The role of the level-designer

[DD]

I don't think even the doom 3 style of level design will make it past the next-gen or next next-gen. BSP will always be around, you need giant flat planes for walls/halls almost everywhere and it's great for optimization/culling. It's great for core architecture, gameplay flow control.

However all the fine details, columns, computers, wires, lights, power plugs, shelves with books, pens, phones, foliage, etc. Those need to be modeled, and regardless of how cool patch meshes are, they simply can't go there. If you could even get that much detail in, getting the UVW map right would be insane, and let us not forget ANIMATIONS. A pipe or railing or thick wiring is ok, and even terrain, but I think going anything beyond that is asking a way too much. Programs like max/maya/etc. have focused on this for years, and artists train on those programs for years. To build an editor with that power would take lots of dev time and training time when it’s really not needed.

An all-control-level-designer-program might work in doom3 but comparatively to HL2/farcry/etc., doom 3 is very low detail and simply would not work in those games. Take an average room from doom 3, take away the normals, fog and steam effects, and make it full bright. Now compare it to the same thing in hl2 and that's what I mean. I guess comparing the look of the levels in the two editors would be perfect to explain. Doom 3 relies so much on these things, and although it’s a nice look, I don't think it will make it past these next-gen's. I just don't see an all-in-one editor even getting close to the level of detail next-gen games are hitting.

Try to imagine the next doom game on Earth (if there) with the current engine. A mixture of outdoor and indoor areas, office buildings, homes, malls, military bases... Lots of artist time is going to be demanded or it really just won't match the level of detail that generation of games will be at. Unless the majority of the game takes place inside a giant metal military complex and the like, some people like that...

[FrieChamp]

BSP will always be around, you need giant flat planes for walls/halls almost everywhere and it's great for optimization/culling

There aren't "any" BSP brushes in FarCry. Floors, walls, ceilings are even modeled objects (in different sizes) you place in the map and align them to get a room. It really is annoying when you spent most of your time in hammer before you start mapping with Sandbox. Maybe I''ll manage to convince one of the senior programmers here to add BSP for the next game (step backwards? )

[Hourences]

BSP will definalty disappear, I dont think its going to survive the next few years. Which is great on one hand, and on the other hand not so great

Great to quickly fix or add a small thing with a cube or so and to zone things off and easily texture them but on the other hand bsp isnt really the fastest way of working and it really is oldskool, next unreal engine wont have BSP anymore anyway afaik and engines that DO have bsp today the day are more of a rarity already than the other way round

You should start to view level editors more as the composers and finishers and not the actual tool to do everything with. We never made everything in an editor in the first place. Things like textures were photoshop. It would be crazy to try and equivalent Max with your game editor. Hard to get such complex program out in just a year or so and not easy for your artist and anyone new you recruit because they have to learn yet another program before they can start to work which slows down.

Editors should be highly specialized in composing levels, easily placing instanced meshes around. Easily making shaders and materials, lighting, particles, special gameplay entities, adding stuff like occluders, simple exporting and saving, testplaying. And all previewable ofcourse

That kinda stuff you need, its the hole in the market because Max cant do it well

And that will prolly be the 3rd job in the future (I hope), Gameplay Dude, Model Dude, The Finish Off Dude

Tom fact that UT2004 is a mess is not our fault, look at ONP, everyone made their own stuff yet (except the themes) its still coherent..

UT2's fault was that were too many people with different skilllevels, too many different mesh artists and specially lack of art direction from the leads are the cause

[FrieChamp]

Levels for UT2k4 and now Guerilla games eh? Welcome again Hourences

[KungFuSquirrel]

doom 3 is very low detail and simply would not work in those games. Take an average room from doom 3, take away the normals, fog and steam effects, and make it full bright. Now compare it to the same thing in hl2 and that's what I mean.

I find it interesting you're saying that from one game on the engine, and it's not like HL2 doesn't have plenty of extremely simple design in it, either. Sometimes less is more, you know. Not every room needs 8 million polys of in-game or high poly source material to look right. And just wait until the crop of licensees starts pushing things for higher minimum spec hardware.

However all the fine details, columns, computers, wires, lights, power plugs, shelves with books, pens, phones, foliage, etc. Those need to be modeled, and regardless of how cool patch meshes are, they simply can't go there. If you could even get that much detail in, getting the UVW map right would be insane, and let us not forget ANIMATIONS. A pipe or railing or thick wiring is ok, and even terrain, but I think going anything beyond that is asking a way too much. Programs like max/maya/etc. have focused on this for years, and artists train on those programs for years. To build an editor with that power would take lots of dev time and training time when it’s really not needed.

Well, most of those objects I want models for anyway. I'm not denying the strength of modeled props by any means, but some of those examples I would rather do myself. Wires and pipes can be so variable from room to room that I'd much prefer the control of manual construction.

Really, Doom3 is already very close to what I described. I can take geometry that I've built in the editor, export it straight out to LW, tweak it, and save it right back in as a model in maybe a minute at most. If it needs animations, I give it to an animator. I'm not talking about building a new editor, I'm just talking about merging functionality.

I'm not trying to say that things won't change, nor argue that they haven't yet, because they have, and very rapidly at that. Teams are growing to larger than ever before - Raven used to have 2 designers and maybe 10 people per project, now there are at least 10 designers alone, it seems. And to me, that's almost more reason to hold on to designers who both construct and design. Why should there be more and more work on the already greatly extended role of the artist when I can do some of it just as effectively or efficiently myself, and often quicker? Need a torn up wall panel? I can build that in the editor. Railings? Build it in the editor. Pipes? Build it in the editor. Wires? Build it in the editor. Even a twisted mangled beam, I can build in the editor. For me, that's the bat of an eye, and for an artist, it's more time to spend on the assets that really need it.

Oi, this is probably horribly thought out. It's too early to be discussing something online... I wanna go back to bed...

[Defrag]

A very interesting topic for sure. I've been actively interested in level design for the best part of six years now. I've built up a solid technical ability over my HL mapping days but have always wondered how working in the industry compares to an (my) amateur workflow. I knew there were many facets to level design at a professional level (gameplay, scripting, texturing, brush-based geometry and model-based geometry etc.) but didn't realise each company had its own approach to the process or quite how much they differed. Thanks for the read - it was very informative. Hi btw (first time poster).

[TomWithTheWeather]

Welcome to HELLL! er.. or... Mapcore as we call it around here.

[Schmung]

I like KF squirrels integrated idea, I've no problem with MAX, my issue is when I have to make a model to slot somewhere in the level, it's a bastard to try ang get the position and scaling of it correct and Hammers DXF export is so shitty that it's rarely on any use. Just a button that overlayed things in MAX so I could get the scale and positioning bang on the first time would be good.

[Pericolos0]

hmm i dont really have a problem with that. Just set your grid size in max to 8, import the dxf, and the proportions are correct when you exportit back as a model.

Dont export a dxf ofcourse, use it as a size reference

[Schmung]

Is that when MAX is using cms or inches?

I've actually got a file with cubes as various sizes to use a reference, but it can still be quite tricky to get things exactly as i want them. Guess it's just a matter of practice though.

[Pericolos0]

dunno about cms or inches

i never touched that.

Just adjust the home grid.

[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"?

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

Ah, naturally!

[DD]

There aren't "any" BSP brushes in FarCry. Floors, walls, ceilings are even modeled objects (in different sizes) you place in the map and align them to get a room. It really is annoying when you spent most of your time in hammer before you start mapping with Sandbox. Maybe I''ll manage to convince one of the senior programmers here to add BSP for the next game (step backwards? )

Yeah I noticed that when I tried to make a level some months ago... good thing the majority of farcry is outdoors. It also explains why my performance indoors in farcry was noticable worst. At least on my machine and I have a pretty kick ass rig.

As far as I know Farcry uses OSP (oct-space-tree, very goo for outdoors/open indoors) or a form of + awesome lod + fog/distance cull + and I think more options for indoors (manual zoning). That's why it can easily go from outdoor to indoor and still cram lots of detail, no?

Sandbox is an awesome editor, I wish I could bread lots of features from it, hammer, unrealed, and doom3 editor to form an uber editor.

Really, Doom3 is already very close to what I described. I can take geometry that I've built in the editor, export it straight out to LW, tweak it, and save it right back in as a model in maybe a minute at most. If it needs animations, I give it to an animator. I'm not talking about building a new editor, I'm just talking about merging functionality.

You can do this in hammer, unreal and many other games. I was doing this with hl1 mapping in the past, but after repeated experience I learned I was just producing lower quality/less optimized models by doing so. I still did/would export bsp from the editor just to get scale correct, but I learned to never use the bsp as a base for a model.

In hammer, say I wanted to created a water tower then export to max to model it. I would need several brushes to create the different segments or else I would create invalid geometry. The same is true in doom 3 ed (lets say we aren't using any patch meshes). After importing into max you'll find all these needless faces on the backsides of brushes inside parts of the water tower, on boths sides of intersecting planes! Hope that makes sense, anyways that's a real pain to clean up.

I think the max payne 2 editor has a feature semi-like what you want. You can select a group of brushes, do some conversion and automatically remove those faces, do some beveling/extruding and other simple stuff, and it will convert those brushes into a model. Then you can instance it all over the place. Even at the point most of the stuff I saw created looked like it needed artist modeling time.

BSP will definalty disappear, I dont think its going to survive the next few years.

BSP or some form of it will always be useful. Especially in heavily indoor games. Outdoor games may use plain distance culls + or manual zoning (VERY TEDIOUS) and get away with it, but that only works in outdoor games. In heavily indoor games you want to cram as much detail as possible in a confined space. Some rooms may be long or just plain big and others small, lots of rooms need to zig zag close to each other, etc. Trying to occomplish a well performing game in that type of enviorment, and do it fast is just way harder and less efficient using modeling programs and no BSP like culling.

The workflow, speed, efficency of dev teams using automatically generated nodes/zones for culling using BSP will totally blow away any competitor who thinks they can do the same using max and maybe + manual zoning or distance cull only. They just will not be able to match the detail and performance.

Here's a great example: Compare an indoor area of Halo PC, performance and detail, to a game that was released on PC when HALO 1 XBOX was which uses BSP/OSP/the like.

The term "BSP" many mappers use refers to in-editor built geometry. To me it means the method used for culling. BSP will not go away, nor will the use of it applied to editor built geometry.

Also last I heard on unreal engine 3 was that it was switching back to additive "BSP". This to me implies that they realized it's importance and spent time improving it. And IMO the game epic plans to release using UE3 is NEXT-NEXT Gen.

[FrieChamp]

Yeah I noticed that when I tried to make a level some months ago... good thing the majority of farcry is outdoors. It also explains why my performance indoors in farcry was noticable worst. At least on my machine and I have a pretty kick ass rig.

As far as I know Farcry uses OSP (oct-space-tree, very goo for outdoors/open indoors) or a form of + awesome lod + fog/distance cull + and I think more options for indoors (manual zoning). That's why it can easily go from outdoor to indoor and still cram lots of detail, no?

The detailed vegetation is achieved by lod models, fog and view distance parameters. Vis areas and portals have to be added manually (which is a real pain sometimes). All rules of making a transition from an outdoor area to an indoor area also apply in FarCry levels, you don't want the player to look into a big detailed room across 2 miles.

[KungFuSquirrel]

You can do this in hammer, unreal and many other games. I was doing this with hl1 mapping in the past, but after repeated experience I learned I was just producing lower quality/less optimized models by doing so. I still did/would export bsp from the editor just to get scale correct, but I learned to never use the bsp as a base for a model.

That's why I comment on how nice it is in Doom3. Exporting retains texturing information and you can merge all the tris to the original quad faces with a single key press. And if you're just doing a straight conversion to a model prop, you don't even need to turn it back to quads anyway. With patch meshes exported out, there are no back faces, and if you build with a base texture or caulk before texturing it, you can select and delete all faces with that material, giving you a nice clean model in seconds. And once you save it, it's ready to go in the editor/game - no compiling, exporting, or anything else. You can go back and forth between LW (or any package that supports .lwo or .ase) and the editor, typing 'reloadmodels' in the editor console to have instant tweaks and adjustments.

This isn't something used for general modeling - that's still up to the art team to concept, do the high/low poly, paint job, etc. etc. But if I need a room that's blown to hell, pillars bent out of shape, or whatever else, I can export any geometry I need (entire rooms if need be), models included, and start cutting, bending, twisting, and doing whatever is needed. It's no revolutionary system, but in efficiency and usefulness it's a step ahead of the rest, and definitely bridging the gap between traditional level construction and all model construction. Combined with the strength of patch meshes, this gives a ton of power to a designer with even a slight functional knowledge of LW.

I guess to half re-iterate and half re-explain what I'm trying to say, general gameplay design is no walk in the park - layouts, combat/gameplay, events, etc. all do take time to get right, but with art content taking longer and longer in next-gen engines, levels included, the more a designer can do and the more flexibility is found in the editor, the quicker content can get out the door.

By being able to quickly and efficiently build pipes, wires, railings, curved geometry, torn up panels, and whatever other details are needed quickly and efficiently in an editor, I'm saving an artist time that would have to be spent on a very tedious task that is taking precious time away from other more important tasks.

(edit: and if you're not using any patch meshes to make an in-editor water tower in D3, you are a fool, no ifs ands or buts about it. )