take them to another part of the map in these sections in the lava. There were also textures that were missing from the playtesting variant when we went to play with it. So I'll need to change those textures accordingly.
These are some data representations of the results of the survey from the play test. From what I had learned from the survey is that the thing that needed to be improved for the most part is the placement of items and the placement of spawns on the battle field. The items being the thing that received the lowest average of all of the other questions. As a result I had added more items and made the rocket launcher in the direct middle of the map guarded by some walls.
Graybox Changes
As a result of the feedback that I had received from my play testers, I had altered the positions of some health items, using them to guide the player to the landmark and the rocket launcher in the middle. There are four symmetrical bridges that lead up to the top of the obelisk in the middle. I added a few walls that surround this room to add a focus onto the rocket launcher, and I want to add a light that's being cast onto the rocket launcher. Giving it this aura of being your salvation in the darkness of the temple. There are archways in the walls that lead into the obelisk at the center. As well as there being windows on the outside and only half of the walls on the inside have them.
This is meant to give the symmetrical map a way to make the sides distinct. Also, I noticed that players spent a lot of time battling in a more open section of the level that is supposed to be a hazard. So I added a platform just beneath the edges of the map where players can spawn in, allowing them to have a safe spot to jump down to as opposed to taking the ramps. Offering another exit and an additional layer to the flow of the map. Next I added some more pillars on the top floor, giving the players more options for cover as they fight on that level.
Lastly, I refined the geometry around the ramp leading up to the top level from the middle, giving a player transitioning from the bottom floor to the top floor more cover than previously. I also changed up the ramps leading into the top level to be actual stair cases, these are uneven for a few sections to give the illusion of them being poorly constructed, as I wanted to add a feeling of ancientness to the structure, making it feel old and improperly made. The pillars are also just plain, as they were not important to the structure of the overall function of the map before the players arrived.
Playtest Two
While the new additions to the lay out went over well, there were a few exceptions that stood out to me that I wanted to fix. The first of which is the balancing of the rocket launcher. The rocket launcher is too easy to acquire for players, and the person who picked it up first was the one who dominated the match until their health was gone. The rocket launcher's knockback too could launch players into the surrounding lava pit. As a result of this from playtesting I am going to change up the weapon from the rocket launcher to the grenade launcher.
This could also be a cause of the other issue where another player said that they didn't spawn safely all the time. I think that changing what the power weapon is on the map could do a lot to help. This was the one negative aspect of the level that my players made clear to me in this round of testing. What came up after this was the areas that I added in that iteration, that being square platforms on the edges of the octagon. I wanted to give players the option to jump down and away on the outside, however, it was clear to me that these inhibited the flow of play and I was the only one who used them, so I took them out of the game. Two of the players ranked their overall experience as very positive where as the third player ranked it very negatively. This however, I think is due to the spawn killing problem as addressed in the early half of this entry. What I also changed is the navigation aspect of the map, I wanted to make it clear where the players were in relation to the center, and the respective halves.
The intended affect of the changes that will be applied will be that players will die off spawn less frequently, and prevent players from being launched into the lava on the surrounding of the map through changing the map power weapon. Another issue that came up was navigation, since the map is symmetrical and looks like it's circular, there isn't much that deviates one half from the other. This comes down to the textures that I had chosen for the pillars and the lighting. Since the symmetry is a part of the map's design overall, I knew that I needed something to differentiate them, as such I made a "Heaven/Hell/Purgatory" texture layout. That's something that I'll explain in the next entry.
Graybox Pass 3
The following screen cap is of a textured area that I refer to as "Purgatory" the map is divided into two halves based on the texture of two different pillars. One being red and dark and the other being bright white, these sides are "Heaven" and "Hell" respectfully. The intent here is to create an environment that showcases a corruption of an originally saintly temple, hence why the rest of the map uses darker textures, and the brightest light in the map is also where the strongest weapon can be found. The emotion and feeling that I wanted to invoke was that the temple is the last hope against a creeping corruption.
However, there's hints in the map that this temple is not saintly, as when the players get into the undercroft of the map they see the blood and skulls that are the foundations of the obelisk, meaning that the map has been this way for a while and things have gotten out of hand. To give the undercroft an ominous feeling, the lights underneath are all a pastel red color, to also give the lava an enhanced glow. An issue that I had run into when it came to looking at the weapons on the bottom floor, I noticed that they were a lot harder to see due to the red lights and it being a black item, so what I had done is I used some lights and set the weapon as a target for it to focus on . This created a bright circle underneath the item that illuminated it better for players to see.
This image is an example of the Heaven/Hell Dynamic on the upper level.