Rise of the Triad Post Release Level

During September, while working on Rise of the Triad, I was tasked with creating an additional multiplayer map to be put out in a post-release patch. I didn’t experiment a lot with it; it was mainly an exercise in consolidating my knowledge of player directing and communication into something that will be part of a paid for product. I mainly concentrated on using colour and the map’s layout itself to communicate its shape and to guide players towards each other. However, I did some experimental use of the players’ real world knowledge to communicate certain aspects of the map.

The map is split into two contrasting areas; a large, dangerous open arena area, where the meat of the action takes place, and a tighter corridor horseshoeing around it, which acts as a refuge area. For the design to work I needed to communicate the roles of the two areas, and guide players into the open so that they meet one another.

First of all, the open area is a bright warm colour and the refuge area is a very dark cool colour to ensure a visual contrast. The large arena area is outdoors and the refuge area in indoors, this gives justification to the colour scheme and taps into the idea of people in a wide open environment will find smaller indoor refuge areas as they make their way across the expanse. In semester 1 I read an article from Christopher Totten explaining his theory about how people did this in pre-historic times and how this was used in architecture. This wasn’t something I had tested myself, however there were a few maps in the game already that had used the idea.

To entice players into the open, I used a mechanical incentive of the game’s powerful weapons. Exits from the refuge area to the outdoors were lit with a red light, to hint that the outdoors would be dangerous for them. The corridors themselves also funnel players into the open by having them point diagonally into it.

A key feature of the map, and USP of the game itself, are jumpads.

They tend to stand out by themselves because their material pulsates with a bright sky blue colour. To add to this I’ve used different artistic methods where appropriate. In the refuge corridor, I’ve placed lines adjacent to them leading players who are on their way out of the corridors towards them.

In the central building, I’ve used a contrasting orange colour and an additional bloom effect. I didn’t want to use a warm colour inside, as I was already using that to designate exits to the outdoors.

Something I saw in the MA research was the idea that repeating use of key environmental features confuses new players. I wanted to prevent this from happening, as the game’s target audience were players’ who had stopped playing FPS games around the time of Doom, and weren’t fans of modern games. To do this I made sure that each area had its own key environmental feature. One area contains a row of radios, whereas another similar area has a ramp and a lift.