Keeping Your Blockouts Simple

In this level design #Shorts, let’s look at fast blockout iteration.
In game development, level designers often add too much detail to their blockouts too early. This slows down your iteration speed and gives the wrong impression when collecting feedback. Keeping your implementation simple in early stages of design allows you to iterate quickly and focus on pacing, intensity, cover placement, difficulty of your (combat) spaces and other fundamentals.

[decarrioden]

I wish this video was wayyyy longer, extremely useful as a level designer

[SpamDesTodes]

i'm not even a game designer but this feels like genuine design tipps :D

[StreamwaveProduction]

If you study TF2 maps and older games in general, they follow this exact principle. A lot of props are aligned to grids, evenly spaced, and very easy to move around. It becomes extremely easy to track where you are in the 3D space when everything is laid out evenly in that 3D space.

[Nate-BreakingPoint-Interactive]

This is a great reminder, I still get caught up in making things too detailed too early...

[dbob]

it's the middle. Color boxing imo is the best, because, beyond level design you can already test with mood and colors, reducing half of the testing and iteration process. This also expands beyond looks, as you can test around which colors help to highlight elements for the player to interact with.

edit: you already explained under another comments what i meant, great. I just have seen your greyboxing in the video

[attben]

Short and to the point! Love it!! Keep it up! ❤

[NexusBaum]

new video!
also, it's a very helpful advice!! :)

[lemapp]

I was brought in late in a project that was heavily built out in graphics. It looked amazing, but the game play was so-so. I so wish I could have been there earlier to have demanded a game design document, something to execute against. I've seen clearly where white boxing would have been so helpful before the 68 gb of assets.

[metasamsara]

It's an art to keep it simple enough but fleshed out at the same time. It can feel boring to design at times if you lack the foresight spark of inspiration. How do you make blockouts more interesting from the start without forcing a design on the detailing step? CS players hate crates everywhere.

[julienfrisson]

how do you manage to have credible and realistic compositions?

[AaronAway]

This is gonna sound dumb, but when I make a blockout, and I’m done with the blockout, do I then rebuild the level completely, or build on top of the white box? Again really dumb question 😂