D1 Anarchy: Estuary Drought
Posted: Fri Mar 01, 2013 2:24 am
After getting my feet wet with some recent multiplayer matches with the Descent Rangers and getting officially inducted as a Red Dragons cadet, I thought it was about time I put my level building skills to the test and "officially" tried my hand at an anarchy level design. Estuary Drought gets its name from the dark blue hallways on the sides of the level, which were meant to look more like dried-up riverbeds even though you might normally associate those textures with ice levels. To add to the feel, though, there are a few textures taken from Descent 2 that would be right at home in a water level there.
Item placement was generally done with small crowds of players in mind. Any more than three or four players in the map and there really won't be enough weapons to go around, although the level might turn out to be best for a 1-on-1 match. There are no secret areas, but you might need to take a bit of a risk to go after the strongest powerups (namely, a 4-pack of Homing Missiles and either of the two Fusion Cannons). With this design, I wanted to hit a middle ground between simplified boxy levels and more detailed offerings, but some of the detail is grated off so it won't be too intrusive.
Special thanks to the Descent Rangers who helped me test out this level before its release, and thank you to MD-1224 for helping me work around a Rebirth issue with the screenshots.
D1 mission download link here:
http://www.enspiar.com/dmdb/viewMission.php?id=645
Item placement was generally done with small crowds of players in mind. Any more than three or four players in the map and there really won't be enough weapons to go around, although the level might turn out to be best for a 1-on-1 match. There are no secret areas, but you might need to take a bit of a risk to go after the strongest powerups (namely, a 4-pack of Homing Missiles and either of the two Fusion Cannons). With this design, I wanted to hit a middle ground between simplified boxy levels and more detailed offerings, but some of the detail is grated off so it won't be too intrusive.
Special thanks to the Descent Rangers who helped me test out this level before its release, and thank you to MD-1224 for helping me work around a Rebirth issue with the screenshots.
D1 mission download link here:
http://www.enspiar.com/dmdb/viewMission.php?id=645