I’m working on a game and I’m about to start designing some levels. I was wondering, how do you all plan levels? Do you use pen and paper? Do you do it digitally? If so, what software do you use?
Thanks in advance!
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If you’re doing a top-down design I’d use something like illustrator as you can adjust the scale of objects and move things around pretty easily. (Any image manipulator with layers/objects really)
Pen and paper might be good for quick mock-ups, but making adjustments becomes harder.
If your level includes a lot of verticality, i’d use lego, blender or just straight unity with cubes to block out the level.
Lego is good because it makes it easy to get the scale right, always make sure to use a character prop/placeholder in your level design! Even in top down it’ll be a good idea to get an idea of how big the characters collider will be so you dont make your hallways and doorways too narrow or too wide.
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Ah yah I was struggling with verticality. Blender sounds like a good idea. Thanks!
I start with goals. What is the purpose of the level? How does it fit in with other levels? What will the player have? What should they have at the end? What kind of challenges do you expect them to be dealing with at that stage of the game? If your game has story, what parts do you need to fit in? How long should it take?
All of those things will dictate stuff like space and layout. That should be enough that you can grab a tool such as ProBuilder and start blocking in the general shape of the level. I like breaking it up into areas, which I might colour code. I’d probably also do basic lighting at this point. I tend to work to a grid for the most part because it makes things quicker to implement and gets more consistent results.
From there it’s pretty much iterations of playing, testing against my list of goals, then making changes to hone in on the experience you’re aiming for.
When you think it’s heading in the right direction make sure you get other people to play it, because you’ll be blind to all sorts of stuff that will be clear to others.
Once the block-in is getting the desired player experience that’s when you switch over to focus on the look and feel. Swap the placeholder geometry out for actual art, or treat it as a basis and add decorative layers on top. Tune your lighting. Add ambient audio and environmental sound effects. Keep testing with players as you go, because this stuff will change the overall experience.
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That’s some good insight. I haven’t been designing things based on the end goal of the level but I probably should.
As in all things, it depends.
-BUT, I bullet point a series of concepts for various levels. Every level should have a theme, and preferably, every level should have some script that exists solely for that area.
-Limit the amount of assets used for each area to no more than 7 dimension. That is, no more than 7 enemies, no more than 7 environment objects. Seven is the magic number because it’s the amount of concepts most people can store in their brain’s “RAM”.
-Make sure that the player has between 3 and 7 dimensions of things to consider.
-Do the Nintendo double saw tooth. Introduce a thing in a safe area. Create an area to try their skill with a small challenge. Do an even harder version. Add another element and give a safe area to try it out. Do an area that introduces a challenge to the new skill. Then an area that combines both skills required at the same time. End it with an area to celebrate the the mastery.
-Load the area with weenies, things that make the player take notice to give them direction and orientation.
-Make sure that every side path has a payoff.
-Put in secrets and challenges that have at least some sort of “tell”.
EDIT: OH! And do a rough layout to get the dimensions and space involved. Making sure to take note of travel times.
EDIT 2: AND make sure to keep the player engaged. Have NPC’s talk to them as they do minor tasks.
EDIT 3: Tentpole the game with various sections that are super polished. Farcry NAILS this. Every Farcry game since 3 has an opening with super detailed models (obscuring the background for costs). Then the rest of the models are “meh.”, but you don’t remember the “meh.” parts. You remember the tent poles. And then your brain lies to you and you thing the entire game looks like the tent pole sections.
EDIT 4: And NEVER underestimate the power of having characters react to what the player is observing. Look at the opening to Doom Eternal. Sure, you’re a bad-ass. But how much of a bad-ass do you feel when all the NPC’s are freaking out about your presence. That guy stopping dead in his tracks and tripping. Grabbing the badge from that gut frozen in fear as you drag him by the neck to the computer.
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BTW, what’s the game?
Wow I didn’t expect to get so much good advice from this thread. Thanks dude! What do you mean by this part:
What’s a “tell”?
Here’s the game design document:
https://rutgersconnect-my.sharepoint.com/:w:/g/personal/ndn19_scarletmail_rutgers_edu/EeI-R4UZuLJHn1aZ2zXbc_cBmAmec3QXiBX2LMoEbTqhKA?e=LjceLP
It is very outdated but the summary section is still 99% accurate.
A “Tell” meaning some sort of indication that there’s a secret there.
Imagine if Doom just had secret doors with zero indication. It would be terrible. Players would be forced to spam use on every wall. Now take that secret door and discolor it. Or maybe show the secret item and only have one logical place for a secret door. Or maybe make a trail of blood go into a wall. Or maybe have light spill out from the bottom.
Tell.
Initially GIMP. I can toggle whichever layers, paint diagrams, export heightmaps (or others as needed), have text label overlays etc… then put a rough version of the scene together in Unity based on that.
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Ah, gotcha. Makes sense.
Export height maps? :0 I never thought about trying that.
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I’m learning a lot about a subject I’m terrible in just from reading all the different methods listed here.
It would be completely fair to say level design is my kryptonite.
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Okay, that.
That is the exact mindset you need to avoid.
Just because you haven’t done something you’re proud of yet doesn’t mean you can’t do it.
As with most things you have to have 1) the confidence to know you can improve, 2) the humility to know what you need to improve, and 3) an interest and passion for what you are trying to improve.
I fully believe that you are completely capable of good level design.
If you really think it’s your kryptonite, then try new tools.
And don’t fix your mind on a big picture if the small isn’t there.
Lean into two things: the limitations you have and happy accidents.
Make limits for your level like the number of things you want to put into it. For your creative scope, your players limitations to process the information, and the systems limitations. And don’t get bored with it and decide to add more. You are spending an hour making something the player will take a minute to experience. Don’t think you need more just because you’ve seen it to death.
And make happy accidents by embracing some randomness. If you open krita right now to colorize a drawing, are you going to use a brush that is precise, or one that gives it texture? The textured brushes always look better. Level design is no different. Plop stuff down, mess with it, then polish the parts that work while trimming back what doesn’t.
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You can also create semi-transparent “overlays” in your scene easily - so if you’re guiding layout from a texture-based layout, just create a Plane the size of your scene (or region you want the texture to line up with), select a transparent material and the texture, reduce alpha if you need to and toggle “unselectable” next to the plane in the scene hierarchy so you can’t click/select it by accident while editing. When you need exact alignment just switch to an orthographic view. Then you can have all kind of guidelines or grids or colored regions, little icons or whatever and it won’t slow down the editor (vs. actually having 1000s of gizmos visible). And you can raise and lower the plane, so you can have as much or as little of it visible through the actual terrain in the scene …i.e. a layout for islands and boats on a lake can be dragged down to the water line. Probably want to do it as a prefab you can remove from the scene when you’re not editing (since you wouldn’t want all those textures included in the build). Then you just drop it in when you want to work with it again. Of course there are probably great tools for this and components and custom editors but this approach costs nothing and is easy to set up.
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And these things remain true even after you’re good at it. You can keep getting better, but only if you’re looking out for opportunities and having a go at taking them.
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@YBtheS
If I’m designing a level for a 3d game, I use pencil and paper first. That way, if I don’t like something, I can easily erase and draw it over. Then if I like the level I made on paper, then I start making a 3d model prototype of it in blender. And if the prototype looks good, then I make the real level. Or, I would take the 3d model prototype, and turn it into the level for the game.
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Couldn’t you erase, or rather delete, things in the 3D model prototype anyways though?
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Also, try just popping open pro builder to law down gross geometry.
Even pros like Naughty Dog use rough geometry to lay out the level.
Is pro builder free? I’m on a low low budget of $0 haha. At least for now.
Yes
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