Zone Creation Part 1

An overview of most of the zone. Note: no models in there yet (trees, rocks, etc.).

As you may know, I’m the chief zone creator for the upcoming iPhone/browser MMO, DangerLands. Today I put the finishing touches on our first zone: Danger Forest. I thought I’d hype the game and talk about how I go about creating a zone.

It all starts with an idea that the team bats around. We wanted something with a visual “wow” factor (wow as in gee whiz, not that other MMO). It had to be a good place for pvp, since version 1 of the game will only have player vs. player combat. So I pitched a few ideas (creepy forest, Colosseum type arena, rocky crag area with bridges, and hedge maze).

We settled on the creepy forest. After that, I created a sketch of the zone and included the impassable walls and major points of interest (poi’s).

Quick sketch of Danger Forest Mark II

Then I had to turn the sketch into a heightmap (HM). A heightmap is basically a topographic map where the lighter colors become higher elevations in game. I came up with a system for how to assign grayscales to heights. Not very interesting, but having a system made it much easier to be consistent when I built the map and will make future map making a snap. DangerLands has a bit of a cartoony look, so I created a zone that resembled terrain you see in table top miniature games. (Levels, Jerry. It’s all about levels.)

Heightmap I made from the sketch.

Next followed several days of making zones with different size and resolution parameters for the terrain (the 3D model) and textures (the paint that goes over the models). I’d make a zone, send it to Dave (our fearless leader). He’d test it out on an iPhone and then tell me to change something. Back and forth we went until I wanted to smack him we got a set of parameters that looked great and ran fast on the iPhone.

By that point, I had gained a better feel for how the heightmap would look in game, and I had found a few design problems in the zone. It turned out to be easiest to start from scratch, so all the pics here are for Danger Forest Mark II. Later I’ll make a post showing some of the looks we tried out before settling on this one.

This morning, Dave uploaded a new build with the new zone, and I’ve been having a blast running around inside. There isn’t anything to do, no people to kill, and no trees or water or grass, but I can’t stop booting it up every few hours. Running around in a zone that started as a few random ideas in my head is a dream come true! Awesome. I can’t wait for my friends to be able to run around in there. I know all the good sniping spots.

These valleys will be filled with chompfish infested water. This player sure hopes we add bridges.

A perfect place to setup camp…