Hola!

Introduction

For the last two years, I've been working on an aftermarket Vehicular AI package called Sentience for Torque3D. Concurrently, I've been developing my own concept for a 'Hybrid-FPS' style game. As my AI project is very close to an alpha release, I thought I'd plug it into my own game concept and show them off together. Thus the 'Ixtlan' project was born.

For a little while now I've been keeping up with Alex Galuzin's 'World of Level Design' blog and thought to follow his 'How-to-Create-a-Map-in-11-Days' eBook to get myself into a workflow that would inspire me to finish a nice, playable level. Using this guide as an example here's my plan:

Day 1: Idea, Level Plan, Gameplay Elements, compile Binaries.

Day 2: Level Geometry and Assembly of Presets

Day 3: Geometry and Modeling

Day 4: Geometry and Modeling

Day 5: Texturing

Day 6; Texturing

Day 7: Lighting

Day 8: AI Implementation

Day 9: Lighting, FX, Sound and Final Touches

Day 10: FX, Sound and Final Touches

Day 11: FX, Sound and Final Touches

Day 1

Background

My grand vision as a game designer is named TolTech. It is based on a series of short alternative history stories I've been writing for years. TolTech is a future-tech world in which the Nahuatl people of Mesoamerica become the dominant human culture and progress on to become the masters of the galaxy. As a game it reflects my passion for vehicular shooters like Battlezone as well as tabletop games such as Battletech and Warhammer 40k.
In 2010, I prototyped a version of TolTech using the old-school TGE engine. It had four types of multiplayer gameplay with up to 8 teams, and a fusion of racing/shooter/roleplay elements. One of these gametypes is called 'Ultilama', in which a ball is spawned in any number of random positions in the center of a 'field' that comprises square miles of terrain. Teams must find the ball and get it into the opponents goal using aircraft, tanks, and sophisticated armament in the process. One of the demo levels in TolTech was Arroyo Seco, a symmetrical terrain level that provided lots of different types of engagement. My level will be a remix of that level, using the modern Torque3D engine.

Here's a shot of the OG version:

The Level Plan

Arroyo Seco began life as part of Zod's MultiGame Starter Kit. I took the terrain file from the 'Return the Flag' level, tweaked it a bit and added my structures and textures to it. This provided a perfect setup to test game balance and AI pathing with. While the geometry of this level lends itself to balanced gameplay, it does so at the risk of becoming predictable. This is where procedural content will keep the level 'fresh' and prevent players from using the same strategy every game.
Using this terrain file, I'll add the existing team 'bases' and ball-spawners. I'll then add some third-party terrain and floral features, mostly cliffs, to create a realistic look. At a glance here's the basic concept:

Name: Arroyo Seco [Redeux]
Gametype: Ultilama
Teams: 2
Players: 4-32
Team Bases: 2
Ball Bases: 3
Style: 'Ancient-Tech'
Geography: Similar to Northern Chihuahua MX, Southern New Mexico USA
Season: Will randomly toggle seasons
Time: Randomly toggles time of day
Architecture: Nahuatl [Toltec]

Preparation

First things first came the compiling of the game app. I used the T3D/AFX project as my base, and added the following mods, most of which have to do with level editing:

Generated 'Ixtlan' project using 'Full' Template

Added Bitgap Games' Sahara per kit instructions

Added Konrad Kiss' 'Rule based layer distribution for Torque3D terrains' mod: www.garagegames.com/community/resources/authorID/101755
modded: source/gui/missionEditor/terrainEditor.cpp

Added JonaJoint's 'Terrain Edge Matching' mod: www.garagegames.com/community/resource/view/21488/
modded: terrData.cpp/h

Added Dan Keller's 'Better smoothing for terrain editor!' mod: www.garagegames.com/community/resources/view/21479
modded terrainActions.cpp/h, terrainEditor.cpp, terrFile.h

Added Kenneth Eves' 'Add MinSlope groundcover setting' mod: www.garagegames.com/community/resources/view/21904
modded: groundCover.cpp/h

Added Steven Saric's 'Changing the world editors max brush size' mod: www.garagegames.com/community/resources/view/21343
modded: terrainEditor.cpp/h, tools/worldEditor/gui/EditorGui.ed.gui, tools/worldEditor/scripts/editorPrefs.ed.cs

Added Paul Yoskowitz's 'LevelInfo Fog Enhancement (Shader Fog)' mod: www.garagegames.com/community/resources/view/21379
modded: game/core/scripts/client/postFx/fog.cs, game/shaders/common/postFx/fogP.hlsl

Added Richard Marravee's 'Modify fog in script' mod: www.garagegames.com/community/resources/view/21408
Modded: levelInfo.cpp/h

Here's a quick level I generated to test the World Editor mods:



Note that by using Konrad Kiss' procedural mod, this entire mountain range was textured proceduraly by slope in under three minutes!!!


Day2