LEVEL PLANNING

by Yan "Method" Ostretsov

Dan Koppel, Lead Designer of Gray Matter, once said that planning is one of the most important things in designing a level. Planning helps with performance, gameplay, etc. It also helps to find and prevent mistakes that can occur in the future. Since planning is such an important part, I decided to write a tutorial fully dedicated to that stage.

One of the first things is to come up with an idea. What the level will be like? What kind of interesting gameplay idea can you implement? You can have a visual image of a room or some kind of atmopshere you're trying to recreate. Since most of my tutorials are based on MP (Multiplayer) levels, this time I'll go with SP (Single player). When working on SP maps, LD (Level Designer) has more freedom. He can have narrow hallways, small ledges and a lot more detail than in MP maps. It's really important to have one or two interesting areas. Something that players will remember the level for. I'll be using Chicago 1930's as an example in this tutorial.

Just thinking about Chicago, I can come up with several interesting areas:

- Street surrounded by skyscrapers
- Dock with a big bridge in the background
- Dark Train station
- Factory with industrial chimneys
- Gritty back alley

Those are some rough ideas. Since I'm planning a realistic environment, it's wise to look up some reference pictures.

Next step is to research the era. What's Chicago 1930's like? Most of the buildings are blocky and have dark textures. Good texture choice for the level would be brown, gray, blue colored textures. Something that will reflect that dark and moody great depression era.

You can find good reference online, using Google or Corbis site. For Chicago reference I used Library of Congress site, which has thousands of old Chicago pictures. Also watching some movies always helps.

Now that I have some reference, I can study the pictures and extract useful information. For example these are the details I found on the reference photos that can drastically increase the visuals of the level:

- Electric Cables
- Antennas and rooftop detail
- Hotel and Bar signs
- Billboards and window ads
- Pipes supported by the buildings
- Building trims/ledges
- AC placed outside the window
- Building and sewer grates
- Hydrant on the sidewalk

At this stage, you should roughly know what kind of level you're building. Next step is sketching the level.

I prefer to use grid paper when sketching top down view layouts. For detail or quick perspective drawings I use printer paper.

Layout sketches

Detail sketches

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. If you have any comments or questions you can contact me at yanostretsov[at]yahoo[dot]com.