Category: Level Design

Matt: The Fort is one of the first level layouts I slaved over after being introduced to the Ceasar’s Revenge level editor aka the Gamemaker GUI. It has a troubled past and had been in development longer than any level. They said I should let it go but I just couldn’t let my firstborn die. Instead it has been ripped apart and rebuild from the ground up. Constantly remixed through development and has changed vastly in its flow, game play and aesthetic.The Roman fort or Castra are temporary sometimes permanent fortifications often built in the outskirts of the empire to control territories with overactive native populous. Often build out of local timbers and earthworks, these forts are used to house Roman legionaries and defend against the native uprisings that come with conquest of foreign land. Depending on the size of the force assembling, these forts they could be built incredibly quickly within a matter of days. This fort is located somewhere to the northwest of Rome in Caesar’s new Gaul or perhaps the wilder Britannia. Dark and dreary, damp pine forests surround the fort. It’s not the kind of place you would expect to find a senator, the likes of which spends his time usually lounging in warm Mediterranean summers. But those backstabbing rats will scurry all over the empire, try any hiding place, but there is no escaping Caesar’s Revenge. Woe are his betrayers.Fort A the original level was a laggy, directionless, unbalanced and oversize-ed mess. Fort B is everything right with fort with the negatives stripped away. Certain elements were kept from the original design were retained while others completely overhauled (see below). I overlaid the map layout of both versions so we could get a clear look at what had been deleted; the most interesting part for me is the three separated parts showing the “deleted”, “salvaged” and “added” sections. What was salvaged is actually very little, more then 75% of the level was deleted and the only new volume added is a small new starting section (the top section of the blue), the rest of the new blue overlaps the purple salvaged section and adds to the level density with new enemy encounters, decoration and set dressing, rather than adding more scale. Despite the reduction in level size the density and additional gameplay makes up for the loss and the playtime to complete is significantly higher. This is all with a smaller cap on instances – instances are the objects placed within the Gamemaker room. The original Fort A had upwards of 6000 instances while the later optimized Fort A had 3000. The current new Fort B has only 1000. 1000 instances is our arbitrary limit, it serves as optimization for the sake of lower end machines and works towards a more limited level object saturation to aid in that old school stylishness.

Optimisations

Jordan: The early prototype stages of the game were mostly interior and felt much more like a dungeon crawler than what the project has become. One of the initial reasons behind this was to allow for aggressive culling and deactivation of objects – corridors and low roofs definitely have the advantage of obscuring more of the environment from the player. Fort is a good example of a larger scale outdoor environment that pushed our optimisation forward as there are a number of open area encounters that require a greater number of AI entities to be active. One way which we have approached this issue is by enforcing an internal object cap to give us a target to work towards. Additionally, the game culls any drawing of objects out of view or beyond the fog. As far as behaviors are concerned, the region beyond the player is deactivated and checked every 60 frames but only if the player’s position has moved enough from the last check to avoid updating unnecessarily. A hard deactivation at the fog distance would be noticeable and open to abuse so the threshold is further back out of sight. This makes for an interesting balance in that we are optimising to avoid moment to moment lag as well as that which comes with the update frame to recheck positions across the level. Right now everything runs smoothly on current levels though the real test will be when we do a proper pass for lower spec systems once we have gameplay and art in a final state.

Bellow is a call back to some concept art by Ivan from 2017 when first talking about the fort idea and a screenshot of a similar vista in the level.

Music

There are actually a number of tracks in the game already but this is the first completed one which I have felt was suitable to share in terms matching the style we are looking for. Inspiration has come from older thrash metal albums. There is certainly a lo-fi quality to the game in terms of its resolution and pixelated gore that is cohesive with early entries in this genre. I have intentionally gone for more of a dirty, gritty and piercing sound than an overly effected and polished approach which better suits the aesthetic of the game. This track incorporates a few ancient sounding instruments which is an area I would like to explore more in an attempt to reconcile 90’s metal with the Roman setting. Something I particularly like about this track is the driving pace as well as the contrast between melodic and dissonant elements. At some point it might be interesting to do a post breaking down whole the production process but for now here is the first released track titled after the Julius Caesar quote: “Alea iacta est” or “The Die is Cast”. It is said that this quote comes from Caesar as he marched his troops across the Rubicon into Rome in defiance of the senate – an act that would eventually lead to the demise of the Roman Republic – an apt title indeed.

Gaius Julius Caesar

Ivan: The production is plodding along behind the scenes, we have been looking into new weapons like the falx, making levels and talking about what other assets we will need in our post-Roman Republic future. At this stage, we have had a pair of floating arms wielding the deadly weapons and issue justice, but what we did not have was a model of the world first true dictator, leader, general, Gaius Julius Caesar. What else would signal excess on this project that is striving to be the paragon of pixel grit but a multimillion polygon 3d sculpt of our fearless leader? I present to you multimillion polygon Caesar.


This model will be retopologized and textured, most likely be used in the trailer and maybe reposed for some statue sprites. The head model itself peaked with 20 million polygons at one point. The head was modeled separately from the body has just been merged in. For some historical facts, Caeser was 5 foot 7 inches (170.18cm), by some accounts, his hair was brown as were his eyes. Considering our Caesar will be re-animated it will most likely be white head of hair and evil glowing eyes. Hope you guys like it.

For the past few months we have been working on a number of levels. One of the most immediate goals for us is getting the first act laid out in terms of content so we can balance and polish to the point of a playable build that could be potentially released. For this post we wanted to showcase one of these levels – tentatively named ‘The Quarry’. There is still tweaking as well as additional art to implement but the bones are in place and hopefully documenting this stage of development reveals something interesting about our approach and process.

We needed a level that introduced slaves who can be freed to fight alongside the player. The obvious answer would have been a prison (which we will probably do at some point) but I wanted to branch out from the corridor focused texture sets we have been using so far. Both of these intentions were met by recalling the slave quarry scene from the opening of Spartacus (1960) – the setting fits thematically, mechanically and offers a new outdoor location that could be achieved within the limitations of our aesthetic.

The architecture and environment of the quarry is mostly made from rock formations with a theme of wooden scaffolding and makeshift structures throughout. The two main areas are the soldier’s camps and fortifications, the mining pit as well as a cave. Conditions in Roman mines were brutal. Many of these slaves were criminals known as “damnati in metallum” – which translates to “those condemned to the mine”. Other slaves in Rome could earn or purchase their freedom, these slaves however would work until their death.

In terms of gameplay, this level experiments with having the sling as a primary weapon as well as the gladius. So far we have used the sword as a staple starting point so introducing a ranged weapon with a bit of ammo management adds a bit of variety as well as strategy to the gameplay. The sling’s behavior was tweaked quite a bit to make it viable – running a level with a single weapon seems to be a good test of not just its usability but also fun factor. Currently the sling can be held for a strong shot or tapped for a faster but less damaging throw. This dynamic in addition to the extra damage dealt on surprise attacks makes for some interesting encounters.

The overall level is fairly linear and so the cave section breaks this structure by offering two seperate paths to take which should keep the level fresh on repeated plays. Both routes have a few pickups as well as allied slaves to free who will fight alongside the player (art is still being developed). An important design consideration was the placement of these benefits; they are far away enough from the fastest route to be of little use to speed runners but are also easy enough to find that players struggling with the level could go both ways to collect all of the slaves and items. This is a thought process throughout the entire game as we want levels to be challenging to speedrun but also provide options for players who want to take the game at a slower pace.

The game is very much a revenge story and so this opening shot of the level sets the tone of the tyranny and brutality of the senators that you are assassinating. Crucifixion was a method of punishment used in Ancient Rome. Mass crucifixions took place throughout Roman history with 6,000 of Spartacus’ followers suffering the torturous death after rebelling. Thematically this scene fits the context of a corrupt slave quarry as well as motivates the player to show little mercy to the ruling senator and his troops.

This level introduces a dog enemy type who runs quickly towards the player and alerts other units by barking. While not particularly high in health, the dog can be dangerous due to its high speed and potential to cause a chain reaction of opponents closing in on the player. This gif also includes a campfire with a roast leg. One of the great strengths of the Roman military over its opponents was superior nutrition. This versatile prop can be used throughout camp areas and provides a bit of flavour to the environment. I’m sure the dogs would love to sneak a bite!

Something fascinating about making this game using GameMaker is the way in which 2D design sentiments translate to a 3D context. We’ve definitely been inspired by looking at Wolfenstien 3D editor and the intricacies of zoomed out video game maps. There is something very rewarding in laying out disgusting 2D sprites in a flat editor, then hitting ‘play’ and seeing the world come to life. Below is a side by side shot of the Quarry in editor as well as the same view in game through the 3D camera. Some new cinematic debugging features were implemented this week which definitely helps in capturing more dramatic screenshots – it is also quite strange seeing our flat-plane environments form a different angle!

That’s all for this post! It will be interesting to see how the level changes going forward as a lot of the balance depends on where it is placed in the game. We probably won’t do a post on every level like this (a little surprise is always good) but expect to see a few more areas being fleshed out in the coming months. If you would like to talk about the game, head over to our TIG Devlog.

Bonus content: Have you ever wondered how many stone quarries were in Ancient Rome? Have you ever wished you had a tabulated database and location map? Well, during research for this stage we found this great paper. Ben Russell has your back.