Hi.

My name is Rasmus Künstlicher and I’m at Full Control as a level design intern.

Short about me: Currently I’m studying the level design program at The Game Assembly in Malmö, Sweden. I got the opportunity to work half-time on Jagged Alliance: Flashback and get some experience and hopefully some portfolio material. Jagged Alliance 2 is one of my favourite games of all time and I am, of course, a backer of JA:F.

In this post I will show you some progress that I made on one of the filler levels, currently located at C14. I thought it would be cool to share some of the process with you guys and give you an understanding of how we work and what we do here!

When the task of making C14 was assigned to me I started with checking the strategic map to see what kind of sector it should be: is there a coastline, are there mountains, what’s in the neighbouring sectors, is there a road on so on. Then I made a quick crude top-down of the sector and started with building the terrain. I knew that the sector east of here contained a prison on a rocky peninsula and I wanted that to be reflected in this sector.

Early block-up of the map. Tank-traps and a road barrier in the eastern end because of the neighbouring prison.

I continued with making some cool spots on the map. I put up a military checkpoint at the road and some ruins of an old fishermans hut. Personally, I like to have a story in the environment that helps me to get it interesting. For example, the huts inhabitants were forced out many years ago due to the prison being so close by and the checkpoint was put up after a (famous) convict escaped the prison.

The guards made a chair out of sandbags so that they don’t have to stand up all day.

Fishermans hut blocked up with placeholder ruins from another sector. It would later be replaced by walls that fitted the poor fishing family better.

I went on and placed grass, trees, rocks and other props on the level. While doing this, it is important to have combat in mind, how tight do you want between covers, where should line of sight be restricted and so on. At the time I could not test actual combat in the level but you can get pretty far with reading the design documents and looking on how Jagged Alliance 2 built their sectors.

We got a new ground shader and I went over the level again to fix the ugly yellow spots and add more detail when needed. The result was awesome and I was very happy with how much we could vary the ground without making new textures for every purpose.

The ground around the fishermans hut is looking nice

At this point I put down this level for now, as it was getting to where I wanted it to be, and started on a new sector, repeating the process. After a couple of weeks we had received new props and Jesper had found time to give me feedback on the sector so I returned to C14 once again. This time, I did an update on the fishermans hut and replaced the placeholder ruins with more fitting props.

Wooden walls fitted the setting better. Replaced the dirt floor with concrete inside the building. Stormy weather made the roof fly into the sea at some point.

As you may have noticed, shadows are very dark and the colours are a little bit off in the pictures above. I found out that I hadn’t adjusted the render settings for the scene. After adding a little fog, some ambient light and tweaking numbers for a while it looked a lot better! Here’s how the level look today:

Checkpoint is ready. The guards really likes their flowers and makes a detour around them. Even armed guards can be soft!

Removed the grass around the beams, it didn’t really fit. Put more blown off debris between the hut and the sea to make it look more natural.

Added an old pier for the fishing boat that the inhabitants used to make a living.

Sometimes you need to work with what you got. We don’t have a water boiler prop right now but I wanted to see how it could look like so I made my own using a barrel, a trash can, a grate and two keys. It will obviously be replaced with a prop that a real artist made. :)

Perfect water boiler, ready for action. Guaranteed to be replaced before release!

There is still work to be done on the sector. For example, the previously mentioned water boiler might break when we get additional code into the game and it has to be replaced by a real prop. The roads are still being iterated upon and will look a lot better shortly. Also, the map needs to be tested for combat and adapted so it is fun to play on it.

Small details like this pond makes the environment more interesting. Jesper got the idea and gave me feedback. Having someone else looking at your work is important and really rewarding.

The sector has come a long way though and I think it will be pretty nice when finished. There might be a little surprise added later for you guys to discover but I don’t want to spoil anything about that. ;)

Hope you enjoyed this update! It is a small window to what we do here and we are working hard to make the best Jagged Alliance in many years! Stay tuned for more updates on how we progress!

//Rasmus K

Slightly different from the first block up.

Thanks for sharing! Looks a nice filler sector. Just a note for upcoming sectors that not all of them should use car props; and probably won't have, but this is just the second sector out of 2 I have seen :) I like the details of tier tracks you have come up with. At some point I also hope (and I am sure) we will see buildings with roofs too (I remember that the missing rooftops mainly bothered me in the first sector where the gas station's whole roof seemed to be collapsed.).

Haha, maybe FC forgets that water boiler there :)

I want to play.... 0.0

Thanks. Hopefully, in the future, players will be able to make your own levels.

Thank you for sharing how you work. I like your approach of a sector and its details. That's how you give a soul and a story to a place.

I'd love to have a walk in this sector.

Thanks for all the comments! The whole team is working hard to make this game awesome and I wanted to give you some info on why making games takes time and how the content evolves during the process.

Dobrodukh: The level editor is announced so you will most likely be able to make levels of your own in the future. Looking forward to see all the great stuff that comes from the community!

Hey Rasmus,

thanks for sharing - very awaresome.

Sure you want to do a 100% perfect job, but how about leaving this improvised boiler as it is?

Two reasons: The old fisherman was poor and had to manage with the simple stuff he could buy. (And of course - a super duper waterboiler would have been stolen years ago.) And - the other reason: Right now the core fans are in the forum following the first steps of JA Flashback. Hopefully in ten years time we will play the basic game with as much joy as we had with the old JA2 these past 15 years on our computers. And each time we walk through this basic game and round the corner of your abandoned fisherman's hut and see the improvised boiler we will remember the old days, when all the things were being planted and were brewing, and the guys at Full Control had to improvise, just like the old fisherman...

Nice work! Really enjoying these little tidbits you guys give us.. keep up the awesome work! =D

Last picture reminds me of Dead Island :P  Which I loved! ;)

Looks nice, the white sand could be a bit more deeper into the island, such a small beach looks a bit unrealistic for me, i think just because of the waves there should be more natural space between the water and the green area. Also i see you are not placing palms at the white sand, but you could do that because thats normal.

I think if you make the beach much larger the island looks better at all. The statics still could stay where they are. (just a little thing came to my mind)

Nice work, beautiful

For pre alpha it looks pretty good, i hope you include more grass in the maps especially around those flowers, not the flax type plants but actual grass strands im talking about.