7 Steps to Level Design

Step one – idea

The first step of the level design process is to come up with the initial idea. I am fairly acquainted with UDK and its kismet visual programming so I felt that it wasn’t unreasonable to create my own gameplay and mechanics which would influence the level design.

Here are some initial gameplay ideas I thought of.

Gameplay:

Player initiating evolution/ de-evolution of environment assets and characters
 

Assets used by enemies as cover change giving the player an advantage

Path through level changing from players/AI actions or progressively over time (evolving the world around the player)
 

Areas become inaccessible or open after a trigger event

Taking an easier route initially leads to a more challenging area and vice versa

Player traits altering through significantly increased evolution (switchable abilities)
 

Night vision or other form of vision – (cheat using texture density debugging console command)

Movement alterations – (modify movement speed and jump height through console command)

Character size – (changed through command console)

Step two – purpose and feature

The purpose and feature of this level design project is to take my chosen theme of evolution and have a level designed and built around it.

There are also other learning and personal skill developments that I hope to gain from this as well. Being a student who is specializing himself as an environment artist I can see how such a project will befit me in a few ways.

From creating this level I hope to benefit my own artistic workflows, idea generation and overall skills for creating interesting game environments.

What I want from the level itself is a feeling a grand scale. I am also thinking of having some large structures and manmade environments that have interesting shapes as well as being a part of the gameplay. I want upbeat action in the gameplay with short breaks in-between areas.

Step three – location and setting

After initially deciding I wanted a large scale with the inclusion of man made structures and environments I began to come up with a list of settings I could put the gameplay into.

Bridge – first I thought of a bridge, I could make one fairly large and give it an interesting design. However I felt that I could do better and find an environment that would have the possibility to have more rich design and gameplay as I felt the bridge would be quite linear.

Major Highway – following on from the bridge I thought of a setting which could have many paths, and a multilevel highway could allow me to switch the player onto different lanes, levels and sides of the highway.

Dam – the last idea I came across with a general chat to a friend about holidays, she was talking about the hoover dam. It gave me an idea and after looking at images of various dams I adopted the idea and setting.

I knew that I wasn’t going to recreate a real dam as it would limit me artistically, but I thought the scale and many shapes that some are made from could really be explored and something really appealing and interesting could come out of it.

Step four – photo reference

Environment and Setting references

Lighting references

Step Five – Story and narrative

This step I feared the most as I know I am not the best story writer or able to think of rich characters and plots.

This is where I needed to have an element of my theme evolution injected so I began going over a few ideas.

What it all came down to was that this dam was the power source to a large science and research facility in which robots were tested like crash test dummies. I had the idea when I thought how evolution affects things but all of them were biological and in living things so I thought what isn’t yet can evolve.

This led me onto computer code. I have read before that in the future we may be able to create a code that can re code itself. I applied this to the setting and story so far and it seemed obvious that maybe one of the robots develops this capability.

I felt like the story could really be introduced through gameplay. Like the robot character encountering a problem then reprogramming itself so that it could achieve it.

Environment Story:

 

Its 2074, robots are a part of everyday life and they do the dangerous and undesirable jobs as well as work alongside humans in certain cases. Center of Robotics and Artificial Intelligence is situated on the outskirts of the biggest population in the world. The huge city requires the use of advanced robots in everyday life and CRAI supplies them.

  The research center has been developing a new generation of AI which is housed inside the largest super computer on the planet. The AI is able to write programs, adapt itself and develop its own thoughts. This new AI scares many of the world’s population and other critics as they feared the cliché that the AI would become self-aware and a threat to man. The researchers and development staff are aware of the AI’s capabilities and as such allow the super computer no connection to any major network or data base.
 

However a large attack from an organized terrorist group are set to destroy the AI or capture the AI and have begun an attack on the facility.

 

Player Story:

The player comes into it as one of the many configurable crash test robots. These robots are given set parameters in which they can operate, often reducing their max speed and abilities.

Unknown to the other staff at the facility the AI has a link to the outside world and has done since its creation and quickly detects the danger it is in. Using the buildings own Wi-Fi the AI adopts a host body in which to make an escape, that body is the players testing robot.

Now the player must escape and avoid capture or destruction to protect the AI which has integrated itself within the robot.

Step 6 - challenges

With evolution being the main theme I want to show adaptation when the player encounters a new problem or challenge.

A few ideas:

The player walks into a room with an impossible amount of opposition. The AI acts quickly to protect the player by shutting off the lights however now neither the player or enemy soldiers can see, this is where the player 'evolves' the ability to use cameras in the environment as the AI changes the players view to a night vision camera. Now the player must use this external view to navigate around the stumbling soldiers and off to safety.

Inside the dam the enemy destroys the generators plunging the environment into dim light again now the player will knows about the night vision so can use this to their advantage to spot hidden enemies and flank them.

The player is required to navigate through hazardous obstacles such as a spinning turbine so the AI introduces overclock which allows the robots CPU to be temporally overclocked in order to perform many more calculations, this relates back to the player as slow motion.

This slow motion also comes into play again later in the level when the player must evade incoming missiles and move to cover.

At one point the player is given an ability to have increased parameters which exceed the robots safety restrictions in order to overcome a large jump. This new ability can be toggled so that the player is not constantly performing huge leeps. This mechanic can be useful in a few areas of the level to access a higher vantage point on the enemy.

Step 7 - top down map

When it came to making my top down map I did something a little different to everyone else. I feel like I am more efficient in 3d software than 2d and felt I could create a level design far quicker and neater in 3d. I understand that at this stage in a design process most of the work is sketchy and most of the time may not even resemble the same design as originally envisioned.

As I am very fast at creating models in 3ds Max I found that as I built rooms, corridors, etc. I could quickly alter or delete parts that I thought would work in my head but when translated into 3d just didn’t seem to work.

The two images below are the map that came from this quick pushing, pulling, extruding and rescaling technique that I chose.