THE MAKING OF MASH-UP STREETS

by Yan "Method" Ostretsov

I always listen to music while designing maps. Gritty beats by Cypress Hill and industrial sounds by Nine Inch Nails is my choice of music. One day I was listening to Mash-Up Radio, a show hosted by DJ Muggs of Cypress Hill, and I got an idea. If there are promotional levels for graphics card like NVIDIA, why can't there be one for a radio? After thinking it over, I contacted Muggs and told him my idea to make a promo level for his radio. He liked the idea and I begun working on a level which later be known as Mash-Up Streets (methtourney1).

I knew that to make a promotional level for a radio would be quite a task, because players hate any kind of ads in games. The best way to go about it, was to use a non Quake 4 theme for a level. Something like a futuristic city with billboards, that would blend in together and won't bother the players.

I had to show the idea to Mash-Up Radio's producer and since I didn't have a scanner near by, I made a few quick sketches in PhotoShop:

Very early sketch of central area

Very early sketch of RG area

Now that I had an idea for the level, it was time to look up the reference. I'm fascinated by Chicago 1930's architecture, so I decided to look through my Chicago photo collection.

I also looked through several architectural magazines for ideas. In fact, the first room (RA area) I built, was inspired by one of photos I saw in those magazines. It wasn't the 45 degree building, but the placement of the hallway leading to SG (Shotgun) compared to the billboard building. Something simple and sort of irrelevant can spark the ideas.

I came up with the name early in the design process. Since I was building a Chicago city with futuristic elements, I decided to call it Mash-Up Streets, because it mashes two styles together.

My original idea for the level was that I'll have a big radio tower, supported by one story building in the middle of the map. That building will have an accel pad, which will push the player to the roofs of surrounding buildings. So basically the fights will be on the rooftops. Building ledges will be used to travel from one roof to another. After testing that out it felt too jammed to move. So I decided to free up the place and use a different layout, more suited for Quake movement.

Some early sketches:

One of the early sketches

Item placement planning

Cable and background detail sketches

Since Quake 4 was shipping with modified D3Radiant and it would be really simple to port map geometry from D3Radiant to Q4Radiant, I decided to use Doom Edit to block out my map ideas, while waiting for Quake 4 to be released.

RA (Red Armor) room blocked out in D3Radiant

Once I got Quake 4, I decided to use a similar texture to block out the level, but the ambient light in Q4 won't separate the shapes. So I ended up making a gray texture with black outline, so it will show off the edges.

RA room blocked out in Q4Radiant using a custom texture

Central area back when VIA/D3W logos were HILL (Cypress Hill)

I spent some time looking through various Quake 4 textures. They were good, but very few could go with the theme I chose to design. I went through several stages before I got to the texture choice I was happy with.

Early attempt to texture the level

Second attempt with windows

Texture choice for beta version

Texture choice for final version

A lot of work went into building Mash-Up Streets. I went through the same design stages as I go every time, which are:

- Blocking level out with temporary lights
- Applying basic texture set
- Tweaking lights and adding more textures
- Adding detail and tweaking geometry
- Beta and pre-final testing of the level
- Polishing the level

I want to go over several things that have been changed after receiving some feedback.

Originally the central tower had only lower entrance. After showing early beta to a few Treyarch designers, one of them suggested to open the tower up. That really added to the level, because it created an upper ground, which can be used to overlook the surrounding area. Adding a powerup on the upper level created a valuable, yet dangerous spot.

One of the early changes was LG (Lightning gun) hallway, which added a way for the defeated player to gain control of the level by picking up some armor shards and sneaking to RG room.

Another thing that has been changed was the RA room. In the beginning it was quiet small and it became a trap room. While watching several good players, I noticed that they timed RA well and right before picking it up, spammed the hallways to stop their opponent from acquiring it. Enlarging that area and creating an additional window in RG (Railgun) room fixed the problem by having more space to move in.

Since the beginning, I was planning the ledges/trims of the buildings. I thought it would be a great idea to jump from one ledge to another. After testing the level, I was told that those ledges create sniper spots, which really slow down the gameplay. Adding a clip brush and blocking some ledges, made it into a real fast-paced level.

There were two suggestions, that really affected the visuals of the level. One of the suggestions was to add cables, which will add to the visuals and break up the sky. Another was to create some buildings that could be seen in the distance to make the environment appear bigger.

Item placement is really important in tourney levels. In fact, it can make or break a level. I've learned that item placement/gameplay is more important than visuals in competitive maps. If I was a stranger and saw that Mash-Up Streets has RG and RA (two of the most important items) in the same room, I would say that it's some bad item placement. Yet that item placement makes perfect sense and is very balanced. One of the most important things I learned from designing Mash-Up Streets is competitive item placement. It takes so much time and logic to make it play well in all situations. Just knowing what makes good item placement is not enough. Testing is really invaluable.

Most if not all players commented that the promo stuff wasn't right in their face and it felt like it was a part of the map. I accomplished that by placing a billboard next to the RG room and on the central skyscraper. Even though the billboard is very exposed in RG area, it doesn't stand out much. Usually players will be too concentrated on the game and won't notice it more than once or twice. The second billboard was placed high on one of the central skyscrapers, so the player will notice it only when looking way up.

Muggs Mash-Up Radio promo

Several people said that they would like to see more of how and why I plan this or that. So I decided to introduce a new section for this article, which I called Logic. In this section, I'll go over my logic of design using RA area as an example.

Here's visual logic explanation for RA area:

Reference for the visual logic section

1. The 45 degree building was one of the first things that I blocked out. It went through a lot of changes. Since early block out stages, I added windows to create an illusion of an urban building. To make it even more realistic, I placed a metallic texture behind some windows, which created an illusion of blinders. To polish it up, I placed a patch with flare texture set to low opacity to create that light glow from the window, without sacrificing FPS (Frames Per Second) by actually placing a light entity.

The 45 degree cut is pushed in and since it looks like a core of the building, I decided to use dark textures to highlight that. The lower windows of the core have a different design than the top ones, to break the repetition. They're more spaced out, which gives them weight to visually pull down the lower part to the ground level. The upper windows on the other hand are longer, which makes the building seem taller.

2. Originally, the ground level was flat, but by pushing it down it created more space and interesting geometry to that area, along with breaking the floor up for better light calculations. Most if not all Q4 steps have a width of 16 units but since I had a clip brush covering the steps, they created a strafe jump, which would make the player fly up and bump his head on one of the wall supports. To fix that I changed step width to 32 units and spaced them a little, to tilt the slope created by the clip brush, so it pushed the player forward instead of upwards.

To break up the ground level for light calculation, I added a tile beneath the RA. Then I placed some dirty decals to make the area less clean.

3. Wall supports serve two purposes. The main purpose is that it's used as a shortcut for players to jump from RA jumppad to the RG room. The second purpose is that it adds to the visuals by connecting the buildings. It also adds a little bit of blue color to the light brown/gray ambient light. Since light brown is a warm color, having a cooler color like blue adds to the atmosphere.

4. To add more detail to the RA area, I decided to place some chimneys and antennas on the rooftops. I looked at the sky texture to figure out where the sun at. Then I placed a light entity next to the chimneys and pulled out the center of origin. I played with its position to make sure that the sun shines from the correct angle. If the sun was behind the details, then I would try to highlight the chimneys without making it too unrealistic.

5. When picking out the sky texture, I wanted to have something moody. Since most of the building textures I used were dark, I thought that reflected light brown light would really add to the colors and create a moody atmosphere. Then I added a few cables to break up the sky and add to the visuals.

Here's gameplay logic explanation for RA area:

Reference for the gameplay logic section

1. Ground level is the main route in RA room. It's fairly wide to evade the rockets and other projectiles, yet at the same time it's very dangerous, because a player can be spammed with rockets from above. He can strafe jump through that section without any problems and even make a crouch slide against the steps. Major weakness of this path is that the player won't know if it's a trap or not, until he's at the RA.

2. RG path on the other hand is narrow, but since it's on the higher level it gives the player more advantage. It's possible to jump or run on wall supports, then get RG and go through either of entry points. RG route also has the most choices. Player can decide to use the upper ground or jump down. It's also possible to look out of RG window, which faces the RA to see if an opponent camping the item.

3. Since RA is one of the most important items, there will be a lot of fights in that area. To balance out the RA corner, I placed two ramps. One which leads to the RG and the other which leads to the health shards. The second ramp can also be used to slope jump on the wall support. Players with really good movement skills can actually over jump the wall support.

Hopefully this was enough to show how and why I plan things the way I do.

I hope you enjoyed this article. If you have any comments or questions you can contact me at yanostretsov[at]yahoo[dot]com.