Leningrad - Killing Floor 2
Leningrad is a survival map for Killing Floor 2 (online co-op FPS) set on the eastern front during the World War 2. I made it as my entry for the "New grounds" map contest hosted and organized by ModDB and Tripwire Interactive.
The original idea was to blend classics maps from Call of Duty 1 and 2 (like "Stalingrad","Leningrad","Harbor" and "Railyard") with the gunplay and concept of Killing Floor 2.
Originally, Leningrad was supposed to be set under a heavy snow storm that would reduce the player(s) visibility to the bare minimum while outside.
The result in game wasn't however as fun as I hoped and so, I started working on an alternative version keeping the layout and some visuals element while making it more interesting to play. This version finally become the one now available to download on the Steam Workshop here:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1672571152
Before going deeper into the presentation of the map, let's talk first about Killing Floor 2:
Killing Floor 2 is a FPS playable alone or with up to 5 more players and take place on a variety of small open maps where the players a free to go anywhere. The main objective is always the same: Survive to each increasingly difficult waves of "Zeds" (failed military experimentation) until final beating the boss (or die trying).
With the ability to go anywhere they want, the players will have to find the best positions to hold against the waves until they finally can buy better gear in between each waves.
To give some better defensive option to the players, each player has a welder that can be used to block certain doorways for a limited amount of time.
Ammo, kevlar and weapons can also be found scattered all around the maps ( on partially randomized position set by myself), giving more ways to fight for the players who takes the risks to explore.
My inspiration for this map came from multiple sources:
- The real story of Leningrad during the World War 2 with the infamous siege of the city by the German army. There are a lots of pictures and documents about this event and I've used them to recreate the place with the highest level of detail as possible.
-Games like the first two Call of Duty and the Red Orchestra series (also created by Tripwire Interactive) all depict a particular vision of the eastern front.
-Movies and TV shows like Enemy at the Gates or Generation War were also great sources of inspiration for their authenticity.
One of the most important choice of level design I made with this map was to offer an important amount of position that could be used as temporary defensive position to repel the zeds and be able to fallback to another position if the situation became too hard to handle.
In between theses positions scattered all around the map, the player(s) can also get into a variety of places like a apartment complex, trenches, abandoned shop and houses...
Theses locations tend however to be narrower in size. This can either be beneficial or detrimental to the player(s) situation when they fight there.
This kind of places is mostly made to be used as shortcut or alternate path to the various open position that are far easier to hold.
Another of my concern while designing the map was to make sure that the map wouldn't have any kind of "dead end". As a player, I consider dying due to being cornered by the enemies perfectly fine. If this happen however because I've reached a position that lead nowhere, this can be quit frustrating and feel unfair.
In the case of this level, there are always multiple ways to escape any places, even when your fighting at the second floor of a partially destroyed building.
The map take place in the city center of Leningrad during the siege of the city.
Player can fight the zeds around improvised barricades previously set to repel the German forces, take cover behind wreckage of tanks scattered around or even go hide in the maze of ravaged buildings.
The most dominant colors used in this map are variations of blue of Yellow to reproduce a feeling of cold and despair all around the place.
I've also kept the idea of the snow storm but toned it down, making the place feel under a constant while still making the place easy to explore. Some places like the burning building however require the player to be extra careful while walking around in the smoking ashes of the place.
The world building being very important, You'll be able to walk around what's left of a fictionnal attack by a tank division in the district, see what happened to some of the survivors and find some more clues all around the map.
It's been almost 5 month since the release of the map.
I've published 2 updates during this time, fixing missing textures, bugged collision and introducing new elements like sign, alarms, ambient war sounds and new details.
Finally, I've made a series of hotfixes to fix some issues like collisions and textures errors reported by some players.
