Tag Archives: level design

Basing Level Design on Concept Art

April 15, 2009 – 3:47 pm

Normally it’s the other way around. You lay out a level and a concept artist will create an impression of what it might look like for the Enviroment artists to work from.
However Damnation are apparently going a different way and basing their Level Designs on Concept art. 

By RobHale | Posted in Videogames, design | Also tagged , , , | Comments (5)

Level Design – Further Reading

March 18, 2009 – 11:05 am

I’m always keeping an eye out for good Level Design resources to recommend to people as I believe that it is a hideously under-documented topic and what documentation does exist is often buried deep in forums, wikis or blogs. The remainder I find isn’t actually useful documentation that Designers can learn from. A large part [...]

By RobHale | Posted in Videogames, design | Also tagged | Comments (2)

7 Ways to Make Your AI Smarter

March 9, 2009 – 9:43 pm

Prompted by this article over at Bit-Tech on How AI in Games works it made me want to blog about some of the ways you can make your enemy AI appear smarter without having to re-write your AI back end or invest in expensive middleware.
SCRIPTING
A huge amount of what convinces us a game has good AI [...]

By RobHale | Posted in Videogames, design | Also tagged , | Comments (5)

Continuity Level Design

March 1, 2009 – 3:35 am

 Over There. by San Sharma

Continuity Level Design is a school of Level Design predominantly used by Single Player games. 
Recent examples include Portal, Mirrors Edge and Call of Duty 4. 
Now it’s worth pointing out that the phrase “Continuity Level Design” is something I’ve just made up (well at least as far as I’m aware).
I’ve chosen the [...]

By RobHale | Posted in First-Person, Videogames, design | Also tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (7)

Ten Books Game Designers Should All Read

February 21, 2009 – 12:03 am

One thing I’ve learnt in my career is that the best books to read to learn about Game Design are rarely ever books about Game Design. Books about Game Design are a bit like mobile phones; sure they have a camera but when you want to take proper photo you need to reach for something [...]

By rob hale | Posted in Videogames, design | Also tagged , , , , , | Comments (1)