FPS Blockout

Project Name:

One Saturday in October of 2022, it dawned on me that in all of my years of designing levels for any purpose from linear environments to sprawling worlds meant for robust movement systems...I had never created a multiplayer map for an FPS game. I immediately sought to rectify this and started on a 3 lane FPS map that takes place in an asymmetrical city block. Unfortunately, I only went into more detail for about half of the map before returning to work on Monday and promptly forgetting about the project. But even now, two years later, I still think it looks pretty cool and would love to make use of it some day.

Engine: Unreal Engine 5

Level Breakdown

Much like other maps I've designed, I felt this one was best to start on with a quick sketch. The first sketch was alright. It was by no means bad but it was a bit too symmetrical and in my opinion a bit boring. The concept I went with is a lot more interesting, but does have its own issues that would become evident later. Thankfully, I'll talk about how I'd fix it further down.

The Blockout:

Once I started blocking out the map, I focused on the major shapes and began testing the flow for the map. As you can tell by the heightened detail on the south side near spawn 1...that's where I started to break down the big shapes and get into the smaller moment-to-moment feel of the map.

However, as I started to walk through the map through the perspective of someone spawning at spawn 1, I noticed a major issue: the street feels like the primary area of engagement. The reason why this is an issue is because players spawning at spawn 2 have a much further distance to walk due to the small building behind the restaurant, which was meant to act as a sort of snipers nest for that side, much like the Hotel Bedroom was to act as a sniping nest for the team at spawn 1. Because they have a longer walking distance, however, this means that team 1 can not only reach the primary area of engagement faster, but also push into enemy territory faster. Imagine if Call of Duty's "Nuke Town," for example, had one team spawn in a back yard two houses back rather than one. That wouldn't feel quite right at all.

If I were to return to the map today, I would fix the spacing issue by removing the building behind the restaurant and squashing the map down a bit. Because the restaurant's length is the same as the apartment's, it would center the street in the map and even out the travel time to the central engagement. This would force me to change the shape of the convenience store (weird shaped building near spawn 2), to more of a workable square shape. It would also allow me to move the spawn 2 sniper nest to the corner of the J-shaped building next to the restaurant, allowing a more balanced and direct engagement between long range players.

As with any map, it would surely take testing to ensure that these changes both look and feel good, however I'm confident that it would greatly improve the timing and quality of the map. The re-balanced layout can be seen in the rough mockup below.