One of Call of Duty: Warzone’s biggest maps is going open-source

By Carli Velocci July 30, 2024

An overhead view of the Caldera Warzone map but it's been stripped of color in a development program. — Activision

Activision announced that it’s releasing open-source data for the Call of Duty: Warzone Caldera map, which is one of the largest in-game data sets released from the franchise, and will allow players to use it in their own projects.

The data set is what’s referred to as a Universal Scene Description (USD), which allows for large-scale, detailed 3D simulations of things like the Caldera map. The data, which includes most of the “geometry” of Caldera along with some in-game character pathing that shows how players move, will be available in OpenUSD (the open-source industry standard for this kind of tech) on Wednesday.

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The Caldera set is called “one of the largest publicly available OpenUSD data sets” by Activision senior VP of software engineering Michael Vance in a blog post. Vance also referred to it as “extensive, in terms of world-size, scene graph depth,” collisions, and other aspects.

The map in-game was already quite big, and it was chosen for this project for that reason. It’s one of the biggest the franchise has ever created, rivaling original Warzone map and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare’s Verdansk. The data itself will be around 4GB.

Caldera's rivers flowing through jagged cliffs in Call of Duty: Warzone — Activision

Releasing the data will not only let developers use it for potential modding and AI training but will help with future Call of Duty development. Since it’s a mostly completed map that’s been proven to work with the public, it’s a unique resource for this kind of work.

“We feel a constant need to improve the play experience and deliver even more richness and detail. Innovations that come from this data set release could give more freedom and flexibility for our content teams to find the most engaging scenarios for our players,” Vance said.

The Caldera map was first introduced in 2021 in the Warzone Pacific update. It was a giant battle royale map, which featured 15 areas and a lot of places to explore — some of which were based on other multiplayer maps from the franchise. The Pacific update was then renamed to Warzone Caldera, but was shut down in 2023 to make way for Warzone 2.0.

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Contributor, Games

Carli is a technology, culture, and games editor and journalist. They were the Gaming Lead and Copy Chief at Windows Central…

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