Название: A Practical Guide to Level Design: From Theory to Practice, Diplomacy and Production
Автор: Ben Bauer
Издательство: CRC Press
Год: 2023
Страниц: 375
Язык: английский
Формат: pdf (true)
Размер: 10.1 MB

Written by an AAA industry expert with over 20 years of experience, this book offers comprehensive coverage of the practical skills that all successful level designers need to have. It covers everything from practical production skills to the social and soft skills required to thrive in the gaming industry.

This book begins with a theoretical and abstract approach that sets a common language for the later hard-skill applications and practical examples. These later chapters cover a wealth of practical skills for use during the concept phase, while creating layouts, scripting, and working with AI. This book includes essential chapters on topics such as social skills, soft skills, world-building, level design direction, production, as well as how to gain employment in the industry.

This book will be of great interest to all level designers, content leads, and directors looking to enhance their skillset. It will also appeal to students of level and game design looking for tips on how to break into the industry.

Even if some people believe level design is all about layout, scripting is usually an equally essential part of level design. In many cases, it is all particular level designers do as their day-to-day job, without even being specialist technical level designers. Especially advanced scripting skills allow for quick prototyping of most gameplay concepts, blurring the lines between design roles. Therefore, I consider scripting as essential for any practically-minded designer. After all, there is the famous saying from Tom & David Kelley: “If a picture is worth 1000 words, a prototype is worth 1000 meetings.” However, technology is advancing rapidly, and gaming technology is absolutely no exception. Additionally, tech and scripting are often unique to the different games and engines.

Any type of text-based scripting or, generally speaking, programming is a realistic possibility for any designer. Lua, C++, and C# are just common examples for bigger gaming engines like Unity, Unreal, or CryEngine. Also, languages like jаvascript can act as a quick prototyping tool. Even some deeper knowledge of Excel and its macro language can be helpful in general design processes. It does not mean every level designer has to learn to program, and many will never have to in their careers. However, some basic understanding and familiarity with source code editors like Visual Studio Code or Notepad++ certainly do not hurt. For example, it can allow level designers to create their own nodes for visual scripting tools. Additionally, even if your engine does not require any text-b ased scripting for level designers, in my experience, even some basic scripting/programming understanding helps you to establish rapport and empathy with coders and other technical folks.

I am well aware that any text-based scripting, especially programming, can appear daunting at first. However, rest assured that if you have a good mentor or tutorial and start easy with a motivating achievable goal, you will get into it quickly. It is an incredibly satisfying skill to learn, which I cannot recommend any higher.