Level/Environment designers play a pivotal role in games development. While a concept artist may visually describe how a scene may look and feel but it is up to the level designer to selectively place assets and make sure the game flows in a way that is enjoyable. Now a game can have the best technical gameplay systems in the world but this will wear on the player if the game suffers from bad level design. Being a good level designer means being able to understand how the gameplay works and how to make it the most interesting in terms of exploration and/or excitement. Making sure that the level design compliments the gameplay and vise versa is vital to creating an engaging experience. For instance making when making an action game a level designer must be able to focus combat into specific areas and instances that will provide a player with both challenge and variety, for instance connecting long narrow areas of combat that restrict certain aspects of gameplay to large open areas that allow you to use your entire range of combat. Introduction of new verticality or puzzles can also change up the experience without actually changing the gameplay.
In games that are less action heavy then level design becomes more of aesthetics and exploration. Here good level designers will use composition techniques in the landscape/geometry of the game world to draw the players attention to points of interest or steer the player in a specific direction.
http://benno3d.blogspot.co.uk/
No comments:
Post a Comment