Rainbow Six: Siege is a 5v5 shooter where an attacking team attempts to plant a defuser while a defending team tries to stop them. The maps feature destructible walls, ceilings and floors. These make the matches dynamic as, depending on the operators each team brings, the terrain can shift dramatically.
Each map needs to be built around providing enough angles of approach to let attackers in without leaving the defenders defenceless. When designing the museum map, I focused on giving each approach its own varying terrain so that each bomb site felt unique.
The map was built around the central corridor. It provides a fast way to move between sites, but the open terrain makes anyone in it vulnerable. Attackers can use the roof openings to flush defenders out of cover, while the defenders can keep attackers from abusing it with the large number of windows overlooking it.
I made sure that each site backs onto it. That way, no matter which one the defenders pick, there will always be a reason to engage with it.
Cafeteria was the first site I built out. It's a common site in other maps as the combination of large rooms with logical cover makes them an easy fit. Having the kitchen be the other room for the site was then an obvious pairing.
The main crux of the site is the window and doorway from the balcony into the cafeteria. Attackers can quickly get in and plant the defuser, then cover it outside. The defenders, therefore, need to either have someone play close using the booths as cover, play beneath using the destructible floor, or use gadgets from afar.
This encourages more volatile play as the attackers and defenders will be forced to play much closer together.
Archaeology is a much more methodical site. Aside from the window, the attackers will need to push through the interior to get to the site. If they take the time to open the destructible walls, they'll be rewarded with clear sightlines to vital cover.
Having one or more roaming defenders to slow down the attack is a vital countermeasure. This site provides great cover, but once it goes down, attackers will be able to flank and take out anyone turtling down.
This site emphasises time. The attacking side will need to split their time between removing defences in preparation and breaching the site itself. As the defending team takes steps to delay them, the attackers will need to decide which is more important.
Isopod emerged as an offset site when I was designing the surrounding rooms and corridors. Offset sites are sites where it's more important to gain/maintain control of a separate area than the site itself. For Isopod, this is the wraparound corridor.
The corridor provides access to destructible walls and multiple entrances. The defending team will have to cover the four entrances, relying on intel tools to redirect their resources.
If either side is locked out of the corridor, they can instead approach the site from above. A large portion of the ceiling is destructable and there is a hatch to drop through.
Humidity is defined by verticality. There are only three ways to enter the basement, so the attacking team will need to use the destructible ceiling to flush out attackers before entering the floor. I balanced this by increasing the site's size and adding lots of indestructible cover. This spreads the defenders across a bigger area and gives the attacking team a couple of secure spots to plant the defuser.
I made sure to check all the sight lines as the attacking site can shoot directly into the site from the roof's skylights. I extended some of the cover to ensure that breach denial tools such as Mute's jammers or Bandit's batteries can't be shot out. The attackers can still bring explosive gadgets to clear them out, but that locks them out of other tools, which I feel is a balanced tradeoff.
I first sketched the layout on paper before building it in Unreal Engine.
I built a simple asset pack in Blender designed to be scaled up and down while snapping to the grid to let me create rooms quickly.
I added some simple blueprint/material functions to make the tools more modular, such as:
Toggleable surface types
Height gradient on the top of horizontal surfaces to delineate depth when in the orthographic view
Adding a simple movement system to view the environments in first person
This included hotkeys to toggle the transparency of destructible surfaces