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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
That's the Half-Life editor. It's been tried and tested. Lots of tutorials to be found on the net. Easy to use and learn.
However, being an excellent architect is never easy:)
I'd try bouncing a couple of levels off the fan community first. As far as games to develop go, I'd develop primarily for FPSs, and maybe a few strategy/adventure games. I don't play many of the latter, so here are the FPSs: Q3 and anything that uses it's engine (i.e. has Radiant editing tools) -- very easy to use, allows for lots of creativity. (Other Q3 engine games: JK2, RC Wolfenstein, Call of Duty?) The unreal games also have a nice bundled set of editing tools that would aid your portfolio. Best of luck!
as to what they found the easiest
:)
The Cube Engine allows you to edit maps right in the game on the fly. There is also a cooperative edit mode, try and beat that
Candle burns its brightest in the dark
If you've never designed a level before, how did you hit on the idea of designing them for a living?
(I don't mean this as a flame; I'm just curious.)
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
1: steal decent levels from web sites
2: say there your own
3: get job
4: Stab manager in back, get his job
5: golf with the producers backers
6: back stab producer
7: get backer for YOU game
8: SHip it when it's half done, retire.
I figure about 8 month worth of work.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
First, read anything and everything by Chris Crawford. I hate most new media theorists, but he's an exception. He's a physicist by education and programmer/game designer by experience. I'd especially take a look at "Chris Crawford on Game Design".
You should also take a look at some of his old game design articles in Next Gen magazine. He had one article on level design in Doom that was quite unique.
Secondly, from a tricks/tools perspective, gamedev.net or xgames3d.com are your best bet.
What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean....
1: Get a job at some faceless corporation with a name like 'Enron'.
2: Design kick-ass games after hours.
3: Get your work stolen by your sneaky co-worker.
4: Beat the Master Control Program for domination of your codez.
5: Become the newest exec (you even get your own helicopter!)
"Greetings Programs!"
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
Where to start...
Well, I guess the easiest, most obvious level editing suite out there (in the realm of FPS games anyway) is Valve's Hammer. It's quite scary just how easy it is to make levels with that util. Upon starting it I was able to figure out pretty much all of the basic features just by looking at the buttons. That's quite an accomplishment, if you ask me. The whole way the editor is layed out, and the process you use to design a level in the editor are both painless and relatively easy. If you're looking for a place to start, and games like TFC, CS, and NS are your forte, might as well start here. I think the only problems you may run into are in the setup options, and true to its oldschool roots, getting down and compiling a map, then tweaking that, can get pretty gritty.
The only other editor I've logged any sort of time on was the unrealed that shipped with UT2003. I missed the whole UT generation, so I can't vouch for the older unrealed, I'd assume it's basically the same. However, after coming from Hammer, learning unrealed is a real pain. The interface is kind of counter-intuitive and the whole logic behind building levels is completely the opposite. It's quite weird. Once you get into the unreal mindset though, creating a level isn't hard at all, it's just that initial hill that you need to climb over. Well that, and unrealed is insanely buggy. I cannot tell you how many times I've lost work due to unexpected quits or fatal errors that seem to make no sense. I guess as it is with every program, save early and save often. This is the editor I eventually found most technically impressive. After learning something new about the editor, or pouring after technical docs and taking a stab at it myself, I am still wowed when I get a new effect (be it graphical or gameplay) working.
Now note I have not logged any significant hours with these editors (read: I have not produced any well known or well thought of maps) as to know the individual quirks and the nuances of each editor. However I can offer the complete newbie's look into it, which I guess is better than nothing. If anything, I say that the Half-Life community has more tutorials and help geared toward my audience than the unreal community, as finding good and easily digestible information is hard. Epic seems to be trying to remedy this with their opening of Unreal Uni, or whatever it is they are doing, which offers video tutorials and forums for developers. (A good thing, but I'm fearing the mod potential is going to waste in these days counting closer to HL2, with potential developers looking for the next big thing rather than weighing the assets of what's out there- which is hard to do for something not quite released)
As for most things tech, I guess slogging through it and exploring is probably the best way to learn either of these.
I guess on the RTS front, nothing is easier than Blizzard's warcraft 3 map editor. The thing is incredibly simple to use, though not quite as intuitive to the newbie's eye as hammer. I was able to get up and building levels (after finding I was unable to figure the tools out myself I went to the documentation) in about 10 minutes after reading the rather friendly documentation that comes with the toolset. I guess the thing is that the tools take 10 seconds to learn, but to master them and build a balanced and fun map, will probably take you a life time. (not to mention a keen understanding of the game.) The tools are fun to use, and going from the editor to a game to a multiplayer match you're testing with friends is quite easy and gratifying.
Neverwinter Nights, I found, was rather easy. Scripting seemed to get kind of nightmarish quick, but I quickly lost interest with building with those grossly simplified tools. I guess the real challenge was figuring out a way to make and import your own tilesets, but in the beginning when I had just spent 50 and tax on the game, it was a disappointment for it to have such poor mod support right off the bat.
I have heard good th
Hey, it's my OPINION that dogs have eight legs and make a sound like a car horn every time they take a piss.
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.
Speaking as a player, I'd encourage you to seek out any competitive communities built around the game(s) you're interested in designing for. While Neverwinter Nights is a cool enough game, I'd also reccomend you check out getting some experience with the "Quake-related" FPS games.
One of the tools that's used to create maps for several game is Radiant (supported on both Linux and Windows) and supports a bunch of games. Mappers familiar with Quake3 were able to transfer that knowledge to RtCW when it came out, and in turn that was transferrable to ET. Plugins for other games (Half Life, Soldier of Fortune, and some others I'm blanking on) is also available.
Couple that with experience working with 3DSmax (or gmax if you're on a budget) creating models, and you should be good to go.
If you're also looking for ideas on what to make maps of, I'd suggest trolling around and seeing if you can find a competitive community for the games you're interested in designing for. Stuff like Half-Life and its mods (most notably Counter Strike), Quake3/RtCW/ET, and the MOHAA/CoD stuff are going to be hot ticket items right now. Organizations like The Team Warfare League or the Cyber Athlete League might be worth a look to get an idea of how people are using the games and what kind of maps and what features they'd benefit from.
Looking to the future, everyone's pointing at stuff like Doom3 and Half-Life2 (obviously). But it might be worth taking a look at games like Far Cry and Painkiller as possible sleeper hits coming up on the horizon.
Good luck in your efforts. :)