Space Station
The Space Station level for Unreal Tournament features a centralized weapon’s facility, surrounded by a crater on the Moon. Gather weapons and health on the outer ring before jumping back into the brawl in this beautiful deathmatch arena.
Engine
Unreal Tournament
Contributions
- Level Design
- Set Design with Unreal Tournament Assets
- Unreal Blueprints
Flow
The Space Station map has dozens of paths a player can take to enter and exit combat without ever having to break their stride. With plenty of pickups and healing items in the outer rim, players are guided to complete figure-eights throughout the map to jump away, heal up, and be right back into the fight within moments. This was deliberately designed to keep combat consistent without being a choiceless bloodbath. Talented players will learn the best paths to keep up momentum without being exposed for too long.
Game-Specific
Building a map for Unreal Tournament means it needs to take advantage of all the game has to offer. Players who have gained a mastery over Unreal Tournament will quickly recognize locations they can wall run across, slide under, and dash between. Familiar tropes like the bounce pads and lifts are placed throughout the map to act exactly as players should come to expect, furthering their ability to improve as they play the map.
Purpose
Weapons and items were deliberately placed in locations that would offer a risk-reward challenge. The rocket is wedged into a corner, forcing players to become cornered themselves if they want to get it. The sniper is high up in a good vantage point, but easily accessible to enemy players coming from behind. Health is more commonly found on the outskirts to provide players a moment to breathe before returning to combat. All these keep the player constantly making decisions based on their situation.
Aesthetic
While much of the map is models found within Unreal Tournament, the rest is clever tweaks of textures and simple geometric objects to create the location; such as the space station’s cannon and interior. The outer rim of the moon’s crater is meant to be barren and dull. This draws the player’s eyes to the pickups and bounce pads, while the cool blue and steel of the station itself is better for long-term engagements. It even tells a story, with oozing coolant and radiating power being drawn from the sun.
Testing
In order to ensure the map was fully utilized and fun to play, bots were used in playtesting again and again until it felt right. There is no section of the map at any given moment that a firefight isn’t happening because there is always a good reason to be anywhere. After I was satisfied that computers knew to roam, real players were used to see where they were most likely to go. At no point did players seem frustrated by bottlenecks, and simply played the map as if it were any other. This is when I knew it was complete.
