Domenation

Domenation is a competitive third-person shooter made in Unreal Engine 5 where 28 players battle until only one of them is left standing.

What’s special about Domenation? Instead of using the typical battle royale mechanic where a storm forces the players to go to a certain area of the map, we implemented a different kind of storm called The Pulse that would kill anyone who wasn’t sheltered in a Dome. Domes spawned in points of interest distributed around the map, and they forced players who decided to take refuge in the same Domes to fight in closed environments.

My duties included:

Design and implement new areas of the map.
- Ideation, blockout, final implementation…
- Chests placement.
- Respawn points placement.
- Enemy AI camps placement.
Remade some of the oldest areas.
Conducted playtests, gathered feedback and applied it to improve the quality of the game.

What did I do in this game?

Hollow Pink mine

Hollow Pink (bottom-left corner of the map) is a mountainous area in the center of which there was a mine where domenite was extracted.

When I joined the project, the mine was closed because its interior had not yet been done.

One of my first tasks was to make the blockout of the mine and collaborate with the team’s artists to develop the zone until it was ready to be implemented in the game.

The mine has:

4 entrances that connect all the sides of Hollow Pink.
1 vertical entrance that players could use to fall through and land in the middle of the mine.

Vertical and regular mine entries

Blockout

Final result

Nexus

We created a futuristic city in which we mixed different heights to achieve a very vertical gameplay. The reason we wanted it to be an area with a lot of verticality was that we wanted to create an area that would fully exploit the movement system we had in the game, which encouraged players to jump and dash all the time.

We added a series of corridors that added extra height to the city streets. These corridors allowed players to move quickly between the different buildings in the city, and were also an excellent way in or out of the city.
Their drawback was that players in them would be exposed to danger from any direction.

The city has the cleanest and most modern aesthetics among all the areas of the game, since it is the most central area.
Nexus worked so well that it was chosen as the main map for Domenation’s new game modes, and was also chosen to showcase the game at Gamescom 2024.

Unfortunately I don’t have material of the blockout phase of this area. At least I have a few trailers where gameplay in Nexus is shown.

Krater City

Krater City was in the upper left corner of the map. It was a city in the middle of the desert that had become a refuge for criminals and outlaws. We took inspiration from the Mad Max movies to create this area.

Unfortunately, this area could not be implemented before I had to leave Blackmouth Games, but I have some material to show.

Krater City - Ideation

Our first idea was to make a main city surrounded by small camps that were great for players to loot and have 1 vs 1 fights.

In the city we wanted to make a huge central building and fill up the perimeter with small shantytowns.

The shantytowns were finally discarded as we decided to place buildings around the main building to have more occlusion in the area.

Krater City - Camps

We created 3 different camps and we placed them on the east side of the city, surrounding the 2 entrances located there.

In the beginning, we thought of adding a tall tower in the middle of the camps that would allow players on the top of it to snipe enemies playing in the camps, but we discarded the idea since it felt a bit unfair.

Camp watchtower (discarded)

Krater City - Main building exterior

Krater City - Main building interior

The main building was the biggest point of interest in the area, and I had the pleasure to be in charge of the interior.

My first idea was to make some kind of city council, but it didn’t really make sense since this was a city ruled by criminals. I ended up making a huge concert room with a floating stage in the middle of the room, taking inspiration from Bring Me the Horizon’s song Top 10 staTues tHat CriEd bloOd.