[Tutorial] Gameplay design in your level

[Ruud033]

Hey people,

I've seen a lot of good maps already made by the community and a tonne of cool idea's. I often get the question what makes a good map in terms of gameplay (as the aesthetics can always be polished). I hope to give an answer to that by writing this forum post.

I often see people starting with a really cool idea and immediately jumping into action by designing the level the way they have it inside of their heads inside the editor straight from the beginning. This is a thing I also did when I first started, but looking a back on how I did things, I should've done things differently, there are many improvements. 

Spoiler

I didn't have the knowledge (or many people to help me) at the time and i still had to learn about in depth technical knowledge regarding the UDK editor. I thought that when I'd have a lot of knowledge about the editor I'd be there. Turned out that I indeed learned much on how to do stuff, but the main playing principle of  any map was not available to me at the time. They just 'seemed to work' because it 'felt right' or something, I could only give very vague answers on why a level worked the way it did..

 I now realize that even with less knowledge about the editor you can still have an awesome map but with lesser aesthetics. Read more to find out.

I think it's better to have a solid plan for multiplayer gameplay functionality at first, so you can work out the aesthetics later on. As said before, I see many people working on the aesthetics of a map straight away, but most of the times this isn't really an efficient strategy. This is because when you have to change something around, you have to change a tonne of details which are very time consuming.

In the very base of a multiplayer gameplay map I think its good to think about the objectives at first and the choke points. The PDF in the attachment here helps me explain a lot I can never write down myself here. 

Once you have done a basic layout of the map the way you want it to be, you can choose where to do what in terms of aesthetics. The most important thing here is that your map 'works' at first, so the details become less important.

 

I'd highly recommend you read this before you start your own level because it'll give you a bit more grip on the gameplay and the way you design the paths.

After you've read the PDF in the attachment, I'd also recommend to take a look at these sources:

• Work out your idea's, determine the atmosphere and scene; 
  • https://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com/tutorials/a-beginners-guide-to-designing-video-game-levels--cms-25662
  • http://worldofleveldesign.com/categories/level_design_tutorials/how-to-plan-level-designs-game-environments-workflow.php
• Paths design, objective placement and distance; (this is mainly for singleplayer due to it's focus on lineair path design but you'll get the point) 
  • http://www.chaoticstupid.com/trinity-8-paths/

Objectives in RenX can for example be;

• A nice camping spot where you can MRLS / Arty pound the base (whiteout hill for ex)
• A tiberium silo
• A communications center
• A custom tech building

Keep in mind that these are only examples, as the PDF in the attachment will say, it's best to have an objective with a function and after completing it's function (or after capturing) it should (almost) never be useful to say in.

 

Arctic Stronghold was designed with these documents in mind, compared to the other maps it is a relatively new map but worked out really well from the start (compared to others which have +- 8 years of iteration behind them already)

It's just an example of how things can turn out. I hope you can do something with this knowledge. 

Edit; Keep in mind that this sort of grabs the core essence of it all. There are far better books and advanced guidelines available (often you'd have to pay for them) but this is to get most community members in the proper direction.

Multiplayer-Level-Design.pdf

Kind regards, Ruud

 

Edit2; For the users who are interested in the more advanced stuff;

• http://www.hourences.com/product/the-hows-and-whys-of-level-design-2/
• http://www.hourences.com/my-2016-releasing-all-of-my-content-for-free/

[IllumZar]

Thanks for the article Ruud! Very well written!

 

[j0g32]

Many thanks for starting the topic!

Gameplay and Balance is such a crucial feature of each "unique" map. Especially for RenX with its complex gameplay mechanics.

I guess, we should encoruage all New Maps to be played in an ugly blocked out state only, before any details are added. Like in a professional studio^^

One observation about some classic RenX maps: although it is highly unrealistic that GDI and Nod built their bases back to back (Under,Field,Islands) this creates the possibility to connect bases with tunnels, while vehicles have to go around in a large "C" (arch). This gives infantry a kind of speed bonuses and does not make it too boring to attack the enemy base, once friendlyWF/Airlstrip is lost...

You will find sth. similar in other classics, e.g. walls, hourglass/whiteout, where the infantry can shortcut through the middle and vehicles have to go around

Basically the infantry routes should be shorter than the vehicle routes and you should be able to transition between those routes on the battlefield.

Yet, I myself am still struggling to come up with a good layout that takes these considerations into account ^^

[Henk]

Renegade X's C&C mode is unique, most tutorials about designing for FPS are just for classic, well-known game modes like Team Deathmatch, CTF, Domination etc. But you can definitely learn from those tutorials (or for at least sections of your map). Renegade X maps are a lot more complex than most multiplayer shooter levels, as in, there's a lot of things to keep in mind compared to a Unreal or CoD.

I learned a lot from World of Level Design. And also looking at and disecting the existing renegade (X) maps. Looking at what popular maps do right vs less popular maps. I saw renegade maps described as alphabet letters somewhere and it was a pretty interesting way to look at maps, and an interesting starting point when you design your level, this is mostly about the vehicle paths. C, V, A, W (Under, Field & Reservoir for example) S/Z (I know there was a custom in original Renegade that had this, and Snow is this if the horizontal stripes are bases), O (Mesa and Tomb for example), H (Walls & Whiteout kind of, with the bases being the long sides).

This is a very abstract way to look at it but it might help. There's also maps that have other shapes than alphabet letters so don't just stick to that system  

 

You should always sketch out your maps like Ruud said, on Tunnels I took it a step further and made the basic layout in 3ds max, just by using simple cubes and cylinders, no need for modelling skills (Make one half, and then mirror it), then importing that to UDK and placing it on a terrain, and made sure the structures fit into the bases of course.

That way you can walk around in your map and see the scale of everything, measure how long it takes to get from point A to B. This is better than working with BSP (if it's just for scale) because it's easy to scale, less chance to get crashes, no need to build geometry after every change, just quicker.

 

What I did then was make one half of the map, very far to completion, including those tedious path nodes. Then copy everything over to the other side that wasn't unique to the faction. And then add some more details and variations to make it look less mirrored.

Saves time, and is more symmetrical.