[Updated 2025-03-17]
Overview: Unlike linear-design, non-linear open-world maps are one of the most challenging genres to design and build. A poorly designed map will lead to players getting bored or lost, leading to frustration. On the other hand, a well-crafted open world map will make players want to get lost purposefully, such as Red Dead Redemption, Skyrim or GTA. In this tutorial I will be going through 5 pillars of knowledge necessary for crafting an immersive open world experience:
1. Types of Open World Maps
2. Layout and Navigability
3. Immersion
4. Optimization
5. Workflow
Before jumping into the studio and blocking our map out, we should think of a few elements that will dictate the parameters with which we design the map. This pre-production phase is very important because the more thoroughly you design before you start building, the less adjustments or remakes you’ll need to do down the line. So to begin, let’s ask ourselves some questions:
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Should my game be open world?
- Although the open world may seem like a good option, they take a considerable amount more time, effort and resources to develop
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How fast are players able to move across the world?
- This will be the biggest determining factor in regard to how large you should make your map. Driving games or games with some sort of fast movement system tend to be much larger than games where you move on foot
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What story am I trying to tell?
- Knowing this will help guide you as you plan out your key locations and points of interest.
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Is my world based off of real life places, or is it all fantasy?
- The more fantastical the world, the more you need to find ways to create a believable world.
Now that we’ve thought through these questions, let’s dive into the first point required to create a successful open world map.
Types of Open World Maps
Some developers who want to create an open world game try to make their world as large as possible, but a large map does not mean that it’s more immersive. In fact, it’s better to have a more compact map full of unique areas and mechanics than a massive map that feels repetitive.
Open world usually implies that the player is free to travel wherever, however in most open-world games, the developer should always maintain some degree of control over the player’s progression. This may be done by creating Hard Barriers with level-locked barriers, or going the more immersive and ‘free’ route of having soft barriers. Soft Barriers may be having enemies that are impossible for a low level player to beat in a region of the map. This allows the player to still go and check it out, but they will keep dying until they’re strong enough.
Did you know that there are different types of open world maps? Let’s look at the three most common types:
1. Seamless: This is what most people think of when they think of an open world map. This is essentially one massive map that the player can traverse across. These tend to be challenging to create due to their scale.
Examples: Red Dead Redemption, GTA:V, Spider-Man.
2. Modular: These games build their environments in smaller and interconnected sections, allowing for greater flexibility and better mini-storytelling opportunities. This design choice is popular in MMO games.
Examples: WoW, Subnautica, No Man’s Sky
3. Mix: Some games do a mix of the two. They contain the player to a region of the map until they are advanced enough to go to the next area until they eventually unlock the full map. This is good because it allows you to ease the player into new areas when they’re ready, giving them more time to immerse themselves within their current environment.
Examples: Need for Speed, GTA IV
Open World Layout and Navigability
Have you ever played a game and got stuck because you couldn’t find where to go? This leads to frustration and (especially on Roblox) rapid player drop off. Let’s look at some of the key terms that you should be aware of when designing your map, and how taking these factors into consideration will lead to a more fluid and user friendly experience:
Points of Interest (POI): These locations are the backbone to your map’s structure. These are planned first and foremost so we can decide how to route paths from one point to the next. POIs are commonly important and large enough to be labeled on the minimap, such as cities, towns or bodies of water such as lakes or the ocean.
Landmarks: Every POI should have a distinct landmark to help identify the location. A landmark could be a bridge, a specific tower or statue, unique looking building, or a variety of other things- as long as it’s prominent and easily recognizable to the player.
Adding Verticality helps to make these POI’s stand out from the surrounding region. This helps the players navigate to the POIs without getting lost. Landmarks also allow us to craft a unique story for each area. For example, a uniquely skull shaped mountain, or an old abandoned windmill that stands out in the otherwise flat field:
Figure 5.1: Landmarks should stand out within the scene
TIP 1: In cityscapes, players move fast through the city streets, which is why landmarks are usually placed on the corners of streets versus in the middle. This is because players are most likely to slow down to turn corners, and you can also make the building stand out more from the corner:
Figure 5.2: Place landmark locations on corners to help it stand out
Triangle Rule: The Triangle Rule is a simple but necessary rule to follow. Looking at Fortnite’s map as an example in Figure 1.3, we notice how all of the POIs can be connected with triangles. A level designer should populate the horizon line with at least three POIs each offering the player multiple choices for where they want to go next.
Depending on the game and amount of locations, POI’s should be within ~40 seconds of travel time between each other. This keeps players from getting lost as easily as well as helps to keep the players engaged:
Figure 5.3: Triangle Rule example
Sphere of Interest: You should be able to overlay circles overtop of your POIs and have them overlap like a giant venn diagram. These circles are called spheres of interest and consist of the area surrounding the points of interest. You can focus on applying details and in-between locations wherever two spheres interest one another:
Figure 5.4: Sphere of Interest example
In-between Locations: These are the locations that you find in between POIs within these spheres of interest. Things like camp sites, bridges and random cabins in the woods. These are placed in between locations to maintain player interest. These places add to the storytelling and can provide items of interest which make stopping at these locations before entering the POI potentially worth it.
Biomes: Biome and landscape are both similar terms used to describe a region of the map, though there are differences. Biomes are areas usually characterized by a specific climate such as a barren desert or a snow capped plain, whereas a landscape is a more broad term used to describe various natural and unnatural features of an area. Biomes help to break up the map consistency and can offer drastically different atmospheres from one another.
Pathing: The main path should route through all of the POIs and connect the biomes. The main path needs to be clearly defined and emphasized with a broad entry point, light, leading lines, open doors, or something else. To contrast, optional content off to the side may be less attractive due to an obscure entrance, curved trajectory, or other design solutions.
Tip 2: Light sources are another way to help players navigate, especially within darker environments:
Figure 5.5: Light sources can help to direct players towards their next location
Tip 3: Similar to why we may include different biomes on different ends of the map, by selecting a unique color palette for each of your locations you can help to differentiate the locations from one another:
Figure 5.6: Color differences between locations can help set different moods and tones
Immersion
Our goal as artists and designers is to create worlds that players want to feel connected with. The more connected the user is with the game’s world and story, the higher their sense of engagement and presence is. This leads to both longer retention and higher player satisfaction. However, open world maps are a lot more challenging to make immersive than a contained linear map, so let’s look at some ways that we can achieve an immersive world:
Audio: Sound and audio help to set the tone and theme of an area. Music can change our emotions and even induce anxiety and raise our heartbeat, and sound emitters can help our 3D props and scene sound alive. For a detailed breakdown on audio, check out How to Immersify your Experience with Audio.
Visual Storytelling: We’ve already briefly discussed how landmarks and POIs can tell stories, but let’s look at it more granularly. What’s the difference between the two images below? Even though they’re both based in a city, we can tell that they both have a very different story from one another:
Figure 5.7: Example of how visual cues can make help set a tone and tell a story
A great example of visual storytelling can be found in L4D. Graffitied messages talking about life before the infection, or boarded up windows on residential houses that lead you to assume that people were trying to keep something out. It’s important to scatter these bits of subtle storytelling because it allows the player to collect and piece together the story as they explore the world:
Figure 5.8: L4D Graffiti Example
Interactive Elements: These are objects that you can interact with to trigger an event or action, or will provide the player with information or an objective. Items like paper notes can be good for adding extra story context, whereas a light switch will change the environmental atmosphere.
Day Night System and Dynamic Weather: These are both great ways to immerfiy your player and encourage replayability so they can see how the world looks in different circumstances. They both help to also break up the visual consistency. Be careful that your environments are still navigable in the dark or during weather spouts. Commonly I like to aim for 75% daytime, 25% nighttime:
Figure 5.9: Day and night cycles offer a new way to view the world
Tip 3: Fog is another great way to contribute to the atmosphere, and also can be used to limit the players visibility and even force them to slow down.
Wind and Particles: Windshake is a quick and easy way to enhance your environment. For a free windshake plugin, see HERE. Further, you can add particles such as falling leaves, dust in the air or effects such as smoke and fire to add realism to your scenes.
Differing Landscapes and Biomes: We’ve discussed this above, but create a variety of environments like mountains, deserts, forests, cities, and waterfront locations to keep exploration engaging for the player. These different locations also allow you to introduce new mechanics, loot or enemies to help contrast locations from one another:
Figure 5.10: Differing landscapes
Map Boundaries and Barriers: We all get frustrated when there’s an invisible wall blocking a path that looks enterable. These unnatural barriers break Immersion. Whether you choose to utilize Hard or Soft barriers, just ensure that the visuals make sense. If it is not enterable then it should not look enterable.
Loot and Collectables: If you play any good battle royale game you’ll always run into ammo, loot or a chest within 15-20 seconds of walking out from a main path. These items help give reason for why a player should explore an area, especially if higher risk areas carry better rewards. These scattered items also keep the player constantly engaged and encourage exploration:
Figure 5.11: Escape from Tarkov spreads loot in ways that offer risk / reward opportunities for the player
So to sum up this section, the size of your map does matter. Remember to make the world feel connected and alive wherever you go, and never build a location without purpose, intent or story. Each area players go should tell a different but connected story.
Optimization
Due to Roblox’s engine limitations, it’s hard to both create an extremely large and also extremely detailed game. This has gotten better with the introduction of rendering occlusion, LOD and Streaming Enabled, but let’s examine a few art tricks and how they can help us save memory. We will look at Selective Detailing, Mesh Recycling and 2D Sprites which are all good skills to know both in Roblox as well as the broader industry:
Selective Detailing: If we had to detail everything, it would take forever and also be very performance heavy. This is why It’s best to focus on detailing areas that Players commonly travel through, such as main paths. The props that we detail with are also very important. We want to try and decorate with props that take up the most space, which is why so many games utilize large objects when decorating interior rooms such as wooden crates, couches or bookshelves:
Figure 5.12: Selective details along the road that the players will notice most such as trees, traffic lights and other tall, bulky props.
Mesh Recycling: Also known as asset recycling, this is the best way to save time and memory is to reuse your meshes, sounds, textures and animations. The more unique IDs you have of these items the higher the memory, relatively speaking. Rocks and trees are a great example of this as they can easily be rotated, rescaled and angled to create a sense of variation:
Figure 5.13: I bet you couldn’t even tell this is all the same rock…
2D Sprite Sheets: These as well as Atlas Textures are both single image files that contain multiple smaller images usually arranged in a grid. These allow you to improve performance by requiring less total images.
Workflow
Finally, the part that you’ve been waiting for! You’re almost ready to hop into the studio, but first let’s wrap up this guide by briefly outlining my standard map production workflow in hopes that it makes the task of creating an open world map less daunting. These steps are applicable to any genre and style of gameplay, not just open world:
1. Pre-plan your map:
- Decide the story your wish to convey
- Create a list of your points of interests
- Decide a landmark for each location
- Plan where the player will spawn
- Don’t worry about the shape of the map until POIs are placed
- After deciding these details, block out the main location POIs based on the Triangle Rule that we learnt about earlier. During the blackout phase, use actual blocks. Don’t spend time detailing things as they will most likely be moved again:
Figure 5.14: Points of interest and their landmarks blocked out and triangles placed to make sure everything interconnects
- Draw out your biome borders or regional borders if applicable:
Figure 5.15: Zones/biomes marked with different colored baseplates
- Create your main paths to connect the POIs to each other:
Figure 5.16: Main pathing added
- Draw equal sized Spheres of Interest around the POIs and ensure that the spheres have slight overlap with one another.:
Figure 5.17: Sphere of Interest marked out
- Now place markers inside of these spheres of interest for where you want your in-between locations to be (i.e. campsites, cabins, farms, etc).
Figure 5.18: Blocked out in-between locations
- At this point you should be playtesting to ensure your map scale and locations are an appropriate travel distance from one another.
- Add the indirect paths from the in-between locations to the main paths.
Figure 5.19: In-direct paths added to create shortcuts and to connect in-between locations with main paths
- When you’re satisfied with your map’s layout and scale, mark out where collectables and/or loot will be (if applicable).
And with that, you now have built the foundation for your open world map. This guide is already long so I’ll leave it there, but if you have any questions then please leave them in the comments and I will reply with an answer.
If you liked this tutorial, you can find my other ones here:
- How to Design a Map Layout
- How to Design a Simple House
- How to Design a PvP Map
- How to Immersify your Experience with Audio
Finally, if you enjoy this type of content and wish to support me, you can purchase my book The Ultimate Roblox Game Building Cookbook!
Stay Cheeky, and happy building
