Rigs - Zurich
The Zurich arena for Rigs (2016) was a DLC map that was released for free shortly after launch. A lot of the geometry was based on the skate park design used in the test arena but the level quickly developed an identity of it's own.
One of the big pushes for this level was to work around the symmetry of the 4 quadrants of the map and still make each area quickly identifiable. The red/blue split was key to this but we also tried to implement a lot of large scale graphic design elements in to the level. This created a lot of shader challenges.
For lighting we decided that we didn't want to use natural light strongly within the level, the majority of light should come from manmade floodlights. This created performance concerns due to large overlapping spotlights but we managed to overcome this with some new optimisation tricks. On this level I was involved in the Art 1 lighting pass and optimisation. Luke Darby was the primary lighting artist for Art 2 and bugfixing.
One trick we used particularly heavily for this map was to place small fog sheets across the top of entrances and across the centre line of the level to seperate key routes. These make the scene easier to read. These sheets fade out when viewed up close.
We went through a lot of colour experimentation for all the floors of the level. In the end we tried to make the tops of key routes white and use darker colours for supporting areas.
This is an area at the centre of the map where I was particularly happy with the lighting balance. The way the red, blue and yellow zones blend together creates a strong balance to this view.
Screens were a key part of the map, particularly as the time of day was dark. This enabled us to use large screens as strong light sources.
This interior section took some experimentation to light well. It needed to be brighter than the exteriors to pull players into it. The fragmented ceiling pattern also brought some interest.
Making the central floor of the room dark really helped the exits pop out more once you were inside this section.
These mini side tunnels needed to have some yellow tones to it so that it connected to the nearby powerslam goal. Their brightness also encouraged players to use this route more.
With all the bright grey flooring there needed to be quite a lot of dark materials here to balance out.
The surround of the level could afford to have a bit more colour variety than the gameplay section. These pinks are only used in the background.
I created a baked down LOD of the test arena in the background of this view. It is intended to be a connected environment. Most players will find it hard to notice without free camera though.
The screens at each end were a key focal point, particularly for lighting.
The screen shader was quite complicated, it needed to support lots of team states plus it will swap to displaying goal text and fireworks when points are scored.
