Level Design in the Hammer Editor

Trouble in Terrorist Town (TTT) is one of the best-known games when it comes to social deduction games. I set myself the goal of creating a playable, tested map for TTT within one week, and to take a closer look at the Hammer Editor from Valve in the process. If you're wondering exactly what TTT is, the official website of this mod can explain it better than I can.

Project Overview

My core idea for the map was a Moorish castle in the Spanish wilderness, serving as a lonely hideout for a group of militants. As things go, conflicts inevitably break out. "Accidents" happen, and it turns out not everyone living in this castle can be trusted: welcome to ttt_castillo.

First, I did a bit of research and tried to find images that captured the defining features of a Moorish castle like this as concisely as possible.

At the start, I also put together a list of features I absolutely wanted to implement.

• A room accessible only to Traitors.
• A system of surveillance cameras.
• The ability for Traitors to teleport.
• A fetch quest to unlock certain level sections.
• A prison to lock up suspects.
• A classic Traitor trap to eliminate Innocents.

My vision was to build a small, rectangular castle centered around a courtyard. Walkable towers, a small multi-story keep, and battlements. The game was meant to take place inside the castle for as long as possible, with more and more opportunities to reach the area outside the fortress opening up as the game progressed.

In the end I managed to hit every one of these points. The project ended up taking me a bit more than a week, though that was mostly because working on the map developed a real pull at a certain point.

The Hammer Editor's UI/UX is admittedly no longer up to modern standards. It also crashes frequently. That said, the documentation is good and the underlying principles are simple. Once you get past the initial learning curve, a whole playground opens up.

You constantly run into technical limitations. The Source engine is the decisive factor here. But these limitations also give you the chance to get creative with your solutions. For example, if you're missing global illumination, you can achieve a similar effect by placing point lights with the estimated color of the bounce light.

Prison

The Castillo has a prison that can be locked and unlocked from the outside. Players trapped inside have no way to free themselves. Only Traitors have the ability to blow up the wall inside the prison and thereby regain their freedom.

Traitor Room

The Traitor Room is located in the highest tower of the Castillo. From there, players have access to special equipment, the surveillance cameras, and the ability to teleport to an abandoned house outside the castle.

Implementing the Traitor Room was particularly exciting. It needed to be hidden, but it also shouldn't be too easy to enter unseen.

Fetch Quest

There are two fetch quests in the Castillo. First, the main gate is locked. The matching keycard needs to be found, and it's located at the top of the map's highest tower.

The second quest lets players get back into the Castillo from outside. Loose planks are scattered along the fortification's right flank. Once all three planks are collected at a certain spot, a ladder appears.

Traitor Trap

In the end, there wasn't much room left for a lot of Traitor traps. Several were implemented at first, but after a few playtests it became clear that the size of the map significantly affects the number of Traitor traps it can support.

If Innocents have relatively few ways to move around safely, the game gets decided too quickly and too decisively.

For that reason, only one trap survived the playtest. In this case (pun intended), Traitors can redirect the generator's exhaust fumes in the keep into a room whose doors lock automatically once the trap is triggered.

For Innocents, the roof remains the only way out. But maybe someone's already waiting up there...