Level Design For Games

Aeonite writes "As a content writer I was not heavily involved in the level design process at my last game industry job, but Phil Co's Level design For Games: Creating Compelling Game Experiences accompanied me to work every day. Not only is it a good introduction to the world of level design, but it also provides an excellent overview of the entire game design process." Read below for the rest of Michael's thoughts on this book. Level Design For Games: Creating Compelling Game Experiences author Phil Co pages 352 publisher New Riders rating 10 reviewer Michael Fiegel ISBN 0321375971 summary An excellent introduction to the art of game level design In the past I've been rather verbose when reviewing books about game design, as I wished to provide evidence that justified the often less than stellar score I gave the book in question. I'm pleased that I don't have to do that with this book, which as far as I can tell is a nearly flawless introduction to level design. As such, this review will be more of a recap, so as to help you decide if the book's content is right for you.

Chapter 1, "How Do You Make a Game?," discusses the game development process from Pre-Production through Gold Master by way of showing how level design fits into the overall scheme of things. Also discussed are design documents, basic level geometry, and the difference between alpha and beta, and A, B, C and D bugs (A being "fix this now" and D being "nice to have, maybe later").

Chapter 2, "Defining the Game," focuses on the various types of games on the market and the differences between them, from first-person shooters to platformers, action RPGs to MMORPGs. Also discussed in some depth are themes (fantasy, sci-fi), ESRB ratings and audience age, and system limitations.

Chapter 3, "Enemies and Obstacles: Choosing Your Challenges," is where the book really begins to get into the nitty-gritty of the level design process. This third chapter covers the placement of enemies ("mobs") and objects within the level, the types of levels (hubs, boss levels, etc.), skill trees and the application of skills to obstacles within each level.

With an idea of what needs to go where, Chapter 4, "Brainstorming Your Level Ideas," delves into the creation of concept sketches and reference images, the creation of a level's storyline, the drafting of a level description and the design of the puzzles and scripted sequences within the level (which incorporate the mobs and objects discussed previously).

Chapter 5, "Designing With a Diagram," is where all those ideas and brainstorming begin to take concrete shape. A primary concern here is the scope and order of levels within the game, particularly in terms of a player's progress through each level. Once you know where your level fits into the overall schema, the author tells you to lay it out in diagram format by creating a grid; this is not unlike a Dungeon Master carving out 10' by 10' dungeon corridors on graph paper for a D&D game. You know who you are.

Chapter 6, "The Template," introduces the reader to UnrealEd, a level editor for which a demo is provided in the back of the book. The author walks through the basics of using UnrealEd, from the basic creation of a room and the placement of an NPC within it to slightly more advanced topics such as vertex editing and static meshes. It's a fairly technical chapter, but is laid out clearly with numbered instructions and plenty of screenshots to guide the reader along.

Chapter 7, "Improving Your Level," jumps ahead in time a bit, assuming that you've already mastered the basics from Chapter 6 and have created a level template that can now be play-tested. It focuses mostly on that play-testing process and how to adjust and balance one's level based on feedback in order to make it fun and functional.

The next chapter, "Taking It to 11," is more concerned with polish and quality. Topics include architectural style, the addition of details like trim and borders, the appropriate use of textures and props, and the like. The second third of the chapter takes the reader back into UnrealEd to practice some of these skills, including the creation of new shapes and a radial building technique to create curved hallways an rounded rooms. Finally, the chapter discusses the addition of other game elements, including scripted sequences, ambient sounds and music, and other special effects such as fog.

The final chapter, "Ship It!," revisits the concept of Alpha, Beta and Gold Master in more depth, discussing optimization, the creation of zones (with an UnrealEd tutorial to help the reader along), game balance, and bug testing. It closes off with some discussion of helpful skills and practices one might pick up, including how to file a good bug, why you should archive data, and how to take good screenshots.

On the subject of screenshots, it is worth noting here that the book contains one such shot from Flagship Studio's Hellgate: London, a game which I am downloading from the EA store as I write this review, and which is scheduled for official release on Halloween, 2007. In my experience, many books on game design tend to incorporate screenshots and examples from older games, and it's rare to find a book that includes a screenshot from a game that is not only current, but as of the book's publication was yet unreleased. Indeed, most of the examples in the book are of games released in the past several years (Psychonauts, Half-Life 2, Doom 3), and this gives the book added relevance, appeal and longevity.

Aside from the more technical language involved with the UnrealEd tutorials, the book's clear language and friendly tone makes it quite accessible, even for those not of a technical persuasion. While I can't speak to how much the book would help a more experienced LD, it definitely seems appropriate for a beginner who's eager to learn the craft, or anyone interested in the game industry as a whole. I highly recommend it.

You can purchase Level Design For Games: Creating Compelling Game Experiences from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Comments

Level-design after the end of levels

[Anonymous Coward]

A recent Slashdot post suggested that the age of levels in video games was coming to an end, that now game environments are much more open-ended. Does the book discuss how this might affect designs?

Re:the cliches of level design

[JoshJ]

Not as bad as the "Mandatory Video Game Minecart Ride". (See: Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3)

Re:Level Design Primer

[quest(answer)ion]

For multiplayer level designers, I'd take a very long look at Call of Duty 4. IMO, the CoD games are also worth taking a look at for single-player level design. they have their drawbacks--overly scripted and railed progression, nonsensical objective-linked enemy spawns, etc--but some of the moments that appear in these games are just brilliant. take the ghillies in the wind level in CoD4: it's a heavily scripted sniper mission, but it captures a sense of tension and realism that makes you believe that if you deviate in one detail, your character would indeed be dead. scripted and inflexible or not, that's an impressive gaming experience.

one of the things that makes the level work (and Valve does a bunch of this in HL, too) is believable and crucial interaction with your partner NPCs. important as the physical details of the environment are, unless the game is about the last dude on earth, other characters have a role as design elements. they contribute both to the feel of the game and to the flow of whatever story is being told.

Multiplayer level design

[Anonymous Coward]

On a side note, one thing I would be interested in seeing would be a level design which would allow more randomness to multiplayer games.

Take counter-strike as an example. Next, look at the Italy map. I haven't played in a while so that is why this is a reference to an older map. In the Italy map, if you are a counter terrorist, you can go down the alley to the left, through the apartment straight ahead, or through the market to the right. Those are the only choices you have and all the paths are always the same. If the level is designed such that the apartment changed interior layout, the market changed configuration, the terrorist house changed configuration, you would have a lot more random choices available.

One way that this could be achieved would be to create sections of the map which would either rotate or move themselves veritcally. For example, the terrorist house is located on the map in a corner. Imagine a house which is actually 4 times as large as the terrorist house but only 1/4 of it is seen on the map. If the house is rotatable, then you could have 4 different terrorist house configurations. Now imagine that the house can move up and down one story with one store in the ground and one in the air above the "sky". If you move the building up and down along with rotating it, you could have many different configurations for just that one portion of the map.

Now do the same thing with the apartment and the market place. Something along these lines would open up the multiplayer experience such that you don't have people camping in the same places every round. You can come up with an experience where the map is changing all the time and each round would be different from the previous round depending upon the random choices concerning rooms etc...

Just a thought.

Isn't it time to say goodbye to 'levels'?

[Dutch Gun]

Perhaps I'm just being pedantic, but I'm really tired of the concept of 'levels' in games. I don't want to see loading screens telling me "loading new level..." I'm tired of rocket launchers that don't break wooden doors (or even glass doors. yes, I've seen this) because that would ruin a design's carefully crafted puzzle. I don't want to hear on the back of the box "Twenty Action-packed Levels of Pure Mayhem". Isn't it time the game industry retires this term? I'm fed up with buildings designed like mazes because the game designer simply wants the players to run through a maze. This is what I think of when I hear about 'level design'. I'm sick of levels.

Why do I care about the term 'level' at all? Honestly, I think it encourages game designers, environmental artists (a better name than level designers) and even publishers to think too linearly, and to be intellectually lazy. Publisher: how many levels will this game have? Game designers: 30 levels. Publisher: Fantastic, that's 10 more levels than our competition has. Gamer: yawn...

So what do I want instead? Give me environments! Give me worlds! I want freedom to explore, to find out of the way nooks and crannys, and more than one way of getting from point A to B. I want to solve problems using logic, not by playing "guess what the game designer wanted me to do or go next"? Game designers: Create a living, breathing, interesting world, and then let your players enjoy their time here. Stop shoving the player along a conveyor belt.

Obviously, it's not fair to pin this on the term 'levels'. But it just seems like a term that emphasizes aspects of games I'd love to see the industry move beyond.

Re:Isn't it time to say goodbye to 'levels'?

[Ford Prefect]

So what do I want instead? Give me environments! Give me worlds! I want freedom to explore, to find out of the way nooks and crannys, and more than one way of getting from point A to B. I want to solve problems using logic, not by playing "guess what the game designer wanted me to do or go next"? Game designers: Create a living, breathing, interesting world, and then let your players enjoy their time here. Stop shoving the player along a conveyor belt.

I wouldn't describe myself as a level designer, rather just a mapper (or map designer if I want to sound posh). But I've made the moderately popular MINERVA single-player mod for Half-Life 2, which people keep claiming is quite good - it's got an interesting world to explore (if you can see it in the distance, you can get there pretty much always), and while it's fairly linear it does have a couple of branches, double-backs and efficient use of architecture. It's definitely not a long, solitary corridor with no turning back...

The book review is interesting because the book sounds like it's managing to focus on things which I've never really thought about - I've never decided to build ' Also in my eyes, parts of the list are the wrong way round - don't take the chapters' ordering as some kind of specified route as to how things must be constructed, rather than aspects to the whole process. Theirs:

• "Defining the Game"
• "Enemies and Obstacles: Choosing Your Challenges"
• "Brainstorming Your Level Ideas" ... "delves into the creation of concept sketches and reference images, the creation of a level's storyline, the drafting of a level description and the design of the puzzles and scripted sequences within the level"
• "Designing With a Diagram" ... "the scope and order of levels within the game" ... "lay it out in diagram format by creating a grid"
• "The Template"
• "Improving Your Level,"
• "Taking It to 11" ... "architectural style, the addition of details like trim and borders, the appropriate use of textures and props, and the like"
• "Ship it!"

My utterly awkward route:

• Think of a setting. Metastasis was basically ISLAND!, while the upcoming Out of Time is CITY! - this helps with...
• Think of an ending. This is the most important part of the whole experience, and will define the beginning. For Metastasis, the beginning is basically the reverse of the ending.
• Think of a middle, and of the whole plotline. This defines what the available enemies will be (the selection needs to be plausible to fit into the plotline - no striders 500m underground, or zombies wandering around a tightly controlled and maintained Combine facility).
• Define and build the architecture. Build it appropriate to the setting and plotline, and with an eye on enhancing details which provide interesting gameplay. You know the beginning and end, so you need something to constantly drive the player towards the ending. Give them something to fight for, and they will. Pull, don't push. Metastasis's architecture changes throughout - and tells a lot of the story though how things are constructed. The game is a result of the architecture, not the other way round. I've got some ideas involving architectural styles imparting major themes and plot-points in Out of Time too - except this time it's borrowed from different areas of the real-world Warsaw...
• While doing all that, add the gameplay! In Metastasis, there was a section which I never bothered adding any enemies to - it was far too atmospheric and interesting just wandering through a seemingly abandoned World War Two-era base to spoil. If I'd decided 'NEED COMBAT-FREE SECTION NOW' before I'd bu

Re:What about for Non-Games?

[Kjella]

Hehe, you should visit one of the places I worked. The customer areas were extremely formal - forget wearing anything but a suit and tie and they were effectively sealed off from the rest of the building. Likewise there were "polished" areas for external workers. We however worked there so long we were in the back end - and it was "anything goes". Several hallways actually did actually have all sorts of junk and cardboard boxes and shit in them, wear anything you'd want and a cluttered desk policy. It was actually several buildings merged together, so the floor numbers didn't always match and it was a confusing mess. Apart from not seeing a flamethrower canister, it was perfectly suitable as a game level. And it's the only building complex where I'd really like one of those mini-nukes to demolish it too.