The role of the level-designer

[zaphod]

that just sounds like bad planning to me. If you channel everything through a concept artist and designer, then those problems don't happen.

[FrieChamp]

that just sounds like bad planning to me. If you channel everything through a concept artist and designer, then those problems don't happen.

This pretty much sums it up what I was aboutto reply to Hourences' post.

I don't know where you have got these bad experiences from, a real games company or a mod team? Either way, if there is no planning the project will run into chaos.

Before I started at Crytek, I knew that game companies need to plan and write down a few more things than MOD developers need to do before starting a MOD project, but when I saw what goes down to paper before anyone touches an editor, I was quite stunned.

Usually you can expect from a professional company with qualified leads, that all assets which will be needed for levels get written down and scheduled so there is no big hassle during the production phase.

[Tequila]

Having a specific artist working on purely lighting seems ridiculous to me; makes me conjur up images of the development team looking like this:

On the other end of the spectrum, 'a jack of all trades is a master of none' rings true. It's all about finding a happy medium.

[Hourences]

Could have been just that place yeah, but still. Was pretty big company, big in all meanings of the word. Wasnt really cause of the planning and leads, more of excusez moi, incompetence from some people. If you dont know a(ny) 3d program or vital terms as occluders I ask myself questions..

I got another job now, smaller company where I have more freedom but I still ask myself questions by some things made up by the general gameplay guy. But at least its more workable now

I do believe it will never be perfect like this. Even if you got a pretty smooth running team you will still loose time because you have to communicate and reshedule more, and other things see previous post This whole gameplay guy vs an artist is basically like the years old visuals vs gameplay argument. .

Its just bound to collide with eachother one day imo

But thats just my point of view

Edit: Now that I think of it, I know some people in this company X, they got a gameplay department and an artist department and they use engine Y. The gameplay department there has -a lot- more experience with this Engine Y than the actual artists who never worked with it before yet and apperantly hate it. They make messy stuff all the time and get stuck constantly (motivation+time loss) yet the gameplay designers who know how to work with the engine are not allowed to help out apart from giving some tips...("you guys are hired for gameplay so youre not allowed to do visual work")

This is almost the opposite of my experience, also by far not cool. Instead of just letting them do everything or at least also the composing and finishing off...

Maybe the system works great in theory but in real life you often want to pull out all your hair seeing it in action

[kleinluka]

Having a specific artist working on purely lighting seems ridiculous to me; makes me conjur up images of the development team looking like this:

[image]

On the other end of the spectrum, 'a jack of all trades is a master of none' rings true. It's all about finding a happy medium.

well take a game like splinter cell which completely relies on and only works because of the lighting and it starts to make a bit more sense to have somebody dedicated to getting it just right.

[Tequila]

Having a specific artist working on purely lighting seems ridiculous to me; makes me conjur up images of the development team looking like this:

[image]

On the other end of the spectrum, 'a jack of all trades is a master of none' rings true. It's all about finding a happy medium.

well take a game like splinter cell which completely relies on and only works because of the lighting and it starts to make a bit more sense to have somebody dedicated to getting it just right.

Perhaps, but in such a scenario I would simply expect the map files to change hands a few times, so each designer can have their own input and fill in others' weaknesses, rather that having a singular lighting guru.

[kleinluka]

Well the Splinter cell team handled it differently and IMO they did a good job. It is also the way it is usually done in movies with lots of specialized people so it's not like its a totally new thing.

Chaos Theory looks really nice, they did an excellent job with their normal and specular mapping, which you'll see quite a bit of in the game with the scary dim lighting etc.

[Tequila]

I just hope it's a bit less Goddamn linear!

[FrieChamp]

Oh and I forgot to mention that one of the major requirements for a succesful collaborative work on a game is, that the designers shouldn't be goddamn morons

[Bluestrike]

Due to the steady increase of detail in levels, also the role of the level-designer is changing and handled differently in each company. The level-designers at Crytek for example focus on general game-design and the design of the missions, but are not involved in the creation of objects, textures etc. It's a cooperation between the design- and art department.

......

So you say there is hope for mappers what have sucky texture and model skills? :-)

[TomWithTheWeather]

So you say there is hope for mappers what have sucky texture and model skills? :-)

Yup. Different jobs at game companies are getting more and more specialized. It's getting to the point where game environments are getting too visually detailed for most traditional level designers to handle. If done correctly, the workflow combination of a separate artist and level designer can actually be faster and produce a better, more polished, product in the end. This also leads to the artistic theme of the entire game being more consistant.

For instance, look at a game like UT2k4. A very large portion of the maps were made by a large amount of different people. As a result, you get a game whose maps are very inconsistant. It works for UT2k4 because it's just a crazy game with no clear visual theme anyway. One minute you're fighting on an asteroid with two towers and the next minute you're in and Asian setting. But the game tends to feel less like one whole game and more like an assembly of mods.

HL2 was so polished and looked good because they did separate the level design from the artist tasks. Same with Doom3. Farcry. These current gen games, IMO, show how the roles of artist and level designer are breaking up and how well it works out if everyone is talented and specialized. Just think of next-gen engines and how high-poly they'll get. It's almost too much work even for the level designer that can do relatively high-poly modeling and 2048 texturing.

I think in the next year or two, level design and artist will fully separate across the whole industry because of the boost in has-to-be-modeled-detail-because-brush-can't-do-it. Brush, as a visually appealling tool for the LD, is dying. Brush is going to get to the point where it's only really useful as a method for optimization. But you say, "What about HL2 and Doom3? There's still a lot of brush there!" and I'd say that you are correct and it works well, but the next couple of gen leaps in engine tech and hardware tech are going to make HL2 and Doom3 look like Quake1.

And don't worry, it's not like the level designer doesn't have anything to do anymore. He's now plenty occupied with gameplay/mapflow creation, blocking out the entire game, scripting sequences, and most important of all, making the game fun. Fact is, most LD's are mediocre at modelling and texturing. When a company is trying to create the best possible game, who do you think will get the task of modelling the statue that goes in the courtyard in the map? Artist, because he'll do a much better job at it.

Gearbox does it this way and as a result, the game is better, visually and consistantly. And I still get to do a big portion of tradional LD things. I didn't make the tree, but I get to put it where I want to, and it looks better than anything I could have created myself.

My 2 cents.

[von*ferret]

I tend to agree with tom

[Tequila]

Wouldn't for BiA it be: "OK, got a lovely tree here from the artists. Now, I just need to consult thousands of maps, accounts and photographs to calculate the EXACT position of the thing during D-Day, and if I get it even a millimetre wrong, then I'm sacked"?

[KungFuSquirrel]

Actually, id is a bad example - their team is VERY cross-talented and a lot of them did all kinds of work across multiple areas of the game.

I'm very pleased with the workflow that the Doom3 tech allows. There's no comparison to patch meshes in any other editor, and with those you might as well be modeling. I would love to see a company either a) take the fine control of details from a modeling program and toss it into a level editor (such as with Radiant and patch meshes, particularly texturing), or b) create more effective plugins or add-ons for a 3D package to allow quicker and easier texturing for

I mean, imagine building a set of pipes or a railing. right now, I can plop down a brush, turn it into a cylinder, and rotate and bend it every which way to my hearts content, all with perfect texturing the whole way (or easily tweaked and fixed within seconds if I throw it out of whack). Now imagine an editor where you could not only do that but, by grouping, weld points together and define them as their own model and instance, then plop it around like a model itself.

The thing I love the most about my job is I really do get to do it all - I've documented levels, blocked them out, and am soon getting into a lot of enemy placement and gameplay stuff. Only thing I don't or won't do is the advanced scripting, which is beyond my tiny little programming knowledge anyway. But I also build mostly from scratch (well, when I'm not on someone else's map, hehe). It's really cool as a designer to be able to keep the ideas to a smaller group of people - more hands is good for productivity, but it's sometimes disheartening to lose the control over some of the things you really aimed for.

I definitely agree that designers are getting more and more involved with the really important stuff, like what tom mentioned of the gameplay/flow, blocked out stuff, scripting, and fun in general. But I don't think that means that you have to take all the fun construction work away, at least not just yet.

EDIT: Tequila, you rule.

[TomWithTheWeather]

Wouldn't for BiA it be: "OK, got a lovely tree here from the artists. Now, I just need to consult thousands of maps, accounts and photographs to calculate the EXACT position of the thing during D-Day, and if I get it even a millimetre wrong, then I'm sacked"?

That's why we have Uber-GPS's that have a rewind time feature so we can see into the past.