Hello!

It’s starting to be a tradition to post news every few months. I’d love to post more but I literally have no time, even for “patrolling” the websites where interesting level art or design content might appear. Anyway, I’m looking for contributors so if you have a bit of time and you’re checking some game dev websites regularly, swing by my email and let me know if you got any interesting design stuff. Maybe there’s a way we could post it here.

Second thing is that I’m looking for a better website engine, something like a simple Article Directory with tags, categories, latest updates page etc. do you know any?

One more thing! I’ve created a LEVEL-DESIGN.org Steam group. Feel free to join!

Cheers and enjoy the update, thanks for showing up on the website! :)
Mateusz Piaskiewicz

LEVEL-DESIGN.org News Roundup – Volume 42

Articles:

• MapCore: Arcane Dimensions: A New Quake World
• MapCore: Creative Airlocking: streaming in action games
• MapCore: Dynamic Levels – In Payday 2 and Beyond
• Why Dishonored 2 allows you to skip its finest content
• Jungle Gyms (Playgrounds) Real-Life Level Design
• The Brilliance of Super Mario Run
• Dreadlog: The Challenges of Level Design
• Military Science for Game Developers
• Shadowrun Level Editor: Branching Discussions and Questioning
• Take a look behind-the-scenes with design documents from The Legend of Zelda!
• The Best Levels of 2016
• The Making of Sapienza, Hitman’s Best Level

Tutorials:

• Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Level Design Boot Camp

Tools:

• Street Map Plug-In for Unreal Engine 4
• Unity 5.6 Beta Now Available
• Unreal Engine 4.14 Released

Videos:

• GDC ’16: A Geographer’s Guide to Building Game Worlds
• GDC ’16: Empowering The Player: Level Design in N++
• GDC ’16: Manifold Garden: Level Design in Impossible Geometry
• GDC ’15: Sunset Overdrive: Transitioning from Linear to Open World Design
• In Praise of Prague (and other small worlds)
• Castle Valley Speed Level Design – Unreal Engine 4
• Half-Life: Smart Decoy – In Depth Analysis Playthrough – Classic of the Month
• World of Warcraft: Level Design Panel

LEVEL-DESIGN.org Reference Database Updates:

• Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (MP) (Custom Maps)
• Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag
• Batman: Arkham Origins
• BioShock Remastered
• Destiny
• Deus Ex: Human Revolution
• Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
• Dishonored 2
• Fallout 4
• Hitman
• Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst
• Ratchet & Clank
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition
• Titanfall 2
• Tomb Raider
• Watch Dogs 2

LEVEL-DESIGN.org Knowledge Base was created to gather Level Art & Design links and resources from around the web in a certain categories. To make search easier, the list of categories is built around the typical Level Design process. This page is constantly under development. New categories and new links will appear after each LEVEL-DESIGN.org News Roundup post!

Knowledge Base can be found here and as a second link on the website’s menu.

Enjoy and have fun!

Articles:

• A Handcrafted Feel: ‘Unexplored’ Explores Cyclic Dungeon Generation
• Gamasutra – Don’t Fear The Hammer: The Importance of UX In Editors & Tools
• Gamasutra – The Disco Generator: Procedural Level Creation in All Walls Must Fall
• Gamasutra – How Rogue Legacy Deals With Down-Scrolling and Leaps of Faith
• Level Design of Video Games – Stanley Parable
• Level Design of Video Games – Hyper Light Drifter
• Level Design of Video Games – Portal
• Level Design of Video Games – Prince of Persia
• Level Design of Video Games – Superhot
• Playing Games As A Level Designer
• Save The Vents
• Making of Sampa
• MapCore – Creating a Single-Player Combat Space
• MapCore – Interview with Robert “BJA” Hodri, Doom Senior 3D and Environment Artist
• WoLD – Interview: Professional Level Designer Talks Designing Single-Player vs Multiplayer Levels, VR Challenges and Tips for Getting Started
• World Building of Witcher 3
• The Assassins’ Guide To The City: Dishonored 2

Videos:

• Polygon Fragments – Rage – Wasteland Garage
• A Love Letter To Gothic’s Open World Design
• Backtracking and Level Design – Making a Way Out
• Controlling Chaos Designing Compelling Combat in Action Games – Adam Bormann
• Dark Souls and Discovery in Game Design
• Hellblade Development Diary 4: Creating the World
• Making of CTF-LostTomb (UT4) With Commentary – Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
• Mass Effect 2’s Iterative Level Design Process
• Other Places: Boston (Fallout 4)
• Other Places: Lothric (Dark Souls III)
• Other Places: Noir (Grand Theft Auto V)
• Other Places: Toussaint (The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine)
• The Importance of Nothing: Using Negative Space in Level Design
• Top 5 Dark Souls Level Design Moments

LEVEL-DESIGN.org Reference Database Updates:

• Darksiders 2
• Doom
• Grand Theft Auto V
• Lost Planet 3
• Metal Gear Solid V: Phantom Pain
• Uncharted 4: Thief’s End

Hello fellow designers and artists!

No links this time, only a short but very important note about the website. As you can see, page got a new look and the Knowledge Base is almost ready to open. There’s a link to the Knowledge Base in the top menu but it’s not yet opened. The content grows of the page each day and you might got some RSS spam recently because of that. Sorry for that, it’s already fixed and should be fine. Visuals will also get some touches here and there in the future so stay tuned.

All the website changes are slowly getting there but there’s a small problem. This page takes a lot of my private time and people ask for more and more. It collides with my free time that I want to spend with my family but I have a plan! The “Knowledge Base” page idea that I described in my previous Roundup will be the main source of Level Ar & Design links. Each post with one link will be assigned to a specific category that fits to the level design process or principles. I’d no longer had to write one huge Roundup post but each link would get a separate post and category. Sadly, there will be no additional description. For me, it will save a lot of time. How it works for you? Let me know if you care and actually read this announcement :)

Moving Level Design Up In The Climb

Hello! Welcome to Volume 40 of the LEVEL-DESIGN.org News Roundup. Few posts ago I’ve announced a small change on the website. I’m still struggling with finding a proper website engine to handle my vision of the new website. I’d like to share some thoughts with you and please, let me know what do you think. Without further ado, here’s the idea. How about changing the LEVEL-DESIGN.org main page to a list of categories? Each category would be a step in a level design process or a principle of design. After opening the category, you’ll be able to see a list of all the resources on this topic. For example, by clicking on “Prototype” category, you’ll be able to see all the resources I’ve found about level prototyping. Please, send me your ideas, concerns and thoughts to mateusz.piaskiewicz@level-design.org. Thanks!

Art Dumps:

• The Division Art Dump at Polycount

Articles:

• Clever Level Design: More Than Meets The Eye
• Moving Level Design Up In The Climb
• One Thousand Cuts
• Prospect of Space
• Bloodborne To Run
• CS:GO Map Creator FMPONE Talks Design, Exploits, and Updates
• Definition of Open World, Free Roaming and Sandbox
• Understanding The Sublime Architecture of Bloodborne
• Space To Ground: Matters of Scale in Level Design
• Push & Pull – The Art Of Guiding Player Though An Environment
• Level Design in Video Games: Building In Doom
• Level Design in Video Games: Bioshock Breakdown
• Seeing The World as a Level Designer
• The Secret of N++ Level Design
• Level Design in Video Games: Abstraction in Kairo

Tools:

• Unreal Engine 4.11 Released!

Videos:

• Central Yharman – Great Levels In Gaming
• Design Club – League of Legends: Summoner’s Rift – Level Design Analysis
• Epic Games on Level Design Psychology
• First Levels of Sonic Games
• Game Maker’s Toolkit: How (and why) Spelunky makes its own levels
• Other Places: Deus Ex: Human Revolution
• Other Places: Arcadia Bay – Life is Strange
• Other Places: Sol – Elite Dangerous: Horizons
• Overlooking Overwatch: Ilois
• Overlooking Overwatch: Route 66
• Overlooking Overwatch: King’s Row
• Intelligent Design: Magicka – Part 1, Part 2
• Learn Level Design For X-Com 2
• LevelHead: Shovel Knight
• GDC ’16 – Fallout 4’s Modular Level Design
• GDC ’16 – Building Firewarch in Unity

LEVEL-DESIGN.org Reference Database Updates:

• Bloodborne
• The Last of Us: Remastered
• Dragon Age: Inquisition
• Sniper Elite 3
• Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Vegas 2
• The Order: 1886

Resources listed above are now added to the Knowledge Base.

Hello and welcome to Volume 39 of the LEVEL-DESIGN.org News Roundup. This time there’s really a lot of Level Design & Art stuff, enjoy! I’ve also listed two podcasts in this update, that’s new for the News Roundup. I’ll try to get more of these but usually there’s not much about Level Design or stuff related to it. If you got or know any cool podcasts, please, let me know!

Articles:

• How to Draw Top-Down Level Design Map Layouts
• Stuck? One Section Level Design for Gameplay from Idea to Playtest
• The Art of Astroneer – Low Poly
• Dear id, please don’t forget Doom’s level design
• Shut Up Doom 3
• How Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ Levels Are Built
• Visual Cues In Level Design (Gamasutra)
• How Dark Souls’ concept art may have deep ties to its environmental design (Gamasutra)
• Traversal Level Design Principles (Gamasutra)
• Level Design Basics (Gamasutra)

Podcasts:

• Explaining Design Decisions to Clients with Tom Greever of Bitovi Agency
• Game Master’s Guide – Episode 11 – Dungeon Design

Videos:

• The Beauty of Call of Duty – Stronghold (Black Ops 3)
• Other Places: Shoshone National Forest (Firewatch)
• Other Places: The Witness
• Other Places: Return to Skyrim
• Other Places: Skellige (The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt)
• Designing For Exploration & Choice In Firewatch
• Using iterative level design to ship Skyrim and Fallout
• NS2 Spark Editor: The Making of Shaft
• The Gruesome Level Design Of Doom
• Talking Hitman Level Design – Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
• Intelligent Design: The Legend of Zelda – Part 1, Part 2
  
• Intelligent Design: Braid – Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
• Intelligent Design: Pokemon Red – Part 1
• The Hall of Ascension – Great Levels in Gaming
• World of Dishonored: Raising Dunwall
• Transmissions: Element 120 by Shokunin (Custom Gamer)
• Super Mario RPG Level Design Analysis – Mushroom Way to Star Hill

LEVEL-DESIGN.org Reference Database Updates:

• S.T.A.L.K.E.R. – Call of Prypiat
• Deadfall Adventures
• Duke Nukem Forever

Resources listed above are now added to the Knowledge Base.

Hi! Welcome to the 38th Volume of the LEVEL-DESIGN.org News Roundup! Before I’ll start with listing the level design goodness I’ve found since the last update, I’d like to make a small announcement. During holidays and new year season, the LEVEL-DESIGN.org website won’t get any updates to the Blog and Reference Database. I’m taking my family back home to Poland for the whole month and I bet that I won’t have time for the updates so that being said, I’d like to wish you a very happy holidays and an awesome new year! Enjoy the latest articles, videos and tutorials that I found for you and I hope that you’ll always pick LEVEL-DESIGN.org as your source of Level Art & Design knowledge to improve in your interests, passions, career or hobby!

Cheers!
Mateusz Piaskiewicz

LEVEL-DESIGN.org News Roundup – Volume 38

Articles:

• 10 Ways To Improve Your Test Chambers – Portal Level Design
• A Theory of Level Design
• InnerSpace: Level Design – Building a Scenario
• Bad Levels in Gaming History – Volume One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight
• Visual Hierarchy for Game Developers: A Practical Guide to Making Important Stuff Seem Important
• Level design In Mobile Games – How Developers Make Their Games Fun
• Gamasutra – Secret of Sages: Level Design
• Gamasutra – Color In Games: An In-Depth Look At One of Game Design’s Most Useful Tools
• Gamasutra – How We Design a Map For Block Star Party
• Gamasutra – How To Make Games That Last
• Gamasutra – Designing Levels: From Photoshop to Unity

Videos:

• Custom Gamer – Of The Flames In The Stars by Breezeep – Quake Single Player (Map Jam 6), Signati by Adib – Quake Single Player (Map Jam 6)
• GDC 2014 – Meaningful Choice in Game and Level Design
• LawBreakers Dev Diary #1: Map Design Process
• Other Places – Star Wars: Battlefront, Sanctuary Hills (Fallout 4)
• Polygon Fragments – The Witcher III – White Orchard
• Intelligent Design – Castlevaina – Episode 1, Episode 2, Episode 3, Episode 4
• Memory and Game Level Design Analysis
• Speed Level Design – The Railroad – Unreal Engine 4
• Unreal Tournament Behind-The-Scenes: Making of Titan

LEVEL-DESIGN.org Reference Database Updates:

• Alice: Madness Returns
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 Zombies
• Mass Effect 2
• Metro 2033 Redux – Complete Single Player Campaign
• Wolfenstein: The Old Blood – Complete Single Player Campaign

LEVEL-DESIGN.org News Roundup – Volume 37

Hello fellow artists and designers! Welcome to the 37th Volume of the LEVEL-DESIGN.org News Roundup! I wanted to inform you about potential major website changes in the near future. I have a few ideas on how to improve the website.

From other news: Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, the game I was working on for more than a year is finally released! I hope you’ll enjoy our levels as much as we enjoyed working on this game. Have fun!

Cheers and enjoy the latest roundup!

Articles & Tutorials:

• How to Design Levels With the “Super Mario World Method” by Patrick Holleman
• Practicing Good Level Design
• Pros and Cons of Procedural Level Generation by Gregory Schier
• Level Design: Views and Vistas by Mike Stout
• Gamasutra – Four Useful Habits for Level Designers by Geoff Ellenor
• Gamasutra – Great Level Design Tips, Using Super Mario Maker by Catharina Bøhler

Tools:

• Unity 5.2.2 Released
• Unreal Engine 4.10 Released

Videos:

• Top 5 Best Wind Levels in Gaming
• Practical Level Design Lessons by Elad Drory
• Great Levels in Gaming #18 – Dark Souls (Part 2)
• Game Maker’s Toolkit – Why Nathan Drake Doesn’t Need a Compass
• Other Places: Pauli’s Diner (Batman: Arkham Knight), Alien: Isolation
• GDC ’15: Community Level Design for Competitive Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

LEVEL-DESIGN.org Reference Database Updates:

• Alice: Madness Returns – Updated with a few new levels
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 – Complete Single Player Campaign
• Dust: Elysian Tail
• FarCry 3
• Homefront – Complete Single Player Campaign

LEVEL-DESIGN.org News Roundup – Volume 36

Articles & Tutorials:

• On Theft’s Level Design: Maps and Territories
• The 20 Best 2D Mario Levels of All Time
• WoLD – UE4: 27 Step Crash Course to Getting Started with Unreal Engine 4
• InnerSpace: Level Design- Building a Scenario
• The Making of Outpost 23
• Level Design in Procedural Generation
• Gamasutra – The Secret To Designing The Perfect Level?
• Gamasutra – Architecture in Video Games: Designing for Impact
• Gamasutra – Designing Smart, Meaningful SHMUPs
• Gamasutra – Procedural World Generation: The Simulation, Functional and Planning Approaches
• Gamasutra – “Line the Pipes!” or Testing Your Mechanics for Flow
• Gamasutra – How To Train Players Right, So They Don’t Hate Learning To Play
• World Building and Art Direction of Destiny
• Level Design: Trascend
• 5 Common Mistakes Super Mario Makers Make In Level Design
• How A Map For Albion Online Is Designed
• How Can We Prevent VR Sickness with Level Design?
  
• MegaMan X to X2 – How Level Design Changes

Tools:

• Unreal Engine 4.9.2 Hotfix Update
• Unreal Engine 4.10 Preview
• CryEngine 3.8.4 Released

Videos:

• The Making of Titan Pass – Part 1, Part 2
• Other Places: Mad Max, Firelink Shrine (Dark Souls), Pathos II (SOMA), Rain, Hoth (Star Wars: Battlefront), North Yankton (GTA V)
• Polygon Fragments – The Witcher 3: White Orchard
• UE4: Beginner’s Step-by-Step to Creating Your First Level
• Cave Story’s Masterful Game Design – A Longform Analysis

LEVEL-DESIGN.org Reference Database Updates:

• Borderlands 2
• Castle Crashers
• Crysis
• Far Cry 3
• The Bureau: XCOM Declassified
• Metro 2033 Redux
• Quake