Creating Canyon: An America’s Army (user-created) Multiplayer Map Postmortem

Part 1: The Process

When I heard that there was an opportunity to create a multiplayer map for America’s Army I was quite excited. I was excited for the chance to help create something that would be played by the public. I was also eager to get experience working in a popular engine such as Unreal. After going through four years of university at Champlain College it was nice to get a chance to apply my education and hopefully end up with something tangible to show for it. The students participating in the project were split into two teams that would work on two different maps. To start the project off an America’s Army development team came to provide both teams information to help us avoid problems that past teams have usually encountered when creating multiplayer maps. After some deliberation my team decided to do a map based in a canyon within a Middle Eastern setting. When designing the team examined both boarder and urban assault trying to figure out what made both maps successful and how we could incorporate those ideas into our map. To make this map to feel authentic the terrain had to be created just right. The process was taxing, as with any project there was an array of issues that our team had to deal with on a daily basis. Throughout the process of creating the base map both teams combined efforts to play test maps and exchange feedback.

Throughout the development process the map underwent vast changes. The AA Dev team made it clear that both maps would have to pass alpha and beta in order to appear as an official user-created map and it simply wouldn’t be given to us. At the first conference with the AA dev team Canyon (my team’s map) received some criticism pointing out areas that should be improved. The dev team left it to us to figure out how to fix the noted problems. We had to dig deep and make some fixes. The map was totally revamped with large changes to terrain and made the overall visual style more cohesive. After some positive feedback from the dev team we felt more confident, so when map went to alpha myself as well as the team felt quite comfortable and pleased with what we had created.

Three weeks later the alpha results are announced over a conference call with the dev team. Canyon was said to need much more work in order to make the cut; giving us an additional week to address specific areas of the maps design and look. Our team in shock had to dig deep again and make a drastic change. Some areas we focused on were pathing as there were too many options available and the middle area was deemed too dangerous to enter. The overall changes we made were focused on forcing players into the middle and adjusting the terrain to make it seem more realistic and to balance gameplay. This wouldn’t be the final version, but the changes made were enough as the dev team was impressed with the drastic improvement over the short amount of time we had. After getting past this major hurdle the rest of the process would go smoother, however before entering beta Canyon would need one more week of crunch time to fix some game balance issues with adjustments to the terrain being the focus again. Both maps were then approved for beta. At this stage AA took over the beta testing stage reporting the bugs to be fixed late November. The bug list was not long, but still time consuming and one last week of fixes commenced.

Canyon was released December 11th, 2008, under the Champlain Map Pack (or seperately under DCDS) and launched with AA game client update 2.8.4 (and launcher client update).

Part 2: Impressions

It is hard to remember specific feelings now that it has been release, however the process was very stressful. Going into this project there were a lot of unknowns, specifically concerning what would happen with maps once we were done. Later this would turn into hoping we would make it past alpha. Once we did, then thoughts returned to what would happen to the maps when they would eventually be released and how would they be received by the community. While the process was stressful it was very enjoyable experience. It was fun to go to work I enjoyed being a part of this team working through the process of designing and building a map. I enjoyed the challenge that was presented to us by the dev team forcing us to push our design and improve our map. I am thankful of the experience and I feel that I learnt a lot from working on this project.

Part 3: The Aftermath

It has been a little more than a week since Canyon has been live and it is an interesting feeling that people are playing (and hopefully enjoying) it. I have been checking the servers running Canyon and there usually seems to be at least one active. Recently when I have played I ran into a few clans that quickly owned me (and my team). I have also been checking the stats from aaotracker.com and Canyon has been played for 3,000+ hours (in the first week of launch). It will be interesting to see if Canyon will last in the online community. For now it is nice to see that a select group of people are enjoying it.

Crazy Week / AA Canyon Launched

So, there was no post made for last week. I was busy finishing off the final fixes for an America's Army multiplayer map I've been working on with a small group. AA Canyon was launched last week on December 11th under the Champlain College Map Pack along with the latest client update 2.8.4. Champlain College and America's Army had an arrangement that would allow students to work on two multiplayer map with feedback and guidance from a select group of AA devs. For more information about Champlain College and the AA project check out the IGN press release.

I plan to make up for last week by posting twice this week. One post will be a postmortem on the AA project the other will be on a game from my past, The Sims Series.

IGN Press Release: http://pc.ign.com/articles/937/937655p1.html

Lemmings: Levels

In Tricky Level 7, the process isn’t difficult, but not building the stairs correctly or by putting stopping lemmings too close together it can make this level quite hard. Little things start to get annoying like starting to build stairs too late and having the lemming hit the platform edge and start walking back or exploding a stopper lemming only to break the first set of stairs and have the rest of the lemmings fall to their death. This is the first level that really tested my patients, forcing me to pay closer attention, and even then it took me awhile to beat. Once past this level the rest of Tricky uses similar technique of using blockers to limit lemming flow, while using one or two lemmings to create the needed path, primarily using stairs, to reach the exit. The only level that I didn’t recall was the last level of Tricky, which was the first level to contain two lemming spawn points with one exit in the middle.

The first level in Taxing really kicks Lemmings to the next level limiting the amount of abilities while requiring 99 of 100 lemmings to be rescued. It is quickly apparent that there will be no gimmie levels anymore. I remembered this first level quite well, but can’t seem to remember how I beat it. All I can remember is getting stuck a lot and that stupid rope thing that hangs lemmings to their demise. After failing a few times due to the low number of tools given a little out-of-the-box thinking allowed me to bypass the section that was giving me trouble. However the time limit that completely slipped my mind, mainly because it has never hindered me before, killed all the lemmings that would soon have been saved. Needless to say it doesn’t get any easier, in Taxing Level 2 there are even more traps, such as water, 10 ton weight, and two snap-claws. Careful planning will be needed to beat the rest of this Taxing difficulty, but there is nothing out of the ordinary here, just straight up lemmings.

This is when I realize that beating this game from start to finish is not as easy as I first thought.

Next week I plan to take a break from Lemmings to focus on another title.

Lemmings: The Beginning

I haven’t played lemmings in well over ten years. Thinking about it brings back good memories of my 486, of great design, and primarily of that one level which I could never beat. Some where in my house are sheets of scrap paper with the level codes frantically written down in print only I could read. Before I decided to writing about Lemmings I figured to do a search. The first thing to come up was link to DHTML Lemmings, which I found out emulates the game exactly with codes and all. I decided that before I could really comment on Lemmings I should replay it from start to finish (we all know the real reason behind this is to see if I could beat that one level).

By tricky level 2, “We all fall down,” we see the first time they really challenge the player. This level challenges the player’s ability to be patient and focused; forcing the player to be perfect in repeating the same task forty times in a row. It is not a difficult task, but I doubt many players have beaten this level the first time. From here on it gets no easier, the next level focuses on a mechanic that may not have been intended; in that the player must wait for a visual cue that the lemming is done building steps before issuing the command again. It may seem intuitive or even practical to have to wait until the lemming is done, but then why did I find myself spam clicking at first? I took awhile before I remember that I needed to wait till the ‘done’ animation, which involved the lemming shrugging, then clicking on it to start the process again. I may be picking at straws, but I find this interesting. Also, from my recollection this mechanic comes up in other areas later on, which may also mean it was intended to include such animation to cue the player.

Another thing with stairs that commonly reoccurs is stair stacking and can occur when trying to continue the building process or by having another lemming build stairs on top of already created stairs. Stair stacking can help reach a platform that wouldn’t be reached by continued building. Since this is not intended stair stacking doesn’t always work and frequently lemmings will just build one or two stairs and stop.

The scope of this review has changed, so I will be releasing it in sections over the next couple weeks.

To be continued; Lemmings: Levels...