Level Design Basics

Level Designing is something I have done since my school days. Thinking about why Call of Duty levels were so cool and why Max Payne levels were so anxiety-inducing. Everything from how much space I, as the player, have between walls and if I can try to spot the enemy AI spawn around the corners -it has captivated my time on and off the game.

This week was my first assignment looking at 3D level creation where I would be determining how the pieces fit together. The specification we got from the instructor consisted of some rules:

1. Must create 3 rooms, geometrically simple.

2. Rooms A and B are connected by a door.

3. Rooms B and C are connected by an elevator.

4. Need to add a light switch that would correspond to light fixtures in the scene.

5. Need to have steam pipes in the scene.

6. Rows of seating.

7. Room for the player to maneuver.

I decided to draw inspiration from a railway station, having the player journey to the train platform and board the train. I thought of having Room A be the entry point, maybe just after the ticketing kiosks. Room B naturally was the walkway to the platform. I decided to have this similar to airport boarding bridges, long narrow, and flanked by windows on each side overlooking the railway tracks. The walkway ends with an elevator and a stairwell exit on the right. This would not fit the realism in the level but it does offer alternative paths for the player to explore. Alternative paths usually are longer, creating level design opportunities for side objectives or collectibles.

Room C is the train platform, with seating for waiting passengers.

All the rooms have light switches and corresponding fixtures.

This is the submission I made.

I used a grid pattern to demonstrate the elevation

And finally, as supplemental documents, I decided to draw the level in perspective, for the first time no less.

This is Room A, in perspective represents the pipes better and the sense of scale is represented a lot better than the top down. Room B shows the size of the windows. The pipes double as a visual aid for helping the player subconsciously navigate down the hall, the inspiration for which came from this scene in Control.

All my thoughts resulted in this perspective design. I would've loved to add more pipes but in the process, I realized visually a lot of small pipes felt more cluttered as compared to two big pipes.

Finally, my love of trains and train stations allowed me to draw from years of experience standing on platforms eagerly waiting for the train to arrive. I wanted to use the "room" as a constraint for the player to traverse, but visually, and environmentally keep the space open. This gives the sense of space even with pillars and seats in the center of the platform that would've otherwise caused a sense of claustrophobia. Room C being perpendicular to Room B also allows for the windows in Room B to hint at what is coming up ahead.

Overall the submission I made has unlocked the possibilities of what this new skill could lead to. Learning about spaces, objectives, and visual clutter gave me the tools to figure out the top-down schematic and drawing perspective for the first time, thinking about it from "out-of-box" quite literally helped me iterate on the top-down ideas. This experience turned out to be a lot more rewarding than I originally thought it would be. The next assignment is to take this design into Unreal Engine and make a white box. Just in time for #blocktober.