Level Design Help Files

    I decided to start writing about leveldesign. The idea came after so many maps that I made for unreal and being frustrated by how bad the levels in Prey 2006 were. Shadow Warrior also has some confusing levels. F.E.A.R. in contrast has great leveldesign.

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    In Prey 2006 they placed a slot machine with a pipe next to a door. I spent almost a minute trying to open that door. They placed the machine in a way that you are tempted to use it because it really feels as if the machine would unlock the door.

    So I wrote 10 pages and plan to translate to english later. Now I have to do some cleaning up and choose a better structure for the text. I didn't wrote much, it's mostly screenshots and commentary. Currently it is as follows:

    - Readability and contrast. I choose FEAR 2, Diablo 2, Path of Exile, Prey 2006, a map of mine and Unreal Tournament's Outpost 23 to talk about how having too much / little contrast is a bad thing.

    - Poorly highlighted paths. I choose Shadow Warrior, Unreal Tournament 1, Jedi Knight 1, Prey 2006, as examples of paths that the player have a hard time finding.

    - Well highlighted paths. Max Payne 1, Alan Wake, Jedi Knight 2, Shadow Warrior, as examples of paths are are clearly visible nad the player can easly follow.

    - Bad puzzles. Prey 2006 is a lesson on how to make puzzles that are both too easy and too confuse because the player have no idea of what to do.

    - Good puzzles. Prey 2006 and Jedi Knight 2. Interestnly, the ideas in Prey 2006 are creative. It's the execution of the puzzles that is poor.

    - Exploration. Doom SIGIL, Bioshock Infinite and Alan Wake as examples of what you can do to engage the player to explore. In the case of Bioshock I criticized how they place a locked chest in one place and the key very far away in a way that forces you to backtrack a long journey for little gain.

    - Landmarks. Discovery Channel, doom 1993, Alan Wake and Jedi Knight 2 as examples of how landmarks are a good thing.

    - Lack of landmarks. UT1 and GoldenEye, as examples of how a map with no landmarks at all, assymetric design and the same lights and textures reused everywhere create a map that is very hard to navigate.

    - Coherence and cohesion. I use Shadow Warrior and Prey 2006 as examples of how things in the game world are out of place or lack any logic behind it.

    - Form and function. I use Prey 2006 as an example of objects that you just can't tell what they are and levels that you can't tell where you are. It's just nonsense. That and how you have to make good use of the mechanics that you have. For ex: in the same space you have a regular bridge to cross and an anti-grav bridge that makes you corss the same chasm walking upside down.

    I made a func_instance from some displacements and some prop_static items, but i want to revert the process, to make them part of the initial map again. Presing the button "to World" does nothing. Any ideas of how to get rid of func_instance?

    Quote from Serialmapper

    1 hour ago, Serialmapper said: I made a func_instance from some displacements and some prop_static items, but i want to revert the process, to make them part of the initial map again. Presing the button "to World" does nothing. Any ideas of how to get rid of func_instance?

    Open the instance vmf and copy/paste the contents to the main map.

    To be straight to the point. I'm getting this message (see the screenshot below) while trying to build a radar using terri's autoradar, and the radar doesn't build/compile. I deleted the tar_config entity, i deleted the visgroups tar_layout,etc. and remade it all over again. The radar compiling works perfectly with other maps, but with this one map no. I don't know, do i have a faulty displacement that could affect autoradar!? i do not have other errors while compiling the map, also in game there are no errors/bugs. Thank you in advance!

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    @Serialmapper yeah that version of auto radar has some precision issues. the displacement warning message you see can ignored though, it just skips it if it sees that.

    as for why it doesn't build, i have no idea, the crashes are pretty much random. sorry that it is wasting your time!

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