Unreal Engine Batman Arkham #25: BTAS Suits, Panther and New Maps

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Hey folks,

It’s been a while since the last devblog of this project, which means that I have accumulated quite a variety of additions since then, especially when it comes to new skins so let’s go through all of that one by one.

Updated Arkham Origins Menu Cinematic

Given the season I figured that it’d be a nice touch to give my Arkham Origins-style menu cinematic a bit of an overhaul, especially because it’s been like two years since I last touched it. I went for a more dramatic and stylised look this time, which is also more in line with the newer visuals that I’ve done for the various environments in the last year or so.

Needless to say that this is a tremendous upgrade over its original state, as some of the comparison-images below demonstrate.

BTAS Themed Skins

I’ve made quite a bunch of new skins that are loosely following the theme of the animated series’ designs after I finished my Burton-BTAS skin two months ago. I figured that it’d be nice to try something a little different for a change and given that I had quite a lot of ideas I wanted to realise I ended up making half a dozen new skins afterwards.

You can find more or less extensive breakdowns of the different skins on my new portfolio-page here: Link

All of these skins are also available as mods for Batman Arkham Knight, which you can find either in my Arkham Mods page or on NexusMods.

Batman Forever Panther Suit

This suit was made by JoeMama once again and it turned out to be a nice addition to slowly complete the set of movie suits in my project. As you can see it turned out very nicely and puts the Val Kilmer face model I made for Joe’s Sonar Suit to good use once again.

You can also get this Skin for Arkham Knight here: Link

Burton Cowls and Face updates

It seems like three times the charm applies to my Burton/Keaton Batman face models, but I think this might be a more lasting revision now, as I’ve adjusted a lot of details, especially in the lower half of his face for more authentic and natural results and I think that worked out well.

I’ve also finally refitted the cowl meshes to said face models, so they’re actually accommodating for the face’s shape rather than squishing the face into the cowls through morph targets, which looked rather unnatural from various angles.

Obviously I also released those updates for the Arkham Knight versions of my Burton Suits here: Link

The aforementioned Portfolio Page for my 3D models

This was something that I planned to make for a long time, and I’ve finally gotten around to it, so you can now find a bit of a portfolio of my 3D models, including design breakdowns and some further insight here: Link

Arkham Asylum Archive-Level

This environment was a bit of a random idea, but I felt like it would make for a contained and atmospheric combat map so that I can have a bit more variety in high-quality environment for my gameplay showcases.

It is largely a loose recreation of a DLC combat challenge map from Arkham Asylum, more specifically of the “Totally Insane” challenge. I originally also wanted to add the lunatic enemies for this map, but I ended up not getting around to that, so that’s something I might still work on in the future.

The Second Bank of Gotham-Level

I wanted to give the Panther suit an accompanying challenge map, and after some brainstorming with Joe I’ve decided that the Second Bank of Gotham from the opening of Batman Forever would be a good addition. Given that the actual set of that scene seems to be rather barren and minimalistic if you look close enough I took some liberties with the actual design of the level, while still keeping some of its key visual elements such as the very prominent orange and white elevator doors, the two-coloured light strips and the rather peculiar ceiling lights, which I realised as big (sky-)light boxes with grates in front of them to create the distinctive, triangle-pattern shapes. Big thanks to Joe for helping me out with the grate pattern and the light strips here.

Updated Streets of Gotham-Level

This is an older map, where I figured that it’s in need of an overhaul and while I was at it, making it winter-themed seemed like a neat idea. I’d say that its overhaul finally made it fit in alongside the other two Burton-themed maps, both stylistically and in terms of visual quality.

Gameplay Additions

If you’ve seen the video for this devblog you most likely noticed it already, but I’ve finally added charge attacks by the enemies during combat, which you may already know from Arkham Knight. The way I’ve handled them works a bit differently though, while they can’t or rather won’t attack you when you’re locked into special moves such as counters or takedowns, they can still charge at you before you start that move and then grab you if you finished said move before the enemy has reached you. I think this gives it more of a “risk-reward” aspect, since you can decide between dealing with the charging enemy first, which may open you up to other enemy attacks and then move on or you could try to squeeze in a special move in between and either deal with the charging thug afterwards if you still have the time for it or you’ve timed it well enough to avoid the charge attack. If you time it incorrectly or don’t react fast enough to other enemies you’ll end up taking damage and lose your combo, which feels like a more balanced and less frustrating approach than in Arkham Knight, where charging enemies feel a bit more inconsistent and messy in my opinion.

That’s all for this time, I hope you enjoyed it even though the video ended up being a bit longer than I planned. Enjoy the upcoming holdays :)

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