Game: Unreal Tournament 2004
Players: 8 to 14
Gametype: Capture the Flag
Time to create: 3 Months
All Unreal Tournament 2004 assets used, from Epic Games.

Download at: http://www.fpsbanana.com/maps/111938

Starting out as a DeathMatch map, it quickly evolved into a alienship crashed between buildings Capture The Flag map. Vertical gameplay was the main focus, along with a visual style to emphasize that.
The switch to CTF was to show off the theme more, allowing an enhanced visual story, gameplay options, and more of a balance between horizontal and vertical gameplay.

The level now consists of 4 playable buildings and 2 crashed vehicles as the play area for the map. Large buildings have collapsed on top of the ships, and the sky walk between the 2 side buildings has been broken into a V shape.

(Alpha 1 above)

(Alpha 2 above)

(Alpha 3 and Final Layout above)

The large broken hollow buildings was splitting up the map too much, so it was broken down further into smaller buildings shards. This created a much better visual story to the map, as well as allowing attackers more cover while giving defenders a chance to ambush also.

(Alpha 2, shot from the third level looking all the way to the first)

(Final Side Building Interior)

After more playtesting, the side buildings needed a change, as well as the middle point: the sky walk. Players were getting somewhat lost in the side buildings, even though they were very basic. The extreme vertical jumps need to enter and exit the side buildings turned players off and a more leveled approach was needed. With the redesign, players found it easy to navigate along with more frequent firefights happening in the side buildings. The vertical visuals brought players attention upward, getting more to traverse the upper levels as well as making it seem that their is still a feeling of a huge structure.

(Alpha 2 – sky walk)

(Final sky walk)

The skywalk was proving to be too much of an advantage to snipers, so it was lowered and the sniper rifle was removed. This created a more focused middle point, and allowed easier access to the top of the sky walk so no one was dominating it.

(Alpha 1 – Red Base)

(Final Build – Red Base)

Bases need a small change too. Instead of being higher up, it was lowered so defenders couldn’t easily attack from above. This allowed for more skilled attackers to platform over the front wall, but the time it took to do it was a setback. For defensive purposes, the flag was put on the second level in the base, and had access ramps to it spread out in the base, allowing defenders some time to wear down attackers.

(Final Build – Layout)

(Final Build – On looking)

Thanks for reading. More development (and thorough) blogs to come.