Dirt Metal

Term 4 CEA | Rapid Game Development 1 | 3 Weeks | UE4 | Team size: 5

Overview

Dirt Metal is a third-person, multiplayer vehicular combat game. In the vast desolated land, two teams fight each other to capture the enemy flag and hang it at their own base. The players can only hang the enemy flag if the enemy isn’t carrying their flag

It’s Wrecking meets Strategy. Coordinate with your team and either destroy or out-strategize the enemy and capture their flag.

Documents

Game Design Document

Asset List

Goals

Game:

The Design goal of the game is to make a competitive vehicular combat game. To provide competitive gameplay, we believe that a game must have a solid game mode with strong rules and goals. Capture the flag is an excellent game mode for accomplishing our goal.

Personal:

My goal for this game was to dive deeper into Unreal Engine’s landscape tools. We wanted fast gameplay and the plan was to have bases at a higher altitude than the rest of the playing area, with ramps around them to give players a boost as they descend to the field. Instead of modelling the ramps in 3D software, the idea to make procedural ramps using landscape splines in Unreal was tempting

Responsibilities

Level Conceptualization and Layout
Procedural Level Greybox using Unreal Landscape and Spline Tools
Flexible Iterations on the Level based on Game Mechanics, Car Controls to compliment the Theme & Game Design and incorporate 4-10 players
Gather Playtest data to Balance the game, Improve level flow and enhance Player experience
Procedural Landscape Material and Set Dressing to achieve final look of the level

Game Mechanics

Workflow

We thought of making our Arena (playing Area) in the shape of a Football field. The level was divided into 3 parts, with bases on either side of the arena and an open field in between them. We were looking at this map from world of Warcraft and used it as a concept for our level Design.

The bases were kept at a higher altitude than the rest of the level to allow the player to view the entire Arena, keep an eye on the opponent, and plot their path to the opponent's flag. The flags were placed in front of the base. As the players could damage the enemy, we needed spawn points which were placed at the left side of the playing area, close to the player’s base. Like the bases, the spawn points were also on a raised platform.

Early Ideation of the level to depict the form and flow of the level:

The initial level included 3 ramps descending in different directions from the player’s base. They were all meant to get the player off to a fast start.

Everything was procedural and was set up using Landscape Splines.

Problem:

The level was set up before the ‘Nitro’ feature was implemented. We found after a few playtests that the ramps were too long and that the vehicles lost so much speed going up the ramp that it seemed like they were falling off the edge rather than launching. There were no routes leading up to the enemy's base.

Solution:

We reduced the length of the ramps and curved the road down slightly to offer the player an automatic speed boost. Along with that, we added another path from the right side of the base down to the field, with the intention of giving the enemy an easy path up and adding some variety to the level.

The ramps worked great with the Nitro. We played around with the level some more, adding additional forms and more ramps towards the centre. On the left side of the base, we added another path leading down. The road coming down from the centre of the base was created in such a manner that it ran parallel to the field at its lowest point, providing an additional entry or exit option.

For the final level, the flag area was moved nearer the end of the base in line with the two paths going down to improve the flow of the level around the base. Along with that, the spawn points were moved closer to the bases and given a ramp like surface to give player a boost.

We added some desert flora and surrealistic models to break up the level even further. Some screenshots from the final level.

Roles/Credits

Shubham Beri (Level Designer, Layout, Set Dressing, 3D Artist) Anand Mohapatra (Cinematics, Lighting) Oguz Bicer (Game Designer, Project Manager, UI/UX) PB Giridharahn (Programming, Technical Design, Steam Feature, Multiplayer system) VR Siddarth (Car Model, Car Rig, Car Texture)