The Art and Science of Level Design

1
The Art and Science of Level Design

• Cliff Bleszinski
• Epic Games
• June, 4, 2002
• Yoon, Kyung-A
• Software Engineering Laboratory

2
Contents

• Introduction
• Level designer
• Role
• Suggestion for level designer
• Design techniques
• The future of level design
• Conclusion

3
Introduction

• Level
• A mission, stage, map or other venue of player
  interaction.
• Level design
• Data entry and layout portion of the game
  development cycle.

Level design is as much an Art as it is a
Science
4
Level Designer- role

• Takes various ingredients from other talented
  people and mixes them into something special
  while following the recipe of a design document
• Judges what is fun, what gameplay elements work
  and what do not
• Evolves to the role of the glue of a project, the
  hub at which everything comes together

5
Level Designer- suggestion for level
designer(1/2)

• Evaluate oneself
• Never afraid to step back and reevaluate content
• Peer criticism
• Never afraid to take criticism from peers
• A great designer is the sum of himself plus his
  peers
• Friendly rivalries
• Feel a desire to one up each other

6
Level Designer- suggestion for level
designer(2/2)

• Search and research
• Search the details that make no sense in the
  works
• Good research lends itself to good planning
• The best design is a combination of careful
  on-paper planning and improvisation
• Detail vs. framerate
• Guide the hardcoded design limitation
• Framerate, RAM usages etc
• Oz has spoken!
• Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain

7
Design techniques (1/3)

• Controlled freedom
• Let the player think he has a choice in where to
  go and what to do but gently guide him to his
  destination
• Pacing
• Constant scares dull the senses
• Level designer works and reworks his ideas to
  make sure they balance the world well
• Risk incentive
• Let the game player make his own decisions about
  how much trouble hes going to get himself into
  for treasure

8
Design techniques (2/3)

• On revisiting
• Revisiting areas from a different angle is a good
  thing for designers to practice
• Supply and demand
• Good supply and demand make goodies more valuable
• Teach resource management
• Scene composition and contrast

9
Design techniques (3/3)

• Work with the AI guy
• Often AI does not work perfectly, it is important
  to maintain patience and have faith in the AI
  talent
• On sound
• If the title calls for chills and thrills, let
  the sound do much of the work!
• Intelligent backtracking
• A designer is reusing a previously seen area and
  it is important to make the area seem fresh or
  interesting

10
The future

• On editors
• Level editors will become closer to high end
  modeling packages such as Lightwave, 3Dstudio max
  etc.
• On texturing
• The next generation titles will feature a more
  detailed system where simple maps are mixed to
  create realistic surface
• On AI
• Design will become easier as AI will become
  better at tasks such as navigation and conflict
• On skills
• Level designer will be familiar with many of the
  tools that artists and 3d modelers use

11
Conclusion

• Level design is as much an art as it is a science
• The level designer
• needs to understand where he fits in amongst the
  other talented people he works with
• needs to have an open mind
• Needs to have a good artistic sense and
  scientific understanding