the game itself is far from complete, and some changes will probably be made to the
main character’s movement. But if the team is aware that radical changes to the player
movement model will be made, having level designers start working on levels is a big
mistake.
On one project I worked on, we started working on the levels before the ability for
the main character to jump had even been added to the game. As a result, once it was
added, we went back and had to modify the levels to include areas that would use this
jumping ability. Unfortunately, after the jumping had been in the game for a while, it
became clear that the jumping was not that much fun, and that we would have to go back
to the levels and remove a lot of the jumps we had put in. The end result was not nearly
as clean as if we had known from the very beginning how the jumping would work. The
problem here was that production had started on the levels before the game mechanics
were sufficiently hammered out, implemented, and their fun level ascertained. As I dis-
cussed in Chapter 15, “Getting the Gameplay Working,” you will probably need to have
one level in progress while you work on implementing the gameplay, so you can test out
different behaviors as they are added. But working on more than that one particular
level is a waste of time that may be detrimental to the project in the long run. Further-
more, it may make sense to scrap the test level once the gameplay is firmly established,
since that preliminary level usually turns out to be far from the best work you are capa-
ble of.
Step 2. Conceptual and Sketched Outline................
Before beginning work on a level, I think it is very important to understand what that
level is going to need to do from a gameplay and story perspective. What sort of chal-
lenges will players face here, and what sorts of environments best facilitate those
challenges? How exciting and nerve-racking is the gameplay in this level? Where will
players need to be rewarded? What story elements need to be conveyed through the
level? At all times, but especially during the planning stage, you must keep in mind the
game’s focus and how your level will work to support that focus.
Once the designer has some grasp of what the level is supposed to accomplish, a
pencil and paper sketch of the level’s general layout is a very good idea. This avoids the
perils of “designing yourself into a corner.” Say you are designing a building in a mili-
tary compound for a fully 3D first-person shooter. In your compound you need to
include a room with a large generator. When you start making the architecture for the
building, you first lay out all the halls, then start working on some of the cooler rooms
before you finally get to the generator room. Then, whoops, it turns out you failed to
leave as much space as necessary for the generator. The room is now too small to be
easily navigable. Unfortunately, the only way to make it big enough involves ripping up
a lot of the halls you had made already. At this point, some designers would just move
the generator room to a less-logical or less-optimal location rather than having to redo a
lot of geometry they already spent time building. Of course, a level sketch might not
always prevent this problem, but if done correctly it might point out to the designer
how small the generator room was at a time when making it bigger only involves using
the eraser on her pencil. Changes to a sketch are much easier to make than changes to a
fully constructed level. A sketch may also be valuable as something that you can show
to your team leader, who may want to look it over to make sure you are on the right
468 Chapter 23: Level Design