Category: maps

Progress Update #6 – Map Progress

06/07/2016

We’ve been working on adding a layer of polish to all of our in game assets. The first thing we wanted to go over was our balcony map.

We’re constantly developing our art style and trying to figure out exactly how we want Helheim to look. Below are some screenshots of the map as it has progressed over the last few months.

Garden Balcony Version 1

This is one of the first playable versions of this map. We were trying to test some different water colors and in this particular screenshot. The original plan for this map was to make it a ruins of the plateau jutting out of the side of a massive mountain. We had a difficult time getting the mountain to look nice in this perspective with our fairly limited resources.

Garden Balcony Version 2

Eventually, we decided to replace the concept of setting the map on the side of a mountain with making it a garden balcony on a massive skyscraper. This suited our lore quite well and made for a much easier time getting the backdrop to look right. We also tuned and increased the overall level of detail with this revision.

Garden Balcony Version 3

In our current version, we decided to increase the overall level of detail again. We’re still trying to find the balance between how much detail we want in the game compared to how clear we want the gamestate to be. We also went over the level design in this version, adding new obstacles and removing others in an attempt to adjust how players naturally use the different parts of the map. As you can see, this version of the map also contains a flags for our CTF game mode.

Posted by: Eluem on 06/07/2016

Progress Update #5 – Water Mechanics

03/28/2016

We’ve finally fully implemented the first iteration of the set of mechanics for how the player will interact with the water on the new cliff map we’re working on. Surprisingly, creating some of the interactions required a lot of rengineering of core systems that were already implemented. So, it also required a TON of refactoring. The main reason for this is the fact that we wanted to create a concept of being “under” the bridge when you fell into the water. At first, this sounds like it’d be some fairly trivial physics or mechanics. However, when you take into account the fact that this game runs with a 2d physics engine, it becomes a lot more complex.

You need to set up tons of layers and complex systems to determine when the player (and other objects) will be interacting with the water or the bridge. After iterating through 2 entirely different systems for implementing this, I found one that I felt would serve us well enough for the types of interactions we would like to support. It’s still an art to actually implement the system into different maps… but I’m pretty happy with what we have now.

Balcony Map

Posted by: Eluem on 03/28/2016