Map Design (Apex Legends)

Elevation, sightlines, map hazards/obstacles, "lanes", and the time to get to each of these elements were designed for a dynamic but fair experience for both sides

Iterated on my original design with feedback from professors and peers

Researched Apex legends to create a map that works, but also brings something fresh (environmental hazards, verticality, snow biome, and more

Constructed "Penguin Park" in Unity 

Created concept art for a new and interactive Arenas map

This map, Penguin Park, was made to be an Arenas map for Apex Legends. 

Genre: Action, 3v3

Contribution: Map Designer and Concept Artist

Team: 1 Map Designer and 1 Concept Artist.

Fun Fact: Penguin Park took inspiration from Rainbow 6 Siege's "Theme Park" map!

To begin my process, I thought about how Apex usually runs a three-lane system where there are three main ways to push, top/left, mid, and bot/right. I wanted to incorporate that idea so that players didn’t feel like they did not know how to play this map if they’re seasoned players when picking it up for the first time. I then picked a theme to start to narrow design choices down. The theme I decided on was sort of a snowy feel since Apex Legends doesn’t currently have a map that has any snow. From there, I wanted something a bit different from what their previous maps were. I took inspiration from “Theme Park” in Rainbow 6 Siege to come up with Penguin Park, a penguin-themed zoo and observation park. 

My overall goal for this map was to make something with a lot of high and low combat. So I made the middle part suspended over a pit of penguins where if you fell in, you’d die. You can find zip lines scattered along the map with the purpose of jumping right into the battle on the high ground. Alternatively, if the player is good enough, a player can also use them to save themselves from falling to their death. I also added in two sniper towers that overlook that prime middle spot without being able to see the entire map. I added in a flank underground, beneath a glacier, that neither sniper perch can see until it may be too late. Furthermore, I added low ground options on the bottom side of the map with two more bridges over penguin enclosures that have cover on the sides of them and a glass floor to see the penguins. The purpose of each of these routes is to give enough cover for players to have a reasonable chance to get to the next piece of cover without being shredded to pieces by the team that can secure the bridge. While securing that middle spot affords a chief advantage, it isn’t supposed to be an automatic win. 

I added in the food court and train obstacles so that at the beginning of each round, both teams would be relatively safe in their spawns since there aren't any sightlines directly to either spawn point. Both obstacles serve as cover that affords climbing on top of, so they can potentially be used as vantage points as well. As for resource drops like materials and supply bins, I wanted them in places to influence collision points around different areas of the map. That underground tunnel may not get a lot of use normally, but now that it has some materials in it, it might persuade a player to go for a flank. This also serves to reward different play styles and have the combat not center just around the middle high ground. Random circle generation also does this, and I think actually makes for very diverse play. 

My biggest concern was the circle centering on the underground tunnel, but honestly, I think that would just make grenades and planning even more crucial. Come to think of it, I don’t have any cover shown in that tunnel. If the ring were to close there, it would just be like musket lines at that point, which isn’t at all a fun way to play. I have got to add cover to my next iteration. I wanted to get all the actual instances of cover and intractability down first before adding in less important decoration and game feel because it’s the first draft. I think once I see it in Unity I’ll know where the game feel lacks and needs more decoration for it to actually fit the feel of a penguin park.

Once I got into Unity I’ll admit a lot of things changed. It was difficult simply starting out because it wasn’t as easy as simply drawing each of the terrain pieces. I had to find assets, resize things, raise and lower terrain, cut off certain parts of assets, add colliders, and rethink some of my design choices. The first thing I did was figure out from my old design where I wanted there to be collision points. I knew I wanted the entire map to be playable, and I wanted to persuade the player to use the entire map to their advantage. This is the decision behind spreading out the materials and supply bins to the far corners, as well as having two in the middle. At the end of the day, I knew the middle was where most skirmishing was going to happen, so I leaned into that a bit by having a material and supply bin in that area. 

The next thought in my brain was how to balance cover. I wanted to give a lot of coverage to this map because the verticality in the middle is so powerful. This spawned the idea of adding in the train on the left side and the smaller buildings on the right side. Once I saw those three assets placed and sized it, it left me with a sizeable portion of no-man's-land that challenged my idea of a map with more cover. I fixed this by raising the terrain in this area to form a hill that is climbable and affords protection from the high spot, but no cover if a player gets behind you. I also noticed a vast amount of cover that I didn’t include in my rough sketch around the high ground area and the underground tunnel area. To fix this, I added a few boxes on the straight catwalk so pushing up would on take a few seconds before a player could get to cover. The downside to this is that a player still has to hop out of cover to grab the meds from the supply bin leaving them exposed for a short time. Adding cover there is just me making sure that people actually go for the meds instead of having to cross a bridge with no cover. Another reason there isn’t too much cover there is because of the legends' abilities. Many have ways of getting there and getting out pretty easily, can launch concussive missiles, or simply pop smoke to cover their tracks. This map is meant to be played with legends in mind so the cover is tailored to strategic play with their tactical abilities.

The other side with the diagonal catwalk, however, is meant to have barely any cover. This is because they have the ziplines very close to the material spawn, so it’s meant to be a quick in and out. If people were to fight there, they wouldn’t have much of anything to hide behind. This path should be taken by someone playing a mobility legend or someone confident in their movement/gun skill. I also did away with the killer penguins and the area under the catwalk is now traversable, albeit dangerous, because there isn’t much cover. This is a high-risk high-reward play where players can flank fast but also risk getting caught mispositioned and gunned down from above. Moving on to the underground tunnel, I didn’t have much of anything set up and I realized that if the circle closes down on that area it wouldn’t afford strategic play. So to counter this obstacle, I dropped some cover in there and a tiny bit of verticality to afford some extra challenge when it came to sightlines. Shooting through a bridge with automatic rifles can be difficult sometimes in Apex, but shooting through with a marksman/sniper rifle is much easier. The tunnel’s purpose, however, isn’t to have flanks on itself like the middle point has. The tunnel values gun skill, sightlines, and mind games because of its enclosed nature. The sniper towers were also moved around a bit because I wanted them to have sightlines of the middle verticality, but not much behind the towers themselves. I also totally spaced on them having a bit of cover so anyone standing on them wouldn’t immediately get shot down. In response to this, I added two small pieces of cover only on the outsides of the towers to make the flank that much more impactful and give snipers something to crouch behind. I didn’t want snipers just being able to shoot each other, so neither tower is in view of the other. Finally, I placed them very close to the entrance/exit of the underground tunnel path because I wanted people who successfully flanked a chance to take these snipers out quickly. 

At the bottom side of the map, I moved the assets around a bit to offer small breaks in cover where players can be seen by most of the map. Furthermore, this theme of a player having to put themselves in danger to get anywhere on the map is also present here. The bottom side of the map is a very key flanking point because of the hill and there are only materials down there. In many Apex arena games, players prioritize supply bins over materials and I did this on purpose. Players looking to flank rather than skirmish can take this long way around and often get rewarded for it if their teammates can stay alive long enough. These areas were also balanced with the knowledge the circle will center on the middle part of the map but anywhere up and down. That’s another big reason I took away the death penguins. 

Honestly, I think what really screwed me up the most here was my ineptitude with Unity. It’s been a while since I’ve made a map/level in this software and lately, I’ve been learning Roblox’s game engine. So it took me a while to get used to it again plus I couldn’t find much of what I was looking for. The point is I lost a lot of time that way. Alternatively, I do like the way the map turned out. I think my biggest successes were the game environment/feel of being in a snowy biome and I especially like the penguins. Furthermore, I really did like my idea of the underground tunnel and I think it turned out good, but I wasn’t sure how to delete some parts of an asset since I had to use Blender, so it ended up looking a bit choppy. As for the actual map design, I loved how the middle part turned out. I can imagine a ton of skirmishes happening there and people chucking grenades to cover their advances to grab the materials/supplies. I like how I made the sniper towers a threat but also made them extremely counterable. I really think I could have added more to the underground tunnel though. The problem I was having was I wasn’t sure what else I could add. I didn’t know how to actually dig a hole into the ground to make it physically underground, either. I employed the help of other classmates and the internet, but between me finding an asset that worked well, and my Unity never matching the version the tutorial people were using, it kind of fell flat‌ in execution. At the end of the day, I ‌wish some assets were a bit cleaner, but I have to address my own shortcomings of not being a Unity god and know that it isn’t going to be perfect.

I learned a lot during this process both in Unity and outside. Starting with my design process, I found that it’s great to have ideas on how you want to make your map, but it’s so important to make that map in a game engine to see those assets in actual space. I had to rearrange and resize so much because I wasn’t sure how things were going to look in Unity. The other important thing was time management. If I didn’t start this project early enough, I would have been screwed. There were so many issues with my Unity version, I lost my map at one time, I had a billion errors on things that weren’t even in my scene, and I was falling through many of my map elements. Long story short, I had to relearn a lot of Unity elements in a short amount of time, and if I didn’t have that time to spare, I wouldn’t have finished. The biggest thing I learned is that making maps is hard work. There is so much thought that goes behind just adding in one vantage point. I found myself wanting to add in multiple map elements and then stopping myself and having to think about how this would affect either side. I struggled with trying to make the map not super mirrored because I didn’t want it to be boring. I overcame this by thinking about “equivalent cover” where the train provides different strengths and weaknesses than the houses on the other side. If I had to say the biggest thing I learned about this project, it’s that adding actual penguins to Penguin Park was a spectacular idea and really gives the map more life.