D-Day Enhanced Trailer

D-Day Enhanced Logo

I joined the studio during the release of the original Honor and Duty: D-Day (PS4, PS VR). So the logo for that game wasn't made by me. For the "Enhanced" version I did create the logo as seen below (on the right). It was essential to keep the logos simple so that they would work on any kind of media, something that isn't possible with the old logo. I still wanted to keep some of the identity of the old logo and incorporated the iconic star and circle.

Map Design & Creation

I am a big fan of multiplayer shooters and probably played 90% of all Battlefield and Call of Duty games. It was always (and still is) interesting to see how the maps for those games were made, why some parts were designed the way they are and so on.

When I started doing part time work for Strange Games Studios, it started off with creating maps for the original D-Day game. I had a limited amount of assets to work with, but I was still able to create a fan favorite map in the form of "The Castle". This small multiplayer map always delivered fun close combat battles. 

Eventually we created an enhanced version of D-Day. For that game I wanted to bring more detail to the original maps, but also create brand new maps that would bring the game to the next level. Those maps can be seen below.

Atlantikwall

The Atlantikwall map is based on the Atlantikwall megastructure on the coastline of western Europe. It is a medium sized map with narrow trenches, underground bunkers and tunnels and some open areas with nature.

Derailed

The Derailed map is a large scale map that has three main areas. The hill with bunkers, the derailed train and the lumberyard. When there is a small amount of players, the maps will be smaller. In that case only the derailed train area for version A or the hill with bunkers for version B is playable.

Kasbah Village

At one point there was the plan to release themed maps every new season. The maps would be bundled with character and weapon skins that fit the theme of the season. Kasbah Village is one of the maps included to be part of that season.

Kasbah Village is one of my favorite maps that I've created. There is a small village in the centre of the map that is created for infantry battles, while the rest of the map works especially well for vehicles.

Oasis Airfield

Oasis airfield was scheduled to release in the desert themed season. This map is located in the North African desert. The map has various points of interest, for example the hangars, oasis, radio tower and so on. There are also tunnels running underneath the airstrip, this allows infantry to advance safely.

Stadium

With players being very positive about the test map (Shoot House), we decided to add another map like this one, but for a bit more players. the end result was the stadium map.

Desert Fox

Another map planned to be part of the Desert themes season is the Desert Fox map. A map that was available in the Beta. It was the first large scale map with more vehicles available. The map was simple to keep the render performance optimal.

Shoot House

As mentioned before, Shoot House was just a test map where we would try various new game elements and tweaks. Players liked it so much that we decided to keep it in the game.

Weapon Skins

I created over 36 different weapon skin tiles for D-Day Enhanced. The tiles are created in a way so that they are tileable. That means that the left side merges with the right side of the image and the upper with the lower side. This way we were able to quickly create a lot of skins for the many weapons we have in the game. Of course we had to tweak the tiling size/amount, so that the skin would be applied in a nice way. Below are some examples of the tile textures I created.

Store Assets

Every game that you put in a store needs graphical assets. Below you can see the assets for the PlayStation Store. Every now and then we update the images. There are many reasons to do this, for example to show something that was included in an update.

New version

For the new version I created a composition with many of the new assets we created.

Old version

For the old version we used an image we created with MidJourney as a base.

Marketing Images

What's the best way to convince people to buy a more premium version than the standard edition of the game? It's by showing the actual content in some way. Below you can see the images I had to quickly create for social media.

Player Banners

In the game, players are able to personalize their player banner. This banner can be unlocked with the tokens they earn in the game. The banners we created started with the creation of AI images by MidJourney. I had to do a clean those images up and placed them within a frame. Here below you can see some examples. 

DLC Store Assets

All the weapon skins we included in DLC packs had to have an image to display in the store. We had individual skin DLC, bundles of skins and an ultimate bundle with everything included. Since there are a lot of skins, I've only included a couple of examples below.

All the DLC had to be placed into the PlayStation Store. I had to do this in the PlayStation Concepts area (of PlayStation Partners). This was the first time we were doing DLC at this scale, so we learned a lot from it. Sometimes we couldn't figure out how something needed to be placed in the system, that's why I created an overview so we could explain our questions more easily.

Icons

For this game I've created many icons. Those include the icons for the classes. Over time I tried to make the simplified icons a bit more appealing. There are also some alternative icons, but the classes didn't end up with those. The supply stations do have very simple icons, so it is easy to spot and distinguish them from a distance.

Singleplayer Concepts

After release we released some modes that can be played with 1 player or in co-op. One of those modes is a sort of linear mission mode where you start at point A and need to go to point B. On the way you will encounter many AI controlled soldiers that you need to kill.

The missions take place on the existing maps. I created a couple of concepts before I created the boundaries in the map.

Included in the slides below is a concept for a King of The Hill mode. In this mode two teams battle for control over a small area on the map. Every 2 minutes the zone changes to another location.

Social Media

When a game launches, goes on sale or when doing a giveaway we create an image for it to post on social media. Here are some examples.

Battle Royale

Sometimes there are just too many ideas, so a lot doesn't end up in the game. One of those things is a Battle Royale mode. The PS4 version had a very simple Battle Royale mode, that's why we explored the possibility of bringing a new version to the new game. Some of those map concepts can be seen below.

One idea was to use the multiplayer maps and combine them into an island, but that would be a lot of work. With the other concepts I focused on creating something entirely new.

UI Design

There are lot of UI elements in this game that I designed, but unfortunately it didn't always get implemented or implemented in the way it had to be implemented. Some things were redesigned shortly before or after the release, because the content of the game kept changing. One of those things is the battle pass screen, where you can see your unlocks. The current one was a really simple placeholder, but the actual replacement was never used.

Pop-ups

Another thing I created are replacements for the UI pop-ups. For example when you are on a killstreak or when you captured a flag. Some examples can be seen below.

Map

Even though this map is not really part of the UI, it did serve as a background for it. On this map I tried to put a lot of details to make it look like a realistic map that would've been used during WW2.

Medals

The medals are pop-ups for when you've done something memorable on the battlefield. This could be getting a certain amount of kills, a kill with a bayonet or something else. The medals were created with the use of MidJourney, but the ribbons were made by me.

Unlock System

We wanted to put an unlock system in the game to keep players engaged for a longer time. I came up with a lot of concepts for that system. Some mock-ups look really simple, it doesn't resemble how it should look in the game.