Design Rules 101 – Get your shit together
July 29th, 2008 at 11:17pmAfter working on three major projects in the last 3.5 years I have seen some amazing decisions that have cost time, money, and people. Like most AAA games time is your enemy and when you waste it, it bites you in the ass. Prioritize what is essential about the game (story, new cover system, co-op, number of A.I., etc.). Design has to work with production to get these priorities sorted otherwise things get cut, added, or lost throughout production.
Pre-production is your friend and should be given ample time in the production cycle to figure out what works and what doesn’t. Any major gameplay ideas should be well thought out and if it can be tested easily or within a certain amount of time it should get fast tracked to becoming part of the game. Make sure the ideas you implement have the proper resources allocated at the proper time (looking at production on this one). Publishers should not ask for more than one sp level and one mp level to demo right away to press or public. Any more focus levels than that end up hurting you than helping. You end up with a situation where only a few levels get love and everyone else gets no support. Then it becomes milestone time and the publisher is wondering where the rest of the game is. It just doesn’t work; I have seen it time and time again and it hurts the project big time.
During pre-production, there needs to be a master list of assets (textures, characters, models, vehicles, etc.) that is tracked by one or two AP’s. That way we can have work for artists to do during pre-production. We need environmental artists working on creating 5-10 different versions of global objects (crates, barrels, desks, wood chunks, lights, shelving, etc.). Because once design is finished doing their design ideas, plans, and everyone is agreed on their tasks, they need to get started right away building the level. We can put blocks down as cover but in reality that only can go so far. The assets don’t have to be finalized but the scale and dimensions should be close. It becomes easier to deal with designing a level when you have things to plop down.
Designing your levels need to be visualized as much as possible by any means (text, storyboards, top downs, videos). If you have a particular look for a level, find reference material to support your vision. If you can’t find reference material, have an artist try to mock up a concept. This process is not only for your benefit but for the people as well.
Too many cooks in the kitchen plague designers all the time. When you have people from art, production, sound, programming, and publishers telling you how to design your levels or game concepts it becomes a problem. Designers know best. They play games, they analyze them, and they know what works and what doesn’t. An EMT shouldn’t be giving orders or suggestions to a neurologist, so just stop. When designers have to say no to game ideas, it is probably for a good reason. Either your idea is dumb, there isn’t enough time, or it won’t work for a multitude of reasons. It makes us look like asses for saying no all the time but generally there is a valid reason, and a lot of times we are tired of explaining why it won’t work. So if you are reading this and not a designer, make sure you know the limits of the engine, the time frame we are in, the work load we have, and bring up something at fits the environment if you insist on plaguing us with your infinite wisdom.
Once designers have gotten their design flushed out and are in block out mode, keep it fairly simple. If you have a builder/scripter combo team, make sure there is enough geometry down for the scripter to work on. Make sure you can tweak the scale, cover, and environment easily. The less complicated the initial block out, the better. This also should apply for anyone who is doing a level by themselves. Just start off simple, detailing will eventually be done. The problem with detailing out areas while blocking out is that people start to become attached to that geometry because it looks good but it may not actually play well. When people start to become attached to that area they are less likely to make changes to it, which can be bad if the gameplay doesn’t feel right.
Changing a level is perfectly fine but change can kill a project if not done right. I just witnessed 3 major changes in overall game design in one project (2 year production cycle) and in reality it became a 9 month project. Changing for the sake of changing is bad and should be stomped out at all costs. There is a fine line between iteration of a level and changing the entire level several times because it doesn’t “feel” right. Major changes should only happen in the block out stage. It is at a stage where major changes are easy enough to make. If a major change wants to be made to a level at a later part of a stage it has to be seriously scrutinized on why it needs to be changed and given a time allowance for it to be changed. There is a saying I hear a lot, “You will never be done with a level even though it is shipped.” This is very true, there is always more stuff you can put into the level to make it better but at some point it does need to be shipped. You can’t ship a game on time if you are constantly changing it. This is one of the biggest pitfalls I see in the game industry today. Find a good cutoff date for all major changes in the game/level design and iterate the hell out of what you have.
Iteration means you take what you have and you slightly change it. The major flow, geometry, and concept should be done. Now with iteration, you can add in layers of elements to make it a desirable level to play. Once an area is fully iterated on, then the geometry can be worked on to be more detailed out. If it is a builder/scripter combo team you can have the scripter work on another section while the builder pimps out the first area the designers flushed out. Designing as you go is by far the worst way to design and it opens the game up for possible failure. Designing as you go is where you have no clear direction on the design of the level. The level is subject to change 1000x over and it will never feel right. So the sooner you lock down the gameplay the better off you are.
