Hurtworld - Noob Zone Towns
These two levels were probably my favorite I made for Hurtworld and were created as part of the Town Event System.
Town Events involved a randomly selected “town” anywhere within the open-world map running either a king of the hill style event or an event where loot boxes would spawn at different locations within that level for a period of time and players would fight over them.
These two levels were specifically created for the starting zone, where players have very little gear and weapons. A lot of Town Events involved highly geared players dominating low-tier players so I wanted to try to design a couple of levels where there was an even playing field as long as you had the skill.
The movement and early weapons in Hurtworld had a pretty high skill cap. There was a bow and a spear, good players could endlessly bunny hop while getting bow and spear headshots from halfway across the map. I wanted some levels where the player had a lot of choice in routes to take, multiple stories, lots of small passages, and pretty much anything to keep highly geared players guessing. I also wanted players with good movement skills able to bypass certain areas which is why there are a lot of ramps, you can build up speed by bunny hopping down these and then launch yourself across gaps. I made a lot of it high up as well so players were punished for messing up high-skill jumps, forcing them to actually practice movement.
“Hurtworld is an indie multiplayer survival FPS that was developed in Melbourne, Australia by a small team and has now sold over a million copies on Steam alone”
Level 1
I remember with this town I wanted it to feel like you could endlessly move around level without stopping. It has a clear oval shape to it with lots of paths running into each other. You can also get up on all but the highest roof. As long as you have the skill to pull off the jumps, this level flows very freely, allowing players to completely outwit their opponents through movement alone. This also contributes heavily to the new Loot Hunt event where loot boxes would spawn in specified locations randomly over a period of time. Players with good movement would be able to weave in and out grabbing loot before their enemies even had a chance.
The top floor of the tallest building is also the capture point for an event where players have to hold a point for a period and will be rewarded with loot. I really wanted to create this scenario where two teams are fighting each other from each of these buildings facing each other, all the while the attacking team has players trying to scale the Capture Point and overrun the defenders. Seeing arrows and spears flying back and forth dropping players one by one until the defending team is overrun or the attacking team takes too many casualties and has to retreat was great fun to watch.
Grey Boxing
Level 2
I always wanted to make a cliffside or tree-house style level. The low-tier levels were the perfect place for it. High risk, high reward for movement skills (a common theme I know), lots of tricky level changes and a capture point that can be very hard to hold against someone with good map knowledge.
This map was great for the Loot Hunt event. It was open enough that you could see everyone running around but had a lot of tunnel-like rooms and level changes so keeping track of players required good game sense.
Capturing the point (the tallest building hanging off the hill) on this one could be daunting by yourself. People would randomly pop up in one of the three rooms facing the point then they’d disappear and pop up somewhere else, firing arrows in your direction as they went. Luckily there’s a lot of cover, but if you let two or more players that are working together surround and distract you, it wouldn’t take long before you took an arrow to the head.
