Metro 2033 Level NAZI OUTPOST 2008 - 2010
Outdoor level, where I was supposed to implement three main zones.
First zone – a foundation pit, where a player can play in stealth mode.
Next is a Nazi zone, where a player plays in combat zone in premises.
The last zone is a part of a street, combat zone at an open space with player’s ability to see the destroyed city.
When creating outdoor levels, the problem always arises of player’s moving restriction. It is important to make the restrictor quite logical and understandable for a player and more original than just fences. I decided to use road’s breakdowns as restrictors at the level’s open spaces as if it was an earthquake. I tried to break up the road and ground in such a way as it appeared on the photos of earthquake’s consequences in Japan. The player acquired an interesting level geometry, sense of space and ability to view a dead city. At the avenue there are many abandoned cars reinforcing the effect that there was a time, when an ordinary life was here. Also the cars represent a good covering for combat zone.
Level lighting is done with the dull day atmosphere. This allowed minimizing shadows defects in the background and obtain more balanced picture in every direction. I tried to make the lightning at this level as during the sunset, but could not obtain a nice picture in all directions.
Before starting the level simulation work I spent enough time searching for photos of elements, patterns, surfaces, which perhaps existed in destroyed city in winter. Glacier surfaces with snow-covered surface fractures fitted very well for streets texture in the background.
Frozen waterfalls patterns were used for texture of the foundation pit walls and frozen water streams. Snow-covered beach surface was a good solution for the ground textures in foundation pit.