Level designer vs Environment designer

[IR]

at ubisoft i was a Level-Artist ( even more weird )

leveldesigner: does the scripting, ai, gameplay , layout

level-artist: dresses up the map with assets and textures, zone's , portals, debug memory usages etc

at my next job ( if all goes well) i would be a environment artist however the job discription is similair or exactly the same as Level-artist.

so yeh like a few already said it totally depends on the company but one question you should always ask yourself when you start;

do i spend the most time fiddling with entities, kismet etc or am tweaking the art constantly, collecting ref and spend the most time making the map look good.

[FrieChamp]

leveldesigner: does the scripting, ai, gameplay , layout

level-artist: dresses up the map with assets and textures, zone's , portals, debug memory usages etc

at my next job ( if all goes well) i would be a environment artist however the job discription is similair or exactly the same as Level-artist.

We seperate strictly between Level-Designer and Environment Artist, the later only touches the editor to test his assets (created in a 3D modeling package) in the engine.

Everything else is done by the Level-Design team whose members don't differentiate by their titles (except for Junior, Senior etc. of course heh ) but in their strengths and tasks. If you are good at making the levels pretty and you enjoy it - you will get to do that a lot. If fiddling with flowgraphs or AI is your thing then the majority of your tasks will reflect this.

To throw in another job position I want to mention that we do have one or two "technical designers" who support the other designers with scripting entities or assistance in setting up more complex stuff in flowgraph ^^ He's the connection between designers and coders.

[Zacker]

If you want to strip it down to one word it can be said like this:

Level Designer: Gameplay

Environment Artist: Looks

One thing however is certain, all companies have more or less different interpretations of these roles.

It also comes down to the tools a lot. Previously at IO the level gameplay was set up using an internal scripting language called SDL. This required the level designers to either be able to script themselfs or have dedicated level scripters working with them.

These days gameplay is set up using a flowgraph-like tool, which has completely removed the position of level scripter and also removed the requirement for level designers to know any kind of scripting.

So even within the same company, it can change a lot.

Furthermore it is differentiated depending on the team. On my team I am the only pure level designer, but we are not exactly like any other IO team.

And ohh Warby, there should be good chances that you also get to do some art stuff at some point.

[mabufo]

I think the root of the separation of level designer and environment artist is that a 'level designer' is able to get his/her tools for free from an SDK. Where is an environment artist(models, textures) wants to get started he/she needs industry standard software to build a foundation on.

That's just what I think.

[von*ferret]

I think a bunch of managers figured this would be more efficient and implemented the system without taking the artistic things into account. If a single task is fragmentated into too many different people and even entire departments then thats bad for the consistency of the world and the workflow of the designers (they have to run back and forth between two groups all the time, or wait for the other one to finish)

That scares me the most is the inconsistencies in creating the level.

[JamesL]

Tell me about it. On the game prototype I am currently working on I continually run back and forth between 3 AI coders, 2 env artists and a lead, a lead designer, a principle designer (whatever the hell that is), an animator and the tools department.

Things move very very slowly. *sighs*

[merkaba]

OK, thanks for the great feedback all! I guess that 'environment artist' is more what I'm looking for, as I tend to come up with large-scale concepts & vivid visual depictions of a scene in my mind and then attempt to cater that to interesting gameplay, rather than the other way around. It all sounds like a very left brain/right brain thing. I think, so long as I'm in a company where I could work closely with level designers to come up with the most interesting mix of environment and gameplay, then I'm set.