Level Design : What are levels? How to map a level design?

Level:
Levels in a game can be described as an environment or location where a game play occurs. When a player progresses through different stages i.e. levels the difficulty of those levels keeps on increasing and the player knows how to break up physical space based on specific game play experience. As the player progresses, he also earns scores and scores keeps him going through the game.

Some developers don't even use the word level, they call it rounds, waves or stage. Rounds are found in those game which have repeated stage as you can see in racing games. They have the same track but different cars or laps or a set time. Waves can be found in combat games where something like waves of enemies happen while the player continues to do the tasks over and over again. Stages are usually like the waves but in stages player knows what activity he is doing.

Developers even sometimes call it acts and chapters (as seen in Max Payne), Maps (First person shooters) and world (Rockstar GTA Games).

Most of the games released nowadays are open world games where players are free to do anything they want either they can do tasks or roam in the free world.

Level design:
The best way to make a game interesting is to integrate both levels and game play work together. As the player starts to play the game he knows what he must do in the beginning and keeps doing the tasks assigned to him and the game progresses. In this case levels are linked to the game play, each task here is an individual level. Some games nowadays work in such a way that when you play the game,  the game progresses and you don't even know when the next level comes up and you finish the game. These games are so smooth that there is negligible time to notice the level number or which level you are on.

Take the example of Disneyland, it has so many attractions. It has various lands which allows the visitors to ride through various Disney movies. Disneyland is a physical location where world to land to attraction to scene happens. Video game, world to level to experience to moment-to-moment game play. Top down approach helps developers make a game world map.

In Disneyland, consider Disneyland as a world, people travel through the world by following the posters. Posters let them know at what location they are currently on the map (Disneyland). Like that all games shoes have proper levels and guidelines to let the player know where he is going to go after he ends this level or how is he got to finish the level and move on to the next one. Most of the games teaches 4 main things: Escape/Survive, Explore, Educate and moral. The player must go through all levels trying to survive the game.

The beat chart: 

A beat chart is used to organize and play movie’s production. It is used by movie directors. It also helps developers to reorganize their games in such a way that they can make it look more elegant and organic.

It should contain: Level name, file name, player’s objective, story neat, play style, enemies, mechanics, NPC, bonus material, time of day and color mapping.

Mapping: 

It depends on developers way of thinking how they prototype the level they are about to develop. Some developers like to use Lego blocks and design the level. Some developers choose to prototype in unity or Maya and some do it with clay. The best way to level out the game level design is to use pencil and paper. You can also use graph paper because it makes it more easier to make level walls and items equally distanced or equal in size taking reference of the player.

There are two types of video game designs: ALLEYS and ISLANDS.

Alleys: In alleys, the player has just one goal that is to finish the game slowly and eventually and the game is designed in such a way that it becomes too easy for the player to reach the end. Alleys can be Portal which is narrow and it can also be wide e.g. Call of duty. This one is a lot easier to play and you can also predict enemies because you always know when some obstacle is going to popup and it always happen in front of the player where the player is looking or in the sideways. Player doesn’t have the right to look around using their cameras until the game wants them to do so, all events are scripted.

Islands: this is the next category of video game designs. This is more difficult to play, and you have got all rights to use the camera and look around. Enemies can popup from anywhere, and it’s even difficult to predict the movement of the enemies because camera angles and locations of the player is unknown. Combats can be avoided by the player completely. Island games sometimes have graphics in it that helps player draw attention towards a direction. They mark the path that player have to take if he wants to finish the game. Even if I am playing a game, I would love to break the rules of the game and do What I want to do inside the game. I am sure everyone wants to do that but this is overcome by making the players play the way they want. Island games can accommodate any kind of play style.

The best way to do mapping is using a pencil/pen and a graph paper.

The reason behind this is, consider one block on graph paper as a player and then you can draw obstacles or enemies on the map making a reference to the single block player. This way all the map, players, power-ups, enemies and what so ever can be equally sized.

Things to remember:

• Always include, Players starting point
• Enemy’s starting point
• Doors, teleport, gates, power-up, health, any other thing
• Mechanics
• Traps 
• Use significant landmarks to refer to statues or pools or any other landscape feature you want in your game.

While mapping there is one key point to make sure that the player doesn’t get lost, make sure that the path that helps succeed the game/objective is in bright color and the rest is in dark color including the player. It is the proven medical fact that human brain is attracted towards white or light colors and it will direct the human to look towards the brightest area first.

Multiple paths, people love backtracking and if your game has got multiple paths, then you are good to go because it doesn’t make game boring, it makes it great!

If your game feels boring, then for sure it is boring. One way to avoid your game being too boring is VARIETY. Another thing that is used to remove the broadness of the game is with FINGERS. Adding a few fingers to the linear path that helps provide the player chance to explore their surroundings and see what he can do to progress the game and use bonuses at the end of every finger. The trickiest part is to create elevations in mapping. Tracing different floors or stairs or levels is difficult, if your game has got different floors or elevations then you need to mark it properly on the map.

Tutorial/Training levels,
This is the most important level of the game that teaches you the basic mechanism of the game, how to play it, what controls are set for the player to move around and the main motive of the game. This is the first level of a game. The player's first expression about the game is made through this training level, and also it helps player decide if the game suits his choice or not. Some people believe that this level must be created at first so that the designer knows what he has to implement in the game for future purpose and it’s update or impost mechanics that he hasn’t decided yet. Some people also do believe that there must be no training levels and players must continuously learn the game mechanics while playing throughout the game.

Gray box level, it is created using a art tool (MAYA or BLENDER). This level is produced to scale size and show relationships between basic elements such as the game camera, angle, view, character metrics etc. It is the most important thing to do, rotate your player around the gray box level to get a sense of how your game will look at the end once it is made. It is also important to speed up levels to see how long it will take to finish a game. If a game takes too much time to finish, then player might start getting bored or may quit!  For the record, usually a single player game is around 8 to 10 hours long, if longer then it’s great!