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Ben's small bible of realistic multiplayer leveldesign
by Benjamin Bauer
"an article describing how
to make a multiplayer level
from scratch to the end for a realistic setting"
go to 'page 11 of the article "Ben's small bible of realistic multiplayer leveldesign"
Personally, I rarely used sound in multiplayer
maps except to create atmosphere. Maybe because I created my maps in the
good old days when surface textures with different walking sounds were
something pretty new. Especially in areas where visibility is less important
than sound detection. For example, in a dark room where you can normally
sneak through very silently, some louder metal/glass plates are interesting
and fresh gameplay elements. The same can be said for water passages because
it doesn't only makes you slower, it is also a different, louder sound
and every enemy in the vicinity can hear that there is someone in the
water. Such small gameplay elements will become more interesting with
better technology so don't forget about them if you create maps for the
new cutting-edge games.
I also saw that several designers used to trigger sound elements if you
move through specific areas, like a barking dog if you use the route through
the backyard. Personally I don't like such things because there is no
fair way to avoid them ... hmm unless you can throw a grenade over the
fence to blow up the stupid mutt ;-). Something different are mission/game
specific sound events like an alarm siren triggered by the enemy or pick
up sounds of the flag/mission objective. They can of course be used to
balance bigger maps with several objectives.
Round Based vs. Reinforcement Game modes
There are two main differences in making levels
for round based game modes and game modes where the players re-spawn constantly.
The first one is the size of the maps. If the player spawn in the same
positions every round, he doesn't want to walk for very long before the
fights start. Of course this is similar to maps for reinforcement game
modes but in a round based mode, the people stay dead until one team wins.
So the number of possible fights is much more limited and so is the size
of the maps. Especially the rounds should be quite short because dead
people have to wait for the round to end before they re-spawn again. So
a bigger map will become quite boring, people have to walk a lot and dead
people stay dead for a long time and get frustrated.
On the other hand, round based game modes can be much more tactical because
the start situation is always equal in every round. You can calculate
tactical situations much better because you know more or less where the
main battle areas will be. For you as a level designer, this makes the
design easier but bad places have a much bigger impact on the level design
then in re-spawn maps. On such maps an unbalanced area is less critical
because almost the whole map can be a battle ground. For example, a powerful
defending sniper position can ruin the fights around a mission area every
round, and the attackers will avoid the area as much as possible. If the
player re-spawns continuously, such a sniper can be nasty, too. But as
soon as he is finally dead, the fights might start to move to other places
or they never really happen. Fights in such maps are less focused on certain
areas but this doesn't mean that you are allowed to create a few unbalanced
parts of the map. Both game types require a different design philosophy.
One needs perfect focus on certain areas while the others must be a unit
of well combined battle areas or just one huge battle area.
Mirrored vs. Uneven Map Layout
It is a well known fact that the arcade game modes
like CTF must have a mirrored map layout. This is okay as long as the
maps stayed small with no vehicles and the gameplay was very arcadey.
Since we can build bigger maps with vehicles and the main intention is
to create a realistic feeling battle field, even unmirrored layouts became
usual for CTF and similar game modes. This is, of course, nothing new
for round based games with normally clear attackers and defenders. If
the role of the team is clear, it is easier to calculate the balancing
progress.
Mirrored maps are generally easier to build and to balance. They should
be used for open and arcade game modes where the realistic feeling of
the level is less important than the pure gameplay itself. For example,
if you play CTF it is already unrealistic and then it doesn't really matter
if one side of the city has blue paintings and the other side is almost
the same with more red on the walls. The biggest problem now is to find
a good solution to increase the orientation and navigation because you
have two parts which are very similar. Of course you could make all the
trees on one side red and the other side blue but I hope we all agree
that this would look stupid even in fun maps. For a realistic scenario
you should try to find much smarter solutions. Like I've already mentioned
above, variation is quite important so why shouldn't the bridge on one
side be a couple of pipes and on the other side a few wooden planks. This
can be used almost everywhere as long as the gameplay at both places stays
the same, for balancing reasons. Another idea, which can be well combined
with the previous one, are different styles in the areas. One side of
the map is dirty with broken old cars and a lot of graffiti and the other
side is a more clean, noble area where the house owners wash their cars
every weekend. I think it is logical that the break between the two styles
shouldn't be very abrupt and should make a little bit sense. If there
is absolutely no way to separate the two parts style-wise, you can still
go back to the old school "colour solution". Using blue and
red should only be your last way. Just don't make it so extreme and artificial
like you know it from pure arcade games like Quake. Colourful banderols
around trees, graffiti on house walls, marks on crates, cars or even flags
are not great ideas but still better than any extreme solutions like blue
vs. red grass. Just make sure that it fits as well as possible or that
it looks like a paintball team marked their combat areas. A completely
blue stone looks way too freaky but if it looks like that someone painted
a big blue square on the stone it is already much better.
Unmirrored levels have the complete opposite problems than the mirrored
ones. On one hand, if you do it a little bit smart and follow the basic
rules in the previous chapters above, navigation and orientation won't
be a big problem. On the other hand, now balancing is your biggest issue.
That is the reason why unmirrored levels are much harder to design than
mirrored ones. Making a few different textures and placing a few detailed
objects doesn't need a lot of design skills compared with making a perfectly
balanced map with two different sides. I've already talked a lot about
how to balance unmirrored maps for round based game modes so this time
I will concentrate more on how to do this for reinforcement levels. If
your battle fields are very big and open, it is easier because a flat
hill is almost the same as a flat valley. As soon as the terrain is really
different and you have a lot of bigger objects, balancing starts to become
difficult. For example, if at one side you have a bigger hill in front
of the regular base defence, the attackers might have an advantage but
on the other side you have a valley. Now you need to think about what
you have to change so that the attackers have more problems with the hill,
or how much cover you have to place in the valley so it is balanced again.
You have to think about almost every place in the map and how to balance
it differently to the other side. This is very critical and because it
is almost impossible to calculate all kinds of combat situations, it is
actually impossible to balance it perfectly. The only real solution is
a lot of experience and a mass of testing the map if you want to create
an unmirrored level where both teams have the role of attackers and defenders.
Expect that the first versions of your maps get a lot of bad feedback
and you will have to tweak it a lot. So stay in close contact with your
test team and make a detailed test plan. After the first general tests
you should start to concentrate on certain areas and let the QA focus
on these areas until the feedback is detailed enough so you can really
balance them. If you and the test team do the job well, nobody will really
notice the small balancing problems. Of course some fans will always complain
about this and that area but it will be the minority and is simply the
calculated risk of unmirrored maps. Just do it as good as possible.
go to 'page 13 of the article "Ben's small bible of realistic multiplayer leveldesign"
