Creating the arenas of ATOMEGA

In this developer spotlight, our level designer, Justin Lim walks you through the unique challenges of creating a play-space for drastically varied sizes in ATOMEGA:

Back in 2016, I was prototyping some gameplay ideas, and the concept of having scalable characters seemed intriguing; whilst it might not be the most innovative idea, it was something I hadn't seen done at such a granular level in an FPS game before. The mechanics were pretty basic, but after our first split screen playtest of collecting boxes and having a lot of fun growing and towering over one another, we knew we were onto something special.

However, the level we played in was just a flat ground plane, so I quickly knocked up a whitebox-esque environment that ended up feeling a bit like a maze. It wasn’t the best, but it immediately pointed out issues, like getting stuck whilst growing, not having the right size of cover and outgrowing the environment completely. Nevertheless, these seemed like interesting level design problems to have.

It became clear that we had to design the mechanics of growing alongside setting the rules for the level design. It was cool to see how features within the level would impact gameplay in a way that related to scale, for example, when being chased, a tiny character could dive through a small crack in a wall, whilst bigger characters would have to go around or over the top.

Once we had defined the different sizes of the characters, we created a set of metrics to space out the level, and created a set of modular tile pieces for which the whole arena would be built with.

With these pieces, I began building a level. I started with the Superior sized character, constructing buildings for that size to go in the corners of the arena. Then smaller, Prime-sized buildings were added to the in between spaces, and trenches connecting different areas of the arena to provide some protection for the smallest characters as they travel around.

With each iteration of the arena we were learning what worked well, in addition to testing the gameplay mechanics. The symbiotic relationship between gameplay and level design continued throughout production. Sometimes we devised new gameplay features, such as launch pads and fast tracks, to improve the navigation and flow of the level. And whenever a gameplay mechanic was introduced or changed we had to ensure the level design could accommodate it, which often required layout tweaks.

When considering the possibility of creating additional content, we decided to try manipulating the layout of the existing NOVA arena to quickly produce a wide variety of concepts. This allowed us to really explore the potential for creating different types of gameplay and player experiences in a way that still retained the core style and complexity of the original. We then pared down our concepts to focus on those that we felt had the most potential to create memorable moments through emergent gameplay, such as using the Impact Hack to push an opponent off the tiny floating platform in the centre of the VOID arena, or shooting out the bridges to block their escape.

While we wanted to make sure that each arena variant had a distinctive look and feel of its own, we also wanted to maintain a visual connection to the original via the presence of recognisable shapes and details. Of course, the centrepiece of the original NOVA arena is its huge tower – the first thing players see when they emerge from the tunnel at the start of a Timephase – so we made our most significant changes to this central area for each variant to provide them with a unique silhouette and gameplay focus, while allowing the outer areas of the arenas remain more familiar.

Because the Syntellects base their Exoforms on what they perceive to be important stages in Earth’s evolutionary history, we thought they would probably take the same approach to the design of their arenas. We therefore took inspiration from distinctive historical architecture, such as Mayan pyramids, along with influences from the natural world and from modern visions of the future.

Look out for our new arena variants dropping next week!