Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Games & Gameplay >

Level Design On 1st-Person Shooters

All Acting Regiment

21:09 / 16.02.06

What makes a good map? What kind of topology do you like? What features should there be more of and which are cliched?

Phex: Dorset Doom

22:56 / 16.02.06

Crates. Bastard stupid bloody crates. I have yet to play a single FPS, from Doom onwards, that did not feature crates (Wolfenstein 3D appeared before the technology to fill levels with crates was developed). Worse still are the crates in Half-life 1, which occasionally contain a single unit of health and ammo and some random detrius which dissolves on contact with sunlight.
Legba, if this is a brainstorming session for a FPS map you're working on, do not include crates and you will make many gamers happy.
As for what I like in levels, I've always found that the levels that resonate most with me are the ones set in real-world places. The parts of Half-life 1 in Black Mesa could be any office in the real world, complete with break rooms and filing cabinets and the like. The streets of City 17 in the sequel reminded me of Prague, parts of the coast reminded me of Cornwall for some reason (granted, Cornwall's beaches aren't covered in crates, or ant-lions). That's something I like in FPS games, and it's probably why games like the GTA series are so popular; you're not running through some generic crate-filled corridors, but a place you might end up in real life. If you can turn the parking lot of a fast-food resturant into something scary and thrilling then you've done your job as a level designer.
Also, if there are going to be friendly NPCs, don't make me the centre of everything. Remember the scene in HL2 where the Resistance has just taken the musuem and suddenly three or so Striders turn up? You can wait it out behind a pillar or be one of the poor saps trying to kill the Striders with the SMG, or you can take charge with a rocket launcher. Either way you're just a part of the battle instead of some unstoppable super-soldier.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

07:16 / 17.02.06

you're not running through some generic crate-filled corridors, but a place you might end up in real life

F.E.A.R. is very good like that- the office maps actually seem like, well, offices. That people actually work in and stuff.

In fact, after a heavy session I find myself listening out for the "clink" of a grenade hitting the stairs when I'm heading for my desk at work.

All Acting Regiment

10:34 / 17.02.06

I like a lot of Far Cry's outdoor levels: it's cover, the jungle, but it's tricksy cover: you're never quite sure if you're visible or not. And they're huge, as well: plenty sniping positions, but this is stopped from being fun destroying because you can usually only get one or two guys down before the others dive into cover and wait you out. And, as was mentioned upthread, it feels "real world"- in the jungle there's stray pigs and birds milling around, in the indoor levels there's posters in the mess halls and magazines on the tables.

All Acting Regiment

23:16 / 22.02.06

Bit of an update for those who're interested. Working on a map for Far Cry. Square map. In the centre, a large girders and platforms construction: you start at the top and have to make your way down, avoiding sniper fire and the attentions of some machine-gun men. Then you have to cross to the western corner of the map to a helictoper crash site, fight some guys to get a PDA and a buggy, then scoot back to the opposite corner to hack into a computer to finish. No crates. A few barrels. Only about three, though.

lord nuneaton savage

10:23 / 23.02.06

Hopefully no annoying platform jumping? That really sods me off. Taking out hundreds of enemies, armed to the teeth, only to die 'cos the first-person viewpoint makes it damn hard to judge the distance between two platforms.

It's a Cool Killer and no mistake.

All Acting Regiment

16:01 / 23.02.06

Nah, stairs, mate, stairs. I took a leaf out of Far Cry's official level's book by making it so that as you come down the stairwell you have to keep looking round to see where the shots are coming from.

11:12 / 27.02.06

Speaaking of crates and FPS's have you seeen the Crate review system, whereby games are reviewd based upon the amount of time it takes to find a crate?

16:06 / 28.02.06

Max Payne (at least the first one), which is close enough to 1st person to count, as far as level design goes, was particularly good.

Most of the locations felt pretty real, some of them unnervingly so. And though it was usually clear where you were trying to go, it never felt to me that I was being overtly shepherded to an endpoint, so much as going where I was able to. Offices felt like offices, subways like subways, and so on.

Jawsus-son Starship

21:00 / 28.02.06

The first level of half-life 2 is crazy good, but we've all talked about this before.

17:26 / 01.03.06

Well, Deus Ex used to be my model for top-notch singleplayer level design, simply because there were multiple points of access to each objective. There's a bunch of FPS that totally missed that illusion of choice and suffered as a result (looking at you, Jedi Knight series). But then, yeah, HL2 comes along, and that's the end of my absolutist theory.

Multiplayer DM level design awards still go to Quake. And Unreal Tournament (Phobos and Morpheus stand out). I've reinstalled Q1 so I can remake some of the deathmatch levels in Source. I rebuilt one of the Q2 maps (Tokay's Towers) for HL2DM, and it's still got hella flow. Real ugly, though.

Star Wars Battlefront II had some nice MP levels - nice to look at, sure, and with different operational layouts preventing the use of the same strategy on each board.

Return to Castle Wolfenstein had a level called "Tram" that was unbelievably good. That one and "Beach" were fantastic, but "Tram" wins out for forcing the invading team to switch gears so often (basically, hurry hurry hurry, wait and defend, add sneak as desired, repeat).

I'm enjoying "cs_office" for CS:source immensely at the moment, so long as the sniper rifles are disabled. There's some furious bottlenecking there, made very desperate by the single-life policy.

Never played FarCry, Legba, but I'd love to see some screens of your level in progress. Pimp, man, pimp!

Thaddeus "B." Glands

04:54 / 03.03.06

This is probably of interest to the topic, particularly to anyone actually interested in making their own maps. Obviously it is by no means the only word on the subject, but based on my own experience in level design and playing games, I've found it rings pretty true.

Big List of Single-Player Mapping Tips

It should be noted that, as it's on a Half-Life based editing site, there's obviously a few things in there that are specific to Half-Life, but for the most part it can be applied to any single-player mapping.

All Acting Regiment

06:54 / 03.03.06

Thanks for the link. Will read and report back.

12:28 / 29.11.06

How'd you get on, Legs?

All Acting Regiment

14:37 / 30.11.06

Shit. Had to remove Far Cry for some reason, then only tried re-installing it when I'd lost home internet capabilities, so then of course I couldn't download the sodding patches etc. Plus the level editor thing was a bastard. Might go back to it, though.