Tag Archives: Level Design

TF2 Map Progress

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Over on the official Team Fortress 2 blog the guys from valve have just released some behind the scenes info on their mapping process for the new KotH Viaduct map. They’ve also been so nice as to include some time-lapse videos of the different map stages. This is a nice view at their work process. I have to admit though that the entire article is not very deep but nice to look at instead.

I say give it a look here: This point ain’t gonna cap itself!

tf2_viaduct-process

What struck me as odd in the videos was that the map was textured almost from the beginning. I would have enjoyed seeing some early footage in a raw, temporary textured state where they were still blocking out the basic shape – if they had such a stage. It might well be that they have enough experience with the game to be able to plan a map well on paper.

Regardless I certainly like the mention of valve doing playtests of the gamemode in modified, existing maps first to get a feeling for it’s dynamics. And I like the fact that they’ve set themselves a specific goal for the map: “we wanted a game mode that had an intense, centralized experience with quick player turnaround”. After playing the map for a while I certainly agree that they’ve suceeded at that.

There’s one thing I’m missing though: There’s no real side-route to get behind enemy lines. This is fine since it forces all action into the central spot as was the goal but I feel it hampers a few classes, especially the Pyro and the Spy. Still it’s a nice map and some nice videos I wanted to point you guys to.

It lives!

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Alright. The big article is done. It’s going through reviews currently and I’ve also submitted it to Gamasutra. If they approve then all that’s left is to add a whole bunch of pretty pretty pictures. But that stuff always takes way more time than you’d expect. I know cause I keep underestimating this.

Anyway, the title of the article is now:

No More Wrong Turns
Game Design tools and Level Design methods that help players better traverse your game worlds

Working on Navigational Tools

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Hey everyone. No need to worry, I’m still around. I’ve spent the last couple of days working on an article about navigation in video games. It’ll be done soon and then I’ll try and submit it to Gamasutra and possibly also post it here. It’s gonna be good.

And just to tease you guys a little, here’s the introduction:

Alright my dear readers, today I’m going to talk about navigation through the spaces of video games and the different tools that help us with that. This is mostly going to be relevant for 3d environments but much can be applied to 2d graphics as well. Also please bear with me, this is going to get quite long.

With the ever increasing complexity of our games and our game spaces, the need for some support has increased just as well. The earliest games often consisted of only one screen. All the action of the game was immediately visible at a glance. Think of Space Invaders or Pac Man. There are no hidden corners, no secret objectives. Nothing. These games are games of (almost) perfect information: You can see all there is to the game. All pieces are on the board, so to speak.

Nowadays it’s a lot different. The ability to display the entirety of the gameworld on one screen was quickly abandoned in favor of larger environments. Be this through scrolling or through leaving one screen and entering the next. The step to immersive, open worlds in 3d has just emphasized this even more. And that’s before we add the increasing complexity of the gameplay on top of it. Don’t fret it though, there’s help.

Anno Wii (Dawn of Discovery) on Metacritic

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I’ve posted about Anno: Create a New World (aka Dawn of Discovery in the US) before. I’ve done Level Design and Scripting on both the Wii and DS platforms. With the impending US release the amount of reviews on the Metacritic page is slowly increasing.

Anno Score on Metacritic

With enough reviews now, the game has currently got a Metacritic rating of 83. Which ranks Anno as 28th of all Wii games on Metacritic (out of 421). Not bad, if I may say so.

Anno Wii (Dawn of Discovery) Reviews

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The game that has been my first, roughly one year long job at Keen Games was doing Level Design and Scripting for Anno: Create a New World (known as Dawn of Discovery in the US) for both Wii and DS. The game’s been out in Europe for a few days now and it’s to be released in the United States in late June.

Anno: Create a New World

Now there’s a couple of reviews for the Wii version available online and the great thing is that the game has so far been rated 80% and above. That’s a good feeling. I’m especially proud of the many positive reactions I’ve read on the story campaign. I’ve been a big part of it’s design and I’ve almost enitrely scripted this thing. With all that said, here are the reviews so far:

I’ll of course update this list as soon as I learn of more articles.

Duke Nukem Forever Design Docs

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With the death of 3d Realms a wealth of Duke Nukem Forever information has been leaked to the world wide web. There’s been screenshots and a demo reel showing some real gameplay and now there’s design documents. Specifically some Level Design documentation and since I’m always interested in the way other people work and plan, this is a good luck.

Duke Nukem Forever Level Floorplan
On IGN you can find a document covering three levels of the game and there’s also a reveal of the plot overview document. I’m not entirely sure this is genuine but since I haven’t yet had a good look it’s hard to say. It certainly looks that way to the IGN folks.

Thanks to Kim for the tip and the links.

Verticality is the new co-op?

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In the vein of writing a few shorter posts that are easier to digest I present the following thought:

A year, maybe more, ago we suddenly had a few video game titles popping up on the radar that relied heavily on co-op. Left 4 Dead is an obvious example. Resident Evil 5 is another recent high-profile example. There was Army of Two (soon with sequel) and the new 50 Cent game. After a long drought of co-op games this feature has (thankfully) become en vogue again.

Dark Void Screenshot

Now looking at a few soon-to-be-released games I see a pattern (where there propably is none): Games that strongly with the spatial element of verticality and provide a high degree of mobility. There’s Bionic Commando, which uses the bionic arm of the protagonist to scale heights easily. The other example is Dark Void, which touts it’s Vertical Cover system as a big feature next to the Jetpack. And lastly there’s Damnation. While the avatars there have no fancy mobility gadget they’re acrobats rivaling the Prince of Persia.

Alright, so I only have three examples and that’s far from being a trend but I found it an interesting observation. What about you, can you come up with more?