Flowmap of the Unreal Tournament level
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJWMEo3jRzY&feature=youtu.be
Research
1. Playing Unreal Tournament
- The first step to built levels for an existing game is to play the game a lot to develop an understanding of the mechanics and to get a feeling for the game’s flow
- Playing matches against people, bots and exploring maps alone
- Playing different game modes and maps
2. Analyzing the player behaviour of different skill levels
- Watching gameplay footage of pro players
- Watching casual gameplay footage
- Exchanging messages with pro players, asking them for feedback
3. Gym Level
- Taking metrics
- Measuring clarity of doors & windows
- Measuring traversal distances
4. Researching multiplayer deathmatch level design
- Reading gamasutra articles
- Watching GDC talks
- Watching documentaries of how levels were made
- Reading guides from “Bobby Ross”
- Reading various other level design articles about FPS creation
Planning
1. Creating a flow nodemap
- Circles are combat arenas
- The middle circle is the biggest one, because it has the highest importance with having more connections than any other combat arena
2. Creating a level design breakdown
Building and Iteration
Color-coded Lighting
- Each room has a color signature (this one is blue)
- Connectors to other rooms shine that room’s signature color on the exit
- White light highlights important pick-ups (e.g. weapons, elevators, health)
Heatmap Data Collection
- Data used to improve and balance flow, gameplay and pick-up placement
- I inserted a third-party plugin to measure this data
- Data collected by performing playtests with 5 human players over many rounds
