BAVARIAN BOROUGH

PROJECT INTRODUCTION

On December 11th, 2024, Fortnite released a Early Launch of their new FPS Tactical Shooter mode, Ballistic. A week later, they introduced the First Person Camera & Weapons into UEFN, the Editor for making Fortnite Maps & Levels. Ever since then, I wanted to make my own Tactical Strategy & Shooter map. I got right into the Editor, and started learning Verse scripting, messing with In-Editor built game systems, and created one of my favorite maps ever.

RESPONSIBILITES

  • Set Dressing & Level Art for making the beautiful aesthetic of Bavarian Borough.
  • Scripting in Verse and designing in-game events, the Custom Round Timer, The UI/UX Design, as well as the Bomb Events (exploding and defusing)
  • Verse Scripting, Memory / Asset Optimization, Audio Design, Lighting, Post Processing, & Fog Atmosphere Blending.
  • Programmed and Scripted my own Attack & Defense Bomb Game Mode
  • Level Design Pureref Art Reference board
  • Reviewing & updating any bugs that were happening within the level.
  • Self Quality Assurance & Testing

PROJECT DETAILS

  • UEFN Fortnite
  • Total Team of 3
  • Role: Level Designer & Game Designer
  • Unreal Engine 5
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PureRef Environment References:

  • Before I started any production on Bavarian Borough, I immediately got to work in finding Environment References using PureRef. This allowed me to research and review a German-Village inspired themed environment and town that I was going to come up with to design an environment with. I found a town in Georgia called Helen, who celebrates and is inspired by German Village Culture and it was an amazing place to research and learn about for this project!
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Whiteboards Are Awesome!!!

  • On Christmas, I was gifted a large whiteboard to write Notes and Ideas on! When Fortnite announced their 5v5 Tactical Shooter Game Mode, I immediately starting writing down notes, doing small sketches of flow maps, questions and confirmations about the Game Mode and it’s mechanics. Writing down my ideas and inspirations and notes about the flow of the level, and all my ideas entirely helped me a ton for this project.
  • I got to write down a lot of ideas, the map’s Flow graph, details about the game mode, and even played a ton of Ballistic to get a solid idea of what to design and work with for Bavarian Borough!

Mixing Village Buildings Into The Graybox:

  • Now to get Production Started, I had to graybox the pathing and flow of my level starting with some basic graybox platforms. This gave me an idea of scale, where to position the buildings on the side, and overall firing angles early on so I can balance them according to potentially crazy sight lines from players. It gave me enough room and space for motivation in what I wanted in the large gaps of the terrain for a building type. It allowed me to place specific stores, specific markets, specific house homes, and even workshops.
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Sight Lines Had To Be Clear:

  • When designing Bavarian, it was important to design comfortable and Tactical Sight Lines for both the attacking and defensive teams. There had to be opportunities to use special equipment such as grenades to coat sight lines in smoke, or to have a choke point to hold from the opposing team.
  • There’s a mix of sight lines for Distance for different types of guns. I wanted to make sure there were enough sight lines for different play styles, for close, mid, and long range encounters.

Rifts / Teleporters In Tactical Team Shooters:

  • Inspired by Valorant, they took a risk in adding Teleporters in Valorant into their competitive Tactical Team Shooter. With Bavarian Borough, I wanted to design and elaborate on this idea to offer more Precise and Strategy for players to bait going to sites.
  • The teleporters in daily playtests were being used Strategically and used in variety to exit sites, and to go into flank positions quickly. Each teleporter in the map goes to Mid, and has a loud sound efffect n design to let other players know that someone teleported, teammate or enemy.

Level Art Execution:

  • With a mix of Grayboxing & Level Art, it was time to get to work in creating all the awesome details to get ready to setup for Set Dressing & The background Environment! This is the process where I add all the buildings that are unique to player callouts, player strategies, and general player pathing! This part of the process was going to be the longest process into getting the level done and finalized and it was something that I was doing for about 2 months!
  • After placing a bunch of art assets from Fortnite, there had to be Optimizations made to lower the memory limit for all users to be able to play on Bavarian Borough! I went through and cleaned any unnecessary visual additions so that the players didn’t get distracted by the beauty of the level and focused a little more on gameplay!

Verse Scripting & Coding:

  • After the Level Art & Set Dressing was fully complete, now was the toughest part for designing Bavarian Borough. Verse is a new-ish scripting system only used for UEFN so it took a really long process to learn how to script and set things up for a custom Bomb Timer within my level. Ballistic isn’t available yet for UEFN creators, and so I was in charge of coding & scripting my own event system by scratch. I had to design the systems for the timer, the bomb’s exploding after 45 seconds, the Planted Bomb Time Remaining Timer, The Pre-Round Setup so players had time to pick and choose their preferred weapons. It was all a huge struggle but I got through it with my technical knowledge as a Level Designer!
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Bavarian Borough Top-Down

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Bavarian Borough Reference Board

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Bavarian Borough Walkthrough