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Levels & Maps

Think of a Level as a movie set. It's the stage where everything in your game happens — the terrain, the buildings, the lighting, the characters walking around. When you open HELIX Studio and start placing things in the world, you're building a Level.

Levels vs Maps​

These two terms get used interchangeably, and that's mostly fine. Technically, a Map (.umap file) is the file saved to disk, and a Level is what gets loaded into memory at runtime. In practice, people say "map" and "level" to mean the same thing. Don't overthink it.

Sub-Levels​

As your world grows, cramming everything into one Level becomes a mess — like trying to fit an entire film production onto a single soundstage. Sub-Levels let you split your world into layers.

Common sub-level setups:

  • Landscape sub-level for terrain
  • Lighting sub-level for all your light actors
  • Audio sub-level for ambient sounds
  • Gameplay sub-level for spawn points, triggers, and logic

Each sub-level can be loaded or unloaded independently, and different team members can work on different sub-levels without stepping on each other's toes.

To add a sub-level in HELIX Studio, open Window > Levels and click Add Existing or Create New.

World Partition​

Building a massive open world? World Partition is your best friend. Instead of manually managing which sub-levels load and unload, World Partition automatically streams chunks of the world in and out based on the player's position.

How it works:

  • Your world is divided into a grid of cells
  • Only cells near the player get loaded into memory
  • As the player moves, new cells stream in and distant ones stream out
  • You set the loading distance based on your performance needs

This means you can build enormous landscapes without worrying about loading the entire thing at once. Players only ever see and interact with what's nearby.

To enable World Partition, go to World Settings > World Partition in HELIX Studio when creating a new level.

tip

For smaller game modes (arenas, lobbies, minigames), regular sub-levels work great. Save World Partition for the big open-world stuff.