Level Design

Level design can be as simple as designing one room in your game or as complex as designing an entire continent or galaxy. Essentially, the level designer is creating playable content for the core features to be used inside the world.

Start by imagining yourself in the world (which is another word for level). As the designer, determine where you want to go, where you'll start, where you'll end up, and what you'll do along the way. Couple all those experiences with what you'll see and hear as you travel, and those are the basics of level design.

Determining Waypoints

Don't feel that you have to begin the level design with the start point. Some designers do; others begin with the key event in the level. For example, if you have a critical battle to fight, a quest to complete, a puzzle to solve, or treasure to find, that is the highlight of the level. A good approach is to decide where that event will occur and work backward, or out, from that point. Determining waypoints tends to relate more to RPG types of games, but any game you design will have start points, endpoints, hookups to other levels, and areas where more intense or less intense play occurs. Plotting out these areas of varying intensity is part of designing the pacing for the game.

In order for gamers to find these waypoints, they needed to be guided in the correct direction. Planting guideposts to help the player, such as giving them a quest, is also part of the level designer's task. As the player heads out into the level, the designer also needs to provide clues so they don't get too far off track. This is a delicate balance during the design phase, because clues that are too weak, obtuse, or far apart may leave the player lost and frustrated. Too many clues amounts to hand-holding, and that can remove some of the challenge. You want the level to be challenging but not frustrating.

More than one major event may occur in a level. Decide where those events will occur. If a treasure will be unearthed, will it be in a cave deep below a mountain, somewhere under the sea, or in a castle floating in the clouds? As you plot where those events will happen, you may want to provide enough physical space between them that players will have time to enjoy the world you're creating; they should also have enough area to complete potential minor tasks before they turn the corner and face a boss or have to decrypt a significant puzzle.

The first passes on designing a level can be simple sketches that plot where some of the major events occur and the basic layout of the land. Experienced designers knowledgeable in gameplay can estimate how much time it will take a player to navigate any given area and its obstacles. The level will go into a build as soon as enough art, animation, and programming exist to begin testing. Figure 7.1 shows a very rough initial sketch of a level. In this sketch, the designer has created a lake filled with flying sharks, brambles to cut through, a river to cross, a bandit-filled forest to traverse, and a town in which the player can barter for enough gold to buy a boat. Upon entering the level, the player must first find a quest giver to point them in the right direction. Along the way, the player will encounter other obstacles and other helpers (the talking sheep) before reaching the cave where the chalice is hidden.

FIGURE 7.1 A very rough, beginning sketch in which the designer maps out where events can occur.

Close your eyes and imagine yourself wandering through the world in your game. For example, if it's a golf game, think about where the first tee would be. Is a clubhouse or pro shop in view? Probably, because the player is likely to need to go there to get better gear or other elements to enhance the gameplay.

In addition to imagining what is around you, think about the space above and below you. In the level you're designing, can the character or characters go upstairs in tall buildings, or onto a mountaintop? Will they need to go downstairs in buildings, into sewers, or underground into caves?

For large adventure or action games, a safe haven is a good entry point for the level. These safe havens can provide areas where players can repair weapons or armor, barter or buy new goods to aid them during gameplay, or just avoid battles for a few moments while they decide on a strategy or figure out the interface (how to operate the controls). If a player learns a new skill, they will want to practice it in an area containing relatively easy hazards before confronting a final boss.

Here are a few questions you'll want to answer:

• What kind of environment is it?
• How long should it take the player to navigate the terrain?
• How much time should they spend there?

When thinking about the kind of environment, consider whether it's hostile or friendly. The player may be underwater in a cavern, far out in space, in a shrouded forest, or deep in some dark and dangerous urban jungle. Is the environment traversable? Does anything change if it's played multiple times? What are the technical limitations?

Flat terrain is likely to be traversed quickly. If the designer wants to slow the player so they can earn more experience and extend gameplay a bit, obstacles can be added, such as a ravine that needs to be crossed, quicksand, thorny trees, or creatures that must be avoided or killed. This is also a good time to keep in mind the physics of the world.

For example, if you add water, and the character needs to swim, then their movements should be slower (unless they have some special ability to run over or swim rapidly through it). Using physics to add to the gameplay is part of the level designer's job. If high winds can occur in the world, then the designer plans where the winds will begin to affect the player or redirect them. Again, there is a delicate balance between adding so many obstacles that the gameplay becomes frustrating and the player quits, and making it so easy that the player gets bored and quits.

As games are roughed out in the initial design phase, the designer can determine approximately how much time it should take the average player to complete the game. Knowing about how long it should take (AAA games usually take 10–20 hours to play) is important because gamers have grown accustomed to the average length of time they expect their money to buy.

The amount of time a game is expected to be playable is established during the planning phase (concept), when the game's goals and level parameters are decided upon (in other words, the game's scale).

Start to write down your ideas. Let them gush, and record all the possibilities that you can use as fodder to begin designing levels for the worlds in your game. Add everything that comes to mind; then, as you start to rough out the levels, keep and develop what seems to not only work for the look and feel of the game but also contribute to the gameplay.

Research!

Research and development (R&D) is crucial to the concepting phase. Making games is big business and very expensive. Spend time in research before you begin sketching out the game or characters. Double-check your rough plans before you flesh them out. Even then, many other bits can go wrong and balloon the development cycle.

R&D is all about the possibilities. Dreaming up cool stuff is arguably one of the most fun parts of development. Then you need to implement your ideas. Not everything can be done. What can be done depends largely on budget, time, and expertise, but you can achieve many goals by doing things cleverly. If the title is meant to be real-life accurate, then R&D is swayed in that direction. If the game is an RPG, then whole civilizations will need to be fleshed out and made believable so players can fully immerse themselves in the illusion you're trying to create.

If your goal is to make an immersive game, then you need to throw yourself into as much research as you can so you understand the nuances of the world you're creating. Thorough research helps you achieve the level of detail required to create a believable world.

One way to make your world believable is to avoid “drawing from memory,” or drawing or designing the same things over and over again based on what you think they look like (as discussed at greater length in Chapter 4, “Visual Design”). Instead, do some research when you start your design so you understand better what things and places actually look like.

Imagine for a moment that part of your game takes place in a cave. Do you have an image in your mind of what a cave should look like? Do all caves actually look alike?

Figure 7.2 shows three different images of caves and demonstrates how remarkably different they can be in our own home world. At far left is a shot showing narrow confines in the Shasta Caverns of California. In the middle is an image of a glacier cave in Alaska, with slit-like passages. On the far right, the massive Deer Cave in the Mulu National Park of Borneo, Malaysia, could house a small city.

FIGURE 7.2 The differences in these caves illustrate the importance of research in creating environments.

What do you know about caves? How are caves formed? How was the cave formed in the world you're creating? Is it manmade (like an abandoned mine), was it created by water or a lava tube, or did an earthquake cause the earth to open? Is it made of rock, or is it an ice cave? Does it contain water, or can wind whistle through? Do animals live in this cave, or is there evidence of a prehistoric civilization? Does the cave have a large mouth, a hidden opening, or perhaps openings to even more caves?

Doing research is half the fun of designing the levels for games. Putting yourself in the shoes of the characters or creatures that will roam your world is paramount. Start with the research, and then let your imagination take flight.

Too often, new designers copy what they have seen or played, so too many games look derivative. Even if your game isn't meant to appear realistic, and your goal is to produce a stylized or cartoony world, research will help you get out of your head and away from beloved memories of games you've played. Research can help you experience something new and get your creative juices working.

As you gather research materials, especially images, movie files, and sound, save them in a resource/inspiration folder so all designers and artists on the project can refer to them. Creating resources such as reference materials is invaluable to the level-design development cycle. Both level designers and artists will benefit greatly. These resources should be created jointly by the level designers and the artists because they're doing separate work, but on the same piece of content.

Creating a comparables list—relevant titles, songs, books, and so on—is part of the R&D process as well. Understanding your demographic, genre, and competitors (or peers) allows you to make the right choices when creating the game. You need to be able to imagine it on store shelves, reviewed by critics and enjoyed by fans, to really understand what you want to make and be able to achieve it.

OK, Now What?

You've written down ideas; sketched out concepts for the world on a napkin while at lunch; walked for miles on city streets and through museums, the local park, the forest, and a mountain meadow; and perused every book, magazine, and web page you could find related to your ideas.

How do you begin to put all that together?

The ancients had a pretty good handle on how level design can work. Look at Figure 7.3, which shows an antique map of the city of Jerusalem produced in 1584. You see the layout for the streets, locations of buildings and parks, and features such as Calvary Hill (at lower left) with the story of the crucifixion of Jesus taking place.

FIGURE 7.3 This ancient map of the city of Jerusalem combines a bird's-eye view of the street layout with side or three-quarter views to show architectural details. This portrayal of the city, which includes events and special locations, looks very much like a modern level design.

This map provided not only a means for navigating the city, but also images related to areas where special events occurred, to (or away from) which a visitor might want to navigate. That is the basis for the way some levels are approached, drawing inspiration from real life.

Figure 7.4 shows a rough level design for the game The Seven Sigils. This portion (level) of the game takes place inside a massive cave system with an underground city and two lakes. In the layout, the red grid indicates square footage, and specific areas are plotted out where events related to the gameplay will occur. The general layout is shown at center right. Above it, you can see where this level fits into the complete world. The concept art at the bottom helps you visualize what the world could look like.

This action/adventure game requires that the player enter the cave (notice the tiny black figure at upper left, shown inside the circle for scale) and solve certain puzzles in order to obtain an essential clue in the old ruins (far left, shaded brown).

FIGURE 7.4 This detailed level is part of the enormous world for the game The Seven Sigils (completely mapped out at upper right) and includes a concept painting to help you visualize what the world could look like.

The puzzles are in the form of huge, wall-size tiles that need to be moved around; they then point to floating crystals that must be aligned just so in order to shine a light on a hidden cavern at the bottom of the lake, where a key to a room in the ruins is hidden, and so on. Of course, while moving from puzzle to puzzle, the player needs to battle monsters and figure out how to get up and down the massive cliffs and waterfalls in the cave using bits and pieces of rope and equipment found lying around.

In this level, the most difficult and critical areas of the gameplay center around the floating crystals and events that occur within the ruins. Because those are intense areas, they're kept fairly far apart. The level was built based on their locations to provide lots of eye candy and elements for the player to explore.

Figure 7.5 is another level design, this one a bit more polished, that shows the vertical layout of a game called Vostok.

FIGURE 7.5 This level design for Vostok shows where all the levels are and the rough look of one of the main areas, the large cave in the center.

Vostok is also an action-adventure game. A reporter travels to the remote base of Vostok in the Antarctic to write about scientists exploring an unusual underwater lake. The reporter gets trapped when a nearby volcano erupts, flooding the upper areas of the subterranean base with steam, boiling water, and lava.

An unusual challenge of this overarching level design (it's overarching because it maps out where all the game levels will be as opposed to looking in detail at specific areas where localized gameplay can occur) is that Vostok is a real place, the lake under it actually exists, and scientists have been studying it. Through research, the designer learned about the local geography (Vostok is surrounded by miles of snow, ice, glaciers, and high-peaked mountains) and that the base consists of a small building on the surface, which is sketched out in this design. It was up to the designer's imagination to decide what any underground features might look like. No information was unearthed about whether a physical study of the subterranean lake is being, has been, or might be conducted.

The designer studied maps of mines along with geographic features that could be underground near volcanoes. Notice the twisty tunnel leading from the guest quarters to the lab and meeting rooms—those are based on what a lava tube looks like.

The drilling area at the lake is the site of some of the most intense action for the game. For that reason, this area was provided with more physical space.

Another important area is a large, naturally formed cavern just below the surface. The long, dagger-like ice stalactites hint at some of the visuals to be built for this area. After the player descends in the elevator from the main Vostok buildings, this will be an enormous, beautiful, terrifying maw of ice, along with dark, spooky depths that provide a tone for the game—awe-inspiring beauty married with the deadly terrain of Antarctica.

Adding Gameplay

An important thing to keep in mind about level design is that if you allow a player to move from point A to point B, they're usually able to get back to point A unless the designer prevents them from doing so.

In Vostok, although the main elevator shaft is damaged when the volcano blows, the player needs to find a way back to the surface. At first, the emergency ladder seems like the way out, when in reality it's blocked with collapsed ice and twisted metal (that is the dead loop). The player puzzles their way out using salvaged equipment from the underground facility to climb up what remains of the damaged elevator shaft.

In many platform types of games, you may want to keep the player moving in a certain direction, so the ability to navigate back isn't critical; it may be part of the design to prevent the player from moving backward. However, if your game includes towns, forests, rivers, and mountains, you're inviting the player to explore the amazing world you're constructing; allowing them the ability to roam without fear of being stuck is an important feature to keep in mind.

Zandro Chan, creative director at Bedlam Games in Toronto (developer of Red Harvest), whose input was crucial for the creation of this chapter, adds this information about traversing games:

Designing a level for a game includes not only the sights and sounds encountered by the player, but also the gameplay. As we've mentioned before in this book, logic should apply to all you do while working on design. It's often a good tactic to figure out first where major events take place in the level and then work from there. Begin with the core events, and add pieces as you fill in the gameplay to the target timeframe, like peeling an onion in reverse.

If your player needs to slay a boss somewhere on the level, then adding areas where they can improve their skills or obtain necessary equipment while on the lookout for this boss makes the gameplay more enjoyable and helps build anticipation for what is to come.

How the Narrative Figures into Level Design

Typically, there is a four-point story breakdown:

• Opening
• Build-up
• Conflict
• Resolution

Those can be considered plot points and marked on the maps showing how the level is being designed.

Figure 7.6 shows a map from Fröbish, an adventure game that takes place in an abandoned sanitarium. The player starts at the front door and, after finding clues about how to disable the lock, enters the creepy building.

They encounter a number of clues and odd occurrences in the lobby of the main building. The player chooses which way to go. They can go up the elevator and begin investigating the second floor. They may head into the office area or, after reviewing files they find behind the reception area, head into the Emergency Room.

This is where the player encounters a large puzzle. Solving it leads them to the ambulance bay and a way to open and operate the elevator in that area, which takes them to further adventures in the morgue below.

FIGURE 7.6 The level design for Fröbish was created using floor plans for the building where the story takes place. Each floor has many puzzles, scary events, and adventures to experience, but the designer selected these four areas for the story's main plot points to occur—opening, build-up, conflict, then resolution.

How Large to Make the Level

The designer also needs to consider how many players might inhabit the level at any given time, referring back to the level-design parameters previously established. If the game is designed for one player, allowing exploration with the nonplayer characters (NPCs), then the space can be smaller (taking critical camera-design conditions into account). If this game supports large, multiplayer populations, then space needs to be calculated to fit them all in, and the geometry must allow the camera to frame all the players and relevant space for their actions (such as combat).

If 3,000 players can fit in the level at any given time, will the city support that many, or will they be standing on top of each other? How much physical space is required? How will the players see the action? How do they keep track of enemies and friends? If there is a boss fight, how does the boss move? How does the player? How is the shot framed? Again, there is logic here.

As work on the level progresses and areas are set aside for major events to occur (perhaps the start point has been determined along with safe havens and so on), an important aspect of the level design is how to guide the player toward the intended goal.

This can include designing visuals so the player is attracted to something in the distance, such as bright lights or colors. Power-ups or mini-quests can be placed in the level to outline the critical path as well.

Level Editors

A level editor (or designer) is the person who designs the arrangement, look, and feel of a level and determines what the gameplay will be there. The term can also apply to the type of game-development tool (software) used to build, script, and edit assets and events within the level. We're talking about the latter type here.

Numerous types of level-editing tools (software) can be used to build game worlds. Technology is ever-changing, so this book doesn't place much emphasis on this type of software, but we'll explain what a level editor does.

The level editor allows the designer to incorporate art assets from other tools such as Photoshop or 3D packages like Maya and CINEMA 4D. It also allows for the creation of scripted events. Scripting is low-level visual programming that lets a level designer create events that happen in the game, from simple actions such as opening a door (with associated sounds) to blowing up an entire neighborhood.

A handful of games made today that are shipped for home computers come with their own built-in level editors. For fans and enthusiasts of games, a huge draw is being able to edit levels or build their own levels in which to continue gameplay. These are often referred to as mods. Someone, or a group, can be modding a game by making a unique level that they can share with friends; they can also post it online and invite players through an Internet connection. Many people have done so using Epic's Unreal Engine and Valve's Source Engine, and some of the creations rival the fun and polish of the big-budget games.

Levels and Their Genres

If the genre of your game is a shooter, then the level design involves catering to genre-specific features such as cover for the player character. In other words, as the player moves through the world, they may need obstacles in the terrain that let them take cover while being shot at or hide while firing at other players or the characters built into the game.

This cover system is an example of how proper level design supports the core mechanics of the shooting feature of the experience. By adding a cover system through the levels, the designer can begin pacing the experience, increasing and reducing player sight lines and thus increasing and decreasing the challenge of the game. The basic action—the intended exchange between a player and their opponent—is fleshed out and replicated throughout the level. Variations of this gameplay exchange are then added so that every fight is slightly different and elicits different strategies from the player.

Although we've looked specifically at the special considerations for a shooter, any genre will have its own special needs that the level designer must keep in mind. Just as a shooter needs areas that provide cover, a platformer needs platform sections to which the avatar can navigate, and so on.

When designing a level in any genre, use the approach we have looked at. Ask these questions:

• What is the purpose of the level?
• What kind of action do you want the players to experience?
• What needs to be placed in the level to achieve that purpose?
• How does the narrative (the context behind the action) work in relation to the level and its parts?

Add those together with compelling gameplay from the core features, and you'll achieve great level design.

Spatial Design

As games become more immersive and allow more depth to become visible and steerable, navigation (or way finding)—physically moving through space—takes on greater importance. The term spatial design literally means designing the spaces, or environments, where the gameplay will take players.

Early games like Colossal Cave Adventure were played through text, which included written descriptions of the environment, such as this: “You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.” When visuals became part of the game design and enhanced technology allowed for bigger and faster games to be developed, that written description of the twisty little passages became a terrain that the player could actually see and traverse.

For the most part, using an input device such as the controller, keyboard, or mouse allows a player to move their avatar through the environment by walking, running, flying, swimming, and so on. The player traverses the worlds, or virtual environments (VEs), by moving directly through the surroundings using visual and audio references that guide them. This method is often referred to as memory-based navigation and tends to occur when a player is in a familiar area. At other times, the player may use a map or written directions to find their way. This type of navigation is sometimes referred to as map-based and tends to happen when the player needs to travel to someplace new.

With so many games providing full 3D gameplay or 2D environments that display a sense of depth, a top-down map may be provided to help orient the player and guide them through the game space. These top-down maps may scroll as the player moves through environments, particularly in 3D games such as World of Warcraft. Other games that have used them effectively are Populous, Sid Meier's Gettysburg!, and Seven Cities of Gold. They're invaluable tools to help guide the player in the right direction and avoid the frustration that can happen from getting lost while en route to a new place or trying to retrace steps.

Many players appreciate maps in games. Maps help provide a sense of order and are critical for those who play strategy games. As the amount and complexity of traversable space increases in games, coming up with map designs has become a significant challenge to designers. As we discovered with the navigation screens that are created for games, for the most part, they tend to have a design and look similar to the game itself.

The hub-and-spoke method for creating spatial design has been very popular with designers, so much so that we'll discuss it in more depth in the next section. Other types of navigation include side scrollers, where the background scrolls back and forth or up and down to provide new playing areas.

Shooters are the most common type of games these days, and they tend to be linear, but most RPGs and strategy-type games use some form of hub and spoke. Most casual/social games stick to a single screen or use an array method that lets the player choose from a variety of screens without a hub. Figure 7.7 provides an example of an array method.

In the game Fröbish Riddles, the player can choose a variety of locations to visit by navigating through the scene using visible exits rather than choosing a destination from a central map. Or the player can select another screen from a drop-down menu; this, in a way, substitutes for the hub, but it's not graphical, so the player never changes screens to make a selection.

FIGURE 7.7 This is an array method for choosing locations to visit. Green highlights indicate doorways the player can choose to navigate to another part of the building.

Hub-and-Spoke Design

In a hub-and-spoke design (also known as wagon wheel), players begin play in a central area of the game and can then choose which direction to go in. They may choose to revisit an area they've already explored or won. They may decide to reenter a section of the game that is in progress or move into an entirely new area.

The hub and spoke provides an area where the player can get started on a storyline or quest. They can also return there upon completion to get new quests or fuel up and then move on to other spokes.

Many games that use this type of design offer a player new to the game an opportunity to visit only one, or just a few, of the spokes. Once they gain experience or collect necessary items, they can unlock the next sections, or spokes, to enter.

What Is in the Hub?

The hub is the start point for most games, such as the locker room for a sports game or a town or castle for a questing game. This area often becomes familiar to the player. It's a safe haven of sorts to return to when leveling up characters and looking for new skills to learn, or to acquire better weapons, armor, vehicles, or goods to aid in gameplay.

What Are the Spokes?

The spokes can be entire levels to be visited and explored or simply areas adjacent to the hub that might house vendors or other benign game elements. The spokes can be travelled to from the hub or directly from each other.

Figure 7.8 is a very basic diagram showing what a hub and spokes can look like. There can be any number of spokes, and hubs can also connect with other hubs, much as airlines designate certain airports across the country as their hubs and fly out to and back from outlying areas.

FIGURE 7.8 Any section, or level, of a game can have one or many hubs and spokes set up. For example, several cities may be safe areas that players can visit and then journey out from.

The Game Design Document

When you begin to design your game, and the ideas are coming fast and furious, you'll need a method for tracking all the information. In addition, when you work with a team on a game, you'll need a method for communicating information to them about how the game needs to look and what will happen during various parts of the gameplay. This is what the Game Design Document (GDD) is for; it's the team's bible.

As you've seen in this chapter, level design is where you'll begin to map out where events occur, starting points, spawning points, exit points, and so on, so this is a good time to review the GDD.

In Chapter 3, “Core Game Design Concepts,” we looked at a general overview of the GDD. As we noted there, the GDD contains specific details about the game's levels.

Bedlam Games, located in Toronto, Canada, and makers of the Dungeons & Dragons games, works routinely with this kind of document. You'll find an example of a GDD for Red Harvest in Appendix C. At Bedlam, many developers contribute to the GDD but the central authority of the document is the game's Creative Director, Zandro Chan.

In reviewing the excerpt, you'll notice that the GDD contains references to audio, scripted dialogue, lore, and quests along with the amount of time estimated to play the game. For the entire game, the designer's goal was to build a product that would take at least 10 hours to play from beginning to end.

A GDD is a fluid document. That means it's a repository of all the elements that go into the game, including art, dialogue, audio, and so on; however, as a game is being built, if certain aspects aren't working or need to be tweaked, you do that through the GDD. Nothing written in it is cast in stone, and the GDD can be altered at any time to reflect changes in design.