Design

The author of this article, Gary 'Kol' Brigadir, worked with the Issues team and continues to produce maps for Half-Life that are inspiring.

There are already a few tutorials here at RUST that look at good design and this is not meant to replace that information, but to enhance it.

These Tips & Tricks come from reading all there is to read and testing and re-testing theories. (As well as having actually released something into the public domain :-)

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Generic Single Player Mapping tips.

This is a list of guidelines for making single player levels. Hopefully you'll find this useful. Some of the guidelines are based on theory, so if you have any experience you want to share, or have different views on anything mentioned here, or have anything to add, please post a comment!
Remember, these are guidelines & tips, not rules on how to make maps.

There is one rule to single player maps: FUN! Everything else is up to you.

Physical Level design can be broken down to 2 basic parts:
Environment - (which is largely brushwork, textures, ambiance, architecture, props...)
Gameplay - (entity work, story telling, progression, pace, interaction...)

1. Environment:

• Good interesting Architecture is derived from functional environments: real life or fictional. Try to mimic real-life environments as opposed to just creating places to shoot things in.



• Architecture and props often fit environment style and sometimes characters, monsters & weapons. Some Items are designed for use in different environments: So no sniper weapons in Vents Please!



• Architecture also adapts to physical, natural, human, and gravitational constraints - supports, brackets, beams - what you might call detail. Make it look like its there for a reason.



• Brushwork and Architecture also serves a purpose - it subtly hinders or aids the player by giving enemies better cover or giving the player certain advantages.



• Good brushwork and architecture always conforms to Game Engine limitations.



• Artistic, & Surreal factors play a role in constructing less "real-life" environments. You can draw inspiration from anything, Movies, Other Games, Books, and even Dreams.



• Mechanical locomotion helps an environment "feel" more interesting. Try to spend as much time on creating gameplay elements as you do on environments. This includes everything the player can interact with.



• Uniformity is limited to certain types of architecture, so try to keep away from "corridor maps" Variety is always good.



• Try to create the impression that every room or prop or item serves (or served or will serve or would serve) a function.



• Loops are very effective: Let the player see areas where they were, or will be, or have to be. This also includes backtracking – a little backtracking can save you mapping new areas, but too much and it gets boring and annoying.



• Convey feelings of awe, fear etc through spatial awareness - high places, wide, large, small, dark. Lighting plays an enormous part in spatial awareness, so take time to tweak your environments until you are happy with the feelings conveyed.



• The less obvious errors in texture alignment, brushwork, and style the better. Don’t put dirty, rusty barrels in a clean lab, and don’t have clean walls and floors in places where there could be obvious ware & tare.



• Attempt to tell a story through the environment – how did it become destroyed for example, why is it so clean and lifeless? What happened, and what will happen? If you can master this, then making your gameplay elements becomes a lot easier.



• Take time to perfect the ambiance of an area, use every single enhancement you have available: Ambient sounds, sound / echo modifiers etc...



• Try to put emphasis on Purpose, Function and Gameplay enhancement.

2. Gameplay

• A little "skill based" (jumping etc) gameplay is good, too much and it gets frustrating.



• Rewards and risks should be balanced and obvious.



• Try to create the impression that you can be attacked from all sides at any time. Tension is a must in any map, but this has to be balanced too, since players soon grow immune to it if it is overused.



• Try to strike a balance between huge fire fights, periods of relative "calm" and puzzle solving.



• During fire fights make things interesting with multi-sided battles, but keep it efficient. Know all the enemy types and what makes them tick. An example from Half-Life:
  4 grunts and 3 aliens can be more effective than having 12 or more monsters eating away at your r_speeds. The key is in knowing what works and what doesn’t.



• Relative calm means exploring areas, occasionally encountering enemies or other characters. It can also help build up tension and offer a change in pace. Room for exploration and finding alternative routes to goals reduces linearity in maps.



• Avoid things like difficult jumps, cryptic puzzles, design faults, and hugely imbalanced gameplay where the player resorts to cheats by play testing your maps thoroughly.



• Make it FUN: Whatever is fun to you, is probably fun for a few other people, ask others what they think. Comic relief never hurt any map. Be it eye candy, freak accidents, gratuitous violence and or character one-liners. What makes a map fun is up to you in the end, but a good level is a fun level, after all, this is why we play games...



• What players expect to see is far more frightening than anything you can show them. Use this to your advantage – delay revealing “scary” monsters or similar things to exploit the player’s imagination. Offer clues before revealing something big and instrumental.



• Again, gameplay is about Fun. If it’s not enjoyable, it’s not worth playing.

General tips / guidelines:

• If you want to progress in your mapping ability, getting the right kind of feedback is key. In progress there is just one factor involved, and its experience. You get experience from mapping. In feedback, you need a balance of encouraging feedback, and constructive criticism.



• Remember: When criticising its imperative that you keep this balance, be nice to the mapper, verbally beat the map.



• If you feel like mapping, map - it makes no difference what you're working on, just map what you want. Practice is experience.



• Releasing a Map to the Public? Great, but first make sure you have everything done. All maps released to the public must be fully and properly tested and assembled. There’s nothing worse than getting a map and finding out that the author didn’t even bother including all the files needed to run the thing...



• Needless to say, any map what has obvious errors and bugs in the design should not be released.

Testing:

• Fix on the go: Run around your map and jot down any oddities, errors and bugs you find on paper somewhere and fix them immediately. You may overlook a bug early in the design process, forget it, and never hear about it until someone tells you that they can't complete your map because of it. It’s a good idea to let someone you don't know test your maps. Get a second opinion on your design and take the criticism seriously and constructively.



• Evaluate the criticism according to your judgement, and then act on it. Don’t change something just because someone said it was crap. Think first.



• When testing maps always test to breaking point - try to interrupt important sequences that must happen, jump where you’re not supposed to, try to ruin the map when testing it. If you and or your beta tester(s) fail to make the game crash or create serious errors in the map or gameplay then the map is ready for release.

Assembly:

• [Half-Life Specific] Make any SP release its own mod folder with correct directory structures and all necessary files.



• There's nothing more annoying than getting a map, loading it up, and having the game crash because the author forgot to include a sound, model or something else.



• Always include a ReadMe with information you think is relevant to the release.



• Avoid self-installing scripts or programs. A lot of people, like me, hate them. You should be able to unzip / unrar / untar.gz and fire up the custom game or map without worrying that the installer will overwrite any of your existing files.



• When distributing your maps through the internet make sure everything is the way it should be, remove unused files and directories, double check that you have included all the content, and when your map is uploaded somewhere, check that the zip file is not corrupted and everything is intact. Yes, that’s right, ZIP or RAR or TAR.GZ, do something. Lots of people are still on 56k.

Conclusion:

There are lots of Articles and tutorials covering gameplay and general level design. You don’t have to go far to find them. Just search around, read material you find useful, and know that wisdom is something that cannot be passed on through IRC, forums or word of mouth. If you want to discover something, do it your self to get the maximum benefit.

Make levels for fun, not because you want appreciation from the community or fame on the Internet. That gets you nowhere.

Once you gather enough insight into the secrets of level design, mapping gets harder and harder, as standards of work increase. If you can fend off the difficulty and keep the fun factor in mapping then you’ve got what it takes to do this kind of thing professionally.