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Monday 14 November 2011

How to Create a Design Portfolio - Part II: Level Design

Level Design is a very broad subject, and one that takes real skill, which is why it constantly amazes me how many companies view it as a low level profession - almost grunt work, whereas mechanics design is often seen as the pinnacle of design prowess.

It is the responsibility of a Level Designer to create spaces that people will utilize, move through, engage with and ultimately enjoy. All these responsibilities are rather similar to those required of an Architect - something that takes 7 years of training at university to become qualified in - so why is the job so often given to anyone who can just barely wield a level editor?

Thankfully there are plenty of companies around that are now understanding the importance of game space, and treating those that craft it with due respect. Which in turn means it is becoming more difficult to get into such studios without proving your skills as a game designer.

Type of Content

So what should your design portfolio be made up of? There are a few approaches to task, and the approach will depend on where you are applying.


User Generated Content


There are several games available that are championing User Generated Content - such as Halo (Forge), LittleBigPlanet, Infamous 2 and Mod Nation Racers. In truth, this is nothing new. I remember playing around with a world editor for a game on the spectrum. However, what has really changed is the ease of creation and sharing of these creations.



I tend to seperate UGC from Modding, since there is a large difference in technical ability required to get started. UGC is designed to be user friendly with a shallow learning curve. That's great for anyone who is new to game development, and wants to get a taste for building their own levels, etc. It does however create a number of limitations on what you can show professionally.

If you are trying to get a job in a specific company - i.e. Media Molecule, then UGC offers the perfect portfolio piece to demonstrate that you are capable of working for them. When applying to other companies it starts to get a lot trickier however. Firstly you have to assume that they have a copy of the game in order to play your level, then you have to hope that they are looking for designers of a similar genre. The biggest problem comes from the technical limits of the editors. Because they are designed to be so user-friendly, it is a big jump to assume that you are going to be able to dive in with a "proper" world editing tool, or be able to get to grips with a scripting language.


Therefore, I'd suggest that USG shouldn't be in your portfolio unless you are applying directly to the studio that made that specific game. Even then, you'd better make sure that your creation is something truly astounding, since they are likely to have a huge number of potential designers just sitting there in the database that they could tempt to do it for a profession (certainly a number of Media Molecule's designers were hired this way).

Mod Levels / Projects

Modding is a step beyond simple UGC, since it requires the creators to deal with more traditional world editing tools and scripting. Hence it really is the best way to get a foot into the industry door if you have the talent. This used to mean buying a game that game with the editign tools, but with recent developments in engine licencing, it is now pretty much free to get started (UDK, Unity and CryEngine3 all have basic licenses available for free).

Back when I started making levels for Half-Life, it required a large amount of perseverance and determination to get levels up and running. The supporting community was pretty small, but very dedicated. Lighting builds for levels used to take 2 days on my old machine. Things are a lot easier now thankfully, but that also means you have more competition.

If you can, try and join a mod team working on a specific mod of a game, as it will give you that experience of working with a team to create the game, which will prove invaluable.

Also remember that in order to show the game running your prospective employer will have to have a copy of the game, so don't pick anything too obscure (or use one of the free engines).

Finally, you will need to think about what exactly you want to show in your portfolio. I cannot tell you how horrific some of the stuff I have been sent in the past has been. Please don't send in your first map where you work out how to do a box and switch that turns on a light - it impresses no-one. You are actually going to have to build a fully featured single player scenario, or create a multiplayer map that show understanding of competitive map requirements.

In order to allow anyone who doesn't have the game or SDK installed on their machine, making a walkthrough video is a great way of demonstrating your design skills. You might even want to do some design commentary over the top to explain your thinking.

Level Design Process

Whilst the finished article is what will prove your design skills, it is important that you actually demonstrate a clear design process - this will give employers confidence that you can repeatedly deliver work of high quality in a time constrained environment, and can communicate your ideas to the team. Whilst there is no set  design process, there are definitely approaches that work better than others. What follows is the basic design process I follow

Research
Coming up with a brief set of notes of research on the setting, tone and style of your level can pay dividends. Source images for architectural styles, landscape looks, or lighting tones to show how you are thinking about the space.

Layout Sketches
Another important step is to sketch out rough layouts. There are numerous ways to do this, but as I mentioned in the documentation post previously, using a 3D sketching tool such as Sketchup allows you to get a more wholistic view of the level layout, and understand how space relates to each other.

Blockmesh / Greybox
From these basic sketches the greybox can be built. This is not required to be high quality modelling - this is more about the space itself - marking out the flow through the level. This greybox will be refined through multiple iterations as the scripting and playtesting feedback starts to inform the level layout.

Blockmesh could be done in a number of different ways. You could use a dedicated 3D modelling program such as Maya or 3D Max. Alternatively you could use the tools available in world editors such as Unreal. They are slightly different approaches to modelling, as one is based around polygon manipulation and the other is based on Constructive Set Geometry (CSG). It is valuable to learn both of these approaches.

Initial Scripting
This is where the scenario really starts to take shape, and where the choice of design tool really starts to affect how you will be working. There are two types of approach to scripting in most engines: scripting languages and visual scripting. The type of scripting you do will likely be based on your technical background.

Scripting Languages.
If you are using Unity then you are most likely to be using scripting languages such as JavaScript, C#, Boo (I use C# since I am a great fan of the language) - though a couple of visual editor plug-ins have been written for it (http://hutonggames.com/playmaker.html). Other games use Lua and Python fairly extensively (Source engine uses Lua for example). This approach generally requires a background in programming, otherwise it will be a fairly steep learning curve

Visual Scripting
This is where I would highly suggest using UDK or an Unreal 3 based game to create a level design portfolio piece, as visual scripting has been woven heavily into the fabric of the whole tool-chain. Kismet and Matinee work side by side to allow the designer to do some incredibly powerful stuff in terms of level design. The other advantage is that a lot of studios are using Unreal 3 engine, so having knowledge of how it works is a
distinct advantage.

Once you have set up the basic scripting for your level you will need to rework and refine. The only way to do that effectively is by playtesting.

Playtest & Revise
As a designer on a level, you are generally so close to your work that it makes it very difficult to be objective about how well something is playing. The only way to effectively gauge how good the level experience is, is to get another person to play through your level as you observe them. This is important even on your own profile piece, as it shows that you are used to following established techniques of development. It may even be a good idea to detail exactly how you went about playtesting.

Armed with data from your playtest, you can now revise and refine your design. Ideally you want to get at least 7 people to play through your level - that tends to be the optimum number to find most of the issues that people will have.

Add Final Assets
This is a stage that you might not need to engage in for a design porfolio, since the major part of level design is done, and is now reliant on other members of the team to generate the final assets that you will bring together into the finished article. If you have great art skills then you may be able to accomplish this part as well, but be aware that very few companies expect level designers to be building art assets in this day and age - it generally falls to environment artists. Thus it would be better to concentrate on making a fun experience rather than a beautiful looking level.


What Employers are Looking For

So what is the viewer of your level design actually looking for when they play through? This partially depends on what type of map you are creating. Since they are two fairly different skill sets, it's worth considering Single Player and Multiplayer seperately.

Single Player
Single Player portfolio levels may need to show a degree of skills:

  • Original, interesting scenarios 
  • Cinematic flair
  • Technically tricky scripting
  • Set-pieces
  • Puzzle design
  • Drawing the player's eye
  • Use of light, shape, etc to guide the player
  • Verisimilitude - ensuring that the space makes physical sense
  • Understanding of combat spaces
    • Flank routes
    • Fronts
    • Combat "puzzles"
    • How to bring waves in
    • Crescendo

Multiplayer
Multiplayer levels require a slightly different set of skills:

  • Conflict points - areas where teams meet
  • Strategy choice - the ability to use different playstyles
  • No overpowered positions - every strong position should have a weakness to overcome it
  • Flow - different patrol routes, multiple entrances & exits to each area
  • Lines of sight - allowing open areas with good cover, danger points and safer areas
  • Understanding of risk & reward - offering a powerful weapon in a dangerous to reach location for example
  • Theme - showing an interesting theme in terms of geometry (i.e. arena, circuit, etc).

Take your time in developing a portfolio piece, this is going to show an employer how your skills measure up to other designers out there. Those of us who are currently employed in the industry may have a distinct advantage here, since we are probably developing such portfolio pieces all the time. Just remember to always show your best work - quality is far more important than quantity.

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