The Components of a Level

Once the levels a game needs have been decided on, possibly with some idea of how those levels must support the story, the next task is to actually create those levels. Regardless of its location in the game as a whole, the goal of every level is to provide an engaging gameplay experience for players. When working on the levels for a game, it is important to constantly keep in mind the focus of the game. What is this game trying to accomplish? How important are the different aspects of the game? What will the level need to do to support the type of gameplay this game has? In addition, depending on the amount of preproduction design done on the levels, one may need to consider how this level may play differently than others. Is it a thinking level after an action- intensive one? Is this level more about exploration and discovery than building up the strength of the player character or characters ? In The Suffering , we made a conscious decision to make some areas stand out in terms of tone and gameplay, such as the asylum level. Since that level was located in the middle of the game, by the time they reached it players had become used to a steady stream of combat and were ready for something a little slower and more puzzle oriented.

Before level design begins, the design team should convene and break down the different gameplay components of the game, since each member must completely understand how the gameplay functions. For specific levels, this may mean the lead designer makes a rough 2D map of the area and then lets the level designer finish it off, or it may mean that the level designer draws up the map and runs it by the lead.

Regardless, each level designer must understand how her level will use that gameplay before she starts building anything. In some games it is easy to make major changes to the layout of a level, such as in a tile-based game like StarCraft . If problems arise with the level, it can be easily reworked. For a game using the latest incarnation of the Unreal engine, however, once a level is built and the art department has polished its aesthetics, it is very labor-intensive to radically alter it. Producers will be reluctant to invest another month of architecture construction time to rework a level because it is not playing well. Therefore understanding ahead of time the gameplay of the game and the level in question is important. One perhaps simplistic but still useful way to break down the components of a level s gameplay is in terms of action, exploration, puzzle solving, storytelling, and aesthetics.

A level for the latest revision of the sophisticated Unreal engine requires significantly more work than one for a simpler 2D game. As a result, making changes to an Unreal level is significantly more time consuming. Pictured here: Unreal Tournament 2004 .

Action

Action is the most obvious component of the levels for many games, and indeed for many titles the action element is the only justification for the level s existence. Of course there are some games that eschew the action component entirely, such as many adventure or puzzle games, but nearly all other games contain some action components, whether it consists of blasting demons in a shooter like Doom , incapacitating walking mushrooms in Super Mario 64 , slaying mutants in Fallout , stealth-killing a guard in Metal Gear Solid , or speeding by the opponents cars in Need for Speed: Underground .

Whatever your game s action component is, the level designer s job is to understand how much action the level contains and at what pacing this action component should be presented to players. What percentage of your level should be action filled and exciting? How many battles will players fight? Is the combat fast and furious or are there breaks or intermissions between major conflicts? Should the players adrenaline be pumping during the entire level because of a constant fear of death? Of course, the amount of action is entirely dependent on what type of game you are making, but regardless, you need to have a clear idea of what amount of conflict players will encounter.

For a game with a lot of action, how that action will play out must be kept in mind while constructing the levels. The level designer must consider how the enemy AI functions and what types of maps will lead to the most interesting conflicts. What geometry will give players lots of locations in which to duck and cover while dodging enemy fire? How can the levels be best set up to encourage players to figure out her own strategy for defeating the opposition ? Knowing what sort of action your game will have and how that action best plays out is critical to designing levels that bring out the best in the action gameplay.

Exploration

What will players be doing when not in the heat of battle? Exploration is a major part of many action/adventure titles such as Tomb Raider or Super Mario Bros . Instead of just providing a bridge between different action set pieces, if properly designed the exploration can actually be a lot of fun for players. It is often hard for the design team to see this after slaving away on a map for months. How much fun is exploring architecture with which you are already painfully familiar? Always try to keep in mind that for players experiencing a map for the first time, the thrill of exploring a new virtual world can be quite stimulating. It may be important to constantly be showing your level to first-time viewers or playtesters , and getting their feedback on whether they enjoy exploring the level or not.

The designer must keep in mind how players will explore the level to know how best to lay it out. What cool piece of art or architecture will players see around the next corner? How excited or awe-inspired will players be on finding new areas? Making exciting exploration a part of your game goes beyond creating exciting architecture for players. It is also determined by how the level flows, and what players will have to do to reach an exciting new area. Being dropped right into the middle of some nice architecture is much less satisfying than having to navigate a large area of the map to finally make it to an exploration payoff.

Part of making the exploration aspect of a game work is determining the flow of a level. Will players need to explore several offshoots from a main, critical path , or will they generally only have one way to proceed? Will the path players must take to complete the level be obvious at first, or will they need to experiment and look around quite a bit before they find it? Games that are very action-oriented will tend to put players on a path that leads directly to the next conflict. Games that encourage players to poke around may make the path less obvious.

As far back as Super Mario Bros. on the Nintendo Entertainment System, Miyamoto s games have included exploration as a key gameplay component.

I once saw someone criticize Shigeru Miyamoto s games as being all about exploration, and therefore not very good games. The observation that exploration is the focus of the later Mario was a correct one. The mistake was in asserting that this is not a fun part of gameplay, as millions of Mario fans will refute. The challenge lies in making exploration entertaining and rewarding for players, something Miyamoto s games do expertly.

Puzzle Solving

Sometimes progressing in a level involves more than just finding a path to the next area while killing the adversaries that stand in your way. Instead it may involve figuring out what needs to be accomplished in order to open a certain door or clear a large obstacle out of the way. Some of the simplest examples of this are the switch flipping puzzles found in many older first-person shooters. In these games (often for no particular reason) players need to navigate through a large section of the map in order to flip a switch. This action opens a door somewhere else that leads players to another area where another switch is in need of flipping. And so it goes. This switch may instead be a key or any other object that opens a door or may be disguised as some type of device that blocks the players progress. For example, Call of Duty disguised switch flipping as placing explosives on anti-aircraft guns. This is the simplest form of a puzzle in an action/exploration game. Here the focus is mostly on players exploring until they find the puzzle, with the solution to the puzzle itself then being trivial. In the case of the switch, once it is found all players need to do is flip it.

Some would say that all puzzles are keys in the end, but this misses an important point and opportunity for more compelling gameplay. More sophisticated variants on the switch/door combination can be situations that require players to actually figure something out in order to progress. Perhaps a laser beam needs to be refracted around a series of corners in order for players to move on. In order to refract it correctly, players will need to move several reflective plates. Players must understand the simple physics of the situation that govern how the beam will behave when reflected in different ways. In The Suffering , early on players come to a puzzle where they need to block a gate that keeps swinging shut with a large stone statue. Players need to experiment in the environment and with the game mechanics in order to solve this puzzle. With challenges of this sort, the focus here shifts from just finding the puzzle to finding it and then figuring out how to manipulate it correctly. The player s gaming experience is enhanced by this puzzle instead of it merely delaying the end of her game. Determining how much emphasis your level will have on puzzle solving is important to keep in mind, especially within the context of the game as a whole. A sure way to frustrate players is to suddenly throw a bunch of arbitrary puzzles at them after the entire game up to that point has been more action-oriented.

Storytelling

In a historical game such as Gettysburg! , the gameplay is very much tied to a particular story from history.

Setting is a big part of storytelling, and levels are a vital component of establishing the setting for a game. Therefore, levels are an integral part of telling a game s story. If the story is more than something tacked onto an already completed game, it only makes sense for the game s levels and the story to work in synergy. Depending on the type of storytelling that the game employs, it may be necessary for players to meet and converse with characters in the levels, such as in Half-Life or in almost any RPG. Setting up the levels to support the appearance of these characters becomes very important. In some games it is obvious that the levels were designed from the very start with the story in mind. For instance, in Myth: The Fallen Lords , the players goals for a certain level are directly tied to the progression of the story. Similarly in The Suffering , we mapped the whole story out and then tried to figure out what interesting level environments would work within the narrative. In a historical wargame such as Gettysburg! , the battles players fight have to be tied to the story, since it could hardly be a historical simulation otherwise . Indeed, any game that hopes to tell a story really needs to make sure its levels support that story; players will notice when the levels were just built willy-nilly and are only barely connected to the game s plot.

Knowing the story goals for a given level prior to constructing that level is crucial to communicating the story effectively. The story should still be loose enough to allow the level designer to be creative in making the best level possible. There are still concerns about gameplay ” about balancing the right amount of strategy, action, puzzles, and exploration ” and since it is nearly impossible to balance these components before the level actually exists, the level designer should not be tied down by an overly restrictive story. Indeed, it may turn out that the story needs to change in order to accommodate the gameplay needs of the level, but having an idea of what story needs to be told on a particular level is essential to designing that level so it fits properly into the overall narrative.

Aesthetics

How a level looks and sounds are probably the driving factors behind many level designers work. And it s easy to see why: surface aesthetics are always commented on first by management, the press, or even players. I certainly would not dispute that a level s appearance is crucial to its overall success. At the same time, however, the aesthetic component becomes a problem when how the level looks becomes the designer s primary concern, a situation that usually has a detrimental effect on how the level plays. Suppose a level designer spends a lot of time creating a massive, gorgeous cathedral for a level, and the appearance of that cathedral is constantly at the forefront of her mind. What if it turns out that the cathedral is hard for players to navigate, the AI agents easily get confused when trying to pathfind though it, and the whole structure is a bit more than the engine can handle, resulting in the level running slowly? If the cathedral looks great and its construction sucked up a lot of man-hours, who will want to cut it? It may translate into some fabulous screenshots on the back of the box; too bad it will not be any fun to play.

A big part of the level designer s job is to balance appearance with the other requirements of a given level, as I have listed above. There is always an achievable middle ground where the level looks good, plays well, renders quickly, and suits the needs of the game s story. Level designers spend a lot of their time learning the tricks of a given engine or level editor. What can they do that will use the fewest polygons while still looking good? Often the solutions they come up with are not necessarily real but rather faked. Of course the whole purpose of creating levels for a virtual world is creating fake content, so a level designer need not worry if an effect is achieved by faking something. If players cannot tell it is faked, if they cannot see behind the magic curtain, that is all that matters. One of the principles behind all special effects is to create something that looks like something it is not. The level designer s job is to make players see something that looks like something it is not, giving the level what Unreal level designer Cliff Bleszinski would call schlack and that others call chrome : a shiny and fancy coating over an otherwise uninteresting level. Shiny and pretty is not necessarily a bad thing, it just should not be used to substitute for quality gameplay.

The visual side of a level can have a big impact on the other concerns of a game s level, as I have listed before. For instance, in order to make a level playable , the textures on a level should be laid out in such a way that players are able to see where they should or should not be able to go. Instead of wondering if a particular slope is too steep for their game-world surrogate to climb up, a different texture can serve as a visual cue to the players as to which slopes are passable and which are not. Lighting can be used to conceal secret areas, or a big puzzle in the level may be figuring out how to turn the lights on. If certain special areas are supposed to be rewards for diligent exploration, making those special areas look impressive is essential to maintaining the players interest in the level.

A lot of time can be spent on the aesthetics of a level. The amount of time is directly proportional to the complexity of the engine and level editor being used as well as the desired visual effect of the level. In fact, it may be the case that all of the gameplay and story elements of the level can be set up first and then the visual appearance can be tweaked for weeks to come. Lighting can be endlessly adjusted, textures can be shifted or switched for other textures, and polygon faces can be adjusted to better represent the visual effect the team is trying to achieve. Indeed, level design work has become so labor intensive that many design teams have started passing off the aesthetic pass to the art team, a technique used in the development of both Halo and Half-Life 2 .

Regardless of who is doing the aesthetic work, the level designer must be fully aware of the effects changes in the level s appearance will have on the gameplay.

Balancing It All

Because a good level must balance action, exploration, puzzle solving, storytelling, and aesthetics, the work of the level designer is a bit of a balancing act. Even if the level may look better a certain way, how does that impact the story being told? Do the story requirements for the level mean that it cannot have much in the way of combat? How important is combat to the game, and can the level survive without it? Is the quantity of puzzle elements in the level preventing players from being able to enjoy exploring it? The action, exploration, puzzle solving, storytelling, and aesthetic qualities of a game level all have interdependencies, which the level designer must be constantly aware of and be constantly maintaining. The price of good level design is eternal vigilance .