// My Remake of Nacht Der Untoten from Call of Duty
An Unreal Engine 4 recreation of the iconic zombies map from Treyarch’s Call of Duty: World at War (2008)
// Development
Role: Level Designer (Independent)
This project was a personal endeavor of mine where I sought to independently recreate one of my favorite maps from a blank slate in UE4 using assets and props found online and in the Unreal Marketplace.
I began by creating the foundation of the concrete structure, ensuring it was as accurate as possible by comparing my layout to the original’s using the game’s “NoClip” command. This allowed me to dissect the map into small sections so I could focus on precise asset placement and reveal what tricks the developer’s used when they created the map.
When it came to set dressing, my limited number of assets required me to tweak textures and combine different props together to make new ones. An example of this can be seen with the wooden book shelves and doors, which use the same assets as the window barriers but are transformed and grouped together to look like separate models.
// What Went Wrong
When recreating Nacht Der Untoten from a blank slate in Unreal Engine 4, my biggest mistake was to not begin with blocking out the entire concrete shelter. Instead, I chose to immediately focus on getting the small details within the map to be as accurate as possible (including the number of sandbags stacked together in a doorway, the size of rubble piles, wooden board placement on the doors, pillar shapes, etc.)
Starting out the level in this way led to me realizing much further on that I forgot to check if the size of the structure was relative to the scale of the player character. This led to the initial build of the environment being quite a bit smaller in relation to the player and thus I had to go back and adjust the scale of the level’s geometry so it would be a proper recreation. Had I have segmented my design process into different parts by particularly saving the minor details for later on, I wouldn’t have had to redo most of the structural details I implemented prior I discovering that the scale of my level wasn’t accurate to the player character.
// Post-Mortem
This recreation of Nacht Der Untoten proved to be an incredibly challenging, yet nostalgic experience for me. Getting to look back this map that I had played through countless of times as a kid brought me back to the memories I have playing this map in split screen with my cousins and reminded me just how impactful a single level can be to a player’s experience. This project also gave me the opportunity to build my knowledge and skillset of lighting in Unreal Engine while also discovering how important lighting is when creating your environment’s atmosphere.
That said, remaking the map itself wasn’t as smooth of an experience as I had anticipated, which is primarily due to my own lack of organization and structured process when I started developing the level. Were I to do this remake again I would rework my entire approach to the design process by first creating a basic block out of the play area, followed by a series of playtests so that I wouldn’t make the same mistake of not making the building to scale. Finally, I’d like to have implemented a basic unlock system for the level’s doors so that I could have also recreated the second floor without excluding details from the first.
