Level Designing with Brunnski

Howdy, Brunn here. Here at team green I work primarily as the sound designer and composer, but I'm also the level designer for the War of the Worlds project! Today I wanted to show a few images of the game world, and talk a bit about what I've been up to in regards to that.

First things first. I want to mention the map size. I know a lot of people (ourselves included at one point) would love to have an ever expansive map based on the united kingdom, and being able to walk for days, going on this grand journey around the map similar to the narrator in the original novel, but unfortunately the game becomes more of a walking simulator when you have a map that's too big. On the flip side, if a map is too small, it can feel cramped, and players can see and do everything within their first few playthroughs, These are things we'd ideally like to avoid.This time around, we think we've got a decent map size that allows for a good amount of exploration and movement, without being too big that players are getting completely lost, or not encountering anything interesting due to the sheer size of the terrain.

(Photo of what the map looks like so far)

I will also quickly mention the neat set of tools Gelato has provided for me that makes creating the nature elements of the map way easier. This environment generator allows me to click a few buttons and generate things like forests, bushes and rocks, and all I have to do is paint the forest floor texture so the tool knows where to put them! Isn't that kinda neat? While this does take away from some of the "hand-crafted-ness" of the more rural areas, it does speed things but a heap! not to mention, if I were to hand place every tree on the map we would be here for a while. And with that being said, I still need to go through and move/delete a bunch of these that generate awkwardly, so there is still a bit of human intervention there.

A new addition that I personally felt was much-needed is these lovely sidewalk models made by Kester. It really helps the already wonderfully modelled buildings feel more like they're in-built into the game world, and it helps the towns and other areas of interest feel more grounded in a way. Rather than having houses just sitting on the terrain.

With the stylized nature of the assets we're using, I'm aiming to keep things consistent with a sort of stylized looking environment. Realism is far from the top of my priority list. With that being said, a lot of buildings and towns in the game are now full of these walls and boxes and other misc objects. These are here to allow the player to move around the towns as stealthily as possible, while leaving the streets just open enough that making the wrong move at the wrong time may mean certain death. Players need to consider their surroundings and whether they have a means of escape in a tense situation. While these walls may serve as cover, they may also serve as a dead end during a chase, so be careful!

No doubt there will be things on the map that don't quite work, and we hope that with the help of the early access supporters we can find all of these blemishes and iron them out and have the map working and looking as best as possible!

I'll chime in again sometime in the future with more updates to the mapping, but for now, that's all I have to share! Stay tuned for more updates from Gelato and Kester.

If you have any questions drop them below and we'll get back to you as soon as we can!