Particle City

Platform: Android, iOS

Engine/Framework: Unity5

Titanfall Assault is a competitive RTS on mobile devices. Particle City can be seen as a sister studio to Respawn, working together to bring Titanfall to mobile.  I designed & scripted the maps, worked on the tutorial, and constantly getting my butt kicked by the community in PvP matches.

Colony

One of the maps released post-launch, Colony was the first map to be vertically symmetrical, and the feedback from internal testing and the community was pretty positive. The layout has a cramped inner city so parkouring Pilots zip across rooftops to the hardpoints, while Titans march on the outside of the walls to attack the enemy base.

Josiah was our artist that did some great rainy weather effects, but we also wanted the weather to change during the match, and potentially be linked together with the 'gimmick' of the map. I scripted a way for this to transition, and it looked like this. Was fun!

Most of our maps have 'gimmicks' in them that trigger within the last 2 minutes of the match. Colony had a few different ideas that I prototyped, and the one that stuck the most was the idea of the storm flooding part of the map, slowing down units, and destroying a hardpoint. Feedback has been solid. 

Training Grounds

Our first and most compact map. Very straightforward paths, but enough rooftop action for more advanced players to mess around with, including a couple good sniper perches. 

The goal was for the first map would have all 3 hardpoints on screen at the same time, but still break line-of-sight so 3 different encounters would feel separate and not leak into each other - along with Titan navigation being easy between the two. 

To not overwhelm new players, kept things simple to one lane as well. This made unit pathing end up feeling more predictable, something that is very important with this kind of RTS where players have no direct control of their characters.

Crash Site

Continuing with the rule of 'one lane' for early players - but scaling up that lane. Crash Site is the longest map in the game, making it difficult to get surprised on by a Titan push. It was also one of the first maps where a new path can open up later during a match, with plane debris clearing a shortcut to the enemy's base.  

At this point of development the only maps we had in stone were Angel City and Boneyard, two wider maps in similar size. I wanted to change things up and make a very long, but skinny map. It ended up feeling good, with the player's camera movement only having to worry about going up and down, not side-to-side. Ziplines were added on the sides of the sniper towers, giving Pilots another route to get to the far hardpoints.

Angel City

The first map developed - the most iconic Titanfall 1 map. Very straightforward with clear-defined city blocks that Pilots parkour through, two lanes for Titans to spread out on, and big ol' enemy bases on opposite ends of the map. We iterated on our gameplay through this map for many months, then moved onto other maps. We didn't add any gimmicks to Angel City - it felt good as it was, and with multiple lanes - players found something to get a learning curve to after sinking their teeth in with the single-lane maps of Training Grounds and Crash Site.

Boneyard 

The first map we played around with as a gimmick - a shield over one of the hardpoints, preventing any attacks from the sky such as missiles, tactical nukes, and maybe most importantly - Titans. The shields go down with 2 minutes left to go, letting the hardpoint get a little more chaotic than it had been earlier.

Boneyard is very wide, open, and easy to get around. It's the same size as Angel City, but has much more open road for Titans and other units to move around in. This did come with the downside of less cover/line of sight breaks, but with enough large buildings and waist-high over, battles were still clearly contained to each hardpoint.