MAP
CREATION
Arena Zero maps are built as Godot scenes and promoted through automated quality gates before they reach the competitive pool. This guide explains how maps are made, what the gates enforce, and where community mapping stands in the pre-alpha.
The Competitive Pool
Four maps form the current competitive pool. Duel, deathmatch, and training maps ship alongside them.
de_compound
A walled facility with tight interior routes and contested mid control.
de_porto
Hand-authored static scene — the pool map built directly in the editor, with no procedural generator script.
de_orbit
Long sightlines and open rotations — utility discipline decides rounds here.
de_souk
Dense market lanes with layered cover and fast site executes.
The Pipeline
Block out in the engine
Arena Zero maps are authored as Godot scenes — most competitive maps build their floors, walls, routes, props, and lighting procedurally in GDScript, which makes iteration fast and diffs reviewable.
Place the gameplay entities
Spawn points, bomb sites, and buy zones are placed as dedicated entities. The game validates them — spawns that overlap collision, for example, are rejected.
Bake navigation
The bot navmesh is baked on the server from the map's static colliders. Re-bake after every geometry change.
Pass the quality gates
Automated checks cover routes, timings, sightlines, art/audio budgets, and performance counters. A competitive map is only promoted to the ranked pool when the gates pass.
Playtest and iterate
Gates catch structural problems; playtests catch human ones. Maps evolve with community feedback before and after promotion.
What the Quality Gates Enforce
Routes & timings
Every promoted map has enforced budgets for route counts, cover placement, and rush timings. Timing changes over half a second must be justified against measured evidence.
Sightlines & utility
Sightline lengths and grenade lineup options are audited per map, so no angle or execute gets in without review.
Performance budgets
Hard caps on dynamic lights, shadow-casting lights, particle emitters, and ambient audio loops keep every promoted map inside its frame budget — the CI gate fails if a map exceeds them.
Bot navigation
Bots path over a server-baked navmesh fitted to the player capsule. Any geometry change requires a rebake — a map bots cannot navigate does not ship.
Community Maps
Community map packs
The game scans a user maps folder for community map packs (.pck files with a map_info.json descriptor) and lists them for selection. This is the foundation of the community mapping path.
Early days
The community pipeline is functional but young — tooling, documentation, and any workshop-style distribution are still being built out. Follow the Discord for mapping channels and tool releases during playtests.
Honesty note
Map-making tooling for the public is still in early development. There is no public map editor release or workshop yet — when mapping tools and documentation ship, they will be announced on Discord alongside playtests.
Maps need servers to live on
Learn how community dedicated servers work, or get the full picture from the beginning.