Panjwai
Panjwai is a 4x4km mod map for Squad.
The main design goals with this map were to:
Create a 4x4km Afghanistan biome map. All of the Afghanistan maps currently in-game are much smaller.
Use best practices from Squad’s most popular maps (ie. have large, mostly open terrain with a good distribution of POIs with lots of freedom and choice for players to decide how to approach them)
Create a map where the insurgent faction could reasonably go up against conventional military factions in symmetrical game modes (at the time, the thinking was irregular factions could only play on asymmetrical game modes)
I was learning the process of bringing in a heightmap and creating a landscape in Unreal so the first steps I took were:
Copying over an existing landscape material and adjusting it to get the aesthetic I wanted
Planning large features like roads and rivers and rivers, trying to preserve as much of the original heightmap as possible because I was unable to replicate the detailed erosion patterns that the heightmap provided.
At this point, I didn’t have a good process for planning out my maps and POIs, so I literally just began building the level out from one corner of the map.
I was inspired to recreate the dense maze of agricultural compounds found in this part of Afghanistan. I used real-world references in order to create several POIs.
To give the insurgents a better chance of fighting conventional forces, I attempted to remedy their design constraints with the space and environment.
At this time, the insurgent faction lacked strong vehicles and magnified weapon optics, so I wanted them to have as much concealment as possible so that they could fight or ambush at close range. I did this with several experiments and techniques:
Sandstorm lighting scenarios where visibility was severely limited, negated the conventional factions’ powerful weapon optics and vehicles when fighting the insurgents
Rivers with lush vegetation along the banks that insurgents could use as concealed highways to navigate through certain portions of the map
Underground tunnel systems that allowed insurgents to bypass large open areas, and force conventional militaries into close-quarter battles
Dense urban areas or walled compounds that gave the insurgents the opportunity to flank and get close to conventional forces
I finished the map and it remains one of the most popular modded maps for Squad although I have since given up on updating it as new versions of the client are released. One day my hope is still that it might get added to vanilla Squad since so much of the work for having a well-designed map as been done.
