The Hows And Whys of Level Design - Released!

    It talks about what not to do floorplan wise, why not, and what kind of things would improve it. That should give you the idea of how to design your routes.

    How would you have rather seen that part been described? A step by step walkthrough of building a lay out?

    Might have been possible although you need to keep in mind that it needs to be pretty universal. A CS lay out is not a Quake lay out... It is very hard to write something down that is true for -all- action and fps games.

    Well, considering I know next to shit about level design, this book can only help me in my situation.

    Hopefully I'll be able to give an opinion of the book from the perspective of a noob mapper.

    Hourences, this book looks very promising.

    I'm going to order it sometime next month, I'm realy looking forward to read it!

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    How would you have rather seen that part been described? A step by step walkthrough of building a lay out?

    Yes, sincerely. Building a layout is not a piece of cake for many of us, and i think you're one of best placed person to teach us how to overcome all the troubles we'll meet once we get deep into it.

    But layout is one thing. There are many other topics to be discussed again, such as difficulty peaks management, rhythm (how to keep the flow in single player), how to place a unique moment (wow effect) at the right time, and so on.

    You may have added some cases study using popular FPS as examples, even if they're outdated. CTF is still a valid topic for instance.

    You can also talk about level design rules in multiplayer and singleplayer, using for example the Call of Duty 2's HQ game type as a basis to extrapolate rules for upcoming FPS. I mean, as long as you have the method to divide a game into single logical level design pieces, it's rather easy to apply this method to other games.

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    Might have been possible although you need to keep in mind that it needs to be pretty universal. A CS lay out is not a Quake lay out... It is very hard to write something down that is true for -all- action and fps games.

    Yeah, this is why i thought having kinda "genre agnostic" approach ruins the whole thing. To me, you can use genre-specific examples to illustrate most of the points you teach. It's still interesting for a guy who does, let's say, puzzle games, because he still learns something.

    I've read this book a few months ago and even though there are some nice parts in it, I felt like it didn't go deep enough in the subjects it raised. Some subjects were repeated many times and explained in depth while others, as important if not more, were talked about in a single paragraph: "This concept is very important to make your levels interesting, for example this is bad and this is good. The end." (Exaggerated of course)

    Obviously you weren't aiming for a book of the size of the Encyclopædia Britannica, so it's understandable why you couldn't treat every subject with the same dedication, but still, I found some chapters of the book to be pretty deceiving, in that they did little more than citing some level-design related features and then passed on to something else. It was a good introduction to level-design, no doubt with that, but I was expecting to find something more. I might have been misled by the name though, and by the fact that I'm generally more interested in reading about gameplay than visuals and that the latter was more important than the former in your book.

    Also, even though I can't say it was THAT disturbing, I have found it to contain a lot of typos, missing words etc. and even though these can also be found in the latest Stephen King best-seller, I have found these mistakes to be very regular in your book, and those that I knew MS Word would have pointed out for you ended up irritating me a little bit. I'm in no way a writer, but I read a lot and expect these mistakes to be limited when I buy a book of this kind (more expensive than my summer polar I mean.)

    I'm sorry if my post seems like I hated your book: it's not the case. On the positive side, I think you raised some very interested points, such as the references to photo composition, which I had never read about in any level-design/game-design book I read. I just felt like pointing out the things that annoyed me in the book, but I still keep it as a whole in good esteem. I read that you were working on another one, so good luck with it!

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    Obviously you weren't aiming for a book of the size of the Encyclopædia Britannica, so it's understandable why you couldn't treat every subject with the same dedication, but still, I found some chapters of the book to be pretty deceiving, in that they did little more than citing some level-design related features and then passed on to something else. It was a good introduction to level-design, no doubt with that, but I was expecting to find something more. I might have been misled by the name though, and by the fact that I'm generally more interested in reading about gameplay than visuals and that the latter was more important than the former in your book.

    I know that I didn't touch on everything, it wasn't the intention to do so either, and besides, it is completely impossible to touch on all subjects.

    You might have had a too thorough understanding of level design to be a fit for my book. I really aim for beginners and intermediates and I am fully aware that for example a professional or somebody who has been mapping for (example) 8 years probably wouldn't get a great deal of value out of it. However, for a starter I believe my book helps heaps to better understand level design and the reasoning behind things.

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    I have found these mistakes to be very regular in your book, and those that I knew MS Word would have pointed out for you ended up irritating me a little bit.

    With 55000 words I surely believe there are some errors, but I cant agree that its full of errors, and certainly not simple typos Word would have found. Believe me, if it were that simple I would have noticed them.

    I just scrolled through the entire thing and the only words marked are gameplay, teleporter, etc.

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    Any stores that sell it in holland? Can't really order anything because i don't have a credit card, defenatly want to take a closer look at this!

    If youre sincerely interested, payment can be done through a regular dutch banktransfer. Contact me if interested.

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    for a starter I believe my book helps heaps to better understand level design and the reasoning behind things.

    Definitely see your point, reading this a few years ago would have surely been more profitable to me.

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    With 55000 words I surely believe there are some errors, but I cant agree that its full of errors, and certainly not simple typos Word would have found. Believe me, if it were that simple I would have noticed them.I just scrolled through the entire thing and the only words marked are gameplay, teleporter, etc.

    I seem to remember there were a whole bunch of them, but it was far ago, and I just flipped through the book and was unable to find any error. I guess my comment was exagerated, since I can't find any example, it probably means there aren't so many of them after all. Nevermind!

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