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The Flight of the Scarabs-release was my first work in CryEngine. The release entailed two open world areas that host boss spawn events inside of them. I was briefed about the narrative, that a large ship that had blown up in space, crashing down in pieces around the planet. From that I was allowed to work freely with building the areas.
Within the areas, there was going to be static events that happened every now and then, spawning more difficult enemies and a world boss. The timeframe was about four weeks to deliver two open world areas using mainly existing meshes. The exception being some new set dressing props for broken ship pieces.
East Scylla Mountains
For the East Scylla Mountain Area I built a smaller crashsite with a strip of land being torn apart behind it. This added more belivability to the area as a whole, while also giving players a deeper end that they could hunt in, expanding the site a bit.
I added two additional themes outside of the event space. The prompt I was given only required the crashsite to be built, but I felt it left the overall experience lacking a lot.
To mend this, I added a Forest on the north side and a slanted pillar plain on the western side. In these areas we also spawned in lower level enemies, allowing a wider range of players to be able to play the new content. As well as increased the agency for mid-level players who could hunt the lower level mobs alone, instead of being forced to group up to hunt the ones in the crash area.
On a higher level, I've been reworking the structures of the world in current Entropia. Building it in more of a similar way to how it would be in the Unreal version. This meant more height variation, better reveals, pacing the players traversal and combat loops and so on. This release was the first test.
Ashi
Ashi was more of a challenge. The area was very spartan, with almost nothing to its name except a small outpost and a pvp zone next to it. I really tried to emphasize the existing themes and flora, to then bind it with the crashsite.
I wanted to work in more of a narrative with Ashi. As the scarabs emerged from the site, the old outpost was overrun, leaving corpses and battle scars all over the settlement. I then setup a new outpost a bit further away and connected the two with a road leading through the new, emphasized flora.
Besides this, I opted for a more direct-hit type crater with ashi. Cutting the hunting areas into two layers. One darker below, and one brighter white above. To showcase the shockwave and impact scale in a better fashion.