A little while ago, we released an update to our development roadmap, which contains several interesting new features and content planned for the future!
Today, we wanted to go into a little more detail about one of those points:
"New Map with upgraded graphics & Iconic art assets."
All maps within Robocraft 2 are built using an in-game world editor that is planned to be released to players. Most don't realise this, and it is a surprise when we tell them! We want to release the World Editor that we use to players when it is ready so that you can unleash your full building potential.
Whether you use the world editor to create exciting new game maps and objectives or use the additional CPU limit to create huge, monstrous, and fun Robocraft designs, we felt it was an important part of Robocraft’s evolution, expanding beyond building robocraft.
We've seen player comments on the map design that we wanted to address. Most games feature multiple landmarks. Our next map will have multiple landmarks that help to make each map more unique and iconic. The first that we can share is going to be for a new map called The Noma Transmitter which will feature various iconic elements, one of which is an enormous satellite dish that can be seen from nearly any place within the map. Here’s a work-in-progress shot of the vista for the next Mars map:
The satellite dish is still under development, but we wanted to show an untextured look at the model to demonstrate the type of quality we’re aiming for:
Most of our art team is working hard over the next few months to make the new map interesting to look at and play! We’ll share more details on the other types of content they are creating to improve the overall look of the maps soon!
The landscape image above also features another improvement that will help us create visually exciting maps with the world editor. It’s called Off-Grid Placement and allows us to clip objects into other objects and create new landscape shapes. You can see it in the image below, where we rotated and scaled rock props to complement the landscape tiles.
We will add a procedural 'grounding' effect to make these look like they're integrated into the world with sand blended into the rocks where they intersect with each other etc.
Our goal at the moment is to improve our world editor functionality to provide better tools to let our level designer create! Ultimately, this will lead to better tools for players when they get access to it! We know that players will find really interesting ways to use the world editor and create maps and game modes that we didn’t anticipate! We hope you’re looking forward to using the world editor when it is ready!
In addition to the improvements in toolsets and the map landscape changes to give each map a better identity, we also wanted to show you the Hacking terminal that we’re working on which will be a part of the next map. Check it out below:
The hacking terminal is accessible only by the pilot. We’ll share more details on this particular object and the next game objective in the coming weeks!
