Tag Archive - level design

Making of Guns of Stygia (Pt.3)

May 11, 2011 in Bulletstorm with 2 Comments

stygia3preview

This is the 3rd in a series of posts about the making of my Guns of Stygia map that’s available in the Gun Sonata DLC pack, and it’s brought to you by the letter G.

I’m not sure why, really – it just happened like that. I started writing about level design stuff and ended up talking about Goals, Gating and Good Ideas. More specifically, it’s about how one small idea can prove valuable, by helping a level designer achieve many different goals at once. If you’re interested in level design, then read on!

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Making of Guns of Stygia (Pt.2)

April 20, 2011 in Bulletstorm with 4 Comments

What do you mean overcompensating?

In this second post about the development of Guns of Stygia DLC map I will try to give you an insight in to the process of lighting the worlds you kick ass in.

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Making of Guns of Stygia (Pt.1)

April 13, 2011 in Bulletstorm with 9 Comments

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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*.

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Life of a Level Designer (Pt.1)

March 17, 2011 in Bulletstorm with 42 Comments

This is how it looks behind the scenes.

When somebody asks me what I do, I try to explain it in a few simple sentences. “I design levels, I place walls, enemies etc”. In return I usually hear “Wow! That’s a great job, you are playing for a whole day and you get paid for it“. Ehhh… both statements don’t represent how it really is.

It’s easy to imagine that making a level is a piece of cake. What’s difficult about putting in a few walls, placing some enemies, adding dialogues, cutscenes or an event like a dragon riding a sledge? A day’s work and tadam! I’m drinking beer, playing my super mega marvelous level, delighted how it came out, knowing players will be exited when they play it. Honestly, it’s a shame that this couldn’t be further from the truth…

Don’t get me wrong. I love my job and I don’t see myself anywhere else, but I assure you it’s no picnic and nothing like you imagine. You want to know why? Read on.

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Embedded Storytelling

February 16, 2011 in Bulletstorm with 14 Comments

Messy...

When designing a level, we need to consider what the overall experience for the player should be and it usually boils down to a single question: “Is it fun?” And for the sake of making any given area as entertaining as possible, we focus most of our attention on gameplay. There is, however, a part of Level Design that, if neglected and not kept consistent all the way through development, will make the end result look like a random assembly of interconnected rooms devoid of any personality. I am talking about storytelling.

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Because we care

December 23, 2010 in Bulletstorm with 12 Comments

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Okay, so we do not do everything by the text book. Guilty as charged. Truth is, however, that virtually any project of Bulletstorm’s scale will have changes and improvements being implemented until the very last moment… and then some more. This is exactly what occurred to one of the levels I’ve been working on. A particular area underwent a major last minute change and what follows is an uneasy path that we went through.

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