A small look at my level design process in Dead Gear

While a significantly large portion of the design work is done primarily in word documents; I still have to design the actual world prototype. Here's a very small , shrunken cropping of an enormous 1:1 scale game world map that I build in photoshop. (The actual 1:1 image is somewhere around 60000x18000 pixels; it's pretty huge.)

It's an evolution of the original layout I had created using Visio, which is pretty invaluable for layouts and flowcharts.

As you can see, the majority of it is simple gray and black; with only a few colors to discern special platforms, enemy placement, or objects affected by gravity. It's very difficult to not get caught in the trap of making everything beautiful from the get-go, like IceForest1 up there in the corner. But it is essential to get your level flowing and working well as a prototype before adding all of the flair, because, after all, what if the level you designed turned out to be crappy and unfun?

With prototypes like these, I can write in a document about what the room is going to be like, design the room design visually, insert them into the game, use them for playtesting, and then once we're satisfied, I can begin the task of making it pretty. (Although I do like to create a small, pretty mockup of each area before I begin. It helps me feel out the atmosphere of the area, as well as block out the colors I'll need later.)

The purple boxes are rooms that are documented, but yet to be designed visually. I typically try to judge their sizes with the purple box, but on occasion the final design is often larger or smaller than anticipated.

Each 'room' has its own PSD file and Text file; I add relevant gameplay notes everywhere I can. Then I flatten the room and paste it to this large map. The giant map is somewhat unwieldy, but it's important to examine the game world as a whole, and to make sure areas are connected appropriately and logically, game-wise.


-Alex