Making of Guns of Stygia (Pt.1)

Finally, you’re able to get your hands on our first DLC for Bulletstorm – the Gun Sonata pack. Hooray!

It includes 5 new maps, one of which is a brand new Echo map called Guns of Stygia, that I was the level designer on. We thought we could take this opportunity to give a little insight into the creative process, so this is going to be a bit of a super mega special article written in different parts.

This first one from me is going to be an overview of the kind of thinking behind a level that goes on in the early stages. Tomas will follow this up with a post from his perspective as a lighting artist, and later I’ll come back to go into nitty-gritty level design stuff in more detail and, and… well, it’ll be so amazing it might just change your life*.

*Not guaranteed.

My first brainstorming session for the level started with Jonny, another English level designer here at PCF, and we held our design meeting the traditional English way – down at the local pub during lunchtime. We were both starting work on Echo maps for the Gun Sonata pack, so we wanted to make sure that our levels were both cool, but in different ways that compliment each other. We talked about ideas, making notes on a scrappy little sheet of paper I stuffed in my pocket, while I had cheeky drink and a plate full of pierogi (Russian style with onions, thanks).

Sometimes we draw diagrams to explain ideas. Sometimes they make sense. Sometimes Jonny draws Batman.

Echo mode’s gameplay is inherently arcadey, with its emphasis on Skillshots, player performance, and repeated play for higher scores. This basically means that trying to tell a story during the level wouldn’t be a great idea. Having said that, we didn’t want the player to be simply progressing through a generic area full of enemies, without any sense of purpose or context. We quickly agreed that rather than tell a story explicitly, it would be better to come up with situations that we can communicate mostly through the environment, and to which the gameplay is appropriate.

Another goal for me was that I wanted the level to feel dynamic, in terms of how the player moves through the level – kicking stuff down to forge the way forwards, jumping over barriers, sliding down improvised ziplines, etc. – and it attracted me to the idea of “escape” as a general theme. So the player starts in a Skulls prison cell, kicks the door open, spends 5 minutes creatively kicking arse as they make their way out, and then… something something. At this point I didn’t really know how it would end.

(…And even if I did, I wouldn’t spoil it here. Buy it and see, punks!)

Armed with my notes from the lunchtime pub meeting, and a lot of ideas as to how I wanted the level to feel, I’m back at my desk experimenting with ideas in the editor. The goal is to make sure the map is everything an Echo level should be – fun, unique, good-looking, the right length with nice pacing and flow, and most specifically to Bulletstorm, the combat should emphasize the depth and variety of Skillshot gameplay.

Ernest Hemingway was on the ball when he said that “the first draft of anything is shit” – meaning that every idea you decide to pursue can (and should be) made better before you’re happy with it. Doing this requires a process which allows lots of mistakes to be made early, and lots of iteration and improvement to take place quickly.

Ernest Hemingway - influential novelist, journalist, and general clever person. Had a clever person's beard.

This means that in the early design stages, when it’s just me working on the level, it all looks pretty basic and ugly, while I just focus on making gameplay stuff work as it should. Does it have a nice beginning, middle and end? Is the skillshot potential of every area multi-layered and interesting? Could this section be better? Am I designing areas that can look believable and gorgeous and cool when it’s finished?

(I’ll go into detail about the thinking behind answering these kinds of questions in my next part of this article.)

Making sure the level looks and sounds great isn’t my responsibility as the level designer, mind. That’s where collaboration comes in, with environment artists, lighting artists, animators and sound people. We talk a lot and work together to make sure the final product is something we’re all happy with, from our own perspectives.

I create a zipline down to the next part of the level, and discuss it with the art peeps. They make it look epic.

So the final version of the Guns of Stygia map looks and sounds purdy, and hopefully you’ll find it super fun to squeeze all the skillpoints out of it too.

In the meantime, there’ll be more purdyness to come in the next part of this article, when Tomas talks about his contribution to the level as the Official Main Lighting Guy of Lighting Masters Extreme. Stay tuned, and keep refreshing this blog endlessly until his post appears!**

** Not really. Don’t forget to eat / shower / poo.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may also like:

1. Making of Guns of Stygia (Pt.3)
2. Making of Guns of Stygia (Pt.2)
3. Life of a Level Designer (Pt.1)
4. What’s a Man Toast?
5. Embedded Storytelling