Struggling to practice level design? This is why.

In this video I talk about why level design is a weird and tricky discipline to get into these days, especially compared to how it was when I got into it, over 20 years ago (!).

00:00 - Why level design is weird and hard to practice
02:15 - Advising people to make fully playable levels
03:42 - How I got into LD during a golden age of FPS editors
06:16 - Game design was harder for me to show than LD
07:35 - Today, things are the complete opposite way round
09:52 - Unity and Unreal are game engines, not level editors
11:03 - My mixed feelings about stuff posted to #blocktober
13:43 - Show gameplay videos instead of empty screenshots
15:10 - Not a simple problem, but I hope talking about it helps

#leveldesign #unreal #unity

[mikoutv]

Levels built in older games are absolutely legit in showing off your skills for an application! You've got to show your skill in the principles and processes that go into making a playable level and those skills are transferable to different games and even genres.

A list of games and tools you could use in random order:
- Source Engine (Hammer); Mostly fps games like csgo, Team Fortress 2 and Half Life, but also top down shooter Alien Swarm.
- Mindustry; A Factorio-like rts game.
- Prodeus; Fps currently in early access.
- Rollercoaster Tycoon 2; Has a scenario builder out of the box. Yes, I'm serious, this is valid level design experience.
- Tooth and Tail; An interesting more accessible rts.
- Rivals of Aether; 2d platform fighter.
- Battleblock Theater; 2d platformer.
- Duck Game; A local multiplayer shmup.
- Distance; 3d racing game with some flying mechanics.
- Super Pilot; Early access 3d racer akin to f-zero.
- Doom & Quake; Also note 2016's Snapmap feature which provides accessible easy level making.
- Tony Hawk's Underground 1 & 2; 2's level editor was a lot better.

Good luck!

[KitDyson]

I feel like you mentioned earlier that old engines are a totally valid path still. I'd recommend Prodeus for new people trying to learn. Great tools that are built into the game.

[mahrcheen]

Youre right. Many people still confuse level design with environment design. Making a nice screenshot is not level design.

[JimmyFraggs]

Thanks for posting this! I remember creating multiplayer maps with Hammer for Team Fortress Classic while jamming out to Californication album back in the late 90's in my teens. Good times. There are few more rewarding than doing a play test and seeing people enjoy what you created.

I'm looking to pursue the passion for a career change and I really look forward to binging your content over the next few weeks.

[wroth]

I hadn't really thought about the whole "golden age" of level editors but it makes a lot of sense. The mapping, and even modding scene feels like it's diminished significantly since the days of Unreal/Quake/Half-Life.

One cynical theory as to the lack of level/game editors these days would be the advent of live services and microtransactions, encouraging AAA companies to keep their content under lock & key so they can potentially monetise future content that would otherwise have to compete with free mods & maps.

Then again, another theory is that most games are built in unreal/unity in the first place, so in-house editors simply aren't a worthwhile endeavour to build for internal use, much less to support them to a degree that the public can use them.

[matthieuchapeland]

I got my first real job as a level design intern in a small indie team this summer. My portfolio contained a few examples of levels that I created but most were indeed static screenshots of levels under different states of completion, mostly showing my process of creation (that I now realise doesn't mean much without actual gameplay footage of the level being played and functioning properly). I did have two levels with video footage of gameplay but my employer told me that they picked me mostly for one of my levels that only had screenshots that they felt really inspired them and fit with their vision. So I don't really know what conclusion I shoud take from all this ^^' Maybe that a bit of everything is good? Or that we should show as much variety in our workflow and end results as possible? I'm not sure but I'd thought I'd share my experience.

And thank you for making this video. I can really relate about the experience that you had in college, it's kind of exactly what I'm going through right now ^^'

[mrtaufner]

Pretty interesting video. I got to the same realization as you did somewhere around 2019-2020, and after that I got really interested in classic level design. "There's no way I'll finish a game myself today and the tools that come integrated with UE and Unity are crap" I thought.

Then I started focusing on making levels for Quake with Trenchbroom. I've made 5 levels so far, and even though I'm not trying to start working as a level designer for now, I wonder what else would I need to actually start. When can I say "My portfolio is ok, let's apply for a job"? It's not a concern to me since I already work as a Fullstack Developer, but I'd definitely consider switching careers in a few years.

P.S.: Also another plus of making levels for classic games -> It's way easier to get actual feedback from these oldschool communities (Doom, Quake, Half-Life 1 and 2, etc), who will play every single new release even from new mappers, than it is to upload a game or a small level to itch.io and wait for someone to find your stuff.

[abdulbanglee]

As a gamedev newbie, I worked on my University capstone project 2 years ago. Our team wanted to work with Unreal 4 and we were really early in our project. We did not have our mechanics down and for me, as the level designer, it was so awkward not knowing how to design my layouts simply because I don't have a view of what mechanics will be available to the player. Because the gameplay logic was still being implemented, I could not playtest my level because some mechanics had bugs that took weeks if not months to fix.

I really do agree with what you've been saying, Steve. It's hard for newer, aspiring level designers to make their own levels in Unity/Unreal since coding mechanics takes a lot of time. Learning level editors for existing games (and learning how to script if possible) and creating fully playable levels is the way to go!

[bourbonbobo]

As an indie dev who's been making games for 8 years. I only found tools (mostly realtime csg for unity) that let me do the level design I've wanted to do properly in the last 2 years. There's so few good tools for unity and indie available engines in general, it's really frustrating because there's people out there having to rely on awkward workflows in tools not specifically designed for level design. So the designers that do make unity games for example can't show off their level design skills as well.

I totally understand where you're coming from on the blocktober thing. Some presence of a gameplay element (even just the players hud) in screenshots can really help and there should always be a screenshot from a place the player would actually view the level from. Still nothing can beat seeing it in motion I guess.

[JustJunuh]

So grateful for your videos about level design. I've been leading a team of 5 for a Unity-based indie game, and what you said about the lack of tooling and game engines =/= level editors could not be more true. Level design has been, by FAR, the most difficult challenge of our project. We're building a 3D platformer game with two characters with different movesets for context. It feels like you just have to build your own tools. Once you've built the tools, you realize that you've barely gotten to practice the actual LD itself :( then to make things more complicated, preexisting "good" level design reference for your game is something that doesn't exist! You only can only look at somewhat adjacent titles and start from there.

[BitterxBones]

When I got my first AAA LD job, I submitted a umap file that contained my blockout along with basically a level design document along with top down layouts. Although not a fully playable level since I built it in UE4, I made up the difference by talking about my design intent and why I made certain decisions along the way. Calling out various gameplay beats I wanted to hit during the level (narrative event, gameplay event etc.) I think really helped me land that first gig. Even though it wasn't playable from start to finish, you could explore the space in real time and have the doc to walk you through what the experience could be like. Which in turn did showcase a soft skill that is overlooked a lot, concise and informative documentation.

Of course, having it fully playable would be ideal but given the time constraints with LD tests (usually a week) and the lack of toolsets in UE4 which you talked about. I wasn't familiar enough with Source at the time so I chose UE4.

[krzykyle]

Thanks for making this. As someone who studied level design in grad school back in 2010 and then took a long break from game dev, I'm having a hard time getting back into the swing of things.

[Grimsikk]

I just discovered your channel and seriously love your content about level design. Bit of a long read here, but I have to share.

I have been trying to get into game design pretty much my whole life. I'm 30 now, working a dead end job in retail and barely have time to work on game design, but I really relate to your comments about Unreal and Unity not really working for level design as a whole. I was trying to make a FPS game a couple years ago (you can see vids of it on my channel actually) and it took me an ABSURD amount of time just to piece together the level shown in those videos, we're talking weeks. In retrospect it has a lot of terrifyingly bad design flaws on my part, but that's ok, I learn from those mistakes.
I pretty much gave up on that project for a few big reasons: One being that I just don't have the financial stability to have the time to learn what I need to learn and actually work on projects, two being that trying to design an optimized level in UE4 was proving to be impossible without some forbidden knowledge that nobody online wants to share, and three being that despite how much I've learned about coding and blueprints, I am not good at coding, and probably never will be, so I'm unable to get the core movement/mechanics needed with which would drive my level design.

Any suggestions on what I should do? I want to make games, I want to design levels, but I have no idea what tools to use.

[Thouova]

This hits on a lot of points in my current... predicament.

I'm making a game for myself, mostly because I find gamedev fascinating and it's fun to try making sort of an "interactive sculpture" or something, and the level design aspect really has me sort of blocked. I'm doing it in unity, partly because there is such a wealth of tutorials (for most areas) and partly because I like making assets in blender. And making individual assets is fine, importing them and setting them up for use is just a set of steps really. But then comes the level itself, it's such a crucial part of the game, basically what makes the game *a game* and not an assortment of rules and 3d models, and my attempts as getting into a good or useful mindset in relation to level design have been less than successful. This is the first channel I've found that talks about level design on a more fundamental level, no pun intended, and I'm surprised that it's not talked about more given how essential it is to, well, basically any game. Thanks for making this series!

[splashmaker]

This is very useful for new indie devs, to point out that the tools for your game will be unique. You need to dev tools to dev the game (which includes levels)

[billmacia]

Having recently finished my bachelor's degree in Game Design, I can confirm that it is really difficult to find a level designer position, especially as a junior, and I am near Montreal ... A big center for the gaming industry. 😞

I find that the profession of level designer is really underestimated by the studios.

Btw i really like your video, keep up the good work!

[spinningninja]

Just wanted to say, this video was genuinely very helpful for me. I’ve only started really looking into level design maybe a year ago, and it feels like a very difficult medium to research nowadays. It’s seems like most docs I find are either too generic to get something substantial out of, too specific to be useful for me, or just focused on a different aspect entirely (I’ve seen lots of tutorials that are more about level decoration than design).

Anyways, my point is that just hearing that it is indeed harder to get into level design nowadays, especially from a vet like you, is a big relief. Takes off the pressure that there might just be some simple thing I’ve been overlooking.

So thank you, so much!! I look forward to exploring the rest of your channel to see what kind of lessons you have to give!!!

[piranhi]

Great video - So refreshing to hear your thoughts on Blocktober. I echo your feelings.

There are some amazing looking blockouts that focus purely on gameplay and how the player navigates the level, really well made and presented. But it seems the majority of the posts now are focused more towards 'showing off' good looking blockouts.

It's borderline low poly art, not level design. And unfortunately I think people see these and think level design is all about making good looking spaces, rather than concentrating on the player and mechanics.

[TheSeriousSoul]

I've had this video floating around in my recommended for some time.

I finally got around to watching it since I've been struggling myself to finish what projects I've started.
I've released two source engine maps for a game I enjoy playing but they were based off of existing IP as I wanted to force myself to learn the process of recreating the environments.
I actually posted videos of the levels being played on my channel for showing people, which after watching this video I was glad I thought to do so.

I had people scoff at me for not making original levels but I did co-opt the levels I did to play with the gametype I was designing them around.
One such example would be West London from Killing Floor, however I did include a lot of interiors to buildings you couldn't enter in the original game.
This was so I could still give the level my own touch while maintaining the original design creating a fair compromise of the two game's design philosophies.
I had a guy who was hosting a mapping contest catch a glimpse of the level who wanted it for his "apocalyptic" mapping contest since it fit the bill.

Sadly I got 9th place out of 10 because the judges who were scoring the map just did not like that I had copied a level despite it being all my own brush work.
The put the excuse as bad level optimization despite making heavy use of hint/skip and area portaling which they claimed I did not do since I had not known how to make the fading variant of the area portal.
I did try to research how to do so and I am aware of how it works now but I just felt stung after pushing myself to meet a deadline only to be slapped down for reasons that were not stated in the original contest's rules.

I've been working on another more original map very inspired by Serious Sam but the layout is completely my own just taking from the architecture styles and trying to figure out the map flow.
It's definitely a lot harder but I've been enjoying it, it also helps to know a bunch of guys who know hammer back to front to call upon every now and then for help.

I found personally I struggled with asking people for help, but after doing mapping for a long time I realized people are happy to help.
I feel part of it was actually having done work on other areas and leaving the parts I had difficulty with.
When I was asking someone for help they were kind of excited to see what I had done since the last time I asked for some help, which I felt I owed to them to show that their help wouldn't go in vain.

Overall this video was a nice perspective to take in and I appreciate you discussing it.

[MaximusGDN]

I'm not technically hired but I joined a group of people with the aim to create a game dev studio. So I can make proper level design because other people are willing to do the assets and tools so I can do playable levels.
Before joining them I had the chance of making a small game in computer science studies where I've done the LD, then I joined a game dev school to further learn Game & Level Design. From that I made a game jam with students from the school and we made another game (3 months of work) for the end of the school and I was fully in charge of the Level Design with some other friends.

In short, the best way for me to practice LD was by being with group of people to create small to increasingly bigger games.
And it's kind of bad in a way as it's not easy at all to find people to work with to make a game. I got lucky to have the opportunity to make those games with cool and dedicated people.
So don't let go opportunities to make group projects because there are not many if at all and it's a comfortable way to practice proper LD