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Other PC Games Thread.
So with the film and music threads still going and being discussed... why don't we get some discussion going on something on topic to the board? What other games are you playing now?
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More Dishonoured 
Non-linear Design Versus Linear But Interwoven 3d Architecture 
In my original post I was more bemoaning the lack of really 3d spaces and reuse of area by having routes that loop back multiple times through the same area - something common in Quake maps, but less so in more modern games. Perhaps the best example of underusing the structure of a level I can think of is Bullet Storm. That game had so many epic areas and so much time was obviously spent on the environment art, but the gameplay was little more than walk into room, kill a bunch of shit and proceed to the next room. In addition, the gameplay was very flat - it was a fun game, however.

When you look at Quake levels (even the stock id levels) they are full of verticality and passing again through the same areas from multiple angles. This doesn't seem to be terribly common in more recent games, but there are sometimes levels where you are forced into a small environment (a house, boat etc.) for a prolonged period and thus the environment is better exploited.

Given how much time and resources are spent on decorating areas, it doesn't seem like a great use of those resources to just make one long environment, but better to actually design the level in a way that takes progression back through existing areas in a way that makes sense.

There are a few reasons I can think for avoiding intricately interwoven levels:
*vertical areas are more difficult for console players to handle due to the often reduced field of view and slow speed of rotating the view on a controller.
*it might not make sense in the game's story, whereas a Quake level has no real story and designers tend to just do stuff because it's cool or fun.
*many modern games have a real world setting, which somewhat limits the scope for complex level layouts as designers want to keep their levels feeling realistic and functional.

Anyway, more examples of modern games with interesting level design would be nice. 
Kinn: 
I certainly wouldn't hate you for employing a "find X buttons to open exit" style of design! I remember being impressed a long time ago by a speedmap Lunaran made that has exactly that kind of gameplay. I think it was basically a DM map with lots of grunts and some buttons, but it played well (and looked quite nice considering how quickly it was made.)

My current map is a similar kind of design, but actually the progression is fairly linear at the moment. You have to find 5 sacred tomes and read them and the order is not important, but actually, the design of the level kind of forces the player into a linear route :/ Maybe I should try and free it up a little. 
L4D2 
The hard rain campaign in L4D2 is one of the more interesting level designs I've seen in a recent game (although it's not too fresh now and I can't play new releases on this machine). The map is a there and back fetching mission, but two things combine to make it interesting.

Firstly the level floods between going out and coming back, so returning by the original path becomes a slow trudge through water. At the same time different combinations of one-way drops make it so that the shortest route back is quite different to the shortest path forward.* It's all really clever and I recommend you grab a chance to have a look at it.


*The one way drops are also an interesting feature for the versus gameplay, as separating members of the survivor team is often the best way to deal damage on them. The one-way drops give you a chokepoint for your attacks, but they aren't irreversible - which is good for balance. If your teammate is caught in front of a one-way drop you've taken, you can go back and save them by taking the intended route for the other direction's journey. Still, the loop takes time so there's usually a good amount of damage as reward for the play. 
Awesome! 
was wondering the very same thing.

Guess I might check out the latest Wolfenstein and perhaps that other Raven game with the time travel. Are they worth playing? 
Sorry 
I am an idiot

Spirit linked an old post in another thread, I was multitasking and forgot that it was an old post and then replied to it :)

Yes, L4D2 has some cool level design. Hard Rain is very memorable indeed. 
Than 
Perhaps the best example of underusing the structure of a level I can think of is Bullet Storm. That game had so many epic areas and so much time was obviously spent on the environment art, but the gameplay was little more than walk into room, kill a bunch of shit and proceed to the next room. In addition, the gameplay was very flat - it was a fun game, however.

Not played bullstorm but iirc Painkiller was exactly like this (epic impressive environment art dressing up essentially a series of huge box rooms), from the same developer incidently.

The interesting thing with Painkiller is that the developers were clearly Quake fans, with the general feel of the movement, secrets, trick jumping and all that Quakey stuff, yet they decided not to use any of the level design principles that worked so well in Quake. In many ways the game felt to me as if the levels had been built from scratch by artists with absolutely no communication from the designers as to what gameplay was going to take place in them.

There are a few reasons I can think for avoiding intricately interwoven levels

One argument that was presented to me by an artist was that if you have a big open area, the most environmental detail can be focused around the playable space, and built with a certain direction of movement in mind, and the background stuff can be largely optimised as the player won't get close to it. If you take the same large area but you make the playable space occupy a greater % of the overall space (e.g. you allow the room to be traversed in different ways at different times), then the average density of detail required goes right up. Personally I think that decent design can make that a fairly weak argument but it is food for thought.

I remember working on an action platformer a few years back where the lead artist was trying to convince us to use a God of War-style fixed camera so that all they had to worry about was essentially two back walls and a floor :)

We went with a proper "look anywhere" 3rd person camera thankfully. 
Than 2 
I certainly wouldn't hate you for employing a "find X buttons to open exit" style of design!

Cheers! At least I know one person will play it then :}

Maybe I should try and free it up a little.

I think it can make for a more rewarding experience both for the player and the mapper - It's funny, making a level that's very non-linear gives me a wierd sense of nerdy glee, as if I'm crafting a real functional place, rather than piecing together a predictable script. One worry though is that the encounter design could suffer, as I need to accomodate the fact that the player infil points and order in which he encounters monsters is going to be pretty damn unpredictable for the most part... 
Kinn 
Fuck yes/ fuck you - looks totally awesome and perfectly detailed/scaled. 
Drew 
Thanks!

Tbh, I didn't intend to pimp this early (as you can tell from the unaligned textures and stuff) :} 
 
yeah, what were you thinking?!

;)
very atmospheric. looking forward to this :) 
Recently 
The new Deus Ex had some good level design, always fairly open with lots of vertical action and choices, obviously a deus ex with linear levels wouldn't really be deus ex though.
Also Bioshock (1&2) both had fairly non-linear levels that felt comparable to some quake levels.

I get bored of over-linear FPS and rarely finish or even play them nowadays... 
 
Do players actually notice if light does not have a realistic source? I don't (unless it is a really bright spotlight and the game/map's narrative is realistic.

Kinn: that looks amazing. did I tell you that you and czg should team up? because you and czg should team up. I tell you! 
 
I agree modern games would benefit from more (vertical) interconnectivity. It probably depends on the type of game (or its goal), though, e.g. not applicable to or desired in those countless games that are just long series of setpieces.

As for nonlinearity, however, let's face it: people are always quick to criticize modern FPS for their extreme linear design, and rightly so, but as soon as they come across a nonlinear section themselves, even long-time Quake players in a Quake level, it often boils down to getting lost and confused. And then it's all the mapper's fault for not making the right route obvious enough.
Think back when you first played the game, though - didn't feeling lost in those strange and hostile environments actually add to the game experience, the atmosphere? Of course, back then combat skills and FPS mechanics weren't as well-trained as today, so it may be possible that players today are more easily bored and thus have a "decreased willingness" to explore, which could be linked back to the expectations of an average gamer nowadays and the question why modern FPS are what they are. 
 
Nice post, negke.

We find that a lot. If we give players choices of routes, they get angry because they don't know which one is the "right" one. If we only give them one route, they complain about lack of exploration. It kinda sucks, to be honest... 
 
What I usually do is deliberately take the "wrong" route (if it's clear which one leads on and which one is a dead end) or go in the opposite direction just to have explored everything.

I just thought about situations where the explorable space is restricted by obstacles, closed doors, or clip walls (sometimes areas that actually ARE interconnected), and the worst possible thing a designer can do: a "leaving the mission area" kill/restart trigger. This made an awkwardly appropriate allegory pop up in my head: it's like walking your dog, but pulling him away from stuff as soon as he intends to sniff on them - for the walk is not about his personal enjoyment, the sole purpose is for him to take a dump. So... when that's done you can actually turn around go back home. 
Dead Space Nagivation Help 
I only played through Dead Space late last year so it's fairly fresh in my mind. I'm sure it has been discussed here, but it seems relevant to the current discussion, so:

One of the best features of the game was the little help system which would draw a path to the target on the ground. At any point you could press the relevant button and see where to go, but the path would fade out after a few seconds. Since it wasn't "always on" it eliminated one of the major negative aspects of some other navigational aids (i.e. when you're too busy watching the sparkly shit or the HUD arrow to actually look at the environment and soak up the atmosphere).

Of course, what I would often do (and what I'm sure everybody would do!) is press the button to discover the "correct" path, turn around and go in the opposite direction to find all the secrets and explore... then go back to the main route again.

It's not perfect, but it allowed some degree of choice and exploration while still ensuring that the player could never really get lost. A pretty good compromise which allowed for at least a little non-linearity while eliminating potential confusion and frustration. Since it was player activated and temporary you only used it when you needed it, but you could go forth with the confidence that you both know where you're going and that you didn't leave anything behind. 
Yeah 
That was a nice mechanic. The second one sort of took the fun out of it a bit by allowing you to look for different map elements like stores, work benches and so on.

Playing Bioshock2 now - which is a pretty good game (fuck the gaming press!) and has a simialr sort of compass to many games. Combined with the map it allows you to hunt down everything, which I think most players seem to enjoy doing, at least when the core mechanics are fun.

When people say non-linear I get the feeling that they mean not closed in. CZG07b for example is completely linear, with a few offshoots for secrets. It does not feel linear though since you revisit several areas at different heights and coming from different directions.

Compare it with the word examples of corridor design which allows for little to no exploration. And usually has 100's of identical doors, some of which you're allowed to open, some not.

Oh, and clip walls across otherwise open terrain. Those are great.

http://hlcomic.com/index.php?date=2006-07-17 
 
i was just thinking that i actually hate it more when i choose the RIGHT route because that means i have to backtrack so i can go explore everything. :P 
 
I don't think that being linear and making the route obvious are mutually exclusive. It's possible to do the latter without locking yourself into the former - just look at the id1 maps for a good example. They're littered with little arrows hinting "go this way", when you find a key you're normally dropped to the door that needs it very soon after (it's often on a ledge or ramp above the door, even). You're still free to explore, you can get yourself wonderfully lost as much as you want, but you can always find where you need to be quickly enough. 
One Nice Thing 
about the id levels (eps 1, 2 and 3 at least) are that they are all small enough so that even if you are totally lost, a quick wander will generally always lead you back to somewhere that orientates you. Also, I find each area is pretty good at being distinct and recognisable.

Episode 4 is by far the weakest in this regard as the maps have lots of corridors that kinda look the same. 
This 
Is probably old news, but yet another indie roguelike is making fame:

http://spelunkyworld.com/

Been laid up with flu and playing this. Terrible, yet oddly compelling design. 
Spelunky's Design Terrible? 
That must be some flu indeed.

I'll agree some things are unintuitive, or plain out frustrating, but just about everything can be mastered over time. And that's pretty much the point of anything that claims to have roguelike elements, right? 
Uh 
I'm a student of games design... when things are unintuitive or frustrating it seems to go against everying I've been learning all this time.

But its a lot of fun, hope they do well with the port. 
Ouch 
That bandwagon nearly killed me! 
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