Blogs - h0dg3

I've built a number of "ideas" over the last few years. "Tactical Twitch" is the game I'm committed to finishing. This video is a first developer diary. More will follow as we reach Summer. My "real" job is being a teacher; so, I only have time to work on this in the Summer.

Thanks for watching!

The GDC 2015 ( #GDC15 ) session titled “game < design” offered sound advice for an effective development workflow.This session was delivered by Stone Librande | Lead Designer, Riot Games

Stone is a veteran game designer. He’s had a long and prominent career in the industry, working for such companies as EA, Blizzard, and currently Riot (for my students – Riot is the developer of League of Legends). Stone has seen the industry evolve over the past 19+ years. His insights on design carry a lot of weight.

As usual I’ll post the GDC session summary, followed by my thoughts and take-a-ways. Let’s jump right to it.

Session Summary

“Game designers frequently emphasize the “game” part of their title. In this inspirational talk, Stone will focus on the “designer” aspect. How is game design similar to other forms of design, such as fashion design, automotive design or industrial design? What can we learn from these other disciplines that will help us grow as game designers, both personally and professionally? Stone describes his own personal design journey and the lessons he has learned along the way. Topics will include design history, the lives of famous designers, techniques taught in design schools, and the philosophies of world-class design studios.” – gdconf.com

Hodge’s Thoughts

Stone began his session with an observation that has been nearly two decades in the making. He’s attended GDC every year strait for 19 years. Every year he gets together with his fellow game designers, and they spend their time talking about making great games. Rarely, if ever, do they talk about design.

Stone then spoke about the larger world of design processes. He addressed the fact that it’s a part of every industry, and that it needs more attention in ours. I’ll break down the key points I’d like to remember.

1. Research and evaluate the design process of great designers.
The first designer brought up was Leonardo Da Vinci. What Stone found interesting in Leonardo’s designs is that the process doesn’t go from idea, to sketch, to prototype. Those three phases all intermingle in a more organic flow. The idea might start as the sketch, or building and tinkering might first create the idea. It’s a break-a-way from the traditional order of operations; brainstorm, document, sketch, build. The pattern of operations can change per idea. Whatever part of the design process inspires an idea is what comes first, and at anytime one can jump between stages; or, you can think of it all as one stage.

Other designers were discussed. One was noted for the design tactic of creating miniature versions of many product ideas in order to find a handful that are worth putting into full production. From the rest of this portion of the talk I took away that successful design often includes test runs/production on a small scale. In the world of software development this is expressed as the idea, “fail faster”. I first heard this idea from Rob Walling who is an expert on self funded start-ups. The concept is that one rapidly develops as many ideas as they can, into working prototypes. The developer then soft launches them to a select crowed. The couple of ideas that gain traction with audiences are then developed into fully polished software products, with formal releases.

While the information on this point wasn’t entirely new to me, I had not yet heard it discussed at length within the game development community. This is exciting not just because it’s good information, but because this is exactly what I’ve been trying to express to my Interactive Game Design class at CART. For those that don’t know, my course at CART is for high school seniors, and combines the subject of game development with their English requirement. The English portion of my course is delivered by a properly credentialed English teacher. We work together closely to present literature that will help them with the “design” portion of our “game design” program.

This year we’ve looked at the lives and design processes of Bruce Mau, Daniel Burnham and Frederick Law Olmsted. My students often feel like we’re stretching to try and include this material as an important part of game design. I feel like the connection should be obvious. Perhaps we do need to take some time and rethink how it’s presented; or, perhaps seeing the connection is something that simply takes a few years of experience to reflect on.

Here are a couple of design books that I’m personally recommending:

• The Design of Everyday Things, by Don Norman
• Glimmer: How Design Can Transform Your Life, Your Business, and Maybe Even the World, by Warren Berger

2. Create your own design process.
The second portion of Stone’s presentation focused on taking information about the design processes of others, and then formulating one that is custom tailored to you and/or your team.

The global design company IDEO invited him to guest speak about the design process of games, and companies he’s worked with. He hailed IDEO’s methods of bettering themselves. Noting their desire to bring in professionals from seemingly unrelated industries, and learning from their experience.

He reflected on the design processes he experienced at Blizzard, and EA. He also explains the design process of IDEO, and then revealed his personal dream process. The info graphic slides he included explain those well enough; so I won’t detail them here. You can view the images, and interpret the information (with the exception of EA, and I’m sorry IDEO is blurry).

---

Stone admits that his dream process is just that, a “dream”. It’s the model to shoot for, but we are often doing work for clients (often the players) who like to jump in at any stage and alter the flow of work. We need to account for that. Perhaps create channels that allow the client to input their ideas at any point, but funnel that input back to an idea stage.

Due to factors such as individual creativity and design habits coupled with client demands, there is no “one size fits all” design process. Stone emphasizes that his dream process is HIS dream. It’s not necessarily right for everyone. This is exactly why we need to study and discuss the processes of others across many industries; so, that we have a strong foundational knowledge for figuring out how we best work.

*NOTE: While I periodically update my posts on indiedb.com, this post was originally posted on my blog, blog.step2digital.com. To see more of my posts from GDC 2015, head on over and check it out.There will be at least one more GDC 2015 post; so stay tuned, and thanks for reading!

Hey there IndieDB friends! I've begun listing my active projects here, so I'm taking a moment to provide a status update. At least one of Step2's projects ("Fuzzy Brain Lost") is positioned to get a real boost soon.

Here is everything going on right now!

Fuzzy Brain Lost

• In game art and environment layout/design is being updated to better represent the game’s content.

• A media package is being developed for a Kickstarter campaign that is planned for October.
  

Apocalypse Rex

• The gameplay is in active development. This is why more screenshots and art have been delayed. I don’t want to release any more visual material until the gameplay is locked in.

• Following on that, the gameplay has been simplified in order to achieve a more fun and fluid experience.
  
• Development time was also prolonged to allow for the creation of a new character controller (more on that at the bottom)
  

The Legend of Sky

• TLoS is not forgotten. The new character controller has proved to be quite useful in making this platformer a solid experience.

• As time allows, I’m refining this demo and the full game (with a likely name change) will take off after AR.
  

New Character Controller & WebGL

As you may have guessed, Step 2 uses the Unity3D game engine. Up until a few weeks ago, I’ve always modified the character controller Unity provides. This has worked well; however, as player meshes such as AR don’t fit nicely in a capsule collider, I realized that I need to create my own solution. To cut a long story short, I’ve used the last couple weeks to develop my own character control setup that does exactly what I need it to. This is a better experience than a “one size fits all” approach. It also doesn’t rely on other Unity libraries, meaning I can port my work to other formats. In fact, it’s already working nicely with WebGL using the ThreeJS library. More on WebGL later, it’s my new hobby

Finally…

Step 2 has moved into the Bitwise building in downtown Fresno. I’ll show some pics later.

Opening up my working desktop to the world invites all of the benefits to productivity that a boss would provide, with none of the negative hangups. I’m also able to receive real-time feedback on my ideas, as I’m working them out.

Back on May 24th I tried something new to both grow an audience, and provide inspiration to work faster and better. I called it “Take Your Planet to Work Day“. On that Friday from 9am to 5pm, I streamed my entire workday as an indie game developer. The turnout wasn’t huge; however, it was very beneficial. I realized that while self employment has a certain independent ring to it, having someone look over my shoulder causes me to work like I’m on fire.

The catch is that it has to be the right someone(s) that is “supervising”. I’m not talking about individuals paid to manage my time. I’m looking for people with experience, or even just interest in all that goes into bringing a game to life. These types of folks are encouraging with their questions, comments, even concerns and advice. I find that as I answer them (while working) I’m thinking clearer about what it is I’m trying to accomplish in any given task. As I explain what I’m doing and why, while doing it, I more immediately recognize when I’m going in a wrong direction. As an example, flaws in programming logic are more apparent when talking out loud about the reasons behind the current direction.

I would strongly encourage any indies out there to try this out.

If you’d like to see what this looks like, and/or are interested in joining me at work. I run my live stream at www.twitch.tv/step2_hodge. I schedule myself to work live on Friday’s from 9am to 5pm (with a 1 hour lunch), but you can also find me periodically at all hours during the week… Game development never sleeps

Here is an example highlight from my stream, and thanks for reading!

Tomorrow (Friday the 24th) I will be starting a social experiment in audience building. If this works, it can lead to many new people-connecting ideas.

Now, let's look at some questions you may have.

What Is “Take Your Planet To Work Day?
TYPTWD is a most fantastic day that I made up this week Tomorrow from about 9am to 5pm, I will be live streaming my entire work day, with a one hour break for lunch. If you are viewing this post too late, or can’t make it; fear not! The stream cast will be archived at www.twitch.tv/step2_hodge

What Do You Do?
I sell my self for money… As I’m sure most digital freelancers feel. Seriously though, I do a lot of different digital disciplines, but my favorite by far is game development. I’m currently working on 2 titles of my own design, and 1 title that I’m prototyping for children’s author Annie Winston.

What Can I Expect?
For the first part of the day, I will be refining models, animations, and Unity3D character scripts for a game I’m working on. In the latter part of the day, I will be modelling out characters for “Fuzzy Brain Lost” (the edutainment title I’m prototyping) You’ll have the opportunity to join in chat, comment, and ask questions. With any luck we’ll get some nice organic conversation about development.

Where Do I Go To Join You?
I will be streaming live from www.twitch.tv/step2_hodge

What Happens Afterwards?
I’m not entirely sure; however, I’m thinking that if it is enjoyable for myself, for the audience, and I’m actually getting work done, I may just stream every time I’m working on games.

Checkout the Stream Channel Welcome Video! (I will have better lighting before Friday); also, for all of the latest news, updates, musings and rant by Matt Hodge and step2, visit the main site at www.step2digital.com. Thanks for viewing, and see you guys tomorrow!

Update: ... and I forgot to load the welcome video. Here it is.

First off, a quick note:

Those of you that have followed my postings here... Probably don't exist. I haven't been updating much in this community, and I'm starting to regret that. From now on I'll make a point of putting my better posts and media here.

And Now, the Blog Post

About this time last year, I was excited to get a prototype for my first game together, and display it in our regional summer coding competition. It actually all came together quite nice. In fact, I nearly won (more on that at another time).

However, in the real world it seems to always be true that 2nd place is the first looser. I didn't receive $10K and I did not pass "go". At that point, I did not have the budget I needed to make "The Legend of Sky" my full time pursuit.

It seemed simple enough. A 3D platform game that tells its story through game mechanics, instead of cut scenes and mountains of dialogue. It was my intention to build a game that has both a deep story, and is friendly to mobile gamers who don't have time for story. The primary story-game mechanic was that the player's age became younger as Sky takes damage, and older as she gains experience points. This is to simulate a person regressing as they fail to overcome challenges, and grow as one learns. The overall story has to do with her growing up.

Sounds intriguing, right? That's what I think, and many others have confirmed that; so, what is so hard about getting it done... The answer to that is everything beyond my main point. I was also trying to tell epic stories through the environments and enemy characters. I have a vision of making a game as good of a platformer as Mario 3D Land. That goal takes a lot of time that can't be afforded at this point.

Okay, so I figured out my idea is too ambitious for the time I have. Good for me. Now how does any of this help you?

How This Story Can Help You

As an adviser to a local high school game design course, and one who has tried to get into mod development (I came on board that long running and failed Jurassic Park mod, right at the end. I did make a cool model of Bob Peck though, aka Muldoon), I see that a lot of us are in the situation where we can't realistically spend all of our productive hours making games. Personally, web/app development is what pays my bills and I just can't get away from that yet.

I would suggest that instead of dreaming about all of the features one wants in their game, as simple and wonderful as it may all sound in one's own mind, boil it all down to a single feature. What is the one most enjoyable thing the player does in your game idea? Take that and make it. If any other feature is created it should be in support of that one feature, and only if that main single feature can't function without it.

What Brought Me to This Conclusion, and Where I'm I Going From Here

I was playing "Sakura Samurai" on the 3DS. How beautifully simple is that game? The main character sword fights, and that is all she does. The mini map, the towns and shops, everything that exists does so in a simple state that supports the characters sword fighting ability. This got me really re-thinking what TLoS should be. The fact is, TLoS has now been broken in to 3 distinct game ideas. This is going to allow me to get something finished in a reasonable amount of time.

TLoS itself has been put on the back burner. Not for lack of interest, but two of the simplified game ideas that came from it, don't have anything to do with Sky's story or world. Those are the two games I'm focusing on now.

I'll provide info on these titles when I feel I have a reasonable amount of media ready. If you want to follow me closer, I encourage you to visit and bookmark my official company/blog site at www.step2digital.com.

Thanks for reading!

Video demonstration of my painting techniques included!

Oh Bob Ross. How I miss your secret little bushes and trees. As a kid I spent many afternoons watching that guy paint. I never practiced what I saw, but what I did do was gain an appreciation for brushes and canvas. As an adult this appreciation is continually helping me gain my own style, and grow in quality. So for all you aspiring game artists out there, I’m going to share this little morsel of wisdom with you… and it’ll be our little secret

Ready for the big reveal? TAKE SOME OIL PAINTING LESSONS. It was only a couple of years ago that I struggled to make decent textures for my 3D environments. All I knew was to strive for was photo realism, and to PhotoChop pictures into textures. At the end of the day, my environments often looked like early Half Life mods. Anything that was cool was by accident. That is a problem. I realized that I could not control my visual look.

I scheduled a few lessons with oil painting instructor Ma Ly.

Under his direction I was quickly learning to push color around on canvas. There is the big take-a-way. PUSH COLOR. Select your palette, throw down the color you want in the basic shape and area you want it in. It’s okay to be sloppy at this stage. It’s often good to start with a sketch or guides, to help you understand where you want to throw your color down. Once you’re color is in place, you can use a smudging tool to begin precisely pushing color exactly where you want it. Some of the best game art out there is not pulled directly from photographs. Once I learned to push color into place, I gained control over my visual presentation.

Check out the video companion to this blog, I use two textures to demonstrate my process.

If you like this post, be sure to check out my main site at www.step2digital.com.
Happy painting!

*note: the pretty graphics are towards the bottom, past the wall of text =)

“...marketing took forty dollars from me; however, they lost out on a couple hundred more I would have spent over the years, had they not punked me with a gimmick.”

While designing my concept level for “the Legend of Sky”, a came to a gut-wrenching realization. One of my key characters, and companion to the player, causes the game to become less enjoyable. On the surface this is just a creative decision; however, it is spoiling my master plan.

Let me first establish that I'm making this game because I would enjoy playing it, and I believe others will too; however, I do need to find ways of monetizing it. This companion character gave me a fluid way
of including brand awareness for a particular company I have in mind. I haven't presented the option to them yet. The pitch is being developed, but that mech character gave the pitch a lot more impact.

What's the problem?

Here is a breakdown of where this went wrong:

• It is necessary to keep the mech with the player, as it is both a vehicle and its AI is a “player guiding friend”
• The player should spend most of their time outside of the mech
• The player has no reason to be outside of the mech, unless it needs to be recharged
• The mech will have to rapidly drain energy in order to prompt the player to exit
• The player will constantly be jumping out of the mech, running ahead to collect energy, and then running back. This process of “three steps forward, two steps back” will quickly become frustrating.

Good mobile/casual play should offer fun through a combination of challenges based on quick progression. My current formula appears to run contrary to that.

If the mech and the solar charger isn’t fun, why keep it?

The initial answer is obvious, because it is important to the game story and needs to be with the player to develop the character. The second answer is a bit more evil. *hint – marketing =)

I originally came up with my gameplay concept while using a solar charging pack. It occurred to me that including a solar charging pack as a game item could be a good opportunity for sponsorship.

In-game marketing can be done successfully. For this to happen the materials must be threaded into the game in a way that makes sense to the story, the world, and enhances the playerexperience. If the marketing component falls short of this, it will be seen as nothing more than a gimmick.

My solar powered mech has landed in gimmick territory.

Gimmicks equal less repeat players

Let's take a moment to fully understand why gimmicks in games are bad.

The Nintendo Wii provides us with a number of gimmicky game examples. Personally, I enjoy this system because it did usher in a new way to interact with games. The first party titles are almost all well received; however, third parties often fall flat. The reason for this is that games were not developed with the player in mind, but the new control system. The new controls offered another way to market old games.

One particular title that stands out to me is the port of “Far Cry” to the Wii. The console version is already a lesser version of its PC big brother, and the Wii version is even further stripped. While offering less, the game sold because it boasted hand gesture controls. This sounds cool on the surface, but execution was horrible. The gestures didn’t work as intuitively as advertised. Beyond the first few minutes of “wow I’m actually throwing a grenade”, I was left longing for my trusty old controller. This is a mechanic that was developed only to re-market the game. It ended up hindering the player experience and ultimately is branded a gimmick.

A marketer might say “so what, we made our money”. It's true that marketing took forty dollars from me; however, they lost out on a couple hundred more I would have spent over the years, had they not punked me with a gimmick.
Players do not care for gimmicks. Players especially hate when they feel they’ve been had by one.

Transform “gimmicks” into enjoyable mechanics (or get rid of them)

With entertainment and advertisement titles Step 2 aims to develop games that are enjoyable t0 gamers first, followed by monetization. That in mind, the play mechanic of the mech and solar charger had to be cut.

While these elements were scrapped in favor of player experience, over the next few days I ran into a scenario where the charger makes sense. It doesn't have nearly the presence it once did with the mech, but it is a useful item that helps the player enjoy and progress throughout the game.

To help decide whether or not the item was truly useful, I've established the following question. I would encourage anyone to ask themselves this question if you are in the same position as me:

“If I didn't have a sponsor in mind, would I still feel the need to include the item/feature in my game”. In my case I can honestly say “yes” to my re-tooled, and more subtle idea.

Summary

In-game marketing can be done successfully. For this to happen the materials must be threaded into the game in a way that makes sense to the story, the world, and enhances the player experience. If the marketing component falls short of these elements it will be seen as nothing more than a gimmick.

In my game, an entire component needed to be scrapped, because it is hindering player experience and is an obvious attempt at monetization; however, after removing the item in question, it eventually found a more subtle presence that makes sense to the game.

YouTube video note:

I recently did an off-grid game dev retreat. I was powered by the solar solution that inspired my game. I used some of that time to put together this 1 minute video demoing my solar powered session and the charger.

Check it out!

Thanks for reading.

Let's stop a moment to ponder the structure of our real world. On a trip to one of our government buildings. I was on the 3rd floor, and I needed to get to the 2nd floor of the building next door. I walked down a hall way with signs pointing me to the elevator. In a daring leap of faith, I rode that government elevator to the 1st floor. I could now exit the building... Actually this sucks.

Man, the real world is BOOOOOORRRING!
In part 1 we examined a technique for conceptualizing our unique and fun environments, but now we're faced with a much less theoretical task. It's time to actually build the level. We need to think about every object, where it is being placed, and why.

Your core game mechanics are what keeps it fun. With that in mind, I find it best to list the areas of a level that you want the player to access. I then only build those areas and the paths that connect them. For my platform game, the paths and areas I build are designed to be fun for my core game mechanics first, with realism to the environment second. The end product is typically a layout that wouldn't make sense to the real world. The idea is that when they player is enjoying the experience, their imagination will fill in the gaps in my abridged version of reality.

So, what elements do we make, and what elements should be interactive? To answer this, we'll examine “Castle Grayskull”, the “Cat's Lair”, and our childhood imagination.

By the design of Grayskull!

Let's take a look at the following design points:

• Not to scale with other toys
• Lack of stairs
• Purpose for every accessible location

Scale is important. A human character that is twelve feet tall when compared to a car is going to introduce a dis-connect with the player; however, we can get some wiggle room with objects that are very different in size to begin with. Play sets change the scale because a 1:1 with the figures wouldn't be practical. I would require too much space, and not be easily moved Oddly enough the reasons for a scale skewing in games is very similar, especially in quick-play/mobile games. 1:1 scale means more areas and space to be accounted for. This is more work for the developer, and potentially decreases value to mobile players by not allowing them to complete goals in short play sessions; so, how do we effect scale without causing on obvious visual flaw?

For an example, large buildings in a platform game can be shrunken down, as long as the features of the building that a player would interact with are convincingly scaled. If the doors, windows, stairs, etc. are to scale, it isn't likely that one will notice or care that the square footage is off. This reduction of building scale would shorten the amount of time spent walking, create less areas that need to be developed, and be an overall benefit for mobile games.

Next, we''ll look at the lack of stairs. Why did the toy designer not provide the most practical structure for moving between floors? Space is the obvious answer, but they're also not an exciting feature.

If the feature isn’t exciting, it’s just taking up space. This principle of ruling out un-interesting features needs to be adjusted with your type of game. If you’re going for realism, you’d probably need to think of an interesting way to incorporate environment pieces one would expect from a real location.

The last point I want to make about He-Man’s fortress, is that every location a figure can populate has a purpose. If you see a piece of floor, you’ll notice it's associated with computer consoles, the throne, or the trap door. Up top we have a lookout position and defensive equipment. There isn’t any ledge/floor that exists just “because”. This should serve as a major design point for our levels. In the example of my game, meaningless areas can infuriate the player.

Imagine you are playing a level. You’re platforming along, and everything seems great. Then off on the corner of the screen you can see another edge. Your initial thought would likely be “hey, I wonder what’s over there. It’s got to be good”. Unfortunately for you, there is no reason to get over there. It was just put there because it made the scene look cool from a distance; however, you have no way of knowing that. You’ll likely spend a number of lives trying to get there before you get frustrated and give up (possibly on the entire game), or you’ll actually find a way to make it. If you do manage to get there, you’ll quickly realize that there isn’t anything to do or achieve. The level wasted your time, and worse, it didn’t provide a way back. Now you have to quit or die for all of your hard work.

The previous scenario is inexcusable. As level designers we must make sure that everything accessible exists for the player’s benefit. The next set of points I’d like to discuss are nicely illustrated by the ThunderCat's Cat’s Lair play set.

“Special item design, snaaarrf.”

This play set offers unique lessons in interaction between the toys in the Thunder Cat’s line.

You’ll notice the back of the head has a seat for the action figure, with a trigger handle. The head of the lair can be rotated and aimed. The trigger activates an infrared sensor in the mouth. Above the layer’s main doors is a light senor. This detects when another toy’s infrared system has fired in the Lair’s line of site. When other toys fire directly at the sensor above the layer door, the lair records damage. When enough damage is taken, an alarm sounds and the doors pop open. The lair's head is a laser defense. If it hits the sensor on the enemy toy, it will pop apart.

So, the Cat’s Lair and enemy vehicles can shoot where ever they want, but it only has an effect if they shoot the designated spot that is designed to receive and react to the shot.

This is an important take-a-way. If we design a weapon or other interactive piece to our level, let’s make sure it has a specific and special purpose. That purpose should help the player enjoy the experience and progress through the game.

Again, depending on the game you’re making, your exercise of this principle will vary. For instance, in a realistic shooter one would expect the average weapons in their inventory to gain some reaction from whatever they use it on; however, even this genre has instances of special environment weapons that only work on other specific elements. Such as a large cannon that only damages a specific wall to allow the player to progress.

It is also important that level items meant to be used by the player are clearly marked. It should also be clearly marked as to where and how it should be used. In games this most commonly occurs as “red barrels”; though that is getting old. For my game, I promise to come up with something besides red barrels.

Now the question, “What is it that ultimately makes our levels fun and coherent?” It is the same thing that made those toys fun when we we’re kids. It’s our imagination.

As kids play with toys, it is a fluid experience. They don’t think about the fact that there aren’t any stairs to climb, and that they just leaped from the first floor dungeon to the second floor control room. It’s a non-issue. A child’s imagination seamlessly fills in the gaps in reality as they play.

Adults still have that child-like imagination; it just doesn’t get used as often. As game designers, we need to make a commitment to our players that we will design our games using imagination. When we’re feeling dry, it’s my recommendation to reflect and reconnect with the toys and games we played as kids. Let them refresh you.

If we make our core game mechanics fun, and the environment’s design plays well to it, an adult’s imagination will rekindle to fill in the gaps in reality. When this happens, the player will be enjoying the experience.

Part II Summary

Environments don't need to be true to their real world counterparts. By making abstract and abridged versions of reality, we create a smoother and more imaginative experience for the player. Toys and play sets are great sources of inspiration for creating play-centric layouts.

In this series I've discussed my methods for conceptualizing, and materializing levels. In the final part of this three part series, I will discuss good practices and ideas for the technical art development of levels. I'll focus on my game “The Legend of Sky” as an example, and I'll be using the Unity3D game engine.

See you in the comments and at the next article. Thanks for reading.

In this first of a three part post, I detail my process of characterizing a level's environment. This is a great way to dial in a clear vision for a game, and ensure each environment is unique and entertaining.

In the real world (as we understand it to exist) natural landscapes are not formed for the purpose of providing a challenging and fun path to traverse. A rocky ledge beside a waterfall isn't going to be perfectly positioned so that one can time a jump to land on debris that is flowing over the edge at regular intervals. It's sad, I know. While beautiful, the real world just isn't pieced together so that one can fluidly adventure through it. It's full of unreasonably difficult locations and dead ends. While containing many mushrooms, they are not strategically placed or have quite the same power up effect as a knowledgeable gamer would expect.

In the game world, its not in an environment's best interest to provide only a couple of fun hops followed by an hour of uphill walking, just to duck under a fallen tree. A game environment needs to provide enjoyable and challenging obstacles every step of the way.

When developing my concept for level design in “The Legend of Sky”, I ran into difficulty trying to balance a believable look and feel, with a layout that is both fun and intuitive. My designer's block was finally broken when I decided to start looking at the environment as a character.
I listed out character traits that should be common to all environments, and those that are unique to each environment: Common environment character traits:

• Mentor to player
• Discernible allegiance

Unique environment character traits:

• Back-story
• Gender
• Apparel

These design points are geared towards platforming levels; however, much of these principles can be applied to most types of games. Using TLoS as an example, I'll walk through how each of these points has been applied to the conceptual level “The Forgotten Cliffs”.

Environment Wisdom (player mentor-ship)

When we think of a mentor, gear your thoughts towards a sensei. A sensei will seem adversarial for the purposes of teaching. They will throw obstacles at you. They often talk down to motivate you. Through all of this, they will point to the strategy you need, to overcome the challenges they've created. In each instance, you will have learned valuable skills that will help you to understand and overcome challenges throughout life.

This is how a good level will play. The challenges are designed to give the player a little struggle, but through the use of camera angles, clever object placement, and experience with previous challenges, a clear strategy is presented that guides the player through. With presentation of obstacles and solutions, the environment is designed to mentor the player along their way.

Environment Allegiance

The environment should side with either the player the enemies, or neither. What this means is that while challenging and assisting the player, the level of challenge and assistance should be skewed toward the level's back-story. If an environment is the home ground of the enemy, the challenges should be hard and the assistance minimal, and vice versa. If the environment is an area that is home to neither, there should be a blend, or medium difficulty.

We see this concept of allegiance demonstrated in most Mario games. For instance, the home ground in Mario 64 is the castle that serves as the hub world. There are challenges presented, but they are typically easy to accomplish. The challenges can get a little more difficult as you venture below the castle into the dungeon. Dungeon's, regardless of who they belong to, are designed to not be friendly.
Then we have the typical levels that are mostly reached via jumping into paintings on the wall. They are more challenging than the castle world, but not as much as the Bowser levels. The Bowser levels take place on the enemies home ground. The environment and obstacles can be downright frustrating when compared to the average (no allegiance) levels; however, if the player remembers everything the previous environments have taught them, then the player should be able to spot the strategy that even the enemy's home ground is offering. In well designed enemy levels, it often doesn't even feel that the strategy is offered. Everything happens faster and more intense. In these levels it should feel that the player found and took their winning strategy, as appose to having been guided to it.

Environment Back-story

It's important to take time out and imagine what brought a level's environment into existence. This will help in imaging what sort of challenges it will present, and it's overall feel.

In the case of my level “The Forgotten Cliffs”, the back-story is one of geographic violence. The world of TLoS exists due to catastrophic events brought on by our near future modern society. Through a string of situations, our world shifted its plane of existence and merged with another reality. While most of the world as we know it was plunged below the Earth, the Forgotten Cliffs were the result of a volcanic upward thrust, that still exists as a vent for this new world.

This back-story has helped in determining visual style, and the types of obstacles to present the player with. Without a good back-story, a level's environment can find itself suffering from meaninglessness. An environment should convey its purpose for existing through its obstacles and geographic features, which ultimately lead to better player immersion.

Is it a Boy, or Girl?

In graphic design it is taught that strait lines and sharp surfaces are masculine design qualities, while curved shapes are feminine; at least that was taught a decade ago when I had a design class. I suppose today's world might throw in a gender neutral design standard – which would actually work well in this instance, because some levels work best with a design that is somewhere in between.

Looking to modern games as an example, let's consider some of the environment designs in “World of WarCraft”. If we look at the Badlands, we see an area defined by sharp towing cliffs. This would be a more masculine environment. On the flip side, many of the night elf areas have rolling hills and structures with curves (note that the curves are often implied through textures).

It can help to picture a slider that slides a long a gradient from black to white. If we were to say Black is a boy, and white is a girl, where on this gradient would our level fall? As with most things in life, true black and white values seldom occur. This should also be true when thinking about our environment's gender. Even with the example of the Badlands in WoW, you'll notice that curves do occur at the base of the sharp cliffs and ridges.

In order to develop the level's environment into a unique and memorable experience, I not only declare the level to be a boy or girl, but how masculine or feminine the level is. This will help to conceptualize the defining elements and supporting features of the environment.

“What to wear, what to wear?”

The final item on my “environment as a character” list, is wardrobe. This includes textures and peripheral structures/items that characterize the level. With my concept level, it's back-story indicates that it represents a glimpse of the old world. It is masculine because of the violent, upward thrusting, volcanic activity that has forced sharp vertical cliffs. The personality of the level can be summarized as one angry dude that is trying to calm down as it reflects on the world that was. So what would someone like this wear?

It is draped in rocky cliffs, dirt ground, and green forestry that is slowly taking it over as it calms down. It has long flows of lava that vent through it and flow over the edges, almost as a sash. It is accessorized with debris and relics from the world past.

I'm still answering this question and it will probably be adjusted as the game moves forward; however, because I've designed so much of the environment's character already, I have a clear direction to move in.

Part 1 Summary

By personifying our level and its environment, we can create a clear vision for each level to be unique, interesting, and to get the most enjoyment possible out of our ideas.

In part 2 of this 3 part series on level design, We'll be looking at the purpose of everything. Every respect of the level should have a reason to exist for the player. It often helps if the level is abstract in layout. For examples I'll reference toys and play sets, and how their designs can help us get in the right mindset for level development.

I'll see you all at my next article. Thanks for reading.