This is the summary of Emilio Padulo's Level Design Master Class.
· Pre-production
· Production
· Post-production
1. Pre-production
· Level Designers are involved in the pre-production stage of a games development cycle.
· These tend to be Lead/Senior and sometimes a handful of Level Designers.
· In this phase, they look at the Level Designers best practices, ranges of combat, metric, world map and more.
· In this stage, there are 3 main tips to remember:
① Experiment
- Try everything and anything that fits the mold of the core game loop.
- Use your mechanic and ingredients to test ideas.
② Changes
- Many iterations are going to be changed and thrown away, some new features or mechaics will be introduced or tweaked.
③ Immersion
- Try to get a feel for what the player will see through the mechanics, environment.
- How “fun” is a certain mechanic?
- How can it be more fun?
2. Production
· Majority of a Level Designer’s career will be in the production phase.
· Before you can create your mind-blowing, game changing levels, you must first collect all the information possible.
· This requires a meeting between all departments involved such as:
- Programmer - VFX
- Narrative - Sound
- Artist - QA
· The topics that are usually discussed are:
- what is the main theme.
- Where in the game dose your area take place.
- What is the area’s backstory.
- How long is the area.
- What mechanics / ingredients are available in the area to use.
· Once all these questions are answered, it’s time to research on what you would like your area to “feel” like.
· If it’s a real location, then collecting reference images on architecture and ambiance is crucial.
· Creating a mood board with multiple reference images is good in order to allow the other department to know what direction you wish to take with the level.
· After collecting enough reference images, it’s time to start creating 2D/3D layouts using applications such as Sketchup.
· Creating a flow chart depicting the beats of the level.
· A small level design documention with some information.
3. Post – production
· This is the most important phase in the whole production cycle.
· In this phase, Level Designers must make sure that:
- There are no bugs in their levels.
- Layout / Intention are cystal clear to players.
- Difficulty / Pacing is perfectly balanced.
- Area is completely optimized.
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