Chasm 66

Level Design

Chasm 66 is a king of the hill styled level for a 4 person split-screen multiplayer shooter. The old western town was built off of a Christian mission, and mined minerals underground for great trade prosperity. When a meteor came crashing down, it decimated and sank the entire town into its massive crater and caused many odd gravity phenomenae within the surrounding area.

Level Purpose

Our 4 person team wanted to practice building a level within a team setting while having seamless cohesion between each member's individual sections. Instead of more basic connections between sublevels such as doorways, we wanted to create a more open feel. We would use multiple levels of verticality to give as many options as possible to players for any path of traversal they wanted.

Paper Maps

Each team member made papermaps of their individual level sections and the overall map to show how everything would fit together. We focused on triangulating our three capture points, and having smooth access between each point from multiple angles.

Mausoleum capture point, surrounded by a graveyard, with a derailed train to reach floating rubble.

Floating rubble that connects all major points of interest.

Pangea map of all ground level sections of the map.

Blockout

Mostly focused on simple shapes and layout mappings to convey the idea of the level.

This meant:

Creating the capture point
Establishing all points of entry
Laying out simple pathing of floating rubble

Player Pathing

Players can enter the mausoleum on it's ground floor:

Players could walk by foot through the main entrances.
Players could take the tunnels to go directly to the main foyer.
Then walk up the stairs to the second floor to the point.

Or, on it's second floor:

Coming from other points, players could touch meteorites that would launch them to the floating rubble.
Then jump across to the mausoleum and drop directly onto the point.
Players could also behind the building to launch themselves straight up above it.

A shotgun pickup is included on the large cross to help with close quarters combat when entering the point.

Enclosing The Space

To create immersive borders around the level, I sunk it into the crater, and built out from the surrounding walls to make the circle of impact.

Next, I made the meteor and positioned impacted earth in a shape to convey direction of impact.

Finally, I filled out the impact site from ground level to the upper walls.

Improving The Design

Simple ground level capture point was too boring for players.

Raised elevation added use of verticality
Rooftop access now skips required stairs
Balcony ledge allows easy escape from the capture point
Grenade launcer pickup allows some ground to air combat, or high risk close quarter combat

Low Gravity

Low Gravity volumes allow easy traversal between floating rubble and rooftops.

Player character gravity scaling is lowered upon entering, then reset to its default upon leaving.

Responsibilities

Create a papermap of the entire level with the team.
Design a blockout for the entire back half of the map, including the railway, train, mausoleum, graveyard, and the floating objects that players can traverse.
Provide strong communication with teammates on how best to align our levels cohesively without disrupting player immersion or limiting their movement.
Create all models used in personal sublevel.
Program Low-Gravity volumes that allowed the player to more intuitively and enjoyably traverse the floating objects.
Design a large vista to immerse the player in the level space and hide the boundaries.