Cale Curry
Level Design
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Balancing Multiplayer First-Person Shooter Maps through Cover
Arrangement
My thesis dove into the topic of how The project began in August of 2019, was
arrangements in First-Person Shooter artifact was a bomb defusal map built for
various types of cover and their
multiplayer maps affect the routes that
players most prefer to access high areas
the game Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.
of contention or objectives. The types of Through this project, I learned new
safe, high, low, elevation, risky, and forms of cover in FPS maps, which in
cover I researched for this thesis were
dynamic-based cover.
The overall goal was to gain a greater
understanding of how cover influences a
player’s decision to take a specific route
through an FPS map and how cover
affects overall map balance.
I chose this project out of a love for
both exploring and playing competitive
multiplayer FPS games. I have been
fascinated with seeing the different
approaches that FPS designers take in
terms of arranging cover to help control
gameplay flow in FPS maps.
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completed in April of 2020, and the final
LEVEL DESIGN
methods of effectively utilizing different
turn can help designers better predict the
primary paths that players will take.