Dark Arrow on 13/3/2006 at 16:46
I am wondering how you people build your levels.
Do you have everything planned in your mind to the smallest detail? Do you draw a floorplan on paper? Or perhaps you go even deeper and draw a "3d"* picture of some special rooms in paper. Do you just let your instinct guide you and start working on a mission with a simple theme in your mind?
So how do you build your Thief3 missions or Unreal missions. I am used to making levels with dromed and I found out that the best practise was to have atleast a floorplan drawn on paper. However, in dromed the architecture was done completely from bsp, where floorplans had it's benefits. Creating architecture from bsp and staticmeshes is quite new to me and I was wondering what would be the best practise when building missions. Should I have a floorplan, or should I be more precise when making some special rooms? Perhaps draw them out. I have noticed that when I make floorplans the missions tend to became flat. Perhaps I need to put more thought in the floorplans or abandon them completely. I'm also considering about the possibility of creating pieces like hallways and rooms and then joining them together like a jigzaw a puzzle.
How do you build your missions? What do you think is the best way to create a mission?
*The correct word for this kind of thing is currectly lost to me. :p
Ziemanskye on 13/3/2006 at 17:29
I tend to sketch rough overheads of rooms or areas before I build.
I sketch details too for refernce or to keep hold of an idea.
I don't map the whole thing because one irritation or constrain or another tends to make a mess of the whole thing.
A lot of the real detail of the rooms comes from experimenting with smeshes and seeing what looks good though - the initial area would just be a box labelled bedroom or something, maybe with a bed in the room if I wanted to set placement of (major) furniture items before I built it.
GlasWolf on 13/3/2006 at 19:06
I have a single sheet of A4 sitting beside me for Litton Grange. On one side is an external plan (gardens etc.), on the other is a floorplan for the upper and lower floors. I also had an idea of the progression the player would be "lead" through, which doors would be locked and where the keys would be for them etc. A lot of things have changed, but a lot of things haven't - you just have to go with the flow and not be too rigid about what you've got down on paper. One little bugbear of mine is unrealistic layouts, and planning things a little beforehand helps to keep it realistic while still allowing you freedom to change or improvise when you want to.
BTW, the word you're looking for might be isometric. :)
Judith on 13/3/2006 at 19:14
I collect all my thoughts and write it down - Story, goals, some ideas to be implemented (or not, depends on my skills and editor capabilities), a list of main locations and sometimes a roughly drawn map. Ussualy takes a few A4 sheets, full of question marks at the end of most sentences ;) All the rest comes along the way.
The building process is generally creating simple rooms and filling them with SM decorations until everything looks "believable". It's not simple of course, especially creating exterior setting is hard to master, knowledge of some "illusion techniques" is very useful - long, patient observation of the OM's under T3Ed can be a good start.
Ziemanskye on 13/3/2006 at 19:29
Oh, and my top downs have all sorts of little doodled icons on them to represent flow around the place, mostly based on little arrows - shaded means down unshaded means up and lines between un/shaded make ramps or stairs.
And so on, so the flow is planned as well as the space. Makes things more 3d with having to mess with Isometrics or Sketchup maps or whatever.
Krypt on 13/3/2006 at 19:32
When building for any game, I get a rough idea in my head for what I want to make first. Then I go into the editor and block it out with simple geometry to get a spatial sense of the sizes of areas and how they connect together. I try to come up with as final a layout as I can manage in this stage, because the geometry is much easier to mold at this point. After that I'll start putting in the detail, texturing and rough lighting. Final lighting comes last.
GlasWolf on 13/3/2006 at 19:39
Quote Posted by Ziemanskye
Makes things more 3d with having to mess with Isometrics or Sketchup maps or whatever.
Thanks, I now have a vision of a map drawn in tomato sauce.
Judith on 13/3/2006 at 19:52
:laff: Nice remark Wolf! *wipes up his monitor*
STiFU on 14/3/2006 at 13:31
A rough map is definitely usefull, though before drawing it you should know t3ed in every detail!! I had the problem that I didn't know about zoneportals at the time when i was planning my map and so when it came to the point to zone my map, I noticed that it is planned totally wrong, but it was too late to go back... A little bit frustrating indeed...
But if you get an idea later on that would make your map much nicer, don't be afraid of throwing the old plan away and drawing a new one. It can only become better!!
And what helps me very often too is looking at some pictures for inspiration. That is really very usefull!!
str8g8 on 15/3/2006 at 12:41
That was good advice Krypt, btw. The thing is once you get used to working with brushes, esp. vertex editing, it is so fast to work with, it seems a bit pointless doing a detailed overhead plan.
So my advice would be to sketch in T3Ed - experiment with lots of different layouts, and resist the urge to start putting detail in too soon (otherwise you get too attached to it).
