Fallout 4's Modular Level Design

Large, open-world games like Fallout 4 require an efficient approach to creating many high-quality locations in relatively short period of development. Modular art kits and an iterative level design process are essential to the team at Bethesda Game Studios. This 2016 presentation from Bethesda Game Studios' Joel Burges and Nathan Purkeypile provides an in-depth analysis of the techniques used to create art kits, the level design workflow which takes advantage of them, and the production approach which empowers a relatively small content team to make an enormous world.

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[LondonRook]

OVERVIEW
0:48 Modular Design Overview
3:22 History of Bethesda Kits

FUNDAMENTALS
4:31 Defining the Footprint
5:43 Tiling
6:12 Extents
7:06 Pivot Points
7:58 Transitions

TECHNIQUES
8:47 Layered Inserts
9:40 Local Snap Parents
10:27 Pivot and Flange Kits

PLANNING KITS
13:09 Defining Needs
14:51 Consolidating Kits

GRANULARITY
16:18 Introduction
17:50 Changes to Workflow
18:41 Pack-Ins Prefab
19:21 Kit Readiness and Interdependencies

PRIORITIES
21:56 Valuing Common Elements
25:40 Impact on Level Designers

VARIATION
28:18 Visual Variety with Consistent Logic
29:52 Damaged Platform Kit
30:32 Material Swaps

EXAMPLES
31:23 The Industrial Kit
32:35 The Utility Kit
33:35 The Steam Tunnel Kit
34:12 The Deco Kit (Exterior Buildings)

EXTERIOR DESIGN
35:22 DC in Fallout 3
36:04 New Guidelines
41:17 New Problems
43:11 New Solutions

ASSORTED ADVICE
44:36 Plugs and Sockets
45:11 Kit-Based Destruction
46:10 Platforms
46:55 Dynamic Destruction
47:19 Decals and Greebles
47:44 Layers
48:04 Mouse Wheel Swap
48:31 Helper Markers
49:01 The Machine Kit

FINAL THOUGHTS
50:06 Conclusion

QUESTIONS
51:47 When to Playtest?
52:34 Deciding Player Workshop Items
53:31 Collaborating Artists and Designers
54:24 Solving Performance Problems
56:24 Solving Team Disagreements
59:05 Optimization of Texture Uses
1:00:19 Placeholders and Greyboxes

[PlebNC]

This talk makes the way the settlement workshop was implemented make so much sense. It's a limited version of their kit system adapted for use by the players to make edits in run-time. The part about pivot points for those kits also helps understand how rotating pieces that snap in the settlement workshop works too. Very enlightening.

[yrussq]

Long story short:

1. The smaller the pieces the more stuff you can do out of them.
2. The more texturing variation of each piece you have the more variate it can look.
3. Universal kits allow big studios on big scales work faster.

[agustinlado]

Damn, congratulations. Joel is a natural both explaining and talking to a huge audience. One of the best talks I've ever seen.

[illdeletethismusic]

this process reminds me a lot of design methods developed for architecture during the era of historism.
as historism intended to bring back a variety of classical styles, and often elements of multiple of them, architects started more rigidly separating the design of walls and floorplans, and stuck more clearly to the separation of floors, and as a result the style of a wall could be swapped out without impacting the rest of the build, and facades could have inspirations from various builds from one floor to another on top of the same main wall, or occasionally with ornament lines separating floors of different facade material

[camzimmeman]

I love the "Boston, because fuck you" part.

[Mixxathon]

I use 3D engines primarily to create pen & paper battlemaps for D&D to run on our large I hate when I get a bunch of granular pieces to work with and love the whole kit mentality. I want it quick & dirty.

This was either way a good video.

[zetetick]

_"We're gonna do a talk we've already done before, 3 years ago, but with some small tweaks"_ - A *very* Bethesda approach. :P

(why is the second chap only given like 2 minutes to speak?)

[-lijosu-]

Before I watched this I was always wondering why I find the level design of Bethesda games so relentlessly boring. To make it abundantly clear. I *get* it. They work in a huge studio, with tons of people. Their games are enormous. They have to shave off as much time and effort as possible. They have to be efficient in ways no one else is. I get that, and the effort they put in is impressive. These people have decades of experience and they're some of the best in the industry.

But man. As a direct consequence of me having felt like the levels are boring *before* knowing how they were made... I just gotta feel like these people have somewhere along the way forgotten important stuff, like avoiding repetition, and making environments feel unique.They clearly put effort into fixing those problems, but IMO they tackle them from completely wrong angles. Instead of putting in the time to create more hero pieces, they double down on the basics. Instead of putting time into the art of it, they're so focused on avoiding being the bottleneck.

[SpaceKingofSpace]

Its not the kit itself that is bad; tons of games use them just fine. Stuff like Enderal and Nehrim used even Bethesda kits to make interesting play spaces. It's just the mass repetition that kills it; you can only see the same set of models and textures a few times before it feels like you're visiting the same location over and over. You need good landmarks and visual distinction to make better playspaces. The Concord townhouse is a nice level but the next 3 houses you explore are likely going to all look the same. Same problem with Skyrim caves, same with F3 subways. Bethesda should just make smaller, more distinct worlds.

That and make better animations/movement feel. No momentum in the movement feels awful.

[AadilSharifDotNetDeveloper]

Thank you so much for this talk. I am a junior artist now & looking to improve my level design & this was so much fun to watch. Thank you to the team & both speakers.

[XaramasLP]

Great talk! Was very interesting to get an insight in the LD workflow.

[FelixIakhos]

Omg that scroll swap option would've saved me sooo much time in the CK xD

[bole]

"It's worth playing around with the different types of footprints you can have, for example you could double the height of that same basic footprint and give yourself the same flexibility and tiling on an equilateral horizontal plane but giving yourself a different ability to create a look and feel with additional headroom." 5:22

That's just amazing

[tomsiteuk]

Excellent talk to understand more about how Bethesda is doing Level Design, and if you compare their approach with many modders approach you know why some mods are just sub-zero. Now only the CK would need to be up to the job and stop crashing just because you moved your mouse or dared to look at the screen.

[KrullMaestaren]

Fun and interesting talk but it also gave me some questions about the oddities surrounding lower graphical settings in Fallout 4. Looking forward to the future talk about "version 3" ;)
Would also be interesting with a 60 minutes talk about the character customization system as well :)

[JETWTF]

35:53 They made a mistake here by thinking that complicated metro system was a problem that needed to be removed. It was fun to explore the metro system, where does this track go and what will I find there? Let's find out! Yeah it got to be a slog as the game continued but it wasn't something that should have been removed and replaced with independent stations. Remove the walls in the world space was all that needed to be removed. Being able to get completely lost in the Metro was a good thing because it promoted exploration.

[Fiferthedragonok]

I appritiate this game far more than before

[VidurMurali]

Take a shot every time someone says "kit"...

[jacksonelh]

I really like how bethesda utilizes kits. It adds really nice visual consistency.