Any Level Designing advice?

Hello, do any of you know anything about level designing? I have troubles to know where to start when making maps/levels, i try to just somewhere and making some stuff and prototyping but i end up don’t liking it at all and deleting the level :stuck_out_tongue: Trying to make a level for a fps game but ain’t going well as you see what i wrote, but level designing for every genre i want to be able to but it’s that i end up deleting the level if i don’t like it…

First, I’m sure many of the people here know about level designing. I’d start with a pen and paper. Top down. Draw the path you want the player to follow. Mark where you want some actions to happen.

When you are happy with it there, block it out in 3d space with primitive objects. Cubes and planes.

Level design (like all aspects of development) are beasts in and of themselves. Take it small. Make a room. Not a city.

This is a pretty good write up about the thought process behind level design.

That is great, thank you. I bet it will help me!

Same here, I’ve ended up deleting a lot just because i didn’t like it, but maybe thousands of other people might have.

Go to http://www.worldofleveldesign.com/ and get the UltimateLevelDesignGuide, it should help you out.

That Gamasutra article is nice for HOW to build a level, however, there’s more to Level Design than just building a map. First thing you need to do is to write down your goals for that map, as in, what is the theme? what do you want to accomplish? It sounds silly but having a few bullet points will help keep you focused on your ideas.

Once you have that start by sketching something on graph paper, is it “fun”? Good, start whiteboxing it and iterate. The keyword is iteration, as many times as needed. Bonus points for having a friend play it and give you constructive critics.

Read this: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131257/an_architects_perspective_on_.php?print=1
You can also see several LDD examples here: http://www.josemnieves.com/individual-projects/ (shameless plug!)

HOWEVER!!! You don’t need a lengthy LDD, a one page document with your general goals and ideas as bullet points will help you stay focused just as well.

Good luck!

EDIT: Take a look at this one too: Game Platforms recent news | Game Developer

Here’s a good article on Modular Level Design:

It has a lot of great ideas on how to approach level design with minimal overhead.

www.worldofleveldesign.com looks interesting, wondering why i haven’t seen that yet. But i will try to look at all links because it all sounds good, thanks everyone :slight_smile:

If you are making a RPG map you can go all kinds of ways. You can import heightmaps and just add textures and prefabs. Or you can just create a terrain and do all the mountains, hills, trenches, and landscaping yourself. After that you are going to busy decorating the map with buildings, trees, grass, fences, props, etc.

If you are making it for a FPS it can be similar. Or you can get some assets from the asset store like the Urban Construction kit that has a load of city prefabs to use to create city maps.

Overall though I would for sure plan your idea out. It will be 10x harder trying to think of your map design as you go. Plan it out then do it.

Also if you are designing a level, some great practise is to model it to real world scale. (I have a little bit of an architectural background)