Level Design

[Methulah]

I think that there is a serious lack of resources on the net for helping designers design levels. One of the great things about level design help is that there is a huge audience. Mappers and modders for games, as well as level designers working on original games.

It would be nice if this thread were to help people design and develop levels. I'll wait for the forum response before actually posting any tips that I have.

Thanks.

[bladder]

I think designing levels is too much of a subjective topic to have any real guidelines on it. It's like art class, they can tell you that in perspective you draw things smaller relative o distance, but it all boils down to how it looks to you.

If OTOH you're talking about tutorials on how to use the tools to build the levels, then there are a lot of resources on the net for that. Not too sure though as i dont really design levels.

[Nodlehs]

There is also the issue of level design with repects to certain engines, and keeping poly counts low while enhancing with textures. Player flow is also huge, there is plenty to be applied across a large range of games when you consider keeping players condensed in a FPS instead of never seeing anyone. I could see some tutorials or tips on that being posted and being helpfull.

[Methulah]

I agree with what Bladder is saying, yet I believe that level design has some general theretical guidelines. These are subjective (to style, genre, setting, etc.) yet knowledge can help level designers design levels that are fun to play.

We can see great games with level design that is boring and generic. Deus Ex is a great game, yet the level design is sketchy at best and lacks the sense of realism and flow that makes levels enjoyable.

Level design can make or break a game (in some cases this is not true, for example the aforementioned Deus Ex). Level design is probably the reason that counter-strike has been so popular for so long; the non-linear levels, each with a destinct graphical style and setting.

There are some lessons that can be learnt from theoretical level design lessons, and I would love to hear some tips from any level designers out there.

Thanks.

[Overmind1984]

Level design is very theoretical, dealing with things such as critical paths. Critical path being the basic route the player must travel to complete a stage without any side exploration. I am not too experience with level design myself though.

[Methulah]

Critical Path is very important for people who just want to finish the game, however, there are some issues with critical path creation.

First off, the critical path has to give the player enough "experiance" - be it weapons, actual XP points or NPC helpers to be able to finish the game satisfactorally. Baldur's Gate II is a prime example of allowing the player to take it easy throughout the game, then when they meet the boss they are a few levels below what they are suppossed to be and therefore get owned by a proverbial zergling rush.

On the otherside, however, one must be sure to make the critical path easy enough for the player to feel as though they are advancing - without making the critical path the easy way to get xp and loot.

There is no definitave method for this, but several ways to make the critical path enjoyable and rewarding. I will only list a few, mainly because I am tired, but if people want more, simply request =)

1.) Give good story intereaction, if the player is feeling that they are continuing quickly in the story, it doesn't really matter hom long it takes. As long as the critical path has regular updates to the story, many twists and quirks as possible.

2.) Give tons of scripted sequences and variation to gameplay. If you game is a squad based FPS, give the player a vehicle so that the gameplay can change, or loose the squad for a level. If you have an RPG, set the protaganist in charge of setting up the defences for an incoming attack, giving an RTS style of gamplay.

3.) Make all the best items off the critical path. This must be countered by having many good items on the critical path, items good enough to finish the game without too much trouble.

4.) Don't make the critical path too long. I have not finished GTA: Vice City because it is simple too damned long. A good balance is about 30 hours of gamplay for the critical path, more for "side routes"

This is all for the moment, I will past this to the wiki aswell.

[business]

some things I can add off the top of my head:

-Try to plan the layout on paper before you begin. Your levels will usually end up much different than your concept drawings, but it's a good idea to get the basic layout down on paper and visualize what it will play like before starting to build it.

-Try as much as possible to make each area or piece of architecture unique. The same goes for prop models - try not to use the same ones all over the place. I can't explain how mad I was at the laziness of the Unreal 2 level designers, who used the same light model throughout the entire game, which takes place all over the universe. If you do, don't put things like identical trees next to each other. your eyes will recognize the shape repeating itself and it looks really bad. At least rotate one of them or change the tilt/scale a little. different skins also go a long way to add variation to a model, whether it's a dumpster or coffee cup or whatever.

-Introduce new gameplay from time to time throughout the game. A good example is Half-Life 2. Scott Miller of 3D Realms had this to say about the level design/gameplay of HL2 on his website www.gamematters.com:

"Gameplay variety. I think variety is one of the biggest keys to a successful game, as no one likes to get stuck doing the same thing over and over the entire game. Within HL2's 16 hour adventure, I spent an hour on a swamp boat, an hour riding a dune buggy, and hour controlling a horde of aliens, an hour teamed up with a squad, an hour in a scary village with the help of a preacher, and an hour hunting and evading scary three-story tripods straight from The War of the Worlds. Throw in the gravity gun and an impressive variety of physics puzzles, and that's what I call glued-to-your-seat variety."

A good example of lack of variety would be Giants: Citezen Kabuto or Armed & Dangerous, which both have about 2 different types of levels (although both are funny as hell!).

-Take your time! I dont know about other people, but I can only think about and work on level design for so long in a day, before I start getting lazy and taking shortcuts. Also if you work on it a little at a time, you will think of lots of cool ideas in the meantime. Also learn about all the engines capabilities and entities - try to think of other ways to use them. That's usually where you come up with the best ideas!

Will try to think up more later.

[Methulah]

very nice. I will make a wiki page with this info in it if you are concenting? Do you give your permission?

[business]

sure, no problem. i can thing of lots of different things that are worth mentioning. It's just hard to get everything together because it's such a broad subject and there's so many aspects of it, know what i mean? I'll post some more stuff soon.

EDIT: here's a few more things -

Going back to making unique architecture: I've seen this happening more and more lately, where level designers will get lazy with their architecture and layout design, and use lots of prop models to substitute for an overall lack of interesting geometry. This happens in professional studios as well, as more and more responsibility gets shifted from level designers to environmental artists and prop modelers. For example: The original cs_assault for Counter-Strike was and still is a very popular level. The layout is simple yet still provides enough variety to accommodate around 6-12 players and keep things interesting. In the Source engine remake, some of the areas and routes have been left out, simplyfying the level to a form which makes rounds more predictible and less interesting. Visually, though, the level is beautiful! high-res textured, specular and normal mapped, with highly detailed phone lines and fire escapes everywhere.

Textures:
Each area and surface should be interesting to look at. Take your time when applying textures, and play around with the scale and with different color combinations near each other. Don't worry about something looking strange in an editor, once it's lit in-game it's gonna look a whole lot different (unless your editor has a lighting preview). Try rotating floor and ceiling textures at a 45 degree angle sometimes, if they don't look right at 90 degrees. Get back at different distances to see how the texture will look from close, medium, far. ALWAYS rotate textures on the edge of a roofline to match the angle of the roof. If you're making a wall with windows and doors in it, try to use an appropriate texture on the inside frame of the windows and doors.

Tomorrow I'll try and find links to some good articles!

Games with excellent level design:
Check these out if you have never played them, or go through them again and really check out the level design -> Anachronox, No One Lives forever 1 and 2, the Hitman series, Unreal, Rune, Enclave, System Shock 2, Psychonauts, Duke Nukem 3D

[Methulah]

Half-Life was (in my opinion) the example of how to use textures. The whole game was atmospheric, the style was helped by dirty and grimy textures. Doom 3 is an example of how not to use textures.

[marius]

Try free version of Getic 3D
http://www.zalsoft.com

[dcruzshan]

I think one of the important things in a game is the actual objectives in the level, how innovative the level puzzles / objectives are, and there must be some fun factor, which will make the player re-visit the level. Thus, play the game again.

If the levels are straight forward players don’t pay attention to the level of details and breeze through the level. Thus finding the game boring, and at the end of the day not appreciation the level of detail.


Also an, other thing I find important is a good frame rate and excellent camera angling. There nothing worse than, poor camera angling. Which frustrates just about every gamer I know.