How Do I Become a Level Designer?

Game level designer, English title: Level Designer, or level planning, as the name implies, is actually the designer of the level in the game. The work of the game level designer is briefly described below: Game level design is actually the design of the entire game world. In a game, players spend almost 99.9% of their time in the game world. As you can imagine, the importance of game level design is beyond doubt. From the beginning of the game to the development of a game, the game requires the guidance of the level designer.

Game level designer

Since the level designer is planning the game world, it is indispensable to understand garden design and landscape design. Of course, this is just superficial. In fact, it is not a good idea to let the art designers in the game development team complete it.

As for the other, the scene function is designed, such as where will the monsters be refreshed and where will there be

Title: Game Level Designer

Job Category: Full-time

main duty

-Cooperate with artists and programmers to design and produce game levels according to game design plans, including but not limited to building basic game level maps, scenes, integrating game levels, writing scripts and adjusting character AI;

Job Requirements

-Have rich experience and interest in various computer games and video games, especially 3D action, adventure and first-person shooting games, and have a strong desire for employment.

-Good analysis and aggregation skills, strong logic, and basic programming skills.

-Ability to have independent creativity, lasting enthusiasm and initiative for work.

-Good time management skills, able to complete work on time in a tight schedule.

-Comprehensive

Level design? I believe that when readers see this word, they all feel confused. Maybe some readers are already thinking of "Mario", "

Now that we want to talk about level design, before we talk about the specific content, we must select the content of the level design work. What does a level designer who "materialize" the game need to do? Which design work belongs to the level design, which design work belongs to the game design, which design work belongs to the procedure, and which design work belongs to the artist? Let's divide a little bit from scratch.

The first is the plot, script and dialogue. Today, even a purely killing game like Painkiller must have a long storyline. Generally speaking, the plots, scripts and dialogues are written by professional writers-for example, the entire series of "Splinter Cell" is basically completed in this way; some specific special dialogues, such as training Things like that are adjusted by the level designer and the game designer. Some designers are more experienced, and they will complete the game plot and dialogue directly-for example, games such as "Vampire Dark Hidden-Bloodlines" (VTM: Bloodlines), the Scripting team and the senior producer directly take charge of Game Design work. There are also some plots that don't matter at all, everything is based on the content of the game. This kind of game may ask someone to write a script after the content of the level is decided, such as the one produced by Shanghai UBI

What are the tools for level design? It's the engine. The answer is straightforward. Every familiar

How did a specific level design start?

First, level designers need to understand the specifics of their level. Depending on the style and specific content of the game design, the way the level content is determined is different. Take our Shanghai Ubi game as an example: the levels of "Cell Division-Tomorrow's Pandora" are all pre-set by the script, the level designer gets the basic plot; "Rainbow Six 3" is a transplant project, the level designer What I get is the level rough made by other groups;

The so-called level design has two main tasks: one is the design structure, and the other is the design of the level operation. The former are things like BSP, Terrain, Mesh, and the latter are things like Pathnode, Script, AI. A good level design requires both. To determine the structure of a level, the most important requirement is first. Different 3D games have different gameplay requirements and different level design requirements. Give a few recent game examples.

The level design of Half-Life2 focuses on "single line and free": the loading of the Source engine is quite powerful, so the entire map is divided into a number of small levels, but the levels are basically free to come and go. This kind of processing method has very high requirements for the integrity of the design-there is almost no switch in the level in the game, and the communication requirements between Level Design and Content Director will be very high. The design of Half-Life2 is also quite sufficient for optimization. Even in small scenes, there are countless obvious corners, turns, and intersections blocked by obstacles ... Considering the extremely large number of uses

Finally, let's talk about the operation part and the optimization part. The most important part of level design is related to operation: artificial intelligence and triggers. These two parts are generally called Script, which is the most troublesome part for level designers.

Let's talk about artificial intelligence first. The artificial intelligence embodied by the enemy in the game is actually two completely different concepts from the "artificial intelligence" mentioned in computer science. Artificial intelligence in computer science involves many

In the beginning, God created heaven and earth.

The ground has not been shaped, chaotic, and dark is on the abyss;

The Spirit of God is covered on the water.

God said, "Let there be light";

There is light, the first day.

God said, "There shall be a sky between the waters, separating the water from the water."

God made the sky, the second day.

God said, "The water under the sky will gather in one place, and the dry land will be exposed."

God called the dry land the earth and the accumulation of water the sea, the third day;

-"The Bible Genesis"

The game world is set like Genesis, with light and darkness; land and sea; heaven and hell. Designers have created another world that is parallel to the real world. It can be primitive, magical, or interstellar. But all this comes from their God

Divided by function:

1) Fighting scenes: such as plains, caves, cemeteries, or open, narrow, or bumpy, fighting may occur at any time;

2) Non-combat scenes: such as prop stores, equipment stores, hawking squares, etc., provide places for players to rest as much as possible;

Divided by region:

1) In the wild: where monsters usually grow, including plains, crypts, cemeteries, and beaches;

2) (City) Street: usually a gathering place for more players, including cities, towns, villages, etc .;

3) Indoors: item trading points, including item shops, equipment shops, and blacksmith shops;

Divided by space:

1) 3D scene: a scene constructed with three-dimensional terrain, with its own height and occlusion;

2) 2D scene: a pure two-dimensional scene, which needs to be edited and processed by tools before it has height, shading, etc .;

Since the setting of the scene also adds other art settings, the other art settings are:

1. Interface: World Map

2. Interface: scene map (small, medium, large)

3. Scene objects: special buildings, objects, effects, etc .;

4. Cutscenes (early stand-alone games are more common)

The performance of the scene is concerned with the expression of the environment and the various atmospheres. Therefore, the appropriateness and harmony of the scene are particularly important! Whether based on reality or future magic, the characteristics of the scene will be affected by three major factors: era, religion, and geography.

Influence of the times

Different era backgrounds have different color requirements and architectural requirements for the scene;

For example: "Diablo", its time background is positioned as far as the medieval period of Europe, during which the barbarians captured the Roman city,

Every game requires scene settings-a "physical" area that contains gameplay in the game. Whether you plan to simulate a Western playground, a colorful and sweet cartoon world, or the remains of an abandoned mine on a distant planet. Scene factors can greatly guide and attract players' emotional input. The emotion of the player constitutes the emotional bond between the player and the game. However, the gameplay mechanisms and methods mainly make players excited, engaged and active, all of which contribute to the player's emotional experience.

The scene is created to support and enrich the gameplay-not to reduce it. Scenes use their visual styles to shift and change player emotions. Warmth and happiness can show the beautiful emotions in a sweet world. Darkness, confusion, and blood show a turbulent world. Therefore, when trying to create a visual atmosphere, it is helpful to use a lot of reference methods, such as photos, drawings, and illustrations to help determine the visual style.

This requires a more detailed description of the times as a reference material, which includes the following aspects:

What time is this?

Cultural level is stone / bronze / iron / steam engine / electricity, or gold / silver / black iron;

Scene number: such as SCN001, SCN004, etc .;

Scene name: such as Desperate Town, Valley of Desolation, etc.

Scene specifications (3D / 2D, n * n screen)

Scene description

Location: wild, city, town, countryside, tribe, etc.

Terrain: swamp, snow, grassland, wilderness, gravel, random graves, hilly areas, crypts, caves, etc .;

Climate: spring, summer, autumn, winter, drought, humidity, etc .;

Atmosphere: gloomy, violent, desperate, bloodthirsty, fear;

Scene description: roughly describe the scene with text;

Import and export: Explain how there are several entrances and exits in the scene, and describe the street direction;

Building distribution: For example, the market is on the east, the slums are on the west, the government and wealthy areas are on the south, the canals are on the north, etc .;

Scene Schematic: Use the picture to simply sketch out the distribution as large as the building;

Special building description: such as church, Taoist temple, temple, etc.

Example: The broken church is located in the center of the town. The decaying door is half-covered, facing the east. It s weird that the church roof has a black cross upside down, and the broken roof has countless upside down Bat, motionless.

Remarks: mainly fill in reference materials, etc .;

Relevant figures: Record pictures that affect other art workloads to prevent forgetting and revealing;

Associated Scenarios: Enter the connection scenario numbers for the import and export in each direction of the scenario, such as E-SCN001, W-SCN 002, N-SCN 003, S-004

Author: Kelvin.Chan