MINI-Devlog #1 IOS & Maps

Hello everyone! Last week we introduced our new Mini devlog series with a lengthy apology for our absence. However this week we want to fully dive into the real meat and potatoes of our project starting with this months Mini Devlog! Focusing on our map design and the process that goes into them to bring our ideas to life.

Oh and also IOS news at the bottom of the article too, read all the way through for that please!

Map

The main map we’ll be focusing on in this article will be mansion, although we plan on having at least three maps at 1.0 release, Mansion is the most fleshed out one we have so far, so we’ll be focusing on that one for this log.

Mansion is set in the middle of a once densely populated, war torn urban Columbia (mostly inspired by Bogotá actually).

MAP DESIGNS & GOALS

White Box Example. NOT Mansion, but an old rework of Oasis.

It would come to no surprise that Maps are a very important aspect in any game, more so in a CQB. Before a single building or wall is created, we sit around in a big meeting room (a discord call) and discuss the main themes and gameplay elements we want to include in a new map. Aspects like the setting, location, lore, structures etc are discussed before we start diving into a rough layout of the map.

Once the rough layout is thought out we hand over the ideas and plans to our level designer who get to work creating a whitebox of the environment. As the name implies, whiteboxing is when a level designer makes a rough outline of the map using nothing but white boxes. In the picture here we have an example of one of our discarded white boxes of Oasis we made back then.

In the beginning of our project we learned a lot from white boxing, aspects like long hallways or linear environments don’t lend well to CQB games, especially on mobile. So with mansion and going forward, we try to provide plenty of cover and interconnecting rooms to prevent long range battles and performance issues. Additional details like furniture and wall paintings etc normally come last in the process, the less gameplay relevant the later it is added.

With Tileable Trim sheets, we can repeat patterns on any surface saving on performance! If you have keen eyes, you’ll spot other games doing this too! Those red lines show a comparison between the wall and the cubes texture positions.

As the white boxing is completed, we get to work into set dressing and filling the structures with interesting details. Texturing the map is one of the most time consuming parts of map development but it’s also the most rewarding. Slapping on a fresh wall texture is one of the most exciting parts of map development as it gives us a great sneak peak on what the map will look like when it’s all done

However due to the limitations of mobile graphics and ram, one cannot slap on an infinite amount of textures onto every single wall in a map. So to get around this, we employ one of the simplest techniques known in the art development industry called Trim sheets and Tileable materials that allow us to copy textures all around walls and spare peoples phone rams from exploding.

Graffiti and Poster shown in these pics are examples of AI assisted art creation.

There’s much more we can go into about our map creation process but we think it would be best to dive into environmental assets on a future devlog, lest this one gets too bloated.

Though one exciting note we wanted to touch on is our use of AI for some of the more menial tasks in creating set dressing art, since our team is so small things like Graffiti or newspaper clippings in the map can take a chunk of time to create for our single set dresser. Tools like AI boosts our productivity by generating the most time consuming parts. Our artist then goes in and fixes it up to match our artstyle and we think the results look quite amazing!

MAP CHANGES

We are constantly play testing and updating our maps design to make sure that it plays to our expectations

It can be difficult finding and fixing bugs with such a small team so the actual maps tend to be one of the most time consuming process’s in this games development. Even things as simple as changing the color texture of a wall can make all the difference in how a certain room feels during gameplay.

In the past few months, we have been constantly improving the environment of the map by adding more abandoned and damaged buildings, decals to highlight the rundown state of the town and foliage to show the overgrowth.

Our philosophy for environment art dictates that we have a brighter, more vibrant, environment to provide a nice contrast with the weapons and the operators which makes the stylized art style more pronounced as well as helps differentiate the objective from it’s surroundings easier.

IOS

Last week we teased a build on IOS and this week we want to officially confirm that work has indeed begun on getting an IOS build ready for release! No promises yet on whether our future beta will include it, but here’s hoping development continues to be smooth.

Honestly, after you get over the initial buy in (a very expensive buy in), the mac ecosystem can be easier to dev for in certain regards since there are far fewer IOS devices than android. But the team so far is conflicted on the pro’s and cons of either OS’s.

We have big plans for the project on IOS and we hope we will be able to afford more equipment soon to speed up development on the platform.

Final thoughts and statement

That about wraps it up for this months Mini devlog (The first of it’s kind technically too! History in the making). Next month we are planning on showing off the much anticipated operator reveals for the game! It will be sad to see the Rookie empire fall, but he’s had a good run.

Anyone remember this meme?