next »

[SeanNoonan]

Interesting thread. Please post more pictures with paths/annotations!

@SeanNoonan: Thanks for pointing out that H-shape. I created a gif to illustrate it because i prefer images over videos.



Edit: Obviously 'inspired' by Pitfall.

Hah, awesome. A good representation of the same idea but in 2D, though obviously with less of a focus of converging paths.

@Moth: You've really made me want to make a platformer out of my infinite runner - I have been toying with the idea for a while...

[Moth]

@SeanNoonan: Wow you worked on Watch Dogs. That's some prestige! I really like your idea of H-shaped paths too, I think that's a bit similar to what Sonic Team did for classic sonic the hedgehog but they really cranked it up (in general, 3 routes instead of 2). Anyway it's awesome that, of all things, you can share your level design with us here as a video of Watch Dogs! Great stealth game level design right there, it reminds me of some of the intense two tiered portions of Metal Gear Solid games.

Also thank you, it's flattering to be an inspiration I like your endless runner's setting and its characters so it would be fun to see you make a larger level based game out of it!

@zorg: Thanks, I will try to get together more annotated pics up soon.

@flyingmangoes: Thank you so much!

@Mariofan0: Thank you! This is indeed how the colors are in-game, but it is supposed to have a bit of an "alien planet" vibe. There are quite a few alternate palettes to view the game in though:



I'd like to see you put a project together and share some level design with us here!

@Jimym GIMBERT: I've been wanting to talk about some of my mechanical level design principles so I'll be writing some posts in your thread soon!

[Mariofan0]

@moth I would like to do a project of my own, but as someone who really hasn't got enough expertise in things like Programming, & Graphic Design, and the lack of a reasonable computer to work from certainly hinders the process. I suppose though if I could burn some vids to a DVD I might be able upload some work I did in Various games with built-in Level Editors, and messed about in the ROM Hacking scene, but to me its not really the same as doing it with an actual project, and I'm not sure I've got a DVD Recorder I can use.
I may be able to fetch some screencaps, and post them under the gaming forum right now if your interested though.

[SeanNoonan]

I have noticed regarding level paths, I am obsessed with "H" shapes - I used them everywhere in the level design of Watch Dogs.
I'll try and find some top downs to show some shape/flow examples, but for
A pretty neat trick when dealing with a linear level layout is to add an overhead or underground "H" path that has high visibility to or from the critical path - you just need to converge before your linear route ends. It gives a good open feeling and can allow for a bunch of different opportunities from both an enemy and player perspective. In fact if you ever need to build a linear layout, always try to add in a converging overlaying (or underlying) path, whether a player uses it or not, it helps make an area feel larger and gives an illusion of choice.
now here's a video that demonstrates a level I made with an elevated "H": https://youtu.be/k3Ied379_AI?t=18m9s

Here's a top down of the aforementioned linear path. You can see I have two H's alongside each other, this is basically to force distance between the player and enemies, even if they're at the same vertical level.

...and some screenshots of how it looked from that point of view.

As I said, simple technique, but I use it a lot

[DXimenes]

I've been doing some research about the architectural concept of "mie gakure", something the japanese came up with while designing their famous strolling gardens.
(Ran into it while

).

The concept of "mie gakure"—or "hidden and seen"—is a central design principle in Japanese stroll gardens, where the path curves, and elements are arranged so that new, unexpected views are discovered at each turn.

It instantly reminded me of the old "X minute rule" (I don't remember exactly how many) with which arcade titles were developed. The principle is that every X minutes something new had to happen on screen that raised the stakes and caused the player to die and thus feed a new coin to the machine so he could continue playing. That rule goes on A LOT in Metal Slug titles.

I guess the concept of mie gakure fits like a glove in open world games, where you have an open environment unfolding as you explore it from different angles.

[battlerager]

I've been doing some research about the architectural concept of "mie gakure", something the japanese came up with while designing their famous strolling gardens.
(Ran into it while

).

I'm pretty sure I read about very similar concepts in Western garden design - but Garden design in general is a good field to think about video game levels. Many similar concepts apply -

Masking the edges of the level / garden, sometimes making it seem bigger. Vistas visible only from certain parts of the garden. Lines that lead through the different segments naturally.


Almost every garden design principle applies in some way because both things are about taking a limited space and designing an experience and structure for it.

[DXimenes]

The little knowledge I had on western garden design was totally different, but if you say so, the concepts totally apply.
The "hidden and seen" particularly resonated with me because of the idea that looking at things from different angles reveals "surprises" and surprises can be used to raise stakes in gameplay.

Do you have any books or texts on the matter that you could reccomend, @battlerager?

[battlerager]

Uh, I'm not sure about proper current books in English, I'll check and get back to you on that.
Many current guides and encyclopedias talk about similar concepts (probably anything by the Royal Horticultural Society).


Christian Cay Lorenz Hirschfeld's "Theorie der Gartenkunst" (1779-1785), in which the author categorizes and describes European gardens and their effect on visitors, has relevant passages, I think. I will try to translate.

• Landscape gardens are artificially created worlds, that lead from a melancholic to a happy scenery and thus create dramaturgical changes of atmospheres.
• Landscape gardens are modular systems that dictate movement patterns and possible actions to the visitors through rhythm and atmosphere.
  Also, it is important to offer many prospects (prospect spaces) to the visitor.
  

Also, I'll offer this translated quote:
"A parc or an expansive garden demands mainly a landscape of manifold changing locations, valleys, hills, depths, mountains, soft slopes and sudden ravines, all in ample variety. On the soil of such change do the views multiply themselves; it's different up high, it's different down below; every step leads to a new position, a new painting, despite the complete immobility of the objects."


I can try to dig up more. If you're curious about the garden-gamedesign link, there's lots of interesting thinking in here:
Chaim Gringold - Miniature Gardens & Magic Crayons:
Games, Spaces, & Worlds

[diegzumillo]

Cool topic! Level design is one of the hardest things for me and I struggle a lot trying to make levels to my project. I really need to learn more about this.

Just to contribute to the topic, here's a sketch I had on my notebook that I painted over to make it a little more clear what is going on.



There is more than one path to the exit. But this is the one I found. The colors represent different orientations (it changes as the character goes through the curves). It's a mess, I really don't know how to do this yet.

[battlerager]

@diegzumillo:

Cool of you to contribute to the thread! I myself am in awe of good level design, as it manages to make tiles or polygons FEEL like a place and / or direct my movement. That's incredible.

As for your sketch, I think what helps is using either blank paper or paper with a grid printed on. The lines are usually meant for writing and it can really mess with your doodle space. If you wanna add notes / musings / sign explanation, there are also notebooks that alternate between grid and lines, so you can have a layout on the grid page and lines to add commentary in the same double-page.

I assume this is top-down? And lines generally are used to indicate paths. I don't know if your game (idea?) has any special gimmicks, but orientation is usually implied / left out, I'd say. You can add pointed arrows in a direction from an object to show facing / orientation.

[diegzumillo]

It's a 2D platformer in a curved space. Those areas where I make a bent grid indicate the curve and they change the orientation and gravity, on paper I just make a bunch of arrows but I made different colors here to make it easier to see. Not sure if it worked.

One game that always reminds me level design exists (because it is good) is stealth bastard (stealth inc). It's the only game where I frequently stop and think "wow, this is CLEVER".

[Moth]

diegzumillo, I love Apple & Worm and it's super fun to see you sharing one of the level design sketches!! I can understand that the level consists of the player trying to find a way to fix their orientation to fall down between the spikes. That is so cool!

Level design may be hard for you, and that means you certainly have your work cut out for you when it comes to a game with this rotation mechanic, but I have to say judging by this little level I think you're doing pretty well!

[diegzumillo]

Thank you, Moth! =D I'm definitely trying to improve, and they look good on paper, but most people who play are left utterly confused. But I'll just keep making them, someday they might reach a creepy castle's level of quality.

[Pfotegeist]

Someone mentioned an H shape. I thought of how other shapes might make levels more interesting, but due to a lack of true evidence I'll talk about Mario games.

Hi I'm a bunny and I tend to hop. I heard Mario jumps higher than a box of frogs. How he traverses his environment and his natural ability have given him possibilities beyond rationality. As a bunny, I tend to memorize places that are safe to hide in and rest there a lot. But that's enough about me.

Contains some Super Mario level spoilers

I'm impressed with how pretty much every Mario platformer game was designed. How every level flows enhancing the meaningfulness of playing them again and again. I only paid attention to power ups when I started. Of course, they were the YOU DID IT moment before you got hit and fell in a pit. I'm not going to be going into such miniscule detail. Instead I'm thinking about how the levels contrast so I can make a broader analysis across all the games and benefit from the art.

One important thing to note is every single level has a different tile set, yet each level type ended in similar ways, as well as the worlds, this defined a story. Without those elements, and without the ending, there would just be continuous mind numbing action. There were also music scores, obstacles, power ups, and mechanics that pretty much proves auto-runners are a dime a dozen.

Starting with games 1,2, and 3, the actual shape of every level is not perfectly straight, although I convinced myself they would be at some point. This skewedness made it interesting to navigate, it wasn't quite so repetitive, some angles were even a challenge and of course, pitfalls are common for platformers now.

Super mario was the least complicated (because of technology) but it had clouds, pipes, and plenty of obstacles and a few please don't kill me moments.

Simpler times http://www.mariouniverse.com/images/maps/nes/smb/7-1.png
this is a more complicated level http://www.mariouniverse.com/images/maps/nes/smb/6-2.png
pretty easy to lose here http://www.mariouniverse.com/images/maps/nes/smb/4-3.png

Super Mario 2 had some interesting door systems (maybe too interesting, time's up). Fewer power ups too whaaat (most people skip this game and play SM3 first, so it feels like fewer).

Right-up-down-right http://www.mariouniverse.com/images/maps/nes/smb2/5-2.png

...So in this map you start at the top center at the bird head, and then you go right, you then proceed underground to the left until you reach a ladder, which enters you into a door that was technically right next to where you began http://www.mariouniverse.com/images/maps/nes/smb2/3-2.png uhhuh

I take it back, this makes perfect sense the way they drew it, why do I have to climb all the way up the tower just to fall all the way back down again when I can jump the gap? (Map does not actually look and perform this way in-game) http://www.mariouniverse.com/images/maps/nes/smb2/4-3.png

Super Mario 3 really has it going since you can find yourself running back to explore and it clearly built on ideas from Super Mario that the players would have otherwise found, challenging, kicking a shell and hitting yourself with it on the first level, anyone? More Power Ups.

Remember when you started the game and met a Goomba? and some horizontally stacked boxes that give you that first mushroom, take two http://www.mariouniverse.com/images/maps/nes/smb3/1-1.png

Every level has a similar ending which makes a coherent ebb and flow. There's a moment where the player can put down the controller and say finally. The castles 'bosses' break the flow between levels, but in a predictable way.
So there was Bowser in 1 (or was it King Koopa? idr),
Nightmarish things in 2, http://www.mariouniverse.com/images/maps/nes/smb2/4-3.png
There was a miniboss in 3, http://www.mariouniverse.com/images/maps/nes/smb3/1-fortress.png, and the Koopa kids on flying airships that could potentially force you to play a level, http://www.mariouniverse.com/images/maps/nes/smb3/1-airship.png and the added bonus that running out of lives didn't bring castles back to life, but it did bring levels back - and only player who completed that level in 2-player mode (pretty cool actually). [no quality video or image found, just take my word for it]

Somewhat on a tangent. No save points. These games could be completed in under 30 minutes and there were opportunities to put the controller down and walk away. Quitting and replaying the first few levels increased your chances of survival, so why not?

Then things got more complicated. Game saves included, that's just how long the games became now. This also makes analyzing them more haphazard so I'm not quite as inclined to even remember details or maximize the skills to beat these games.

Super Mario World started to use a more interesting camera system which I think cut down the complexity of the obstacles a bit.  The levels were flattened out and stacked about two or three screens high. Instead of traveling different directions up-down, left-right, diagonal, most of the time, you had to explore different heights and more secrets.

most worlds in SMW look more like http://www.mariouniverse.com/images/maps/snes/smw/vanilla-secret-2.png
at least there's no less than a pipe and a cloud shortcut occasionally

Secret exits too




A little off the point. Bridge.

Yoshi's island, yoshi's story, wario land were a little different. They utilized the introduction of mechanics and map design admirably, the problem being there's nothing to compare them with so I'm sorry! There is a slight contrast in how Wario has hats, Yoshi has transformations, Mario also had hats in the search for golden coins, and transformations in consol games which really makes an odd distinction.

Things got more complicated.

Super Mario 64... and games similar to Sunshine. I'd be lying if I said I fully understood how all the levels in 3D marios were formed, they don't match the flow of other mario games which makes them stand out as more fundamental designs like the very first "Super Mario". Now I'd say it's mostly about distances, verticality (the actual height you could travel),  precision in order to 'hit' your target in most cases. Also depending on which version of the world you entered, there would be a presence of new objects that were advertised upon entry by a panning camera. It doesn't really add up the same way.

Also I'm not as familiar with these games so much because they take so long to finish.

Super Mario Galaxy... what's going on? This game explored mechanics to a nauseating degree, the levels were more modular so you could be fired out of star cannons to try your hand at the next problem. I'd like to think that they still followed the art discipline but it's really psychedelic because of the physics, camera movement, puzzles mechanics. It was pretty cool, but I can't tell if any of it made sense.

Back to the original point. Which was, the diversity and contrast, right.

Out of chronological order there's the spiritual remake of New Super Mario Bros Wii. Well, they did alright to follow the traditional flow, but I think the colors should have popped more. Tiles were reused more often, these seem like pretty small sacrifices in order to extend the duration of the game. The verticality was reduced to about one screen high at all times to allow multiple players. It seems a lot like playing the very first super mario with something between Mario World and Mario Wii graphics.
1-1, 1-3, and 1-6 very similar. http://www.mariowiki.com/World_1_%28New_Super_Mario_Bros._Wii%29

Skipping up to the next thing I know of. Here we're back to something I like.

Super Mario 3D World. The first thing I noticed was how most of the maps could be described 2-dimensionally. Eventually I noticed it followed a similar flow to the rest of the 2D mario games in its art and level design, it even retained a verticality factor and a flagpole finish. The mechanics switching make it stand out, sort of like proof they learned tricks from Mario Galaxy, but it really feels more like it could be Super Mario World 2.

Sorry there aren't any obvious websites displaying whole 3D maps at once. Look up a youtube walkthrough. Every level was different.
At first I thought the shaders were over the top and the characters were too plastic shiny. It didn't hurt the fidelity. I guess it can't be helped. The art is really diverse between levels, just like the first Mario games.


I seem to have run out of material. I won't try comparing games that have Mario in them, just for the sake of Mario (I'm not writing a game theory here). This was all about the level design, and that changes drastically between genre.

Now I might look up other franchises and how they handled the art and level design.


There are many places discussing how the actual mechanics flow in newer games, like this one I randomly found with a search http://www.polygon.com/2015/3/16/8227391/mario-level-design-thoughts
Or older games like the Extra Credits episode about Super Mario, 1-1



A notable pitfall: It may be difficult to continue utilizing more than one newly introduced concept throughout an entire game. Example. The cape, I don't think most people will like the cape from Super Mario World. In some levels you can fly straight through but I always see people crash and lose it because they accidentally ran, or something silly.

That's all I've got, I'm going to see if I can apply anything I learned from this quick study. Hop, hop higher!



All games and characters mentioned belong to Nintendo. Many images are linked from mariouniverse.com property of their rightful owners.

What the heck did I do? This is so long.


Enjoy?

[Moth]

large exhalation of air

This one took a while.

[Pfotegeist]

large exhalation of air

This one took a while.

http://i.imgur.com/FrWxUkA.gif

That looks really cool. I think the tiles remind me of Metroid more than anything else in it. This makes me want to talk about how level design impacts player exploration.



I decided to reinvestigate the game experience that Super Mario 3 provides.

I wanted to run
A seasoned player will think of it as a speed run, they know exactly where to jump and even if they get hit they know which hits are ok to take, piece of cake.  Having no recent experience I noticed running through a level pretty much guaranteed I'd jump into a pit of death or crash into a wall and have a not very amusing death due to my own stupidity. Also the slight momentum correction meant if I did run, I wasn't going to start unless I did it at the right place, and I couldn't stop without learning tricks. I understood eventually, this wasn't what the game was meant for.

I stopped running, and walked
The levels are designed with the idea that you (the player) have a limited view around your character avatar, and because of that there is rarely a point where you are forced to make a leap of faith (Coins frequently point you in the right direction, a welcome break from realism. Then again, giant floating coins). Walking is actually a much more survivable [and enjoyable?] first time experience and there are many explorations to be had before you can progress, every single time.

Beginners cut around corners to win, the experts don't need to
Reaching the end within a half hour is possible with shortcut items, and prior knowledge of the game's secrets, but it is proof you learned the shortcuts and you didn't fall into all of the pits. Even so, the fact you have to skip levels to get the quick ending leaves much undone, and that means if you have a slightest ounce of exploration left in you, you'll go back and play what you skipped until mastery.

Why. That Darn Time Limit! It made me rush
The reason I'll back to explore a game is not because it handed me every easy answer, but because I know I missed something. Super Mario 3 did not target completionists (Yoshi's Island did), but it does facilitate exploration in short frames of time, which explains "why the time limit?" why time limits in exploration free games is a pointless trope.

.
Some of those power ups are really worth playing around with too, not just for completing the game but to augment the exploration as a different character. But while this is probably an unnecessary self-determined task, it adds an enjoyable choice. One example of this is I found out a frog suit could still be useful to swim under all the boats near the final stage, it's easier than repeatedly pressing the jump button.

[Pfotegeist]

It is hard to learn from finished artwork because you don't see the work that went into it. So I figure I'll present level design scraps. They're slightly polished, initial concept art is hard to understand, similar to brainstorming, but I'm going to describe what I thought anyway.

I'm going to use this article as a lens http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/130542/game_design_cognition_the_.php


Upon beginning I think: As far as initial concept art design is concerned, context is what I'm drawing. It's where the player will go.  What fits in the drawing automatically works, no script. The more interesting I can make it look, the better I think it'll be. Being realistic, I expect it to be heavily altered through iterations.


The first important step in the process after learning to draw is determining a starting point. So there's a concept, and millions of others.  All I needed to know was there would be for the prototype an outside, a house outside, and the inside of a house.

I tried to pin down my art style.


I knew I was going to need to imitate it in 3D, it's also easier to program to. a little foreknowledge is good


A potential 'first look' of the game I'll build off of. A wild bunny. A house. A side-scrolling view.


The first challenge can be as simple as a straight line. Top-down diagrams are extremely fast to draw. More complicated diagrams would benefit from a legend, in this case I leave it open to interpretation.

and I drew the outside of the house


I did numerous concepts for straight line, and I prototyped 3D content I could code properly. The process so far ~2 weeks.


I concept design the house interior view


I design a prototype of the house in 3D, this takes some time and the simple house I made generates unexpected possibility space. I contemplate mechanics that would make the game work, and then more enjoyable, and then more interesting. Content designed for the outdoors and the house now have a context I can duplicate the context as much as I like.

(a house, nothing new, although I drew it)


The level begins to influence my design with its possibility space, and I code more content so that the house level is playable. More complex decisions later could be described as this entire process iterated, in greater detail, with more deliberate strokes, like most art. This is a beginning of my level design.

The camera gets interesting.

There were many opportunities to draw bunnies and imagine how the game will evolve.