Far Cry 5 custom Outpost Level
Project Type
Outpost Liberation
Role
Designer
Location
Burbank, CA
Engine
Far Cry 5 Arcade Editor
(Modified Dunia Engine)
A Bit About the level...
This is a custom level designed in Far Cry 5's Arcade editor. Arcade Editor is a tool that ships with Far Cry 5 that allows players to create custom maps using the assets shipped with the game and other Ubisoft titles. This level is a Outpost Liberation level, where player liberates a small area from cultists.
Featured Level
Gameplay Walkthrough
Level Breakdown.
Gallery
Talking about the level
One of my favourite things to do in Far Cry games is to liberate outposts. Whether it be small patches of town, military camp, checkpoints or moody resorts. These liberation missions really give the player a sandbox feeling where it basically says here are your tools and weapons and clear out that small area which is overrun by a bunch of hostile people. So as a game designer I wanted to challenge myself into making one of these levels.
At first I was thinking of making this level in pre exisisting game engine like Unreal engine or Unity.Fortunately Far Cry 5 shipped with a tool that allows me to do that. It was like playing with a box of legos. Which really took away my worry for coding and developing assets for this level.
From the get-go, I knew I did not wanted to just throw the player into the heat of battle. I wanted to build up on it. So I decided to design the level around a narrative. Which lets the level play out in a flow, rather than just the player character pointlessly picking a fight with a bunch of blood thirsty cultists.
The other thing I wanted to do with this level was I wanted to make it in the same setting as Far Cry 5 is in. The beautiful yet deadly fictional landscapes in the state of Montana. And since we are in the nature, I wanted to have an organic layout for my level as well, instead of hard turns and perpendicular turns. It curves with the landscape, and each sculpt sort of tells a story.
Designing Level
Developing Level
Development of this level was quite fast, as I already had the assets that were battle-tested with correct collisions, layout, blocking, and player interaction with the objects. Although initially I did struggle a little bit to figure out how the tool worked, as there is a very small amount of tutorials and documentation one can find online, since the arcade editor was launched in 2018. So, relying on my knowledge of how other game engines worked, I started joining blocks together one after another and started testing how these things interacted with each other.
Most of the time I spend is looking at reference images online and converting real-life references into a game level, using a set of premade assets available to me. In many instances, I was able to find the asset I was looking for, but sometimes I had to combine and join different assets together to create something that worked at my level.
The enemies in the level was entirely built using Ubisoft’s premade systems, and they blended seamlessly with my level design. Because the AI was already designed to react intelligently to player movement, sound, and line-of-sight, I focused on shaping the environment in a way that naturally supported their behaviors. Patrol routes, cover placements, and sightlines were arranged to let the AI navigate smoothly and react believably flanking, taking cover, and coordinating with each other without any custom scripting. This integration made the combat encounters feel dynamic and grounded, allowing the AI to showcase its full capability within a space handcrafted around it.
AI Enemies
Wave System
The level also features a wave system running underneath the encounter, adding tension and unpredictability to each playthrough. If the enemy NPCs manage to reach and activate an alarm, the system immediately triggers a full reinforcement wave, bringing in additional enemies to overwhelm the player. However, even if the player successfully disables all alarms before they can be used, the system doesn’t let the fight end too easily once the first wave is reduced to less than 25% of its original count, a smaller backup group is still deployed to keep the engagement active. This ensures the combat flow remains exciting and layered, rewarding players who plan ahead while maintaining the pressure of a living, reactive battlefield.
