The Architecture of Level Design

Events

Having selected an appropriate path and organizational type to act as a framework for your level, you can now focus on the smaller events that bring a design to life. Usually in the real world type or organization takes precedence over path, in the game world this relationship is inverted, and the design is often developed around a number of game play events.

In his book A Pattern Language, Christopher Alexander and his colleagues identify 253 patterns, "spatial bits," that through combination can go towards creating meaningful environments. The list of patterns begins at the city-scale and many of the items are little too small-scale or domestic. However, a cursory examination of the list can be useful for generating ideas. In moving from large to small scale, they follow the process of developing a design.

On a streetscape for example, you could introduce an arcade to create the focus for an event and enliven an otherwise flat façade. Although frontier towns and gunfights spring most immediately to mind, an arcade is an opportunity to create a transition space between inside and outside.

As already mentioned, on a building interior think about developing a staircase as its own separate space. The stairs should not just be a slot between floors, but treat it as "a stage." Give the stair its own volume, open up the surrounding walls and ceiling, make the landings large enough to do battle on.

At the room scale, Alexander suggests considering detail like interior windows and half-height partitions. For gameplay, they create locations to hide and snipe from, and they also break up the feel of a level being a series of discreet cells.

Character

Materials, light and scale are the key areas to focus on developing the character of your levels.

Building materials, or texture in the case of games, lend a great deal of character to a space. Brick adds warmth, stone is cold, and white walls clinical. The first rule is to keep it simple. Try limiting yourself to three materials. One for the floor, ceiling and walls or even simpler. The architecture should be background and not draw attention away from gameplay with dazzling textures. Add detail with trim like wainscoting and mullions, but keep them in a consistent material. Avoid mismatching construction types, the weaker, lighter materials should always go on top. And pay attention to how you turn corners and match edges.

Light is the most effective way to dramatize and enliven a space. You can improve a corridor simply by adding skylights or backlighting. Architecture has a long history of illuminating spaces naturally. The works of Louis Kahn, Richard Meier and Steven Holl are modern examples of inventive lighting techniques. They are experts at manipulating indirect light and playing with the transparency of glass.

It is important to achieve the correct scale and proportion of elements for a convincing sense of space. There are numerous historic precedents for scale and proportion that can be referenced to achieve the appropriate character for your game. Each period of history has its own sets of laws for the size and distribution of elements. Greek is different from Roman and Gothic, as they are different from modern day proportions.

You can also modify the scale in a level for dramatic effect. For example, you can distort and stretch details in a racing game to increase the sense of speed. In Disneyland, many of the attractions are built at three-quarter scale for emphasis, and in first person shooters many of the motifs are compressed and repeated to intensify the experience.

Conclusion

It's impossible within the scope of this paper to cover all the aspects of an introduction to architecture and it's potential uses in game design. It should be clear however that going outside the standard references of the short history of computer game design can serve to widen the range of experiences possible in games. The importance of expanding that experience can't be underscored enough. Games and architecture have always been an important part of the way in which people express themselves. Architects continue to evolve this process over time and game designers could stand to learn a great deal by looking at how other design professionals have dealt with similar problems. As computer games develop with the ever-advancing technology there will be opportunities to express with much more subtlety the full range of human experience both real and imagined. Designing that experience is not the static application of a set of rules and principles. No set of rules or principles will make a boring game design idea a better one, and by the same token great game design ideas can only be made better with the smart application of the right principles.

Bibliography

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Christopher Alexander et al., A Pattern Language, New York: Oxford University Press, 1977.

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Banister Fletcher, Dan Cruickshank (Ed.), Andrew Saint (Ed.), Sir Banister Fletcher's a History of Architecture, Butterworth-Heinemann, 1996.

Kenneth Frampton, Modern Architecture: A Critical History, New York: Thames & Hudson, 1992.

Steven Holl, Parallax, New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2000.

John Lobell, Between Silence and Light: Spirit in the Architecture of Louis I. Kahn, New York: Random House, 2000.

Richard Meier et al., Richard Meier: Architect, vol. 3, New York: Rizzoli, 1999.

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Colin Rowe, Fred Koetter, Collage City, New York: MIT Press, 1984.