Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
like the overall game design, is an iterative process. At points during the procedure,
the level designers should show the work-in-progress to other members of the team
for analysis and commentary. Early input from artists, programmers, and other
designers prevents you from wasting time on overly complex levels, asking for fea-
tures the programmers cannot implement, or making demands for artwork that the
artists don't have time to meet.
At the 2004 Computer Game Technology Conference in Toronto, Canada, level
designers Rick Knowles and Joseph Ganetakos of Pseudo Interactive presented an
excellent lecture simply entitled “Level Design” (Knowles and Ganetakos, 2004).
They described the 11-stage process by which their company builds levels, which is
summarized here. The following sections assume that the development teams con-
sist of game designers, artists, programmers, and sound designers, as well as you:
the level designer.
Throughout the discussion of this process, you will notice a strong emphasis on the
relationship between the level designer and the art team, and less emphasis on the
relationship between the level designer and the audio or programming teams. The
reason for this is that level designers build prototype artwork that the art team
then uses as a blueprint from which to build final artwork that will actually go into
the game. This requires that the level designers hand off their prototype to the art
team and receive the final artwork back from the art team at particular stages in
the process. The relationship with the programmers and the audio team is less
sharply defined. Level designers request special features from these groups, and the
project manager determines when and how that work gets done, but generally it
doesn't involve handing off material to the audio or programming teams and
receiving material back from them in the same way. Your relationship with the
programmers and audio people is just as important as your relationship with the
artists, but your interactions with them may be less formally scheduled.
A Note on Duties and Terminology
The nature of a level designer's job varies considerably depending on both the
genre of the game and the technology that implements it. A few years ago, level
designers were not expected to possess either art or programming skills. As the size
and complexity of games has increased, so has the size and complexity of the level
designer's job. In modern 3D games, level designers often use 3D modeling tools to
construct temporary—and sometimes even final—artwork to go into a game. (The
term
model
refers to a three-dimensional geometric structure that depicts a single
thing, such as a human, vehicle, tree, or the underlying landscape of a level.) Also,
games now often include
scripting engines
that allow level designers to write small
programs, or
scripts
, that control some aspects of the behavior of the level during
play. Scripting engines normally implement scripting languages less powerful than
the programming language used by the programmers, but the scripting language
will be sufficient for defining the behavior of automated traps, doors, and other
special events that may occur in the level. There isn't room in this topic to teach
