FPS Level White Box

FPS Level White Box

Project Overivew

Team Size: One

Genre: First-Person Shooter.

Setting: This level is set in a small suburb environment supporting both long-range and close-quarter combat. Best suited for Free-for-All mode (ideally 8 players) and Team Deathmatch (ideally for 5v5 battles).

I imagined this environment to be a small suburb on the outskirts of a much larger city. The suburb’s backdrop would have high skylines of the city on one side, mountains fading into the distance and open lands forming the rest of the backdrop.

Asset packs used: SuperGrid Starter pack (tool for white boxing and applying grid materials).

Software: Unreal Engine 4.27





Time frame: The project was part of an assignment in the Level Design course at FIEA (Florida Interactive Entertainment Academy) and was completed over a period of 10 days. The level’s white boxing was completed in 6 days (totaling 21 hours). Conceptualizing and drafting the map took 3 hours. This project was not blueprints heavy and took about one hour to implement all the basic blueprints such as respawning enemies and crouch functionality.

Design Inspirations: For this level, I've spent most of my research time studying multiplayer maps from the Call of Duty Franchise. In particular, ‘Crash’ from the Modern Warfare series and ‘Slums’ from the Black Ops series have been the inspiration for some of my design decisions. 

Quick Menu: Design Process Map Layout Iterations Blueprints Walkthrough Video
Jump To

Interactive 3D Model

Level Walkthrough

I made a walkthrough video to show the level in more detail. For the purpose of this
demonstration, I placed a few killable target dummies to show important sight lines.
These dummy targets respawn in the same location immediately. 

Point of Interest: I placed several ‘landmarks’ to help the players orient themselves as they move through the map. These points will also help in communication between teammates when they want to ping or refer to their location. The Bridge, Signal Tower, Water Tank, Advertisement Hoarding, and The Statue are all distinct and visible from many vantage points on the map.

The Statue area and mini Hangar area in particular can be used as two control points as they have sufficient cover as well as two openings for flanking. 

The Signal Tower

Advertisement Hoarding

The Water Tank next to the Bridge

The Statue

Hangar

Underground Area

Design Decisions: I wanted to design a map that allowed fast-paced close-quarter combats to shine. This map has a lot of blind corners and narrow streets to support that. While every section of the map can be flanked to encourage movement and prevent players from camping. there are certain points on high ground that serve as good vantage points.

Entrances to the underground area

The underground area can be accessed from 3 ‘Subway Entrances’ on the road level, and another opening from the section under the bridge. Access from multiple entrances was important to prevent a ‘camping’ scenario. However, I’ve added an adequate number of pillars to break the line of sight and covers to give players in this section a fair chance, as this underground area can be potentially used as one of the control points to be captured.

Advertisement Hoarding

 

The underground area aerial view without its ceiling
(road and houses on top removed)

Iterations and Feedback: In the feedback of the initial version of the level, our faculty felt that my map consisted of a lot of rectilinearness resulting in monotony, and seemed like players would get lost more often than not. The lack of unique points of interest also aggravated this problem. To address this feedback, I added angled buildings, pathways, and variations in building heights.

Older Version of the Level

The unique points of interest have also turned out to be useful additions as they have been placed carefully in specific locations around the map so as to maximize the value they provide.

My faculty’s feedback also highlighted that the original design of the map contained one single road level, with variations provided only by building heights. This resulted in sightlines being very straightforward with very little challenge. A couple of iterations later, the map now contains more sloped paths, walkways under bridges, multiple road levels, and an underground section.

Thanks to the faculty’s feedback, I believe all of these changes have greatly benefited the map’s overall composition while keeping the original vision intact.  

Latest Version

 


Color Consistency: In order to clearly communicate affordance to the players in a hypothetical playtesting scenario, I used consistent colors throughout the level. For example, Ladders are all marked yellow, and stairs and points of interest are blue.

Blueprints

This project was part of an assignment that did not require a lot of blueprints. So, I have only implemented simple blueprints that enable basic functionality found in FPS games such as crouching, climbing ladders, and the ability to kill enemies (in this case the target dummies respawn after 2 seconds in the same location). The GIF on the left demonstrates all 3 blueprints in action and the screenshots down below are of the source blueprints.