Callum Anthony Stables

Overview

The Red District is designed to fit into the Dead By Daylight gameplay cycle and steps were taken during development to ensure the map would play well.

While this map is purely a solo project, efforts were made to communicate to players and get feedback on tiles and elements of the map to ensure gameplay would be enjoyable. Comparisons were also made against other maps in Dead By Daylight to ensure the map scaled correctly in size.

In August 2022 it was released in the Mod By Daylight 🔗 Discord after I finished porting the project to Dead By Daylight.

Further below is an in-depth look into the design philosophy behind The Red District.

• Designed an environment which fits into gameplay flow of Dead By Daylight, in Unreal Engine 5.
• Iterated design based upon player feedback.
• Added gameplay mechanics using blueprints and C++ (Collision, spawn-points, prefabs, etc).
• Backported the map into Unreal Engine 4.27.

Design Discussion

The Red District takes players into the dark underbelly of a once flourishing city now turned into an abandoned wasteland where the only population is you, and the killer.

By analysing and following design conventions found throughout Dead By Daylights current map rotation and using player feedback on what makes a map “good” and “bad” I set out a series of guidelines to follow when designing this map:

• Design a map both compressed into a small area while not making players feel constricted into narrow paths.
• Design a map large enough so the killer cannot reach both sides of the map too quickly while not being a daunting task.
• Provide a central “hub” of the map where all paths can lead.
• Allow for vertical movement, otherwise certain abilities will not be functional.
• Spacing generators, hooks, pallets, exit gates and windows consistently so players are not compressed into small areas of the map.
• Offering both “strong” and “weak” interactive loops for survivors.
• Creating “Deadzones” (Areas where there are little or no resources for the survivor) while promoting survivors to enter these areas with generators.

Compression & Expansion

Given the setting of the map, and the atmosphere of Dead By Daylight, it only felt natural to try to capture the claustrophobia of a dense urban environment.

The Red District is a mixed urban environment, with open plazas contrasted against narrow alleyways and small courtyards. I wanted to give players the feeling of being isolated in this narrow concrete jungle, while still having enough space to maneuver and avoid being funnelled into “Dead Zones”.

When designing, I wanted to give every area a theme and mood. Tall buildings play with line of sight. Dark alleyways feature dark red lighting giving a moody theme, while open areas are littered and scattered with a rainbow of colours. Every street and path tries to tell a story such as the modern, glowing main street hiding the homeless structures set up behind.

Cohesion in Dead By Daylight

The distance between 2 of the furthers generators apart is roughly 90m. Using a 4.6m/s killer this would take the killer, assuming no movement blockage, about 20 seconds to navigate. Compared to a map such as “The Game” where the distance between 2 sides is 90m, this is fairly average for a Dead By Daylight map.

This area acts as a “hub” with all paths leading to it. The building is the basement / shack with a twist. Instead of the basement being underground, this itteration of the basement is placed in the sky, with 2 enterances. This alleviates player concerns around the basement often being a waste of precious time and killers camping the enterance. This allows killers to quickly begin fun and interactive chases with survivors at the trade off of allowing survivors easier access to the basement. It also acts as a tool for vertical mobility.

The Red District offers players a variety of interactive loops, some are weak and some are strong. During design I used player feedback to find concerns over loops and tiles. One major complaint is that loops should not connect together in such a way where multiple “strong” loops are linked. This map is designed so that while loops will connect, they alternate between strong and weak tiles. Pictured is a somewhat strong pallet but one that allows certain killers such as “The Huntress” to be more effective on.

(Incase you’re wondering, a “loop” in Dead By Daylight is somewhere a survivor, while being chased by the killer, will run around as to stop them from being killed)

Acknowledgements

This is a custom map and is not representative of work by Behaviour Interactive. I do not claim to be an employee of Behaviour Interactive.

I do not claim to have created or modelled any of the assets shown on this map.

Copyright

© 2015–2025 and BEHAVIOUR, DEAD BY DAYLIGHT and other related trademarks and logos belong to Behaviour Interactive Inc. All rights reserved.