Having come relatively close to the final version of my Doombringer map Ironforge, I wanted to make a second offering to the competitive community in the form of a more 2v2 focused map. Where Ironforge was influenced strongly by some of the more popular duel maps from Quake Live like Cure and Furious Heights, I decided that for this map I would draw from sources from faster Arena FPS games like QuakeWorld and CPMA. Among other considerations I had for this map, it would ideally play frenetically, have geometry resembling a big ring in the middle and lack a railgun spawner. After a month straight of concepting prototypes of it that I would quickly scrap, I created the first version of The Bends over the timespan of 5 days in early October of 2023.
The central ‘ring’ area of the first version of the map.
When the map was released, I as well as some friends in the game’s community, tested the map in 2v2 and found that it played decently well, however two of them would then play the map in 1v1, feeling afterwards that it shone brighter in that gamemode. When they informed me of this, I pivoted its development more towards accommodating it for that kind of play. It had many features that have made it unique in a way that is sometimes rarely seen in the AFPS subgenre in general, chief among them being its lack of a railgun spawner and the number of positions where players could trap each if they were particularly smart.
As I hinted at previously, a small fascination of mine within competitive AFPS level design has been creating maps that lack a railgun spawner. From a design perspective, I see rail much more as a tool than as a weapon. It affords players more opportunities to create the circumstances where an easier fight can happen without much danger if you aren’t noticed when you are using it. Removing this weapon, therefore, changes the way that players interface with the game on a fundamental level; they now lack the ability to hit the long range damage that can often open up fights in neutral or disadvantageous game states, and they instead must now position themselves more aggressively to get said damage. With this, however, comes the ability to more brazenly stand in positions that rail would be uniquely adept at countering. Doombringer’s other options for ranged combat are relatively weak, making it easier to more openly use geometrical features such as height variation and distance to prevent another player from making an approach, opening up a different kind of strategy than is typically the norm in these games.
Left to right: The red armour spawn on The Bends and the mega health spawn on The Hot Place that inspired it
The bars in front of the red armour spawn allow players in the middle room to potentially hit ranged damage to others taking the item while not being so unsafe as to immediately start a prolonged fight if they do so.
My favourite feature of the map early in its development was the red armour’s spawn position. While it is the most powerful armour item and at the top of the map (a position that common AFPS wisdom dictates is typically the best place to be), its being in a pit with little room to get out makes it highly dangerous to attempt to take. Generally, players who are currently winning will find it easy to get access to, which makes it a good opportunity for losing players to hit damage that would allow them progress towards taking the lead.
In addition to this, there are multiple ways to approach punishing players for taking the red armour, or at the very least mitigate the increase in armour for the opponent that it brings. Players who may not have the resources for a more prolonged fight may stand across from the red armour’s spawn in the middle of the map, using rocket launcher and gatling gun spam to force anybody who wants it to take damage as they grab it. This option also buys time for the other items to spawn in if it forces the opponent to hesitate taking it, making it more difficult to prevent others from getting those resources. A more aggressive approach is to stand directly above the armour in the room it is in; here it is much easier to hit direct rockets and close range super shotgun shots for large amounts of damage that may possible lead to a kill, however the risk with this is that you are also putting yourself in a position to take this damage. This geometry was inspired by the mega health spawn on The Hot Place (also known as pukka3dm1), a map made for 2v2 in CPMA. This spawn did not change much as it proved to be an interesting area to play around, eventually gaining bars in front of it to make the position even more dangerous, and force players who wanted it to play around it even more.
The lightning gun spawns at the bottom of this room, a highly dangerous position if someone else is above you or directly next to a doorway in this room.
Another decision I attribute the map’s immediate success in 1v1 to is the positioning of the lightning gun spawner. The combination of its importance as a medium range tool for accumulating chip damage and for defending against aggressive pushes, alongside its spawn being secluded in the centre of its own room around the rim of the map made for an interesting dynamic. When they get a kill, players can choose to deny their opponent the LG, stripping them of the ability to protect themselves in any encounters happening soon and preventing them from being able to punish in positions like on the mega health spawn and on longer straightaways.
The major weakness this strategy has, however, is that it makes it harder to control the area around the mega health and (in later versions of the map) the super shotgun spawn, giving the opponent time to build up some health and armour, as well as allowing them to have a weapon that can output massive amounts of damage at close range. This variability makes it so that players who just got a kill must make a decision on if they believe controlling the LG spawn is a worthwhile endeavour, something that the losing player can take advantage of to force the winner into taking fights that may be less advantageous for them. Choices like these are what I feel make slower paced maps in these games good; though kills don’t happen as often, trades of damage that can lead up to kills and small decisions in positioning inform the way the match plays out second by second.
I felt that having the lightning gun ammo in the middle of the map spoke even more to the importance of having the lightning gun.
Somewhat unique to Doombringer, weapon spawners do not give much ammo for the weapon that they spawn if the player already has that weapon and picks it up again. Ammo management is an extremely valuable skill, and certain ammo boxes must be controlled similarly to the way that weapons and items are if the player wishes to have an advantage in certain fights. This allows for a new layer of depth to the design of competitively oriented maps in this game; restricting the number of ammo boxes and placing them in certain positions allows players to restrict these resources from each other, creating situations where one may begin a fight that a certain weapon would succeed in, but that their opponent is not able to use.
One way I took advantage of this was by placing the large LG ammo box on the pillar in the middle of the map in 1v1, where the Quad Damage usually spawns in 2v2. Players who are alive for a long time will need to continuously pick up this ammo in order to continue being able to prevent pushes and hold their own in fights where the LG is powerful. Its being in such a weak position with so much high ground around it creates new opportunities for losing players to find their way back into the game, since they are less likely to need this ammo box if they are dying (and consequently losing the weapons they had previously) more often.
A number of positions on important items on the map are close to sneakier spots where players can surprise each other with bursts of unexpected damage.
The final, smaller pieces of this map that I’d like to highlight are the positions where traps on certain items can be safely set up, despite the short distance of the encounters there. Many of these positions, such as the one over the lower yellow armour spawner, allow players to exert pressure onto those areas. Doing so covertly, losing players can find many more opportunities to deal the sort of safe damage that the lack of a railgun spawner on this map loses, if in a different manner. This additionally gives them the opportunities to initiate favourable fights in circumstances where their opponents are not prepared for it. Approached more openly and aggressively, these spots instead become tools to buy more time and even scare opponents out of contesting important pickups. The micro-level decisions around whether to make attacks like these knowable in advance or not gives a lot of variety to these kinds of encounters, something that plays to the other elements of complexity within the map.
The process of creating The Bends has been an illuminating experience for me. While my previous Doombringer map Ironforge has become a more widely liked staple within the competitive 1v1 scene, I feel that this was the map that drove me to make something more wholly unique and interesting; The Bends has much less room-corridor-room and plays in a way that I feel not many maps in the AFPS subgenre do. Watching people discover new, small details about the map that give them an edge in small situations has been a delight, and it is something I very much hope to experience again.
If you’d like to download the map, click here to do so. You can also find the ArtStation post of the map, as well as some gameplay here.
