Level Design Part 1: Technical and Artistic explanations

There is an open secret in level design you probably have seen, and even thought about from time to time. You are walking through a mall, an airport, or even a school and suddenly wonder about skateboarding or some deathmatch. If we brought this up with a school teacher, or the security at the airport, there would be a lot of frisking involved. I get scanned at every airport anyway, so it doesn’t bother me to tell you the truth. The buildings you are thinking about were designed with the same thought processes in mind.

A building is designed for ease of traffic between people. A person walking into a building needs to know where they are, and where to go. It has to deal with the amount of people, and multiple locations just like videogames. Once you learn the direct route, you figure out indirect routes, or even shortcuts. All of this is designed into a building, a road plan, or a level.

This open secret is actually pretty painful to watch. There has been decades of videogames made, most people reading this essay are not as old as Pong, let alone Space War. Books have been written about game design for years, and almost none of them cover level design. It’s an insane thought, and it gets right to a lot of problems within game making books, and even promotion. The reason why is because most writers either look at it from technical standpoint, or from an artistic side.

The technical side tends towards two types of design. The first is programming, and the levels are secondary to the purpose. The next one is using the level editor for a given game, and it will only have a small section on level design.

Programming is a major part of creating videogames. Some of the first books about making games are actually about programming. Back in the 80’s, there were magazines that would have code for anyone to try out for a game. Going into the game, and making something better was considered something to show off. Because of how complex games got, books on the subject would get thicker and thicker.

For example, my personal favorite Tricks of the 3D Programming Gurus, is nearly 2,000 pages of densely written text, and programs to copy. It covers everything from the very first game, to the much more advanced 3D game. Things like Alpha levels, and textures are covered within the book. Being able to move within the game is all that is really shown, no added artistry after that.

The Programming Gems series is also like that. They work on things like AI, visual effects, using the RAM properly and others. Once again, it is about programming, not level design.

If you are thinking this is because the words Programming are in the books, then you should see modern tutorials. Doing a search for Unity -a game making program- and you find out how to make a game. CG cookie tells you all of the technical tricks, even programming to make a game. UDemy has a tutorial as well, and level design is not shown.

Then we have books specifically for level design.

Insert part about level design books here. Duke 3D and all that.

The book that got me into level design was the Duke Nukem Level Design Handbook.

I bought it used a few months ago because of all the fond memories I had of it. There had been books on modding previous to this book, and game, but it was entirely about programming. Quake also has a bunch of books, but I have not been able to get ahold of them. From what I have read in reviews, they are similar.

A Level Design handbook sounds like it should have in depth information on all sorts of things. The book mostly teaches about how the level design program works, and how to make stuff with it. There is a section on level design on Apendix A.

The problem is that they tend to give general advice on how to make levels. Technical details on how to control the Framerate, and other parts show up as well. There are some fun spots though.

The book is about 340 pages long, and the recommendations for level design is about 7 pages. Take a moment to think about that for a moment. A handbook on level design, only has a few pages on the design itself. Keep in mind this is one of my favorite books, and the fact that it has level design advice is considered a rarity.

Then we have books like Level Up. It covers the basics of game design, and how it works. Showing how to make a game design document, and how to plan everything out. The book is on my wishlist right now, but by the reviews of it, the end result will be about the same as the Duke Nukem Level Design Handbook.

In other words, the subject is talked about, but not a great deal.

To make sure, I checked google as best I could.

In the 3DBuzz forums, one of the best design sites on the internet, a person asked for level design tutorials. StealthCoder had a great response:

Do you mean modelling or level design?

Level design has nothing to do with a specific software package,

it is the knowledge of how to construct fun playable levels in video games.

If you mean modelling, yes there are videos here on making a character in Blender,

but if you understand the general principles of using Blender to make a character

you can also model an environment to produce a game level.

It is a good and detailed response to how the conundrum happens in level design. Most people want to build a level, but not design one. Most tutorials are about the technical side, and not the design itself.

He is correct though, since other tutorial sites appear to be entirely technical. This is even though they have the words level design as part of the page.

Other posters on the forum found some great youtube links.

(This link wouldn't post.)

You will notice that the authors are telling people to look for things in the world, and how they are designed. They also design things for what they enjoy, and not for others.

JovanD on the Unity Forums said this:

In case you're asking about the "idea" / "design" part of it, there isn't much a right or wrong way 3 step process of doing it, you need to know what game are you making and just make sure the design follows your vision. Good practice is to use as low polygons as possible in objects that are not gonna be in near distance to the payer or the focus of the scene. Just try to think about what the player will be looking at and go from there.

Hope i helped XD

Although it doesn’t look like much, this is more than most books I have read. Keep in mind, there are whole books on level design, and JovanD has said more about it in one paragraph. On the same thread, someone quoted an interview with John Romero, who designed the levels for Doom.

An indie videogame team posted a three part tutorial about designing a level. Most of it is about technical details, and how to make things look nice. One comment was about Choke Points:

The level shape changes from small corridors to open areas. By adding “choke points”, players are forced into the funnel of the level, which prevents them from wandering and getting lost in open space. The path is ultimately linear, but there is enough room to go off and explore for a while. Natural bottlenecks lead players back onto the path again.

So the technical side of level design does get covered, but the majority of details are in how to use a program. You can find 2,000 page books on game programming, and not find a comment about level design. In fact, most people don’t want them.

But what about the artistic side? Shouldn’t they have some sort of details that would help you build a level?

In an interview with Nintendo game designer Koichi Hayashida, the subject of teaching within a game was approached.

"First, you have to learn how to use that gameplay mechanic, and then the stage will offer you a slightly more complicated scenario in which you have to use it. And then the next step is something crazy happens that makes you think about it in a way you weren't expecting. And then you get to demonstrate, finally, what sort of mastery you've gained over it," he says.

"It's very similar to a narrative structure that you find in four-panel comics. Something that's talked a lot about in Japanese manga, for example, is a phrase, kishoutenketsu, where you introduce a concept, and then in the next panel you develop the idea a little bit more; in the third panel there's something of a change-up, and then in the fourth panel you have your conclusion."

There is also a great book about the more artistic side of design called The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses. The author goes in depth into architecture, and how it works from an artistic point of view. There are chapters dedicated to helping figure out how things should be placed to help the player know what they are doing. It’s quite nice, and does cover architecture within games quite well. The problem is that the author dodges the subject of this essay quickly. You will not see the reason why a shopping mall and a game level had the same design ideas.

Another great artistic book is The Theory of Fun. The author gives his own opinion on how games work and why. He believes that so long as a game is fun, it will be replayed. He also goes into some details about how this fun can be achieved, or viewed. Level design is not brought up directly, but he does cover a lot within his thoughts. As one reviewer points out, he doesn’t take the thought very far, and ends up discussing violence in games for the second half of the book.

There are some who are talking about level design with more concrete answers, but it is rare. There is a book I discovered from the google search called The How’s and Why’s of Level Design. It seems to cover a great deal of what is needed, but I highly doubt they will cover the subject of this essay. I haven’t read it, so I can’t really comment either way, and there doesn’t appear to be any reviews to work off of.

Blogger Radek Koncewicz talked about levels in Super Mario Bros 3. He gives a very detailed approach to looking at how the levels work, and teach you to play the game. Sadly the author has not kept up the blogging, so the last article was sometime in late 2012.

There is also academic research on the matter. The University of California: Santa Cruz researchers have done a great deal of looking into it. For example, Design Patterns in FPS Levels(PDF) covers basic patterns, and architectural design of first person shooters. It doesn’t go into a great deal of depth, but covers the ideas broadly. There is also a section reviewing level design books in more depth, and how they seem to talk about things, but never show them.

The Science of Level Design(PDF) is an attempt to take the patterns, and apply them to a random level. They discuss how to add tension using a sniper and hiding spots. The example used was an open area, and then trying to set patterns for the player to follow.

The problem with academic research is the researchers themselves. The author of the two articles from UCSC graduated, and hasn’t published since. What he is doing with this research is unknown, or if we will ever see a larger explanation on what is going on.

So there is deeper research, and knowledge on level design. The problem is that most books, articles, and tutorials do not go into depth on the subject. They look at it from a technical point of view, with a small commentary on how level design works. Another method is to talk about it artistically, and sometimes go into depth on the subject, but not cover it directly explaining how things work. The research, and explanations on how level design works is just budding into existence, and many of the people making comments disappear.

The reason for the lack in knowledge is from how gamemakers work. Most level designers began working at random, and figured it out on the way. Asking them how something works is likely not something they can explain. The other reason is that if they started admitting how videgoame levels work the same as malls, airports, or schools it would cause a lot of problems.

This essay took me all week to research, and it’s not really finished. Next week we will show how level designers got into the business. We will also hopefully cover some of the ins and outs of level design. After that I will finish up about the political problems with admitting the similarities with level design. That same week, expect to see a lot of talk about the arcade show I will be working at.