Prodeus
This is my official work for the game Prodeus. I was interested as soon as I saw the Kickstarter campaign’s demonstration of their level editor which was built into the game. After a bit of early testing I created a map for the Prodeus and Mapcore level design contest and came in third place. After that I created a few more maps and was then asked by the lead level designer Jason “GeneralVivi” Mojica to join their team and help get their vision to the finish line. The maps below are organized in the order in which you come across them in the game.
FUEL
( Layout / Combat / Art )
Fuel was born out of the need to have a brighter, short, action-packed level early in the campaign as it was all a bit dark with medium to long length maps until this was added as a pace breaker.
I was asked to make a Doom-style level with a basic wrap around flow and a bunch of traps for the monsters. Some highpoints for me in the level are the laser trap hallway, the rolling barrel section and some brutal crushers. Letting the player see the environment killing monsters in weird ways always looks cool and can usually get a laugh.
One of the great things about Prodeus is the use of large heavy moving objects and machines, and I enjoyed setting up these animations throughout the maps as it really brings the world alive.
Corruption
( Art )
This was my first task when I joined the team. I was asked to do the environment art for the layout. The tough part was that each map in Prodeus has a face count limit of 15k faces for performance across all the consoles, and the blockout was 13k. So, with only 2k faces to spare getting all the detail to be balanced across the whole map was my priority. Working within those constraints was a great challenge and I’m glad I got to experience it.
This was a very good introduction to working in a team environment on game development. One of the best lessons I learned was to not be too attached to my work. Iteration is the key to quality and everything can always be improved.
GrenaDE tRIAL
( Art )
The blockout for this map was super creative and doing the art was a real treat. I really enjoy my sci-fi so mixing in a bit of industrial brick and iron was really interesting. Also the feeling of giant hammers smashing around you is just awesome.
The highlights for me are the view out into the world with the conveyor belts of crates and a train flying past in the distance as well as the big circular room at the end. Working on circular spaces can be a challenge with grid-based editors so it was good to extend my skills after the Corruption map and learn even more tricks and ways of working in the editor.
aTONEMENT
( Layout / Combat / Art )
This was my first full map. I was asked to make a church type environment, so big ceilings and open spaces mixed with a nice side of tech. There was a lot of iteration on this map and it taught me a much better workflow. I was doing the classic rookie mistake of arting spaces too early. However, I needed to find the art style so those experiments were ultimately a good thing.
My favorite part of this map is the main portal room. I took a bit of inspiration from the game Destiny for the main central tower then used some classic Renaissance period style concrete and stonework structures to surround it. In the original version there was a whole underneath section that got cut from the 1.0 release. While it was tough seeing that get cut, ultimately it was best for the game as we had received feedback from the community that the longer maps were asking a lot from the player.
tRENCH
( Layout / Combat / Art )
I designed this map with the Prodean alien aesthetic in mind. Featuring long corridors and a big outdoor area, the goal is to activate a series of lasers to power the defense system.
With large spaces the battle again was about visual detail versus face count. I paid a lot of attention to framing when changing areas to make the player feel dwarfed in the environment. There were some late additions to the editor feature set during the production of this map so Jason helped out with some amazing scripting for the lightning defence machine at the end.
Space station
( Layout / Combat / Art )
You unearth a spaceship in a Prodean zone and blast off to an orbiting Space Station. On board the station you fight your way to the main gun which fires and freezes the asteroid after a massive malfunction.
This map took me the longest on the project coming in at around 4 months. There was a lot of iteration as we found the fun and nailed down a flow that felt good with a series of set pieces to keep the player excited.
There was a lot of collaboration with Jason on this map, he helped out with some advanced scripting and the usual solid feedback. Once we got maps in a good place we would invite members from our community to stream themselves playing the map on Discord. Watching this is a really valuable source of feedback and helped get maps where they needed to be.
Aftermath
( Layout / Combat / Art )
You’re back on the asteroid, the Space Station wreckage is everywhere, time to move forward. This level is a conversion of the map Excavation that gets played earlier in the campaign.
Making a bunch of debris and pulling apart pieces from the Space Station, adding a new ending location as well as a bunch of snow and ice was an efficient way to populate the map and make it feel fresh and not just an asset flip. This was a very short development cycle at around 2 weeks.
Fuel DM
( Layout / Art )
Near the end of Prodeus’s development, Jason and I went through the maps to decide which ones would be converted to multiplayer. We were on a tight deadline so development time was short. Each of the maps for multiplayer had about one week’s worth of development time.
Converting Fuel to multiplayer was all about adding more connectivity and removing some dead spaces, like the back hallway that wraps around and takes you to the start. Opening up paths and giving the player more movement options gave the map a much better flow for multiplayer.
With the layout finished, I decided to tie the map into the story by changing the setting to after the asteroid got frozen. I added snow and ice, and changed it to night time. The snow was useful as it was an easy way of adding ramps around the outside areas.
Atonement CTF
( Layout / Art )
The single player version of Atonement had a natural base, so the conversion to a CTF map was a natural fit. The layout is a classic 3 lane with a meeting point in the middle. It’s a tough map to get a capture on but it makes for an exciting match.
The struggle was getting the map scale right. Originally the central space was going to be a circular room in front of what is now the middle room (see gif) but the map felt too long. So I cut the space down, built a central structure and redid the floor as well as adding in some additional cover. Next I made a new hallway to wrap around on the other side from the flag room to the central area.
Once this was all done all it needed was a bit of lighting, some signage and a few banners to keep players orientated.
