11 Day Level Design - Day 1

I have not been doing a lot when it comes to level design as of late, so I decided I need another Level Design Challenge. So here we are yet again with another game to be modded and this time it is Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad. Why ROE? I have been a fan of the game ever since the first installment, and I am an even BIGGER fan of World War II era genres. Sure they have been over done and over used, but who cares? Call of Duty has used the exact same engine for over a decade, but still they sell...

Speaking of Call of Duty, this little challenge revolves around it! My favorite Call of Duty is hands down World at War. The entire game inspired me, and not to mention is has the baddest ass mother f*cker in all of gaming in it with Viktor Reznov. World at War was the reason I played Call of Duty games, and EVERYONE who worked on this game, I have to say thank you so much for bringing me COUNTLESS (around 50 days of gameplay on MP alone) hours of fun, frustration and most of all inspiration.

Now that that is out of the way, this little challenge like I said revolves around this game, as this will be split into two seperate parts: Days 1 - 3 will be design and development of the best MP map: Courtyard. Days 4 - 9 will be design and development of my favorite mission: Heart of the Reich. Days 10 - 11 will consist of building lighting, bug hunting, and then publishing it to Steam Workshop.

There are a few rules I have set that I have to abide by:

• ONLY USE assets within the ROE SDK
• 11 Days is all I have... PERIOD
•  It has to be as acurate as possible

This last one will actually be quite a challenge in itself, as there are many things that can go wrong. For instance working on Courtyard has proven to be difficult just because of scale. Assets I am good on, because I can use them to make them look like I want to, but the scale of the map has me troubled. I had to keep in mind one thing when dealing with ROE multiplayer, and that is the amount of players and my main objective. Courtyard will be used strictly for a Territories gametype; I chose this because Headquarters on this map was epic. It is based on a maximum of 32 player setup, and the scale is vastly larger than what was experienced in Call of Duty. At first I wanted to keep it accurate on all bases, but after playtesting the BSP build, I was not happy.  

I decided then to not keep scale an accurate point, so I shifted some things around, made some of the corridors longer and wider, and a lot more open space. In the above image you will notice that it is vastly larger length wise, this too was intentional, as I really thought with 32 players filling this map, it would add some more depth to it. The above is just a BSP build, so I could accurately map out the level, and playtest just for scaling reasons.

So I will post more progress tomorrow morning on what it was I accomplished on Day 2 of 3 on this map. I am taking it one step at a time! Wish me luck!