Twisted Metal level designs
Aug 30, 2022 12:06:58 GMT -5
Post by 40oz on Aug 30, 2022 12:06:58 GMT -5
I went down a bit of a rabbit hole recently during the development of DBP51. I recalled that Twisted Metal 2's mid game boss's territory was on the lost civilization of "Amazonia," so, for inspiration, I deiceded to pull up a playthrough of TM2 and skip to the map on youtube. Watching it really got me thinking.
The twisted metal series is known for being the championship belt holder for vehicular combat games. It's one of the greatest selling ps1 games of all time, selling 1.74 million copies in the United States. But what I want to talk about is how it somehow slipped everyone's memory that the level designs were ugly as fuck.
I played many hours of Twisted Metal 2 as a kid, it was one of my favorite playstation games. Vehicular combat was never as fleshed out anywhere else as it was in this game, and competing head to head with equally equipped deathmatch bots was awesome.
Twisted Metal 2: World Tour has maps that take place all over the globe. You start the game in Los Angeles, and end it in Hongkong. And as you advance to each map, round by round, you're flown to another location in the world for your next scrimmage. By creating a symmetrical bowl stage with a bridge over it, and a bounce pad in the middle, then naming it "Moscow," they somehow tricked my stupid adolescent brain into believing I was actually in Russia. How the fuck did they do that?
I guess they were on to something by having game design that utilizes low FOV and absurd vehicular steering that makes every surface feel like it's made of butter. When you don't really have much time to pick apart the scenery, and the constant threat of oncoming murder is in your rear view mirror, you can get away with some really ugly maps.
Twisted Metal 2 succeeds at leaving the player with an impression of the game's setting feeling dynamic and diverse. The "theme" of each map is absorbed regardless of whether the level design was good or not.
The rooftops of new york is more or less, just some enormous rectangular brushes with instant death floors at the bottom, and a shootable wall texture that looks like the statue of liberty. I can't believe a level designer passed Holland: Field of Screams through QA. It is a flat giant rectangle with a pair of windmills in it. The windmills are destructible, activating a now, flatter and emptier battleground. They stuck this map at towards the end of the game and effectively passed a map with absolutely no cover as a greater challenge.
The third map, Paris, was one that really stole the show for me. It's probably a trophy holder in one of the greatest level design interactivity moments of 1996 video gaming history, with the pinnacle being able to fire at the eiffel tower, such that it crashes, and lands on an adjacent building, forming bridges that you can use to traverse the rooftops for extra powerups. That shit was cool as fuck!
But still, am untextured grayboxed model version of this map is still a city where the defining feature is it's non-gridlike roads unlike what western cities have. The pixelated, stretched out, photographs of european architecture plastered all over the walls, water fountains, and statues, accompanied by an accordion as the dominating instrument in the background music is all the resources needed to transport the player to a completely different fucking continent.
It gives me a lot of appreciation for how good Doom level designers here are. You guys are creating real history. It's really fucking cool to see how many level designers have really refined their mapping styles and applied it cohesively within all these DBPs and other projects they make. It's seriously cool as fuck.
The twisted metal series is known for being the championship belt holder for vehicular combat games. It's one of the greatest selling ps1 games of all time, selling 1.74 million copies in the United States. But what I want to talk about is how it somehow slipped everyone's memory that the level designs were ugly as fuck.
I played many hours of Twisted Metal 2 as a kid, it was one of my favorite playstation games. Vehicular combat was never as fleshed out anywhere else as it was in this game, and competing head to head with equally equipped deathmatch bots was awesome.
Twisted Metal 2: World Tour has maps that take place all over the globe. You start the game in Los Angeles, and end it in Hongkong. And as you advance to each map, round by round, you're flown to another location in the world for your next scrimmage. By creating a symmetrical bowl stage with a bridge over it, and a bounce pad in the middle, then naming it "Moscow," they somehow tricked my stupid adolescent brain into believing I was actually in Russia. How the fuck did they do that?
I guess they were on to something by having game design that utilizes low FOV and absurd vehicular steering that makes every surface feel like it's made of butter. When you don't really have much time to pick apart the scenery, and the constant threat of oncoming murder is in your rear view mirror, you can get away with some really ugly maps.
Twisted Metal 2 succeeds at leaving the player with an impression of the game's setting feeling dynamic and diverse. The "theme" of each map is absorbed regardless of whether the level design was good or not.
The rooftops of new york is more or less, just some enormous rectangular brushes with instant death floors at the bottom, and a shootable wall texture that looks like the statue of liberty. I can't believe a level designer passed Holland: Field of Screams through QA. It is a flat giant rectangle with a pair of windmills in it. The windmills are destructible, activating a now, flatter and emptier battleground. They stuck this map at towards the end of the game and effectively passed a map with absolutely no cover as a greater challenge.
The third map, Paris, was one that really stole the show for me. It's probably a trophy holder in one of the greatest level design interactivity moments of 1996 video gaming history, with the pinnacle being able to fire at the eiffel tower, such that it crashes, and lands on an adjacent building, forming bridges that you can use to traverse the rooftops for extra powerups. That shit was cool as fuck!
But still, am untextured grayboxed model version of this map is still a city where the defining feature is it's non-gridlike roads unlike what western cities have. The pixelated, stretched out, photographs of european architecture plastered all over the walls, water fountains, and statues, accompanied by an accordion as the dominating instrument in the background music is all the resources needed to transport the player to a completely different fucking continent.
It gives me a lot of appreciation for how good Doom level designers here are. You guys are creating real history. It's really fucking cool to see how many level designers have really refined their mapping styles and applied it cohesively within all these DBPs and other projects they make. It's seriously cool as fuck.
