How to do it – the analysis of the Gamedev kitchen – Level Design.

Level Design is not a separated part of the game, it affects the player’s perception of not only the location, but also the plot as a whole. As an example of a bad levere of design: you should be familiar with a feeling when the pace of the narrative is increasing in the game, but you are stuck on one of the locations, this knocks you out of the rut of history and spoils the overall impression of the game. How to determine the quality of the design of the design, and begin to understand it in this article.

Content

In order to understand the features of the design of the design, we should turn to history, the most striking representatives of the gaming industry and practically the directors of the phenomenon of the design of the design, doom 1993. DOOM developers had to go to various tricks to make a banal climb up the stairs. The game engine – Doom Engine did not allow creating a room above the room, which limited John Romero and made the game the way it is.

Let’s analyze the first level from the 1993 doom

The player appears in nongamstop-casinos.uk/ a spacious room in his hands a gun. The player immediately has a choice consisting of two possible routes, go straight or left. If the player decides to go to the left, he will be able to open another passage to> in which the armor lies tempting. But the lever that will open the passage to the lake is guarded by hostile mobs in the amount of 5 people who can kill him, but if the player cope with them, he will find the armor that is on the pedestal and a beautiful panoramic look, this acts as a reward for labor.

It would seem that there is nothing complicated in killing several enemies, but if the player simply does not want to enter the battle and passes them in the forward, he receives his individual experience from the game – this moment is indicative, with the help of such techniques, the player’s design allows the player to write his story, which will differ from the rest.
There is also a reward in the form of armor and shotgun for a player who still killed enemies-this will laid in the mind that the risk is justified in Doom, in the future this will serve as a motivation for studying the location and detecting secrets that are abundantly scattered at each level.
Also, the turn to the left acts in the role of training, there is everything: the selection of objects, a shootout with enemies on Hailograd, possible secrets (lever).

The location of enemies plays a small role here, two of them are hidden behind the columns, three on Haigrude, they are all armed with shotgun. The enemies are in a deliberately winning situation, despite the fact that they are low -level they can cause inconvenience. Using techniques with a different arrangement of enemies, you can create interesting game situations even with a small number of mobs for the whole game.
Suppose the player activated the lever in order to run to the lake. But if you do not hurry, the door will close the path – this will allow the player to feel that the world is to some extent alive, it has his own instilled and this rule says that you need to be quick.
Когда игрок выйдет к кислотному озеру на против его откроется створки из-за которых начнут стрелять. This is another obstacle to obtaining armor, which is in an acidic lake.

Obtaining a thing that is protected by an acid lake, where the player is under cross -fired fire, makes the thing an order of magnitude more valuable than it is, because it took more effort to obtain this subject than the player expected.
Also, the armor in the middle of the lake is a kind of point of interest. The point of interest is what clings to the eye, in modern games these are various towers and similar objects, also bashi are dominants, more on this below

The player has no more choice in movement, the passage for him is closed, the only thing that is available to him to go through the intestine where 3 demons are waiting for him, not only the player gets a closed space filled with enemies, and the passage is closed behind the player, which will not allow him to retreat, this sharp transition from the open space to the closed mood of the player, despite the fact that the battle was practically not stopped by the player, he felt a completely different kind himself free, because he always had where to retreat, now in order to survive it is necessary to react to threats faster, it would be ideal to change music in this part of the level. The gut will direct to the hall, which leads to the end of the level. Four demons are waiting in the player’s lobby, next to which there is a barrel that explodes from the shot – this is a new open for the player. In fact, the entire level gives the player, to try various mechanics at the same time does not noticely teach him – this is an example of a good design left -handed, faster and easier, to make an introductory tutorial for the player with instructions for using various mechanics, this significantly spoils the immersion in the game, removes the stream state.

The player kills demons in the lobby, opens the door and finds not another monster behind, can be called a peculiar scream, before death, the demon will definitely have time to attack, there is a chance that the player will die and he will have to re -extinguish the level that there is a competent step from the side of the level of level, because it is a great probability that when the player will be re -releasing the level, he will go to the other.
We step a little back and germinate another part of the level, part with the path enter the serpentine that stretches through the acid slurry, here is clearly visible color zoning in the mood of the location. Acid izh – green like the walls to it. In general, color zoning or psychological involves the release of various functional areas only with color or material, this is a common practice among interior designers, how much the game is an attempt to deceive, at least I would have characterized them like that, then various methods from the real world work as an order of magnitude better than invented. For example, the creators of GTA 4 went to the ghetto to collect slum references, the developers often take something from the real world in order to convince the player in the reality of the invented.
The only thing that is missing is the demonstration of the dominant-the dominant is the hill in the circle of which the location/peace/ENT is built, but in most cases this is what the player to strive for, remember the red mountain from the Marovid, or the throat of the world from Skyrim, the tower to City-17 from Half-Life. There are panoramic species in doom, but they are not used properly, for example, on a panorama, it would be possible to add a database of demons where the player needed to get.

And what do you think, what is missing at the first level in doom and thoughts in general?