Xander Clauss
MMOFPS & Open World Level Design
Quartz Ridge Camp
Wynn Lake Pass
This task came to life after the another designer and I discussed the same bad level-related fights we saw from streamers the night before and decided to prioritize it. The northwest corner was significantly isolated from the rest of the map, and despite all of its interesting terrain and vistas, there were no reasons to really go there aside from being pushed into it from the gas.
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Wynn Lake Pass was put together to turn a gameplay space out of an otherwise largely empty mountainous area with unplayable terrain. That grew into connecting distant areas together and then we needed a bridge too, since it's going over a gorge and all. I had a blast with this task; it was challenging, wide in scope, and gave me the opportunity to 'activate' a really interesting part of the map that just needed some loot and love.
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This one had a lot of little sub-tasks since the 'level' being modified here is technically an oddly shaped 2sq km blob:
- Cleared out loot camps in the extreme northwest part of the map for optimization and low usage rate
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- Resculpted hills to gentler grades, as well as hooking up all the scenic outlook parking lots to each other with hiking trails along the bank. Give mountains some flatter, grassy tops.
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- Use gentler hill grades to carve & paint asphalt road + bridge from Hemingway's to the lakeside Schade Campgrounds.
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- Cleaned up nearby logging camps and redistributed the vehicle spawns in the area to around the lake.
The before/after road map above shows the increased connectivity between the loot sites in the Wynn Lake region. The isolated logging camps along the yellow dirt road are now supported by the grey county road, which crosses over a gorge to hook back into the teal highway system. Revamping Wynn Lake Pass solved the accessibility issue, but the bottlenecks separating the area from the rest of the map still make it a dangerous ambush point.
