Clocktower Early Development

Soon after I'd chosen my theme I decided to roughly scope out the size I wished the Clocktower to be. I created several different cylinder sizes for the Clocktower.

 This image shows how the Clocktower size changed throughout development.

The cylinder on the left was the original size I tried. I soon realised that this version was too narrow to offer compelling gameplay. There wasn't enough space for an interesting layout.

I doubled the size of the cylinder which gave me MUCH more room to work with.

Clocktower Clockface

The first area I developed was the central clockface of the tower. I used 3ds max to model a simple circle for the clockface, along with two simple clockhands.

I converted the hands into Interp Actors and used the rotation property to make them move around the outside of the clockface. An early idea I had was to allow players to walk along the clockhands to obtain a useful power-up or weapon. This would require timing, since the hands would need to be nearing the horizontal position.

I decided to place the all powerful Redeemer (mini-nuke launcher) weapon in this position.

I created a hole using BSP subtract in the wall of the clockface room.

I then added a series of platforms leading up and around to the clockhands. The player can, with the correct timing, jump off of the last platform land on the big clockhand, and run along it to the Redeemer spawn. The player can then jump back to the platforms and pass back through the hole to return to the battle.

I think this concept is a good one. I've mixed the theme of the level (dynamic/moving, height), with gameplay to improve the map experience.

Clocktower Middle

The middle of the clocktower began as a place to test out gear rotation. I modelled some extremely simple gears in 3ds max and imported them into the map to test the idea of moving, rotating platforms.

The lower set of gears allow the player to cross the middle of the map from one side to the other. The gears rotate in an alternate fashion, gear 1 rotates left, gear 2 rotates right etc.

The upper set of gears can be navigated by using the Jump Boots power-up. The player can jump from the starting platform, onto the first gear, second gear, and lastly through the open hatch into the clockface room.

Clocktower Lift

Initially I created the lift as a temporary measure purely to make testing the map easier. Every time I fell down to the ground floor, I could simply hop in the lift and speedily reach the clockface room, without needing to die and reload the entire level.

 

At some point during development I decided that keeping the lift would be useful since it allows players to easily traverse the maps height.

I decided to add glass to the lift so that both players inside, and outside the lift could see and respond to each other moving around the map.

Clocktower Ground Floor

The lift was a success but the only way to reach the middle of the map was to take the lift to the top and jump down from cog to cog. This was inconvenient.

I decided to create another method of reaching the middle of the map. On the ground floor I created a series of gears that spun up and down a pole. The player could jump on the first gear, wait until it's near the apex of it's ascent and jump onto the next gear.

If the player did this correctly they could quickly ascend to the middle of the map and then jump onto two small gears leading to a platform.

Conclusion

This concludes my post explaining the early development of my Unreal Engine map Clocktower.