Ahead of the forthcoming Robocraft ‘Battle for Earth’ expansion (coming 2nd June) community manager Drognin sat down with Freejam’s Art Director Ric and Lead Designer Sergii to get some insider info on the great things to come. A transcript of this interview you’ll find below.

    Hi Guys! Gimme a quick description of the game mode and what the rules and win conditions are.

[Sergii]: The new more is core Robocraft with a pure emphasis on combat; classic 5v5 Team Deathmatch (TDM) with respawn. The first team to 30 kills within the 10 minute time limit wins. If 30 kills aren’t reached within the time limit, then the team with the most frags wins. In the event of a draw, it will go into sudden death and first kill wins.

    How does spawning work?

[Sergii]: On both sides of the map we have six spawn points. Players spawn after five seconds currently with invulnerability on respawn. You have the advantage on respawn to avoid spawn camping, and you respawn almost instantly like in the pit.

[Ric]: It’s supposed to be the purest form of Robocraft. A mode where there aren’t any other priorities like shooting protonium towers. It’s Robocraft at its basic core. You spawn, there’s nothing else to think about other than your team and getting as many kills as you humanly can.

[Sergii]: It’s a game mode that’s ideal for both new players and those looking for more dedicated team play. In this mode, the goal is for you to just kill enemies and if we’ve developed it well you won’t need to grasp anything else when playing.

[Ric]: I would say it’s faster paced than the other modes because we’ve shrunk the environment slightly compared to the other maps and your focus is the other players. Your focus isn’t the additional gameplay aspects in the level.

[Sergii]: Yes and also we shrunk the environment because we wanted a 5v5 player count. As a result you just meet enemies more often and you spend less time moving from respawn to battle. Well, in the Pit you have something similar but that mode isn’t team-based.

[Ric]: You feel the pressure when you play the new Team Deathmatch!

    So unlike The Pit gamemode, there is no points system for killing someone with lots of kills?

[Sergii]: No. Basically in the Pit, the points system is to give other guys a chance to catch the leader. But in a team-based mode that kind of mechanic isn’t needed. New Team Deathmatch is simply a contest between two teams, with the best team winning out.

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    Which map or maps will the new game mode take place in?

[Ric]: We are making a custom map for the new game mode. It’s based on Earth in a deserted power plant in Birmingham. We do plan to offer this game mode on other planets and add other game modes on Earth, so we’ll just do a bit of a crossover.

    So currently it’s just the one map specifically designed for this game mode and its pace?

[Ric]: Correct. Basically if you took this map and tried to implement it with one of the other game modes it just wouldn’t fit. It’s a custom map designed for a purer style of Team Deathmatch.

    How have you designed the level to make play styles that are benefited by range and mobility such as snipers or flyers good, without making them too powerful?

[Sergii]: So one thing is that we actually made this level bigger in the process of playing it and testing it because flyers didn’t have enough space. Also, we have cover on top specifically for flyers. Some bridge like thing. That tower has fortress-like turrets that flyers can fly around. Basically we did what we could do in those constraints to make flyers, snipers and things like this viable on this map but not to be dominant.

[Ric]: We moved in the map boundaries so they’re close to the cliffs of the level itself as well, to stop the situation we have in the existing maps where flyers often end up out of gameplay space and not involved in the combat at all. On some other maps, flyers can also creep around the back of the map unseen, so we have completely stopped you from doing that in this particular map to focus the gameplay on the 5v5 battle in the centre.

    What was the goal for the new game mode?

[Sergii]: Well the goal was to create a game mode with a lower barrier to entry. A mode where any first-person shooter player or vehicle-based game player can just come and have fun.

[Ric]: Also one of the things that is cool about this is that there’s now going to be five-person platoon slots and it’s 5v5 in this map, so you have the potential of two big teams to have a big old battle off.

[Sergii]: Yes yes yes! It’s like an arena where on one side you don’t need to know anything to start playing and having fun, but on the other side you can have a really fair playing field to show who is stronger.

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    Why classic Team Deathmatch over other potential game modes?

[Ric]: New Team Deathmatch is the closest mode to the main appeal of Robocraft, you know building and shooting! So adding a mode like racing wouldn’t help the lower level of entry for new players so it didn’t seem to make sense to do that FIRST, but that will come later down the line.

[Sergii]: Yes, definitely. This game mode is like, we thought – ‘Okay, let’s say the player starts in Crossfire or Team Fortress or Quake or whatever massively popular shooter it can be. What’s the simplest core mechanic this player needs to know? Run and gun right? Can we make run and gun in Robocraft? Yes we can! Will it help new players get into the game, while giving our competitive players a pure mode which clearly shows which team is better than another? Yes! Then sure, why not?’ Also our question was how do we make liquidity in this mode good? How do we avoid queue times? Why don’t we make it a smaller game mode like 5v5, so you need half as many players than in TDM.

    How did the game mode define the design of the new map?

[Sergii]: Well we wanted some focal point in the middle [of the map]. A place where you have an advantage so you naturally want to get there. Also we wanted to have cover around the spawn points but at one point we actually had too much cover and it ended up as three focal points so basically players who were in the middle were fighting players who were at the spawn point. We reworked it a bit, so as a result now you have strong fortress in the middle and few points of cover around the spawn point. Players naturally will want to get to the middle and spend most of their time there until they’re dead. Also we’re really interested to see how team make-ups will affect how matches play out as well. For instance will teams boasting more well rounded and versatile roles, featuring SMG, Rail and Ion Distorter weaponry perform better than a team that just consists of long-range rail. It’s going to be fascinating to see how the meta for this mode evolves.

    Did you try anything new with the new map that hasn’t existed in previous Robocraft maps?

[Ric]: The whole map was designed around the new game mode so obviously we tried to lure the player, as Sergii suggested, to where the cover is to stop you from base camping and sitting where you spawn. So your team is going to do better if they all move towards the center and work as a team. They’ll get the most kills faster. Yes of course the whole structure of the map is drawn to be based around the middle of the map.

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    Why an Earth map, what was your inspiration?

[Ric]: We went for the Earth map because we wanted something dramatically different from the other planets that we’ve built so far, but we also want to make the new players feel like they’re home already. So if you imagine your first experience is an Earth-like environment, it’s something you’re familiar with – there are trees, you understand the nuances of how this topography is created. Then in your subsequent experiences you start ending up on Mars and beyond and you know, the universe starts to expand to you. We felt that was a better journey for new players.

[Sergii]: Yeah. Like when you start Robocraft, there’s a lot of information to take in; it may be overwhelming for some and we felt there was no need to overwhelm those with another planet and additional game rules. So in your first days of Robocraft it’s good if you’re only playing a familiar game mode in a familiar environment.

[Ric]: The other thing is vegetation which we really wanted to explore. Getting grass and trees and foliage into the level, that’s actually been quite exciting. I’ve enjoyed doing that with the art team. We’re learning a new process; we’re starting to hand-paint textures a bit more and so the quality of this level is significantly higher than the rest of them. It doesn’t mean we’ll leave it that way, we’ll go back and readdress the other levels in time with hopefully improved map design but also improved aesthetics as well.

[Sergii]: Yeah and last but not least, this level is smaller and so probably as a result, we can afford a bit better visuals as well right?

[Ric]: Yeah of course and because you have half the number of players than a Battle Arena map…

[Sergii]: And you don’t need to render that far.

[Ric]: …and with all that GPU you can spend a bit more on the quality of the graphics – exactly.

    Have any elements of previous maps made their way into the new one?

[Ric]: Er…. nooo? I would say this one was pretty much done from scratch. There’s almost no inspiration from any of the levels even in terms of how we blend textures together. We’ve created a new texture set from scratch. New hand-painted foliage, new trees and rock formations. They are all custom made for this map. It’s quite a wholesale change from our previous maps. The other thing is that we’re adding a nice atmospheric feeling to this level as well. We’re going to have a slightly duskier setting. The structures in the level are old, they’re disused. They’re overgrown and that kinda thing gives you a sense of a post-apocalyptic kind of feel where nature has regained its foothold back on the formations.

[Sergii]: Most people have moved to Mars.

[Everyone Laughs]

[Sergii]: And I would say it’s more different than say our ice levels, different from our Mars levels right? Despite being on different planets they have those same pieces of architecture.

[Ric]: That’s a civilization thing, that’s separate.

[Sergii]: But on this level you don’t have those things it looks completely different.

[Ric]: Ah no there are accents from the Spitzer Dam map. So there are artistic similarities with the physical structures.

[Sergii]: Ah right because Spitzer Dam was the most recent level, prior to Birmingham Power Plant (Earth).

    Finally how did you work together as art and design to create this new map?

[Sergii]: I was annoying the art team… a lot!

[Ric]: A lot, a lot!

[Everyone Laughs]

[Sergii]: I had design requests for the art team all the time because we tried lots of things. Some things didn’t work as well as we expected, so we needed to change it and it always makes more work for the artists.

[Ric]: We got an opportunity to make a lot more design iterations for gameplay than we have with most of the other maps. And when I say gameplay I mean it’s actually a test environment with 5v5 and we all experience it together. After we play tested a load with different size robots we’d come together as a group and discuss what we did and didn’t like about that particular experience. And from that we started to formulate solutions to some of those problems that the guys brought to us. So I’d say that the level is quite clean in terms of design because of that process.

[Sergii]: Yes it’s very readable. Big structures, no noise. I really like it.

Robocraft_Earth_Map_05

    Great! That’s all the questions I have guys. Thanks a lot for your time!

[Ric]: Happy to help.

[Sergii]: Thanks