How Do You Design Your Levels?

Baufritz · Post by **Baufritz** » January 4th, 2014, 6:03 pm

How do you design your levels?
Do you tend to sketch things out? Or do you jump straight into design mode? What are your inspirations?

I almost always just start designing with no particular goal (just messing around with stuff), and go with whatever my mind comes across. I don't design very linear, I'm just adding little things here and there. It doesn't really look like a level at this stage. Later, when more stuff is there, I tackle the order of elements that are already on the design grid. I also end up throwing some of it away again, if I feel like it doesn't fit into the level. When I have a basic concept of how the elements will be arranged, I play through it a couple times to get a feel of how the various elements fit together. If I like it, I keep it and move on to skybox/music if I didn't experiment with it before.
When everything is done, I play through it a couple of times again and change little things, like speed of platforms, respawn time of enemys etc.
I typically release my levels a couple of days after I finish designing, because I playtest different aspects. If I notice that a concept of mine is too unreliable/hard to execute, I take it out/alter it to make the level beatable.

On a side note, I absolutely hate designing with fog and sun effects (in design mode, I love them ingame), especially when I've already set them to match the level. Anyone feel like that?

Wazi · Post by **Wazi** » January 4th, 2014, 6:09 pm

I never sketch things out. I always think of an idea and I do it.
Well, unless I get bored out of it and gave up.

Baufritz · Post by **Baufritz** » January 4th, 2014, 6:14 pm

Wazi wrote:I never sketch things out. I always think of an idea and I do it.
Well, unless I get bored out of it and gave up.

I sometimes sketch things out, like when I'm in school and an idea strikes me, I have to draw rough sketch on a piece of paper, because I know that by the time I get home, it'll no longer be in my head.

ElectroYoshi · Post by **ElectroYoshi** » January 4th, 2014, 7:18 pm

Ideas for levels tend to come to me completely at random, but usually the idea has some kind of connection to what I'm doing at the time. I then jot down a few ideas (Sometimes on my laptop, but other times just in my mind), for concepts I want to incorporate when I'm designing and kind of map out in my mind how I want the area to look. I then get into design mode and begin realizing my vision as closely as possible. I playtest periodically and fix everything I don't think works well, or if I can't find a workable solution, just scrap it. To finish off, I always do a "final playtest" where I play through the entire level. If I run into something that's not reliable, I exit playtest mode, fix it, and start the playtest again. I never upload levels until I can successfully beat them without making alterations.

krishiv768 · Post by **krishiv768** » January 5th, 2014, 4:42 am

I just design the whole level in my mind and then try to make that level in real.

Wazi · Post by **Wazi** » January 5th, 2014, 7:37 am

krishiv768 wrote:I just design the whole level in my mind and then try to make that level in real.

This.

krishiv768 · Post by **krishiv768** » January 5th, 2014, 8:54 am

Wazi wrote:This.

This what???

Post by **Phantomboy** » January 5th, 2014, 10:23 am

Often times a thought, such as a section of a level hits me or sometimes it is simply the levels aesthetic. Then I will simply work out from there. If my idea was to make a castle level, then I will design and area that looks like it could fit in a castle and start building game play elements into it. That's something I like to do, I prefer making smaller gameplay rooms, split up by checkpoint flags. That way I don't end up with a sprawling visual terrain, with next to no content to fill it. It also keeps me mindful of the capacity bar

Wazi · Post by **Wazi** » January 5th, 2014, 6:31 pm

krishiv768 wrote:This what???

krishiv768 · Post by **krishiv768** » January 5th, 2014, 9:54 pm

Wazi wrote:

Meh

Wazi · Post by **Wazi** » January 5th, 2014, 9:57 pm

krishiv768 wrote:Meh

krishiv768 · Post by **krishiv768** » January 5th, 2014, 10:01 pm

Same to you

Post by **bionicnacho** » January 5th, 2014, 11:44 pm

Deleted some off-topic posts. Let's try not to turn this into a pigflag now, guys.

Post by **Entity** » January 14th, 2014, 11:16 pm

Here's my typical loop:

- Come up with amazing killer idea
- Spend two hours in design mode working on it
- Lose motivation and save it under a cool memorable name
- Vow to come back to it
- Never come back to it
- Repeat

Yeah. Back in the day I had literally hundreds -- I kid you not, hundreds -- of crappy unfinished levels. And every now and then I'd finish one and it was still crap but I'd upload it anyway

ElectroYoshi · Post by **ElectroYoshi** » January 14th, 2014, 11:28 pm

Entity wrote: - Come up with amazing killer idea
- Spend two hours in design mode working on it
- Lose motivation and save it under a cool memorable name
- Vow to come back to it
- Never come back to it
- Repeat

When I first joined Atmosphir this happened to me more than it should've.

Post by **Entity** » January 14th, 2014, 11:31 pm

ElectroYoshi wrote:When I first joined Atmosphir this happened to me

I don't like what you're insinuating young man

Anyway, I like to think of myself as a creative person who is bad at doing creative things.

I uploaded maybe 100 levels and only 1 of them got LOTD. Ironically it was a tutorial level on how to make your levels look nice.

Post by **ThatOneFox** » January 15th, 2014, 10:54 am

It really does depend. Sometimes I just jump in without any idea (mainly during the days when atmosphir was actually running, which explains why I never got LOTD). However recently I do plan out my levels before I make them. Phantom was pretty impressed with what the lighting engine in atmosphir could do when he played "Amnesia - The god Complex part 1", mainly because I designed that level with lighting in mind, and therefore use of atmosphere (PUNPUNPUNPUNPUN).
In fact you could probably use it as the lighting demo for the game XD

Baufritz · Post by **Baufritz** » January 15th, 2014, 3:17 pm

StreetLights wrote:Phantom was pretty impressed with what the lighting engine in atmosphir could do when he played "Amnesia - The god Complex part 1", mainly because I designed that level with lighting in mind

Lighting/atmosphere are in my opinion very important things to keep in mind when designing. A lot of levels I've seen in the play browser just keep the default lighting/music, and it often makes a huge difference if you just change the color of the skybox.

Post by **Entity** » January 15th, 2014, 3:20 pm

Baufritz wrote:Lighting/atmosphere are in my opinion very important things to keep in mind when designing. A lot of levels I've seen in the play browser just keep the default lighting/music, and it often makes a huge difference if you just change the color of the skybox.

This

crazyal02 · Post by **crazyal02** » January 18th, 2014, 1:32 pm

I usually have a vague underlying mechanic and aesthetic, and just jump into design mode and build a level around it.