I
n the introduction, we gave the working definition of level design as “the thoughtful execution of gameplay into gamespace for players to dwell in.” As we move from discussing historic precedents from both architecture and game design, we will explore the methods we will use to design game levels according to this definition. In this chapter, we discuss what game levels do to create user experiences and some of the techniques and tools used to create game levels. We also take engine-specific work-flows into account to show how you can build your own levels in game engines that are available at no cost.What you will learn in this chapter:
Level design goals for creating game experiences Non-digital level design tools
Digital level design tools Level design workflows Engine-specific methodologies
LEVEL DESIGN GOALS FOR CREATING GAME EXPERIENCES There is something about the act of creating that stirs excitement. This is what many people who aspire to be architects and game designers seek—
fulfillment in the act of creation. A sure way to excite a group of novice
low exercises, based on “wouldn’t it be cool” design ideas. In the same way an architect should never begin pouring a foundation without doing a site, budget, or load analysis, game designers should never begin work without taking a very important component of games into account—players. Great or even simply good levels should be planned—not only to get an image of what the level will look like, but also to understand the kind of experience the designer hopes to create for players. Therefore, before exploring the different tools of level design later in this chapter, it is important to know that game levels are the primary tool of communication between game makers and game players.
If game levels are interpretations of gameplay, that is, the constructed system of rules that create a user experience in a game, then they are also the medium by which game designers transmit the gameplay they’ve designed. It is important to know this, because so often novices in level design open a game’s level editor and simply begin placing objects in a scene like a child with a new box of LEGOs. To be honest, playing with LEGOs is possibly the best analogy for creating game levels for reasons that we will explore later. However, planning your levels with user experi-ences in mind is the difference between building a masterpiece and having a disorganized mess, even if it is a pretty mess.
As the primary tool for communication between game designers and game players, game levels should be built with three goals in mind. By reaching these goals, designers can better direct players through games and create meaningful user experiences:
Adjustment of behavior Transmission of meaning Augmentation of space
Concepts contributing to these goals form the content for much of the rest of this book. When reached by designers to create game levels, gamespaces with powerful communicative properties are created. Such gamespaces can deeply affect players, though they should also allow
players to create their own interactions with the game system. Before moving forward, let us briefly explore the following goals of level design.
Adjustment of Behavior
Many designers argue that a level’s primary function is to teach players how to play a game. In Indie Game: The Movie, for example, Super Meat Boy artist and designer Edmund McMillen highlights how the first sev-eral levels of the game teach players how to play.1 He argues that through obstacles that require players to utilize Meat Boy’s different abilities to pass, players will not only learn Meat Boy’s different properties, but also gain a sense of accomplishment for figuring out how to play. Repetition of these situations, he argues, both reinforces gameplay lessons so they are retained and teaches players how to combine abilities, such as running and jumping, into new moves (Figures 2.1–2.4).
Kremers argues a similar point in his book Level Design: Concept, Theory, and Practice, with the concept of skill gates.2 Skill gates are required challenges that block a player’s progress unless he or she performs a spe-cific action to pass. Such obstacles can be very simple, such as an enemy or object that players must jump over (Figure 2.5), or more complex, such as games that require you to use new abilities to escape from the room where you acquire them (Figure 2.6).
While behavior adjustment can be accomplished in these very planned ways, there are also games that allow their players to act in very unplanned ways. One celebrated (and sometimes demonized) aspect of games is their allowance of taboo behaviors and role-playing. If a game allows players the choice of many things to do, especially in massively multiplayer online games, they will take on roles that are not always necessarily heroic.
FIGURE 2.1 The first level of Super Meat Boy requires players to jump to save Bandage Girl.
FIGURE 2.2 The second level requires the player to use Meat Boy’s wall jumping ability.
FIGURE 2.3 The third level requires players to combine running and jumping into a long jump.
FIGURE 2.4 The final level demonstrates saws to the player in a non-interactive fashion before they become obstacles in future levels.
Again, gamespaces can help facilitate this kind of role-play by providing environments that mix and match both heroic and support characters while providing mischievous players opportunities to wreck havoc.
Architecture supports both of these types of gameplay. In different cultures and throughout history, architects and builders have used spatial configurations to channel occupant activity. Throughout this book, we discuss the psychological methods that both games and buildings use to adjust user behavior.
Transmission of Meaning
There is an ongoing debate in the game industry between those who believe that games should be understood according to gameplay mechan-ics, known as ludologists, and those who believe games should be under-stood as a narrative medium, known as narratologists. Over time, these two factions have settled their differences, and games are now often understood for how they utilize both rule-based systems and meaningful
FIGURE 2.5 An early skill gate in Super Mario Bros. requires you to jump over or onto an enemy Goomba to pass. This teaches the player to jump.
Entry/exit 1
3
2
1. Low jump into room 2. Get high jump boots 3. High jump out
FIGURE 2.6 After getting new powers in Metroid games, players must often solve a puzzle related to the new power to escape the item room.
Built for occupants who were often illiterate, pictorial representations of biblical scenes or figures of deities helped communicate the idea of what the structure was supposed to represent. Some structures, such as Gothic churches, were built in ways meant to simulate the architect’s idea of spiri-tual places such as the kingdom of heaven.
In games, narrative descriptors contained within a game’s dialog, art, and symbolism interact with formal and structural elements of game levels—rules of movement and the construction of the gamespace.
Understanding how these work together helps us discern how to create meaningful game levels. Rather than simply turning to cutscenes as sim-ple story solutions, designers can make their game levels do a lot of narra-tive legwork for them. This turns game levels into systems of rhetoric, the art of communicating ideas through discourse. Game theorist Ian Bogost argues that while writing and debate are classical forms of rhetoric, and while art and graphics make arguments through visual rhetoric, games and interactive media can make statements through procedural rhetoric.3 In Bogost’s model, games make their arguments through the cause-and-effect relationships between player actions and game rules. This is explored later to show how gamespaces can help encapsulate narrative or meaning-ful ideas.
Augmentation of Space
Tied in with the idea of transmitting meaning is the concept of augment-ing space with information. In video games, user interfaces and on-screen icons connect players to databases of in-game information (amount of ammo, enemy information, etc.). In some games, levels can give informa-tion to players in ways that allow them to make informed decisions about what is coming next. Lighted signs in Valve Corporation’s Portal tell play-ers what mechanics a given puzzle will involve at the entrance to every chamber. Patterns in level design can inform players when bosses or other significant enemies are coming (Figure 2.7).
These types of patterned spaces can be powerful ways to commu-nicate with players. In architecture, formal symbols are often used to communicate the function of a building (Figure 2.8). Establishing a set
of formal or spatial symbols allows players to understand what’s next in a level, or even what objects are interactive (Figure 2.9). Through this type of formal interaction, gamespaces build their own formal lan-guages that can assist in the augmentation of behavior or transmission of meaning.
roomBoss Gates
Prep corridor
FIGURE 2.7 Games in the Mega Man series typically use a double set of gates and a hallway to mark the entrance to a boss room. This pattern trains players to know they are about to fight a boss and builds anticipation for the encounter by slightly delaying it. Knowing that a boss fight is about to happen also allows players time to arrange their resources for the battle.
FIGURE 2.8 Look at these building sketches. What types of buildings do you suppose they are? Symbolic forms like these help demonstrate to observers what the purpose of a structure is without the need for signage or verbal indicators.
New to game development are mobile technologies that allow for information to be transmitted not only in the game, but also within the real world. Smartphones now support applications for augmented reality (AR), technology that overlays digital information on the real world. With AR-capable devices, game worlds can expand to include real-world envi-ronments. Like creating symbols in digital environments, AR apps are often programmed to recognize certain images in real space and then pair digital information with them. This can help players establish a lexicon of forms that have extra meaning in the context of the AR app.
So, what kinds of spaces should be augmented with AR to create mean-ingful game situations? Is it enough to put a digital layer on any real-world environment, or are there ways to plan interesting interactions through spatial awareness? Theories of urbanism may hold the key to understand-ing how functions of AR, alternate reality games (ARGs), and big games (large-scale physical games played in real environments) can meaning-fully communicate serious ideas to players.
NON-DIGITAL LEVEL DESIGN TOOLS
Now that we’ve established some of the goals of level design, we can dis-cuss some of its tools. Like many things in the game industry, there is no one perfect tool for level design. There are many available game engines out there, a few of which are listed in this book’s introduction, that you can use to create your own games. In many ways this makes games much
FIGURE 2.9 In many games, interactive objects such as buttons, grappling hooks, switches, and others follow similar visual language throughout so players know when to use their abilities. The game Mirror’s Edge uses an interesting approach of color-coding interactive objects in the otherwise whitewashed world.
more of an open medium, as games can be made with many tools, even non-digital media. However, it can also make breaking in confusing for anyone looking for one set path to game development.
Due to the non-standard state of game production, an appropriate list of level design tools should be derived from the methodology you choose to adopt as a designer. Since in the context of this book, we are looking at architecture for inspiration, let us consider some of its tools and methods as a starting point for level design methodologies—beginning as architects do with basic drawings and working toward realized interactive space.
When designing levels, especially 3D ones, designers should strive to prototype their levels in interactive form as soon as possible. However, one should not underestimate the value of non-digital tools for level design.
While they do not get designers onto the computer and generating work right away, non-digital sketches and maps can be of great value.
To be clear, this section is not focused on non-digital drawings as the kinds of perspective drawings that are typically used for concept art, though those certainly play a part in planning. Instead, this type of drawing utilizes architectural diagramming and drawing for several different pur-poses. Planning levels on paper is an obvious application, allowing design-ers to quickly sketch their ideas before working on a computer. However, as we will see, architectural sketching can also be useful for recording one’s experiences in and understanding levels from our favorite games.
Basic Drawing Techniques
University of Washington Professor Emeritus Francis Ching said that drawing both “invigorates seeing”4 and “stimulates the imagination.”5 Drawing is a core component of not only architectural work, but also visual understanding of designed spaces. It is therefore vital to under-stand the basics of architectural design drawing. While one might assume that good drawing for artwork is similar to that for architectural analysis, there are quite a few differences.
In architectural drawing, you are trying to capture the shapes, the two-dimensional boundaries of objects; forms, three-two-dimensional masses of objects; and relationships, how each object interfaces with one another in space. Perhaps the biggest difference is that architectural drawing is often meant to be more communicative than regular sketching, describing to others the forms, shapes, and relationships of spaces, and therefore must be neater and more precise—free of chicken scratch, hurried shapes, and timid lines (Figure 2.10).
How to Draw a Line
Creating cleaner, more confident lines is easier than one might think. Two techniques can help in drawing clean, straight lines. One is beginning and ending each line with a dot or dash. These dots and dashes should over-shoot where the line actually ends, so lines coming to a corner should intersect slightly. Another technique is to squiggle your lines as you draw them. This will provide straighter lines. While this seems counterintuitive, wiggling your pen slightly while you draw a straight line will cause you to concentrate more on the squiggle and less on making your line perfectly straight; the result is a line that is more directionally straight (Figure 2.11).
When creating shapes that are not linear, such as circles, it is useful to create straight reference lines and measure out the shape rather than simply attempt to draw it correctly. To draw a circle, first draw a square.
Then, draw lines through the square horizontally and vertically. Now, draw arcs between each midline so that you end up with a circular shape (Figure 2.12). When drawing in perspective, circles become ellipses, so draw these by either using the sides of an object as endpoints for the ellipse or measuring the ellipse out with a square drawn in perspective.
Contours and Line Weights
The previously mentioned drawings are contour drawings. Contour draw-ings follow the edges of shapes and forms, describing where objects are tural sketches. Chicken scratch lines and hurried shapes can distract from the meaning of a drawing.
FIGURE 2.11 These line sketches show several different techniques, including adding a start and end to each of your lines, how these are used to neatly intersect lines, and how squiggled lines create directionally straight sketch lines.
in space (Figure 2.13). Contour drawing is what people often start with when learning how to draw. Contours also offer a quick way to document spatial conditions when in the field.
When sketching in contour and when drafting, line weights help com-municate object distance. Line weight refers to the thickness or darkness of a line used in a drawing (Figure 2.14). When drawing with line weights, the thickest weights are assigned to edges that do not immediately connect with others, such as the outer contours of an object or group of objects. Contours of objects that directly meet other objects are given very light line weights.
Drawing with References
When sketching designed spaces, reference lines can be used much in the same way you would when sketching shapes. If the point of sketching is to understand the spatial conditions of the scene you are observing, then it is helpful to use light reference lines to line up elements of scenery or archi-tectural forms that line up with one another in space. Ching also recom-mends using your pencil as a viewfinder to observe spatial relationships.
FIGURE 2.12 To sketch a circle correctly, create a reference square and reference lines, and use them as a base to draw a properly proportioned circle. Circles in perspective flatten and become more elliptical.
FIGURE 2.13 This contour drawing shows the placement of buildings, trees, and other natural features in relation to one another.
Holding your pencil with your thumb halfway up the shaft allows you to measure the image you are seeing. Holding the pencil further down toward the eraser allows you to use the shaft of the pencil as a straightedge to determine angles and relationships between objects so you can draw your reference lines6 (Figure 2.15).
Shading
Despite the usefulness of contour drawing, you will occasionally want to describe the surface conditions of forms you are observing or the lighting conditions of a space. To do this, you will use methods of shading to describe these conditions. Shading is using your drawing tools in such a way that describes light and tonal, information related to color, values of an object.
FIGURE 2.14 This sketch utilizes line weight to communicate the distance edges and contours are from one another. The outer contours of objects are therefore the thickest lines in the drawing.
FIGURE 2.15 Techniques for using your pencil as a measuring tool and view-finder. From these exercises, you can create reference lines that help you under-stand the relationships between objects you are drawing.
There are several different methods for shading. One of the most commonly used is hatching, where the artist uses a series of parallel lines to describe tonal value. When hatching, darker values are created by spac-ing lines closely together, while lighter values are created by spacspac-ing lines farther apart. Crosshatching is a similar technique to hatching where two sets of lines are crossed over one another to create values. Crosshatching and hatching can be used interchangeably in the same drawing to create many different tonal and textural values.
In his book, Ching describes another useful method, called scribbling, that has artists putting down more random lines to denote tonal value
In his book, Ching describes another useful method, called scribbling, that has artists putting down more random lines to denote tonal value