Crag
Summary
Crag is a multiplayer Deathmatch map built in Unreal Tournament 4 (UT4) designed around two sections of vertical separation and a subset of UT4 weapons. Crag consists primarily of mid- to close-range combat zones on section 1, Lower Crag, but also offers a few controlled long-range sightlines as the player ascends to section 2, Upper Crag. Crag offers tight sightlines that allow for fluid and tactical maneuvers in and around cover for strategic plays or to evade pursuers. The focus is on tight combat zones that allow players to take advantage of close- or mid-range weapons.
Composite Map & Sectional Maps
Design Commentary
Designing Flow
The design behind Crag's flow is tight memorable paths that enable and guide players via progression through pickups and tactical advantages. The overarching flow and player spawn/death cycle for Crag is as follows, players spawn in the lower two levels in line of sight of starter weapons, then begin to flow up to the upper two levels to get health pickups and higher-tier weapons. After that, they either die, get pushed out, or flow back down to the bottom two levels to restock and begin the cycle again.
To incentivize players to flow upwards the lowest two levels of Crag contain all the player spawns and sparse cover making it highly advantageous to players to ascend upward to gain an advantage and to escape the congested lower levels. To balance the height advantage of the upper levels, weapons, ammo, and power-ups are concentrated on the lowest levels to encourage players to flow back down to the lower sections of the map to resupply and then to ascend again.
Flow Path Reinforcement
I used contrasting lighting color tones, cool and warm, to pull the player's attention and guide them through combat spaces. The goal of lighting along the flow paths was to leverage the contrast between a cool ambient world lighting and warm point lights to signal to the player key areas, pickups, or paths.
Alongside contrasting lighting, guiding lines were used to further reinforce flow paths into and out of points of contention and transitional combat spaces. The guiding lines were implemented with the goal of enabling the player to just simply flow and effortlessly move around the map while subconsciously the guiding lines led the player where they need to go.
Distinct Locations
To increase the memorability and help quickly build up the players mental map distinct aesthetic zones and landmarks were created. The distinct aesthetic zones were designed to allow the players to quickly and develop their own shot calls or labels for the areas and landmarks that contained certain weapons or powerups. The goal was to enable players to easily and rapidly identify where they are in relation to where they want to go.
