The Hows And Whys of Level Design - Released!

[KungFuSquirrel]

Now that I'm settled into our new place I just ordered a print copy, whee!

[Furyo]

I finally got my copy off Lulu, and I'll be expecting the delivery sometime this month at work. I'll also advise my boss to pick up some copies, since we're asking our artists to make levels too, they could certainly use expert advice.

[Zacker]

I finished reading it a week ago or such and overall it was a really great book. Nothing new in it, but a totally perfect book for an introduction to level design.

At some points it seemed too much of a tutorial/personal comment from you and not as much as a book. You also repeated yourself quite a few times.

Another thing which annoyed me was some of the picture examples. You got like a totally fucked picture and then a nice one and then you have been so kind to tell me that the nice one is the best. I was often like "O RLY?". Less telling people about what is bad and more about good solutions please.

[Nysuatro]

uh? I think repeating is a good way to teach someone something

[Zeta]

uh? I think repeating is a good way to teach someone something

[Furyo]

Got my copy just now at work, so 9 days total for shipping Will read it tonight

[channie]

So, months after the release, what are your thoughts you mapcorians?

My biggest complain is that the "design" part is not very instructive since all the advices are not going deep into the map design process. I mean, once i've read this part, i still don't know how to design my routes, where should i connect them, how do i balance my chokepoint, where may i place my items and other power ups, and so on...

On single player part i came up with the same conclusions : how do i balance the difficulty, how do i increase the intensity, ...

I quite disappointed because i expected the book to teach me some things that other books like "game level design" from ed byrne or "level design for games" from paul co didn't, but i was wrong.

[Hourences]

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.

[ChopperDave]

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.

[-HP-]

Hourences, this book looks very promising.

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

[Sentura]

oooh nice, ill be getting it as soon as i have the monae

[channie]

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.

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.

[-HP-]

Just ordered my copy!

btw... bump!!

[NormySan]

I've been interested in this book for a while. Think i may order a copy now that i've decided to go more serious with my level deisgn

[Corwin]

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!