Slashdot Mirror
Trying Your Hand at Level Design?
Utawoutau asks: "As a student nearing graduation with high interest yet no game industry experience I have been taking a serious look at the position of Level Designer. In order to apply for such a position of course, I would need an impressive portfolio. I am aware that a number of games, Neverwinter Nights for example, come packaged with level development tools and that a number of other games have tools (official or not) that are readily available on the Internet. I am interested in hearing opinions from others that have experimented with the level design tools for a number of games as to what they found the easiest, the most fun, the most in depth, and the most impressive to work with. In particular, I am interested in a game whose tools strike a good balance between all four of the above criteria."
But the friends of mine who are do not find the industry all that they expected it to be. The fun and games that you would expect from a game company is actually politics and stress in reality.
You end up working long hours on a game that will be released when you know it's only half done, only to be laid off the week after the game ships.
Do yourself a favor and buy a Vanagon and go on a long road trip instead.
I have been pwned because my
Just play a ton of mods (Half-Life and the forementioned NWN for example). You end up with a pretty good idea what works and what does not.
Whatever you decide to design start with pen and paper and a good idea first. Pointless mods that merely throw a bunch of monsters at you feel pointless.
Check out some classic mods for Half Life like They Hunger for HL.
Remeber if you work as a level designer in a company making a game. I can not expect to work with tools that are full fledged.
The tools you are going to work with will constantly evolve, your tools availble will be added and removed as the game moves on.
To create an impressive portfolio that will pop eyes where you apply. Design very good levels for a wide area of games. And last but not least, they have to. Absolutly HAVE to be well balansed. Especially with a multi-player game. I have seen some very pretty levels done for counter-strike but that was very poor balanced. So they where never played.
Another big thing when you design a level. Make sure you make your own textures. If you have solid texturework you will have a far better shot at the job.
-L
- To understand recursion, we must first understand recursion -
I recommend that you'd also take your time to learn a little about:
Programming
Scripting
Photoshopping (Sorry! I said GIMP'ing, of course)
3d modelling
Sound editing
That's fair -- but it strikes me that game production is way, way, way more involved than level design. If you want to work in games, it's perfectly reasonable that you've never built one yourself -- it's not practical for modern games. But given that level design *can* be done by one person, that level-design tools exist for it, and that the Internet is teeming with player-designed levels for a variety of games, it seems suprising that the author implies that he's never designed one before.
Perhaps I'm reasing his question incorrectly, but it sounds as if he hasn't tried any of the design tools available. That led me to wonder: how did he get the idea that he wanted to do level design, in that case?
Everything is attainable but you've got to be passionate about attaining it - Utawoutau the poster seems not very passionate about mapping if he failed to produce any maps, mods, models, etc, so far.
Map designing takes a lot of skill, passion, and interest in a huge variety of subjects such as architecture, interior decorating, gaming experience, multiplayer, psychology... the works.
Of those to whom much is given, much is required.
You may be barking up the wrong tree. Level design, particularly for modern 3D engines, is more of an art than a science. There are many mappers who have been working at it for years, for various games. In particular, you might look at some of the maps released for Quake III and even the original Quake, along with more recent games like Unreal Tournament 2003. The problem with assuming that you can just "jump in" and become immediately skilled is that it completely ignores the skillset which is unique to that position. Quite honestly, almost no programming experience will transfer to the field. If you are still interested--and it is truly a hobby/profession which requires interest--Half-Life is actually a good place to start. Try not to get overwhelmed with concern about newer features at first--learn about brush layout, visibility occlusion, et cetera. These will help you with any engine. Also, I think that these skills are more transferable than something like Neverwinter Nights or other, simpler level editors. Making a level in a 3D game like the FPSes I listed above is very similar to 3D modelling, so you can transfer skills between the two. Func_Msgboard is somewhat dead these days, but you might find things of interest there--and there are some truly great mappers who hang out there. :) Good luck.
having recently tried a number of Q3A mods that really did nothing to balance the game.
Most of the really good things that define a highly playable mod from a 'cool, lets try something else' one are in the basic mechanics of the game.
Where are the weapons and are they appropriate for the playspace? Do they work well for a few players? Lots of players?
What about the playspace itself? Does one side have a clear advantage? How about a particular path? Many of the classic levels avoid dead end ways making it tough for players to just sit and wait for others to show.
For games like capture the flag, where is the balance of power? Is it possible for a team to cover all their bases without being forced to venture off for new weapons/ammo?
Visuals have never been as important as play mechanics are, but they do play an important part. A dark spot or interesting texture placed just so, might allow a player to hide for a bit, or clash horribly with the target, making for either a sneaky element of challenge and tension, or a frustrating experience...
Spawn points should be in areas where players have a fighting chance at actually spawning without being camped too often. Best ones are those where the player forms near the action while campers always are watching their back.
All of this is specific to Q3A --hey, I still play the game because it is well balanced and interactive, but other games have similar issues. The parent is right, you gotta play.
If it were me, fun first, beauty later, but that's just me.
Having played Q3A a lot, I have been thinking about this too. Be sure to check out other mods and play them. You will get a great sense of what you want to do. --Then do it!
Blogging because I can...
Perhaps I'm reasing his question incorrectly, but it sounds as if he hasn't tried any of the design tools available.
Not to flame either, but I think his career will be shortlived. The personality type that would succeed would have started messing with at least one editor before throwing the question out there. I think this is a case of him hearing someone say that the way into the gaming industry is to do level design. His first criteria was for a tool that was easy to use. Instead of diving into the tools and the community, he's looking for the easy route.
In my personal opinion, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter what tools you use, rather the tale you tell and how you tell it (use game design elements to buttress story elements). I could go and on about how stories have been neglected for eye candy and the gee-whiz factor, but I think that horse has not only been beat, but processed and distributed in school lunches. Before you put your head to the grindstone, it might benefit you to check out some books on the basics of writing fiction. Apply those principles to the game world, and I don't see how you can go wrong. Unless of course, it's a bad story :) Good luck.
A thing that struck me when reading through the other posts is that a lot of people seem to say "use the newest and most advanced tool available". That is definitely something you will have to do in order to get a good portfolio.
But for learning the basics about the different aspects of level design you might want to try your hand at something simpler. Try finding "old" games like Doom or Warcraft2 (I think there was an editor for that?) and try your skills at designing levels that are only two dimensional. Believe me, there's a lot that can go wrong even without the extra options available in the 3D editors.
I know it may sound like a waste of time, but it will give you a few good experiences, I think. Due to the simplicity of e.g. Doom's level structure you can spend a lot of time working on the small details like how to align two platforms so a player just barely can (or, if you're wicked, can't) move from one to the other. You can experiment with how to let the player use different objects/walls/etc as cover when shooting large monsters and so on.
One of the other posts mentioned that you would undoubtedly be forced to learn to adjust to using new/different tools that what you're used to so another benefit of "working your way up" from the old games is that you will eventually have to move on to new tools. Make sure you focus on learning the fundamental parts of what level editing is rather than memorizing the exact functionalities of a single level editor.
Oh, and after having made levels for 2D games you'll definitely appreciate 3D editors and the freedom they give you.
A last piece of advice is to try and come up with something original instead of "yet another multiplayer map". Some years ago me and a friend designed a series of "Quake Hinderbahn" levels. It's basically an idea we got for a LAN party where we wanted to host a different kind of competition - and we made an obstacle course and had people record demos of their fastest runs.
I learned a LOT about how Quake works from that.
Good luck with it.
It's 19:11:42. Do You Know Where Your Meat Body Is?
I'd agree. It's a very nice editor. HL2 still uses the hammer interface but with some added functionalities and stuff :)
:))
If you're seriously about leveldesign: remember, rome wasn't build in one day!! I'm talking from my own experience
People are answering your question as if the goal is to design the best looking levels, or the easiest way to build them, or other construction related questions. But those are not the right questions you should be asking.
Just as an architect needs to find out what the goal of their building is, a level designer needs to have a goal for a level. An amazing house that doesn't have the rooms a buyer wants is still a failure. An amazing level that doesn't advance a game, or isn't any fun, is also a failure.
Before you start building a level, write it out. Put together a story of how the player will move through the level. Sketch storyboards of interesting challenges that will occur. Start with a rough layout of the rooms you plan to link, and describe whats going to be happening to the player as they move through those areas. Figure out which areas are dull, and either liven them up or cut them out. And once the flow of the level makes sense and seems enjoyable, a level designer passes the documents off to an artist, whose job is to make it look good.
Far too often, the process gets reversed. The levels are designed from an artistic perspective first, without first determining why the levels are there, or where the player will be. Time gets spent fleshing out regions that the player runs through once, hunting for something to do, and never looks at. Those areas may get thrown away in playtesting, or just kept in and bore the players. Not good.
So basically, if you want to be a level designer, design levels. Don't be a CAD designer; that is the artist's job. As a former game developer, I would have appreciated it. As a current game player, I would appreciate it perhaps even more.
I think Quake still has the largest installed gamebase but Unreal is a close second. Take a look at both, firsthand knowledge of their strengths and weaknesses will be good education for you.
The road to level design is a long one. First you have to master the tools, then you have to master the gameplay, the flow of a level. Which is a very difficult thing. You must first understand the flow from a gamer perspective before you can ever even dream of creating a level with a good flow. When you play a level you need to understand WHY it works. Why it has good gameplay.
Over time you will accumulate more and more knowledge which you can incorporate into your own maps, maps which will be original works by you instead of just copies of good levels you've played before.
Join the community and start designing levels. That's the way many people get hired. Some rare exceptions even after the very first level they ever put forth. And many/most people never.
When every map you create gets voted as 9+ then you can talk about having an actual portfolio and start applying for a job, if no offers have this far come your way. Before that, don't waste your time for applying for a job with non-existent/no good credentials.
Of course, getting a position through your own design can happen too. Some freeware mods actually later turn into real published games.
It really is not so much about the actual tools you use but about the community, types of games that you actually like and just plain chance. It's more of an art than just an engineering decision.
Join the community and find your way.
Unreal Tournament 2003 ships with the Maya Personal Learning Edition (high end 2D package, used by ILM f.e.) and the Unreal Editor which is a high end industry strength IDE for gaming enviroments.
Not that UT runs on Linux and Windows alike, the editors though only on Windows.
If you want to get into FPS level editing this is absolutely the first choice.
Note that there are other games and other genres using the same engine.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Remember that level design, texture design, and even texture application are often three different jobs done by three different people (or, more often, teams). Level design is architecture. Texture design is a very specialized form of 2-D drawing. And texture application is basically interior decorating.
Assuming that you want to lay out levels, then study architecture. You want to be able to make things that look real, atmospheric, and cool. A good exercise is to find a dynamic and interesting space in real life and model it as precisely as you can in a game engine. This will give you a feel for the level of detail needed to build a truly immersive level.
Also, don't limit yourself to one tool or even one game. Some of the more full-featured and late-generation editors have a huge amount of crutches that you can easily get dependent on. Make an RPG dungeon and an RPG city. Make several RTS maps (these are great for gaining a macro-level understanding of balance and flow) for single-player and multi-player games. And, of course, make a lot of FPS maps. Even a dippy little fragfest map can show off your talents if you put a lot of work into it.
Finally, be aware of industry trends. For instance, single-player FPS campaigns are starting to veer away from the strictly-linear style of the genre's forerunners (look at MOHAA for an example of why... the levels are very stale and scripted). Play, play, play. And take lots of notes.
Download the tools, experiment with various games, Halflife, Quake3 and Unreal Tournement are key ones for the FPS design, look at other peoples work and such forth.
:)
Games like neverwinter nights are a whole diferent kettle of fish, but it does require one thing in common.
You need to have a decent artistic and creatave ability, you need to decide what looks good, what doesn't look good, and you also may need for many games a passion for the mind-numbingly boring.... once youve aligned one texture, the next one is just dull
I'll agree with another poster, game companies can be a lot less fun to work for than you'd think.... HOWEVER, my current job is by far the most enjoyable and rewarding I've ever had, in or out of the game industry.
I highly recommend looking at the Unreal level editor. Pick up a copy of UT2003 and start messing with it. There are a *ton* of companies using this engine for games, and will give you the best chance of actually getting into the industry with what you've learned.
Hell, Epic even sponsored Unreal University for the purpose of letting people come learn their tools from pros.
http://cde.ncsu.edu/uu/
If you're serious about becoming an LD, you want to use a common engine with tools you're likely to see used for a number of different games.
What has puzzled me since the days of Wolfenstein (1) was why they are called textures, and why it's called texture mapping. They aren't textures at all - they are wallpaper, and it's wallpaper mapping. Go up to a "texture mapped" object in a game, and you'll find the texture is completely smooth wallpaper over the underlying object.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
1st, realize that making games is not the rockstar job that lots of people make it out to be. The game industry keeps itself alive on the blood and sweat of people who love making games. You will work 10-14 hour days for weeks at a time (or years, as some cases may be). You probably won't get a bonus when the game is done. You probably won't be paid very well. You'll have to work with people who think they are god's gift to the world, and they will probably be your boss.
But, you will also work with really cool, creative people. You will get to do something you (hopefully) love to do. You will get to create games. If this small paragraph sounds better than the larger, first paragraph, then by all means, pursue a career in the game industry.
So... the nutshell I can come up with at 4:45 in the morning (yes, I've been working since yesterday morning).
Get a day job first. It's a different path for everyone, but odds are you won't break into the industry anytime soon (it took me a couple years). You might be able to get in as a tester or intern, but it's almost as hard to make the jump to the dev side as it is to just break in.
Grab the whatever latest version of Unreal2KX XMP Super Mega Championship Edition is out. Epic has done a good job of marketing their engine and tools to devs, and a lot of places have picked up the Unreal engine and it's editor, UnrealEd. This can give you a slight advantage just because being familiar with the tools can be a big selling point to some companies.
Next, learn how to use it. Not just part of it, all of it. How to make and import textures. How to make and import meshes. How to make and import sounds. Even learn the basics of unreal script. You may not be actually creating art assets/code in the position, but as level designer you are where 'the tires hit the road'. Everything has to come through you at some point to go into the level so you have to understand everything that is going on behind the scenes.
Make a few multiplayer maps of whatever flavor you want. Focus on a few key areas:
1. Look and feel. No BSP holes. No meshes intersecting each other at weird angles. Everything lines up. There is a good sense of 'space'. Lighting is good and reflects the mood appropriately but isn't overboard. Textures are aligned properly.
2. Wiring. Doors open and close when they are supposed to. Switches work the 'right' way. Events happen when they are supposed to. Areas are zoned or antiportaled correctly.
3. Gameplay. For learning, I put this last at this point. These maps your learning how to use the editor and trying to make them look as good as possible. In general, in gameplay the player shouldn't get lost or stuck anywhere. The next area to explore should be obvious. Paths are clearly marked. Framerate is good at all places in the level.
Now, you need to make some single player experiences. You probably won't get a job making multiplayer maps (I've never made one professionally) so you need to be able to create good single player experiences. This is the hard part (learning the tech just enables you, this is the actual work!). Even moreso than understanding the technology, you have to understand the game you are making and understand the game design.
To learn how to create good single player experiences, don't just play other games, analyze them. Watch how they create tempo and how the flow of the level works. When is the player challenged? How often? When is the player rewarded? How often? What types of challenges are present? How difficult is the game? Why were certain game and level design decisions made for that game? How would the level design be different if the character could jump twice as far? Shoot twice as fast? Once you start playing games with these sorts of questions in mind, you'll start to have a better understanding of what it takes to create a level. It will take awhile, as long or longer than it takes to learn all the tools. I'm still learning and I've been making levels since Q2 days.
Good luck.
Here's an idea....get a real job with a decent paycheck and some job security.
Then do level design on weekends for fun and give 'em out for the whole world to enjoy!
I suspect you'll be much more fulfilled that way.
After all, aren't you interested because you want people to see your work? You want to create something for people to enjoy? I've had more fun downloading NWN mods and playing Natural Selection, Team Fortress, operation flashpoint, and desert combat than buying new games.
"You cannot find out which view is the right one by science in the ordinary sense." - C.S. Lewis on Intelligent Design
One of the things that I think is getting missed in this thread is the Level Designer's knowledge of the game community and game itself. For example, the people who concistently write great modules for NWN are people who've played the game its based on (D&D) for years. One of the things you may want to take into consideration is how much you know about the game itself and the community that plays it. If you've played D&D since 1st Edition (and especially if you've been a DM), then NWN would be a natural extension of your existing knowledge and skills. For example, some of the best NWN levels I've played have been those that take the "standards" of the game and turn them completely upside down. If you didn't know what the "standards" for the underlying game are, you'd have no way of doing this.
Do *not* try to get into the game industry because you think the job would be fun.
That's like say, oh, it would be fun to be a writer, because they travel and drink whiskey.
Making games is damn hard work, and frequently frustrating, and frequently physically damaging, a frequently made unpleasant by dinks in suits.
If you want a job in the game industry, make sure it's because you damn-well *love* making games.
If you don't, then it will end up being "Office Space" with nerf-guns.
We do this job because the only thing that sucks worse than making games is not making games.
What were you expecting?
Ill bite, but no doubt this will remain hidden in obscurity at 0 so good luck finding it.
I have been a level designer for almost 7 years now.
I started with Quake (qbsp) and then moved onto Halflife (worldcraft) and eventually to Unreal (Ued). I have turned out over 50 maps and worked on 2 mods using several different engines.
Level design is fascinating, the skills that you need are diverse. 2D skills with Gimp and Photoshop are essential to create custom signs, textures, intro screens and so forth. Then you need to become profficient at a 3D package. Ultimately 3D Max and Maya are the tools you should aim for expertise in, but this in itself can take 1 to 3 years to fully master. Then you should learn animation skills, how to make and articulate skeletons, kinematics, skinning, uvw wrapping and so on. An ability with sound would also help, basic waveform editing, normalisation, converting between formats. Lastly you should gather some decent coding skills, you need to master at least one language, Java or C++ is probably useful.
OK - now you have all these skills - what does it actually take to be a GOOD level designer?
Tp be a good level designer you have to
1) Play the game. Some people who never actually play the games they design levels for think they are level designers, they are not, no more so than a deaf guy who never listens to any tracks is a music producer. It is essential you actually play the game.
2) Through (1) you learn that a level is like a program. It is a finely balanced collection of attributes involving geometry, timing, lighting, and often a complex array of game logic such as pathnodes and triggers which all interconnect in space and time.
3) Games level coding is actually HARD, its usually implemented with polymorphic asynchonous stateful objects which have a complex emergent behaviour, but sometimes we like to look at single player levels as a pure state machines - whatever way you will see that large levels with many variables and objects become huge programs in their own right with complex issues such as network replication to solve. All of this is without getting grubby with the 'engine' and doing actual physics or rendering code.
4) Level design is also an artistic (thats why _I_ do it, for relaxation) endeavour. You can work from photos or just your pure imagination. However because it is 'artistic' you have to be prepared that audiences and critics will hold unquantifiable, subjective views, they may well think the level you spent weeks making is shit because they don't like the lighting color or the theme offends them.
5) Culture. By playing games you will understand specific knowlege like why you never place spawn points which are visible to each other, why you never use dynamic lighting with fast moving objects, why you have to check chains of causality in instigator traces, why you have to make bots not too greedy or they will get stuck on a tasty cookie. Games specific stuff.
Recommendations:
UnrealScript by Tim Sweeny and Mark Rein is a beautiful way to start , I wish it had been around when I started games design.
For real open architecture to work on at a _low_level_ then Crystal Space is probably a good engine.
Making money: I have only ever made levels for pleasure, although I may be so bold as to say many are superior to official levels I have seen in commercial games. I think the industry is growing and there should be plenty of paid work.
However - I would also say that given the _range_ of skills you need to be a good level designer you would expect them to be paid very well, this is not the case, from what I see level designers are considered a lowly position in games companies despite the fact they understand more about the software as a working whole than any other person in the company (including the engine coders)
And good luck, I find level design very rewarding hobby, and you will enjoy it as a job too.
About three years ago (mostly because of Project Greenlight), I got involved with a group of people that also wanted to make short movies. So we did. Through the course of our first project, we became known as Lime Wrangler Productions. I've been a Prop Master, Script Supervisor, Best Boy, Editor, Gaffer and on two occasions, Director. My second directing job was for Caribou Moving Pictures and we premiere it here in Phoenix, AZ on February 13th.
I had twenty-three years worth of kindling under my ass before I found the match to start it. But now that it's going, I've been running at top speed, 'cause it's burning hot! I haven't made any money at it yet, but that's not really what's important to me at this point.
It doesn't matter when you start, just that you go for it when you're ready. Level designing does take knowledge in a huge variety of subjects, and so does directing. I personally feel fortunate that I was able to learn a lot of that stuff before I ended up in the big chair. Who's to say that our Question Asker hasn't been studying or even merely interested in the kind of stuff he needs to be a good designer?
There's skill and then there's talent. Skill, you can learn, but talent? That's what you're born with. If you've got both of those and determination, you can do anything you set your mind to. If you've got a good attitude it just makes things easier.
Moekandu
Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius. -- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle