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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 2 of the article "Ben's small bible of realistic multiplayer leveldesign"
Basic Strategy Balance - Introduction
The strategic plan behind every map is the key to a good map. These first deliberations will determine if the player can roam without real confusion. If the mission is basically balanced, then you will help yourself a lot because you will not have to make major alterations to the map at a later date. Everything you will read in this chapter is in the conceptual gameworld. Here we don't care about the positions of trees, houses or rocks. Stay in this basic world as long as possible and only continue with more detailed sketches when you are 100% sure that the basic strategy concept behind your map kicks ass!
Basic Strategy Balance - The first basic Layout Settings
Setting the basic layout of your map is the first
and most important step in level design, and one that is often overlooked.
Just picture all the possible paths of the player as simple lines and
you will begin see a basic geometric layout. Normally you can make a basic
sketch for every gamemode. The sketches should contain only the most important
facts and rules of that gamemode, nothing more.
Some explanations of the example sketches: The quality/accuracy of the
sketches is very rough and basic and art skills are not important here,
gameplay rules. If it looks symmetrical it should be assumed it is symmetrical.
Based on these sketches I want to show several possibilities for the round
and reinforcement game modes.
The first sketch is for a normal CTF game and not for a round based gamemode. The stars mark the spawn point and the point of the flag. These are very simple example sketches and should only show the main intentions of these gamemodes, e.g. for CTF there should be three ways to every flag and the layout is usually symmetrical and balanced for both teams. The horizontal line between the three ways is the minimum amount of freedom you should include to switch between the routes.
The second sketch is for a standard BOMB mission. Team blue has to place a bomb at one of the bomb spots and then has to defend that area until it explodes. Team red has to prevent team blue from accomplishing its mission. The plan is for a round based gamemode. For the bomb mission we have two bomb places where team blue can place the bomb and every bomb site has three entrances. Team red is able to reach the spots faster because they have to defend these positions. This is the reason why it usually shouldn't be symmetrical for both teams.
Basic Strategy Balance - Making it more complex
Now let's improve the basic sketches because every one of your maps shouldn't be like my first example. The following examples are just one of a million possibilities and you will design many alternatives.
We start to analyze the changed CTF mission. The basic intentions are still the same but the left and the right way have changed. The left side became more complex in the center. This should avoid strong concentrations of enemies in the middle defense positions. Even if it is easier to come through the middle part it is still hard to get directly to the opposite base. You can come with a large amount of fast and good players very close to the enemy's base but the 'last few meters' can be very hard. The right side is still unchanged in the middle area which might raise the danger in that area but as soon as you come close to the enemy's base you get more possibilities to react to the enemies defending strategies or to bluff the enemy on one side and switch quickly to another entrance.
Now the bomb mission for the round based gameplay:
the two main ways for team blue to reach the bomb spots still have the
same length but they now come from different directions and give the player
the possibility for a third way to get to the bomb spots to make it more
interesting. On the left side team blue has a chance to take a longer
and less flexible way but coming in from behind. For team red this way
is less interesting because there is no direct way to the bomb spots.
Remember that team red needs fast/short and good possibilities to switch
between the two bomb spots at any time. At a minimum I would make two
ways or one big way which they might come from as soon as team blue has
placed the bomb. On the right side team blue has got a tunnel which leads
them to the back entrance of the mission area. This way is shorter than
the new way on the left side but in general a tunnel is more dangerous
for attackers and has a higher risk.
These were easy examples but in this stage of development you should be
thinking about the main battle areas in the middle and the mission areas
of the different teams. A more complex middle area shouldn't have a lot
of ways to the mission goals. On the other hand several good entrances
to a mission spot shouldn't have very easy ways to reach them. It has
to be balanced through the ways and between the ways itself. We will discuss
later in this article how the size of the map should affect your basic
design.
I imagine you already have enough of your own ideas and if not it really
helps to analyze current well known maps to understand what I've explained
above. Normally you shouldn't create extremely complex path systems because
the player wants to learn his environment quickly and shouldn't be confused
by too many different routes. Please don't think that you have to translate
these geometric lines exactly in 3D! Of course you should change, for
example, the angles of the corners, and the straight lines later, as you
need it to be in your specific situations.
Basic Strategy Balance - General Area Settings
After these two first steps you should bring your vision of the look/setting/environments into play by adding it to the basic sketch. Still a very rough sketch but it might help you to get a better feeling of what your map might look like.
For the CTF mission I chose a jungle setting and thought of some different environments which I can use for the different ways and areas. The light blue is for a beach (ocean, river or lake), the bright brown is for a stony mountain area with few plants but with bigger rocks as hard cover, the dark brown are caves or tunnels. Dark blue green is for deep jungle with several big trees and a lot of sight cover. The dark green is for normal jungle and the bright one for grass. The environment layout is symmetrical but the combinations are always different especially in the middle area and the way to the base. These areas should have a lot of landmarks because the player should always know where he is and where he is going, it helps for orientation and is very important to the immediate feel of the map. The left will be long range, the middle way is close combat with a dangerous way over the grass to the base and the right way is middle range and stealth in the tunnel. Be sure that you implement different areas for the different kind of players like normal roamer, stealth players, rusher, sniper and CQB freaks. Of course with some settings like on a ship you can't support snipers very well. This will be understandable for the player but if you make a big desert map without having some mid range areas it might confuse the players of that type because they will not find a location they are happy with. It is the same if you call your 45 horse power car a 'sports car' and then being surprised when people laugh at you or don't take you very seriously ;-)
Now take another look at the third bomb mission
sketch and you will see that I have used the same system to allocate my
environments. The mission areas have very different combinations of environments
and the ways to these spots are different for each team. For the general
setting I chose a harbor/urban environment. The dark blue is a small river
with concrete walls around it, the bright blue is directly at the harbor,
and the brown defines warehouse areas. For the urban part on the right
side I chose a normal street (green), inside of houses (pink), sewer (dark
red) and backyards (purple). It doesn't matter if you are a stealth CQB
freak or rusher, now every bomb spot has the possibility to make you happy
but you can still orientate yourself just by the different settings around
you.
Sewers are normally something for stealth players (e.g. caves or dark
back routes, warehouses, apartments, machine rooms, etc. for CQB freaks).
On the other side, you can have open areas (e.g. streets, open fields
or beaches for the sniper fans). Generally, every environment is for a
specific kind of gameplay. Be sure that you mix it well and retain a balance
because after a long beach there shouldn't be suddenly a hard-core CQB
area unless the route was already too easy and you need some kind of difficulty
here for the player.
Assigning the environments is almost independent of the kind of game mode
you have chosen, just be sure that it is very different. You find a lot
of different sub-settings for the different kind of players and for orientation.
I hope you are smart enough not to make every warehouse area identical
to all the other warehouse areas in the levels. These areas should be
different even if only subtle changes are made e.g. lighter/darker, empty/crammed,
completely different kind of crates, more/less machines, no/some offices,
decayed/clean, really tall/thin.
Basic Strategy Balance - Special Talk about open Battlefields
I understand if people think that this kind of
level design is strictly for that 'old fashioned' tunnel system or especially
for 'Quake based games' but what about the open battlefields you have
in "Battlefield 1942"? It is actually quite similar because
even on big battlefields you are leading the players along main routes,
but there is more freedom of movement in-between. Therefore, I would suggest
that you first paint the main routes as plain surfaces, already with their
specific environment. Then you should paint the tunnels and valleys, and
the blocks between the main routes.
You can also see open fields as battle areas and mission areas which have
no real connection between them. It is just one large area which is so
huge that it already has strategic elements in place. I'll talk later
in this article about battle and mission areas so don't get impatient.
Basic Strategy Balance - Strategic Summary
It doesn't really matter how you make your sketches
at this point, it is more important that you really think about the strategic
game mechanic and the flow of your level before you start with more detailed
ideas. Believe me; I saw enough sketches from other designers who already
put every waterfall or tree in their very first sketch, even before they
noticed that the gameplay in that level might be really unbalanced or
boring. Of course, it is not wrong to think about where you want to put
your waterfalls or other nice ideas for your level but, for the moment,
keep your ideas where they are as you will use them later on.
The most important thing to remember when you are making a basic sketch
is that it has to be balanced! An unbalanced map is always bad; especially
if you are making non-symmetrical maps. If the strategy is balanced you
are already on the safe side but it still might be a funny map if a few
tactical elements are not 100% equal for each team.
Another thing I would really like to emphasize is the originality of your
map layout. Try to develop your own ideas, be experimental, and always
try to create something new and unique. Normally you have enough time
at school or work, in a traffic jam or on the bus just to think about
some new basic level layouts. If you are really stuck for ideas and you
decide to copy an existing map then please at least be smart! Nobody really
needs a Mongolian version of de_dust with just different textures and
the same boring architecture. If you really want to copy de_dust then
try to make it original in your own way e.g. change some tunnels to open
areas (and inverse), replace level-limitation-walls with cliffs, improve
the variation in the main battle spots, add a new stealth way, mirror
the layout or certain parts of it, or better still, change everything!
go to 'page 4 of the article "Ben's small bible of realistic multiplayer leveldesign"
