Batman DLC: Dev Q&A

We recently hosted a Dev Q&A on the official Minecraft Discord server to celebrate the release of the Batman DLC pack (available now in Minecraft Marketplace)! Joining us were a few key members from Noxcrew, the developers of the DLC pack, who answered questions straight from our community. If you missed this chat, then that’s not a problem! We’ve compiled the highlights for you:

Q: Could you give us tips on how to create an amazing, high quality adventure map like this?

Avondale, Business Development Manager: I think tips for making great Minecraft content vary depending on your current level of making maps!

- If you’ve never made a map before: My best advice is to pick something small and get it to a state where other people can play it! The biggest mistake people make, especially when they’re newer, is thinking too big and never finishing the project. Get it playable, let someone else play it, get their feedback, and use it to make your work better.

- If you’ve made a few things before: Spend more time thinking about how you’re making the player feel. What the “reality” of your world is, and what you need to do to support that. You want the player to forget they’re playing Minecraft because they’re so immersed in your world.

Q: What tools were used to create the DLC?

MarkusNC, Lead Level Designer: We actually build the maps in Minecraft: Java Edition first before transferring over to Bedrock Edition, so we can utilize all of the classic plugins like Worldedit and Voxelsniper.

Q: How many hours were spent creating the map?

Arsenic, Project and Art Lead: We had 20 people (give or take) working full time along with some part-timers. We started full production back at the start of April so we’re looking at over 20,000 hours of work combined!

Q: Who is your favorite villain in the Batman universe?

Avondale: I’ve decided that I love Harley Quinn. I recently watched the animated series and really enjoyed her character. Clayface is also quite fantastic!

MarkusNC: I would say Mr. Freeze since he is the coolest. Sigh.

Shronky: Condiment Man - someone who uses ketchup and mustard as weapons deserves a greater appreciation. But on a serious note, probably Mr. Freeze. I think his motivations and path to villainy are the most sympathetic and heartbreaking within that universe.

Arsenic: I always enjoy the antics of The Joker. A villain that doesn’t take themselves too seriously is great!

Q: What was the funniest thing that happened when creating the DLC?

Shronky: One playtest I was going through one of the rooms in the Iceberg lounge and found a bug with a chandelier. As I looked up to a take a picture I discovered a number of Electric eels had left their tank and were floating up on the ceiling.

MarkusNC: When we first started playtesting the map in multiplayer, we started trying to troll by sending explosive BNT at each other. It became a constant game of bat and mouse, trying to evade carts zooming around every corner. Then we found out that it’s actually a pretty good speedrun strat to blow somebody up mid-flight and get a big boost in the air!

Avondale: In the map, sometimes Lucius Fox sends you pop-up NPC windows. Because of the way Minecraft works, you actually need the NPC near the player. To accomplish this when the player has the ability to move around, we made Lucius ride on the player so he’d always stay close by. When we made this system, Lucius didn’t have any voiceover yet, so everything was working fine. However- he eventually got a voice, and I didn’t know. I’d be testing the map and would randomly hear someone say something that sounded like “Cool lemonade!” Eventually, we realized it was Lucius riding my character, and we had to solve the problem, but I still laugh every time I’m in the Batcave and he says “Cool lemonade!”

Here’s a picture of what Lucius looks like riding a player. We eventually made him quite small and invisible so you can’t see him in-game.

Q: How did you organize and plan the project?

Avondale: We had a lot of back and forth both internally and with DC towards the beginning of the project. From the beginning, we knew we wanted to reuse a model from an existing game of ours: Ninjas of Zombie City. It was just a matter of adapting it, figuring out how Batman’s gadgets would apply to a Minecraft world, picking our villains and mobs, then tying everything together. From a boring management standpoint, we use an online tool called “Asana” to keep track of our tasks and deadlines.

Q: How did you design Gotham City? What reference materials did you use, for example: comics, games, etc?

MarkusNC: All of it. We played some games, read the comics, watched the movies, got the art book (Batman: the Ultimate Guide). We also had a lot of reference material sent to us by DC Comics. We tried to make this dark gothic metropolis without having it feel too depressing. We had the villains each take over a part of the city and themed these areas after their specialties, like literally freezing over the Warehouse district that Mr. Freeze controls. For the dungeons leading up to the boss fights we designed gameplay first in a really lo-fi fashion before texturing and decorating them. Textures for the map were made to be gritty, with slightly muted color schemes, but still cartoony, to give a bit of that edgy atmosphere that Batman is known for.

Avondale: Additionally, we wanted to share these early images of our Gotham design. The first is an overview showing map areas early on in development. The second is a mood board of sorts showing styles for areas of the map.

Q: How did it feel to adapt such an iconic character into something that fits the Minecraft feel, and what went into that process?

Arsenic: There is always a daunting feeling when taking someone else’s IP and creating content around it, especially for one that is so dearly loved and has been adapted in so many ways before!

We wanted to bring Batman into Minecraft and let the player feel like a superhero so that gave us a clear focus to start with. From there it was about finding game play which meshed a Minecraft mechanic with something that feels Batman-y. We felt that many aspects just fit naturally with the current capabilities of the game! DC really loved a lot of our ideas which helped the process immensely.

Q: What served as inspiration for the DLC plot?

Shronky: We decided quite early that we wanted someone to get kidnapped and taken to the Nether. Initially it was Batman, but that was scrapped in favor of either Alfred Pennyworth or Lucius Fox so that the player could be Batman. Unfortunately for Alfred, he won the contest for being kidnapped by the Joker.

Other than that, the general story took most of its inspiration from a collection of comics, but namely “The War of Jokes and Riddles” served as a great example of the capability of the villains (especially when paired together) and “Run, Riddler, Run” showcased a great, playful and elusive Riddler (though he still made deadly traps).

Q: Which villain was the hardest to create in Minecraft form?

Avondale: We had a big challenge getting The Joker’s image correct. The Joker’s biggest identifier is his continuously emotive face, which is very difficult to represent in 16x resolution. We went through several iterations of the character to get him just right, which you can see in this image here: 

Q: Were there some things you had to scrap during the making of the DLC? Shronky: Nothing major was cut from the project during development, as we stuck with most of the decisions we made in pre-production. One thing we had to change- Mr. Freeze used to attack the player with the "Freeze Trident". It functioned the same as the Ice Launcher, but used the Minecraft Trident model. DC asked us to change it because the Trident is famously Aquaman's weapon of choice. We also pitched some villains who sadly didn’t make it into the map, two of which were “Killer Croc” and “Catwoman”.

Q: What were the initial thoughts of the team when they found out they were making a Batman DLC?

Shronky: Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-BATMAN!

These were just some of the fun highlights from last week’s Q&A. To go back and read the full chat, and to be a part of more Dev Q&As in the future, be sure to check out the official Minecraft Discord!