This week, I decided my existing level (designed on a whim) didn’t represent the type of map and the gameplay I want this game to focus on. It had two large rooms separated by a couple of choke points, but no real depth or strategy. So I made a new map, which has three (and a half) large rooms, each joined by several distinct routes.

I opted for an urban environment (hard to tell without textures!) since it only has hard edges which are easier to model. Better use of Blender let me iterate and playtest much faster; the “solidify” modifier was used to generate thick walls from a single face, whilst still allowing me to quickly change wall placement. The series at http://www.ongamedesign.net/designing-fps-multiplayer-maps-part-1/ was instrumental in designing this map, do check it out! It’s pretty impressive how relevant the advice still is, even after 8 years.
I often struggle to know where to draw the line between developing gameplay elements and adding content, but in this case adding more content (a new map) allowed me to understand some of the gameplay elements that were missing and under-developed.
A lot of work went into a new character animation and ragdoll system, to streamline character development and take advantage of Unity’s features. Humanoid characters now share “avatars”, which allows skeletal animations to be shared between different models. Adding new characters should just involve modelling and skinning with the existing bone structure. “should” :). Hopefully the time spent on this system will pay dividends by reducing some boring parts of the artist’s workload. It also let me add ragdolls!

Originally I thought these would be a purely aesthetic gimmick but it adds a load of feedback. Not only can you see deaths more clearly, but it also makes weapons feel more powerful.
It’s been fun writing this devlog and summarising the work I’ve done, but was it fun to read? Would be great to get some feedback on this type of post.