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By
Marc Saltzman, Compilation Editor
Gamasutra
July 23, 1999
This
article originally appeared as Chapter 6 in the book
Game Design: Secrets of the Sages (Macmillan, 1999). It
has been reprinted here with the permission of the editor, Marc
Saltzman.
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 Features
Secrets
of the Sages: Level Design
The
worldwide PC gaming
community hasn't been the same since id Software's Wolfenstein
3D was unleashed in the spring of 1992. More than a quarter million people
scrambled to download this racy, 700KB shareware game from their local
bulletin board system (BBS), and thus, the first-person perspective 3D
"shooter" was born.
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| The
classic Wolfenstein 3D almost single-handedly diffused side-scrolling
"platform" games on the PC. But with this new perspective came new
obstacles...(Used with permission by id Software) |
The next
seven years yielded many memorable shooters--Doom, Dark Forces, Duke
Nukem 3D, Quake, Jedi Knight, GoldenEye 007, Unreal, Sin, and Half-Life--and
in so doing, it launched a specialized and necessary art form, known as
level design. Loosely speaking, level design pertains to creating the
architecture of maps in the game, plus dealing with object placement,
mission or goal of the map, and often mini-missions within the level as
well.
So what
makes for a well-laid-out and challenging level to complete? What are
some of the more common mistakes found in amateur level design? Is there
a science to it? You bet. This chapter features the world's top level
designers and their invaluable opinions on what makes or breaks level
architecture in 3D shooters. Keep in mind that many of these pointers
can also apply to other 3D games, such as third-person perspective action/adventure
hybrids (e.g. Tomb Raider).
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Introduction
