Making the map a character

When you think about RTS games, what do you spend most of the time looking at? More than your base, more than your armies - it is the terrain itself. It sets the scale of the conflict, shapes how battles unfold, and creates the sense of immersion that keeps players engaged. For Ashes of the Singularity II, we wanted to push this further by creating maps that are larger, more detailed, and more responsive.

Our work on Ara: History Untold taught us a lot about how to create immersive, natural-looking environments. One of Ara: History Untold’s core pillars was to build a “living world” that grew and evolved with the player’s actions. With Ashes 2, we took those lessons but shifted our philosophy entirely. Instead of a living world, Ashes of the Singularity II is focused on a “destructive world.” The environments here are not meant to flourish - they are meant to react to the chaotic forces unleashed during war. A Hyperion crashing into a forest could ignite nearby trees. Artillery shells might leave craters in the ground. When a structure is destroyed, its absence leaves a scar on the terrain that lasts for the rest of the match. The terrain itself becomes part of the story, a record of the destruction left behind as the battle rages on.

Player-generated maps for greater replayability

In the first Ashes of the Singularity, our maps were ambitious for their time, built to support massive battles, but limited in variety. Skirmish mode offered a set of pre-made maps, but there was no way to generate maps procedurally (although there was a map editor that allowed players to manually create maps). With Ashes of the Singularity II, we wanted to go further by giving players the ability to generate completely random maps. Every time you start a match, you will be dropped into a new world. This opens the door to endless replayability and gives players the control to shape the kind of battlefield they want to fight over.

Our procedural world generation system has been greatly updated to incorporate advanced texture synthesis and projection techniques to create sharper, more realistic surfaces. Height density has been increased significantly, which gives the terrain more slopes, ridges, cliffs, and plateaus. These features are not just visual dressing. They break up the battlefield, creating natural obstacles and points of interest that make each match feel unique. Positioning matters in subtle but meaningful ways, with terrain shaping the flow of combat without overwhelming the core gameplay.

Strategic, not tactical, map sizes

Battles are not the only large things in Ashes of the Singularity II.

The scale of the world is another defining feature. A “small” map is larger than what many other RTS games would consider a “large” one. The scale of the world and procedural generation make exploration more engaging. Moving across the map is not just about reaching your opponent; it is about uncovering the shape of the world itself. Each match encourages players to scout, adapt, and expand in new ways, making exploration an essential part of the experience.

In Ara: History Untold, the challenge was to represent an entire planet with multiple biomes, which limited how detailed each one could be. In Ashes of the Singularity II, the map sizes have remained largely the same, but instead of creating a whole world, the map represents a single biome, which allows us to make it more detailed, atmospheric, and believable. We aim to make the environment feel authentic, and that makes the battles fought across it even more engaging.

Realism matters

For us, it was never enough to simply make the maps look better. They needed to feel authentic, to enhance gameplay, and to reinforce the scale and intensity of massive RTS combat. By combining large procedural maps, varied terrain, focused biomes, and a philosophy built around destructive worlds, we have created terrain that does more than set the stage. It makes large-scale battles a true spectacle that is both engaging and immersive.

(Screenshot of Work In Progress procedurally generated Siberia)