Grunge Valley
What is the Map:
Grunge Valley is a Battle Royale map made within Halo Infinite. Set within a Dammed out River that had Forerunner Materials throughout it, the Banished (Halo Infinite's main antagonistic Faction) strip-mined most of the area and now use it as an Arena to force their Spartan Prisoners to fight to the death to stay alive. The map is designed to be a fast-paced Battle Royale experience that holds 24 players maximum with the lowest player count being 16. Very small for a conventional Battle Royale experience.
What was your role on the project:
On this project, I was the Overall Project Lead, Level Designer, and Artist for this map. I also dabbled in scripting for the project but opted to bring a more skilled Scripter in so the project could function as good as possible
Level Design: George Bandy
Art: Geroge Bandy
Lighting: George Bandy
Scripting: Artifice, George Bandy
Design Philosophy and Goals:
With this map I was constrained by 3 things, overall Budget Available within the Forge Toolset, Infinite's Sandbox, and the overall Playercount allowed within Halo Infinite (max 24). These constraints directly correlated to design choices made for the map. For example, with sandbox, Infinite's sandbox is mostly-hitscan weaponry; this comes with challenges for sightlines, overall encounter design, and weapon placement. To combat this I regrouped all weaponry in the sandbox into their own distinct Tier system, allowing for the most powerful weapons for range to still be present within the sandbox but be limited by their spawn chance. Playercount is another big one, most battle royale experiences on the market have 100 players as their max, with the lowest playercount being around 40 (Black Ops 4: Blackout). With this I studied how some of my favorite battle royals made their maps, even talking to one of my friends who worked on Apex Legends about some of the design challenges he faced so I'd be prepared to make this massive project. With all my research I came to the conclusion of making the map compact but dense. This allowed for the fast-paced nature I was going for, while allowing the map to still feel big enough to hold at least half of the playercount in 2-3 POIs without feeling too small or cramped.
POI Design:
With the design of POIs I took the player flexibility approach to them. What I mean by this is allowing players to get mostly anywhere within the space if they can do the mental pathing of where to get, while allowing for some experimentation too. This allows players to flow throughout a space without feeling stuck. I also did my best to allow spaces to breath, this allowed people to pick up most of what they were seeing without becoming lost. Another major factor I looked into with POI design was overall sightlines between areas, this allowed me to contain sightlines so you couldn't get cross-mapped, while still allowing for pathing to feel open and explorative.
Line of Sight Control:
Line of site is probably one of the most important aspects of design for me, mainly because as a player I hate being in those Out-Of-Luck scenarios. To combat this I intricately wove paths throughout the map to allow players to almost always have an option to break a sightline with a player and also scattered miscellaneous cover options (crates, shields, computers, etc) around to allow for extended cover in areas that need to be more open or feel as such.
Art Direction:
Art Direction on this map was something very difficult to do, primarily because of the budget constraints of Forge. In a perfect world, if I had the budget, I would make certain areas of the maps different colors or add more foliage in certain areas to allow players to distinguish areas even more easily than they currently can visually. The art direction of this map was focused on making it look like a dried-out area where water used to be (dammed out river). With this I looked at reference photos of what Dams and their surrounding areas typically looked like, I also focused on industrial areas built under or around the area to allow for the most varied Banished experience for the space
Lighting:
Lighting on this map was extremely tricky, Halo Infininte has a "max lights placed" budget that's relatively small so I really just focused on having the Sun and it's areas cover most of the map to allow for the best lighting possible. This shines in certain areas and falls flat in others.
