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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
Paul
Jaquays, id Software
Paul Jaquays
is a "jack of all trades," but at id Software he provides level design
for Quake II and game and level design for Quake III: Arena.
Now who wouldn't want to be in his shoes, eh? When Jaquays heard about
this Secrets of the Sages project, he wanted to offer a large collection
of do's and don'ts on level design, as well as more general advice on
the art of map creation. Without further ado, let's first jump into his
collection of handy design tidbits.
Jaquays'
26 Level Design Tips
- Know
what you want to do with a level before you start. Don't expect a map
that you start as a single-player map to be easily changed into a multiplayer
map. The reverse holds true for trying to make a Deathmatch map into
a single-player challenge.
- Sketch
out a diagram of the map to use as an initial guide.
- Don't
start with grandiose projects. Try making something fun with a few rooms.
- If possible,
build your level with a "gimmick" in mind--some tricky gamism bit that
players will remember. Popular gimmicks that have been used in the past
include wind tunnels, numerous portals, lava maps, trap maps, water-filled
maps, maps with large, slow-moving hazards, and low-gravity maps.
- Try to
be fresh and original with every new design. Do something that you haven't
seen done before.
- Test
gimmicks of gameplay, tricks, and traps in test levels before building
them into your game level.
- Do architecture
and texture studies ahead of time to establish an architectural style.
Stick to that style.
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| Above,
Jaquays roughly sketched out a complicated puzzle and trap for Quake
2, involving modularized, moving prison cells as a part of the
Laboratory sequence. The concept was not implemented in the final
game. Below, Jaquays began one of his first Quake 3 arena
maps by roughly sketching out the major game features and their
relationship to each other. The final version of his arena map carried
several of the original concepts through to fruition, even though
much of the layout and geometry was changed. (Both images used with
permission by id Software, Inc., copyright 1998) |
- Block
out your level with large pieces of geometry. Think of the architecture
you'll use, but concentrate more on how gameplay will flow through the
level. At this stage, I try to keep my map grid at the largest possible
setting (in Quake II or Quake III, that's the "64" grid).
Avoid fussy details at this point and go for massiveness. At this stage
of development, try to keep your frame-rate speeds well below the amount
allowed by the game (for Quake II, we aimed to be below a maximum
count of 500 triangles of architecture in any view). A good rule might
be to try for no more than a third of your total possible polygon count
in the worst views in and near your larger rooms.
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| This
64-player map is taken from the Quake II DM Pack 1: Extremities
expansion CD. Jaquays reminds level designers to make sure that
large maps have distinctive memorable play areas. (Used with permission
by Activision) |
- Once
the flow is established, you can start adding architectural detail and
refining hall and room shapes.
- Build
in a modular manner. Make prefabricated pieces that be can fit together
easily to make your level. Build tricky pieces of detailed architecture
(such as door frames, complicated cornices, or furniture) once and set
them outside the boundaries of your map. Clone them as needed for placement
in the map.
- When
designing architectural elements, study the real world. Try to duplicate
the look and feel of impressive works, but with less complicated geometry.
Set yourself challenges in this regard.
- Strike
a balance between the use of real geometry and textures that imply three-dimensional
depth when building architectural details. Textures that appear to be
3D should be used with caution. When viewed from a distance, they can
fool the eye into believing that the architectural geometry is significantly
more complex than it actually is. But the same texture viewed up close
and at eye level completely destroys the illusion of depth.
- Compile
the map often. Don't wait until everything is placed to see what things
look like (or if you have leaks in the map hull).
- Complete
your map geometry before adding monsters and items.
- When
building single-player game maps, don't put every game feature in the
level. Having every monster possible in the game in a single game level
is a glaring sign of amateur work. Generally speaking, the only place
you're going to see all the monsters at once is in the AI programmer's
test level.
- The same
goes for tricks, traps, items, weapons, and power-ups. Unless your map
is as massive as the 64-player DM maps created for Quake II,
restrict the number of different items you put in the map. Use a few
things cleverly, rather than many poorly.
- Small
maps can be relatively similar throughout. Large maps should have distinctive,
memorable locations that the player can use to orient himself in the
map. "City64," a large DM map for Quake II, featured a huge canyon
area, a massive alien temple, underwater caverns, a vast deep tank with
water in the bottom, and numerous stretches of twisty corridors. The
corridors were often similar, but they ended in distinctive large play
areas.
- For DM
maps, give the players frequent opportunities to avoid pursuit and dodge
for cover. Long hallways with no exits are bad. Avoid forcing players
to make long trips to dead-end rooms--even to get good power-ups.
- Place
lights to achieve drama. If you have a choice between under-lighting
an area and over-lighting it, err on the side of darkness. Just don't
go overboard. Dark levels may look nifty, but stumbling around in the
dark while playing gets old fast.
- Light
as you go--even if you're only placing temporary lights.
- Don't
forget the audio elements of a map. Sounds can provide important game
clues.
- If possible,
allow multiple solutions for puzzles. You can still reserve the greatest
rewards for players who solve them in what the designer has decided
is the "best way."
- Give
the player a variety of game experiences and challenges in each map.
All combat or all puzzles can get old quickly.
- Be kind
to your players; don't over-challenge them unnecessarily. Well-placed
environmental hazards add to the tension of game play, but falling into
lava or slime every third step or being crushed to death by falling
weights every time you turn around quickly becomes frustrating.
- Study
maps you like and make an effort to duplicate or even improve situations
and settings.
- Finish
what you begin.
As many
other programmers, artists, animators, musicians, and level designers
have stated in the past, this last point on finishing a project instead
of starting 10 new ones is essential, and not easy for beginners.
Paul's
Advice on Game Design
Throughout
his career in the gaming industry, Jaquays has accumulated quite a bit
of knowledge on the art of game design. While he covered many individual
pointers in the preceding section on map creation, the following details
serve as more broad advice on game design, drawing from his own personal
experiences as well.
Stop
Imitating Yourself
I started in
the game business as a designer of game adventures for the new (at the time)
game called Dungeons & Dragons and later for the game called
Runequest. There was a time when I was considered one of the best
adventure writers in the field. One of the reasons that I quit designing
pencil-and-paper-type role-playing games was I found that I had started
to imitate myself, rehashing the same storyline over and over. I was no
longer fresh. Thankfully, I had other career options within the game business
that I could pursue. But the problem still remains: how to keep your ideas
alive and new.
Choose
the Unconventional Solution
There's a tendency
in game design to use familiar or tried-and-true solutions to design. In
the latter part of the Golden Age of Video Games (the classic 8-bit years),
the solution for nearly every game based on a character or movie license
was to create a side-scrolling game. During my tenure at Coleco, we were
given very few opportunities to create new games. Most of our work was to
analyze and translate arcade titles. The
War Games movie license gave us the opportunity to create a game
that broke the mold. The conventional solution would have been to make a
side-scrolling "solve the puzzles, find the hidden goodies, and avoid the
bad guys" game until at last you confronted the computer in the last scene.
At that point, the game would start you back at the beginning and ratchet
up the level of difficulty a notch. After seeing a special preview screening
of the movie War Games, I was inspired by the sequence near the end
of the movie in which the computer runs simulated scenario after scenario
in which the outcome was always the same: nuclear war and complete world
devastation. I was taken by the graphics that plotted the arcs of missiles
as they approached their targets. If I could convince the powers-that-be,
that short sequence of the movie would be our game. The actual gameplay
derived from several unrelated concepts. The goal of the player would be
to stop bombers, subs, and missiles (which were drawn on the fly as lines--no
simple trick in the 8-bit pattern tile game systems of the day), from reaching
their targets on a map of the United States. In a way, it had similarities
to the popular arcade game Missile Command, where the player fires
anti-ballistic missiles at incoming missiles dropping down from the top
of the screen. Unlike the arcade, the play took place on six separate maps
simultaneously. Like the juggler who keeps numerous plates spinning at once
atop thin sticks, the player had to rapidly switch his attentions between
a radar map showing the whole USA and six sub-maps that contained closer
views of target cities and military installations. The player had to rapidly
commit resources (missiles, interceptor planes, and attack subs) to deal
with enemy attacks, then shift to the next map and do the same. If the player
had the right stuff, he or she could defeat the game.
Blending
Flavors
Some of the
most popular foods are those that blend unlike or even opposite flavors
together in one tasty package. Sweet-and-sour Chinese dishes and Chicago-style
hotdogs are just two examples. What does this have to do with game design?
One of the products of which I am most proud is a book series called Central
Casting. The purpose of the products was to create vivid back-stories or
histories for characters in role-playing games. I created separate books
that covered three distinct genre groups of games: fantasy, science fiction
(or futuristic), and 20th century games. Players rolled dice and compared
the results against a series of tables and lists. Roll by roll, they selected
events and personality traits that they could use to define their game characters.
Quite often, the results of dice rolls would seem unlikely to be combined
together, but with a little creative thought the widely disparate events
would blend together, like the myriad of flavors in a Chicago-style hotdog,
into a uniquely original result.
Make
It Real
Even if
you plan on making your game setting wildly fantastic--that is, nothing
you would ever see in the real world--take care to make it seem real.
This is something I learned as a fantasy illustrator, painting covers
for games and books. The way to make the fantastic elements of a painting
believable is to realistically paint the mundane things in the picture.
This establishes a setting that appears as if it could actually exist
somewhere. You then paint the fantastic elements in the painting with
an equal amount of care so that they partake of the reality of the rest
of the painting. The same holds true when making 3D game levels. Give
the player one or more familiar elements that he can relate to. By comparison
with the real elements, the unreal things in the game should seem more
real, or perhaps a better explanation is that they seem more plausible.
And by contrast with the mundane, they will seem that much more fantastic.
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