Session Name: | Level Design Workshop: Set this Game in Order: Organizing Hundreds of Levels and Mechanics |
Speaker(s): | Nathan Fouts |
Company Name(s): | Mommy's Best Games |
Track / Format: | Design |
Overview: | Oh no, your game has so many levels and enemy encounters, all with multiple people working on them! The middle of the game keeps getting rearranged and rebalanced. How do you keep track of what mechanic is introduced where, and if the player has seen something yet or not? Is there a better way to see difficulty flow in the game? This talk will look at different methods to organize level designs and mechanics including spreadsheets, folder searches, and a specialized "level-search" tool created to examine levels in the speaker's game 'Pig Eat Ball'. Mechanics-based level design will be the focus using a 2D level editor, but the concepts are generally applicable to 3D as well. Though it may seem like unnecessary work, the talk will give tips for building useful support tools and documents to examine level design and game flow. |