Arruca Village - FarCry4
 Aruca Village - FC4 01 |  Aruca Village - FC4 09 |
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 Aruca Village - FC4 010 |  Aruca Village - FC4 04 |
 Aruca Village - FC4 06 |
Level Description
Arruca Village is a map built with the FarCry4 editor. The goal was to create a secluded open world experience which looked natural and believable while offering a fun experience which is enjoyable to different types of players.
Design Choices
Designed for open world game-play and with player choice at the center of the experience from the start. This affected everything from environment production and layout of natural obstacles such as rivers and mountains to road placement and settlements within the map.
Starting with the layout of the 'natural' structure. The circumference of the map has hills and mountains of various heights enclosing the map allowing the player to feel like they are part of a large living world.
Using natural obstacles like rocks, fauna and trees, along with the topology of the map the players view is often broken to cater for draw distance and object pop in within the engine. This had to be done in such a way that the map still felt natural yet allowed for technical limitations if the player had been playing on lower spec settings. However, there are vista points (see below) where the player can view a large area ahead and plan their attack of an encampment.
As mentioned earlier, player choice is key in this map. Thus the player can choose to start with a low-mid range weapon or even a sniper rifle for long range engagements. Thus placements of encampment buildings and cover had to tailor for this, to give the player a chance whether they wanted to take on the map at close-quarters or long range.
This also carried over to the placement of the enemy AI within the level, to challenge both sets of players both long range and close-quarters. The above screenshot shows that an encampment south of the main village had to be created specifically for this reasoning. During extensive testing it was found if this encampment did not exist the player could effectively pick off the entire main village from range with a sniper rifle with no problem due to the large range between them and the enemy. However, the inclusion of this 'southern encampment' meant that if the player did alert the main village before heading over they would be attacked from behind via this encampment.
On the opposite side of the testing argument, if a player decided to play the map stealthily, there had to be enough cover and objects for players to effectively hide behind while timing their attacks around each of the encampments. Looking at the above screenshot it can be seen that walls, buildings, props, trees and bushes give this effect and allow a smart player multiple choices at stealth approaches. Even the water layout can be utilized to get behind the camp.
After effective testing and balancing the map was complete-able in many different play-styles. Including but not limited to stealth approach, long-range sniping, short-mid range rifles, non-lethal and even knife-only playthrough.
This was not the end of the work however, constant tweaks afterwards were made to add aesthetics and natural beauty to the level. As shown in the below two pictures for comparison.
