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GDC 2002: Realistic Level Design for Max Payne

Lights, Action!

I don't need to emphasize the importance of lighting in the level. If you have none the environments are either pitch black or full bright, either way the end result isn't very pretty. At the first glance lights in an environment can seem to be put in quite arbitrarily. On closer examination this however isn't the case. The best way to put lights into a realistic environment is to put them as they are in real life -- paying attention to your surroundings and how they're lit provide a good start to lighting a level.

Getting the basics done is very easy, however getting into details isn't. This may be a reason why several people make a living out of putting lights about other people's apartments. A good approach here is to imitate real life and to do the lights in cycles with all the rest of the stuff, refining and tweaking positions and values each pass, adding detail.

Looking at early images of the lobby, you can clearly see both the first two passes had basically only temporary light (sans the table light) while in the second to last version I have added the small-wall mounted lamps as well as slight bluish light coming from the window. In final version I have further added a large ceiling lamp, as well as the reddish exit-sign, the three round lights on top of the drawers and the bluish light coming from the computer screen. Even more lights could be added but I feel any more would make the environment look too chaotic as well as harder to control. Usually it's good to stick to one larger light source in a room and bring out the detail with smaller, slightly colored lights.

Final Round

Now you should have the geometry, textures and lights in place - do you still need more? Short answer: no, long answer: yes. We need more. We need to get the rest of the levels to the same point and only then deliver the final blow (or blows) to them. This is quite important because you need to see how levels compare to each other. Several people may have been involved in making the levels and thus, even with similar working methods, they're bound to look somewhat different from each other; all the planning and concept art doesn't seem to ease this problem, so you still need to tweak things.

With Max Payne we did it so that one person was appointed the task to check all the levels through and write down which areas need work --more detail (room geometry, objects, textures or interactivity), better textures or improved lighting. Even though this may sound like a lot of work, it's far less than the hassle you'd get trying to leave the task to all the different level designers. Going through 20-odd levels actually doesn't take much more than one normal work day, making the tweaks and changes does, however, take several weeks, if not months; time spent here will truly pay off.

Reference

You may still have a hard time starting and finishing a level. What I would recommend is to gather around enough reference material for your project, be it photos, drawings, written descriptions, movies or TV-series, one thing is sure, you can never have too much of it. Good source for such material is obviously nowadays the internet -- of more traditional media I would recommend magazines and books about interior decoration, antiques, furniture and architecture. Being creative is important.

Summary

How was it you should go about? Good planning (written, drawn), modularity, scale (objects and textures), real life reference (geometry, objects, textures, lighting) and the final touch of making everything look like part of the same world. The process takes time, but with the methods talked about above, the task should be much easier than before.

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