Posts by Ziklops

  • Level Design Best Practices Examples

    Quote from Mitch Mitchell

    On 10/8/2018 at 10:10 PM, Mitch Mitchell said: Dust 2


    I think one of the most famous levels ever created in 3d multiplayer might be of service to your goal...

    Yeah, I think Dust 2 fits the bill. I've not worked on any multiplayer shooters professionally, but I guess it must have been referenced at some point.

  • Level Design Best Practices Examples

    Hey all,

    I was just curious if anyone knew of any best practice examples of level design for a mechanic, genre of game or a particular game series that are used internally at studios they work, have worked at in the past or you have seen stated by another studio (could be from one of your studio's games or from a competitor's)? So what I mean is a level or part of a level (could also be a mission or quest) that the team looks at as a guideline for best practices when designing other levels or more specifically, combat encounters - shooting/melee, puzzles, traversal challenges etc. I'm interested in finding other widely considered examples that can be learnt from. Here are some I know of:

    • "Knock Knock" in Gears Of War - Cited as one of the levels that Epic Games used as a great example of a combat encounter for Gears.
    • Corinth River in Killzone 2 - At this year's GDC, Blake Rebouche did a presentation called "Level Design Workshop: Balancing Action and RPG in Horizon Zero Dawn Quests" where he mentions a part of Killzone 2 Corinth River as an example used by Guerilla Games for good FPS level design for combat (which is what he used as his basis to improve his moment to moment design for one of the combat spaces in Horizon: Zero Dawn).
    • Dr. Galvani's Apartment in Dishonored (Fullbright whilst working on Tacoma) - "Such a perfect distillation of everything you can do in this game at this point", "A textbook example of a designer taking every available tool in the toolkit and making it into this very focused single interconnected section of the game." - Steve Gaynor Tone Control Episode 18 (Approx 1:30:10).
    • Dust 2 for Counterstrike - Created by Dave Johnston, and widely considered one of the best examples of multiplayer shooter level design. (Making of Dust 2)

    Anyone else got any others that they know of? I'll add them to the list.

  • Player Gating in Level Design

    @blackdog Thanks, yeah I've seen that link. Yeah I'm looking to do a write up on gating techniques, with some good and bad examples. It makes it a bit easier when clearly classifying the different types. I also want to avoid contradicting the common understanding of terms as well, so I just thought I'd double check on here.

  • Player Gating in Level Design

    @Helder Pinto I'm talking in relation to single player games and gating in terms of blocking off exits to different areas of a level, whether temporarily of permanently. Mostly FPS and third person action/adventure genres, but gating is applicable to others.

    @Alf-Life Yeah they're both terms in relation to gating, where you are using methods of restricting the players movement through the level. What you call back gating gating I've heard referred to as hard gates. I've also read hard gates as being what you call front gates, where an absolute condition (such as killing all the enemies) must be met before it is unlocked and the player is allowed to progress. I've also seen soft gates described as small challenges that influence the player's pace through the level, for example some destructible objects that can be easily cleared with a weapon the player has. Plus I've read similar to your example as a soft gate, where the player might encounter enemies of a higher difficulty that they aren't quite ready to take on yet.

    I'm not saying any of those aren't valid under those categories, I was just wondering if there was a common definition in anyone's experience?

  • Player Gating in Level Design

    Hi everyone,

    I've been looking into gating through level design a bit more deeply, but have come across some differing interpretations between "hard gates" and "soft gates". I wanted to ask how you would define both "hard gates" and "soft gates" to see what the general consensus was here?