Level Design Part 2: What they know and how they show
Level editing is one of the funnest ways to understand architecture. Everything you find in a mall, will show up in a deathmatch level. This is an open secret in gaming, and one that few people realize.
Last article, I showed that talking about architectural design within a game is not shown a lot within books, or articles. You can find information, but it tends to be a small bit next to technical or artistic design. In fact, most books don’t even mention it.
There is a reason for this, most level designers did not read a book to learn. They used their own knowledge, and watched others play the levels. This lead to rules, and ideas, but not a way to explain the ideas. There are some games that make it perfectly obvious that a few level editors know. In fact, there are architects who work at some companies.
Halo and Goldeneye have a lot in common. They were both industry leaders in FPS design. The Multiplayer was one of the most played parts. The multiplayer levels were started by beginners.
In an interview with Gamasutra, Hardy LaBel, one of the two the multiplayer designers for the first Halo admitted he was just messing around:
HL: Yep. Absolutely, there was that tradition. So the two of us basically dove in to resurrect multiplayer. Michael made a set of tools for me so that I could create multiplayer maps that plug into the Halo toolset. It wasn't the full set of Halo tools and we didn't actually have a level artist, so a lot of the levels in Halo were me learning how to use 3D Studio Max.
(laughter)
Really?
HL: Yeah! I was like, "Oh, I wonder what happens if I use this extrude tool. Whoa! That opens up all new possibilities!" (laughter) Anyway, it was a very, very small team.
So I worked on Halo, I was a contributing level designer on Halo 2, and then I was the creative director for the SOCOM [U.S. Navy SEALs] series of games. I left Microsoft and I went over to Zipper Interactive.
This is not to insult the man, or his talents. There was also some great advice on how modern levels are designed.
[...]Next-generation development is more about saying, "OK, we have this bed, or this group, of elements," and you're really trying to conduct them more than you're necessarily trying to explicitly say, "I want this guy to run this way and this guy to run that way." I've spent a lot of time and experience trying to shape the random elements together to make something fun and interesting.
Counter-Strike is all about map customization, really not about game play customization. Love that. Just love it.
We will be discussing CS soon enough, but just remember that he used other games to influence his design.
Goldeneye had amazing multiplayer levels. In fact, it sold more than any other game for the Nintendo 64 in the US. This is surprising because the multiplayer was done last minute, and without anyone really knowing about it.
One of the things that always strikes me as crazy in retrospect is that until something like March or April of 1997, there wasn't a multiplayer mode at all. It hadn't even been started. It really was put in at the last minute – something you wouldn't dream of doing these days – and it was done without the knowledge or permission of the management at Rare and Nintendo. The first they knew about it was when we showed it to them working. However – since the game was already late by that time, if we hadn't done it that way, it probably never would have happened.
Even more surprising is that most of the people involved were new to gaming. The level designers didn’t have goals, or starting points in mind at all.
One important factor was this. The level creators, or architects were working without much level design, by which I mean often they had no player start points or exits in mind. Certainly they didn’t think about enemy positions or object positions. Their job was simply to produce an interesting space. After the levels were made, Dave or sometimes Duncan would be faced with filling them with objectives, enemies, and stuff. The benefit of this sloppy unplanned approach was that many of the levels in the game have a realistic and non-linear feel. There are rooms with no direct relevance to the level. There are multiple routes across the level. This is an anti-game design approach, frankly. It is inefficient because much of the level is unnecessary to the gameplay. But it contributes to a greater sense of freedom, and also realism. And in turn this sense of freedom and realism contributed enormously to the success of the game.
The reason for this was because the game wasn’t intended to be a first person shooter when it began.
“When I got involved, the first thing I did was model the gas plant. We put a spline through the level so you could follow a route like in Virtua Cop, but it didn’t go further than that. We decided to take it off the rails. Some of those early builds had bits missing because you’d never be able to see them and I remember going back and filling in the holes.”
So how did they get the game to play so well? They played a lot of other games, and based missions, goals, and movements on that. Shooting was Virtua Cop, movement was Doom, and design was Mario 64.
These strong models each contributed to the final game significantly. We ended up with innovative gameplay, in part because we had Virtua Cop features in a FPS: A gun that only holds 7 bullets and a reload button, lots of position dependant hit animations, innocents you shouldn’t kill, and an aiming mode. When you press R in GoldenEye, the game basically switches to a Virtua Cop mode. Perhaps more importantly following the lead from Virtua Cop, the game was filled with action. There was lots to do, with very few pauses. Following the lead from Virtua Cop and Doom, the controls were accessible. You could get a long way just using analog left-right, fire and reload. One dimension and two buttons. Try playing Quake or Halo like that. From Mario 64, I took the idea of 5 missions per level. Yes, we changed it from the Mario format, which was attempt-one-mission-per-play, but the idea for the huge variety of missions within a level came from Mario 64. We milked the Bond universe in many ways. For example gadgets, I compiled a list of about 40 gadgets from various Bond films, most of which were modelled, and then Dave and Duncan tried to find levels where we could use them. This is backwards game design, but it worked very well. These models were the game design; there was very little written down on paper. And the models were researched and milked extensively. And, importantly, they all gelled together very well. These things helped to make the gameplay and the game style what it is.
So there you have it, the game was designed based on other games. They didn’t know what they were doing, and in fact the best part was tacked on last minute. Somehow, Goldeneye becomes one of the best selling games of all time.
Level editors tend to do this, they base what they are doing on other things. The movements of a game are based on a previous one. The level design is architecture of the real world, and other videogames. A level designer doesn’t know the right terms, because no one told him. No one told him because there were no terms to begin with.
This isn’t quite true. Game companies hire architects, and explore real world architecture. In fact, it shows up in levels all the time. Some of it shows up in the most obvious ways, but you don’t realize how much planning went into it.
As an update to the last part of the essay, I did find a website that covers a lot level design pointers. There is tons of technical details on how such and such engine works, but there is also a section dedicated to designing levels. It still stands that the vast majority of books, and tutorials on videogame design is either technical or artistic. The concepts are just starting to push out from the ground where they were planted.
There is a great article on how to develop a level. Even going into detail about layout, and what is needed.
Some things that all great map layouts contain are:
- Good pacing and flow
- Balance, where skill of the player and skill of the team is the deciding factor of winning; no layout deficiencies, giving advantage to one side
- Maps that are easy to remember, simple to learn after a few rounds of playing
- Could rival the gameplay layouts of some official maps (such as Dust 2, Office, Nuke, Train and Inferno).
- Others enjoy, willing to download and play
- Contain strategy; choices in pathways
- Caters to various playing styles (sniping, close quarter battles, stealth)
- Could be used in competitive gameplay
- Fun to play
We will go into more detail on this layout with the next essay, but for now, look at the names of the top levels. One is about a trainyard, another is called Dust but is about a town in a desert, and finally one is called Office.
The Office level is designed to look, and feel like a regular office. This level was made before the show with the same name, however a fan has made a level based on it.
As you can see, the level is an office. The over design is entirely for gameplay, but once again has a certain office design aesthetic to it.
This is one of the most played levels in the entire game.
The level was originally made by a fan, and not intended to be sold on shelves. Because of this, a lot of things could be done without catching a lot of notice. Levels based on real world places are common in the fan level editing world. For example, someone designed a school for Counter Strike. There is an entire community of players that remake real world, or realistic living spaces specifically to semi live in them. These Role Players can have expansive levels that look and feel like real places down to the smallest detail. Yes, you can totally deathmatch in them.
Big time companies have done this as well. Activision has the notoriety of having two games with levels that take place within an airport.
We will be discussing this more in another essay, for now though, just know it exists.
This is not the only coincidence. Both Tony Hawk, and Modern Warfare have levels based on suburban housing.
If you ever wanted to know where gaming has gone over the years, this is a great reminder. Let’s not forget entire games based on real world places such as Grand Theft Auto, or any open world game that takes place on Manhattan.
Valve explored European architecture when designing their games. A quick look through their roster, and you can find several people who studied architecture in college.
Jeff's projects include Half-Life 2, Lost-Coast, Day of Defeat. Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead 2, and DotA 2. He is responsible for concepts, world textures, prototyping levels, architectural studies, and model making. In addition to working on world environments you can find him sketching, modeling, and learning new art techniques.
Phil Co graduated from the University of Virginia School of Architecture in 1994 and moved to the San Francisco Bay Area hoping to be a rock star. When the rock star thing didn't work out, Phil turned to his second choice: level design. He started at Cyclone Studios, working on Requiem: Avenging Angel. He went on to design levels at Infinite Machine, Knowwonder, and Blizzard North before coming to Valve in 2005. He is also the author of the book Level Design for Games.
There is another way where architecture of an environment is shown. This one is more subtle, but easy enough to catch.
This is the over the head map of a deathmatch level in Mario Kart 64. The colors are there to help you remember where you are, and figure out where your opponent is. Nintendo had no problem with checking your opponents screen. This is three floors of action, and many of the levels for deathmatch in the game are built with the same ideas.
This is the map of the North Town Mall in Spokane. It’s a little more complex, but hopefully you can see that it has the same outline. A grid like square with squares inside of it. You probably shouldn’t ride a go kart through the mall, but if you did, the experience would be similar enough to the game.
As you can see, videogame level design mimics real world design. This is an open secret that can’t really be ignored. Level Designers started off without really knowing what they are doing, so they didn’t have any references to help them. Using real world areas, and designs they could create fun levels. There are some games that have levels that show this a little more openly like Tony Hawk, and Modern Warfare. There are also more subtle ways of showing this like a Mario Kart 64 Battle Level.
So we have covered what level designers know, and even how they show it. What remains is why this works, and why no one talks about it openly? The next essay will be about the controversy of putting places like your school into a game. Expect it to arrive on Tuesday. That same week, expect a lot of short articles about the Arcade Show in Seattle I will be visiting.
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