Post by a Chunk on Mar 5, 2019 17:40:11 GMT
The Last of Us Multiplayer Level Design Process
By David Ballard
Read this article at our new site HERE: www.nextleveldesign.org/index.php?/featured-content/articles/the-last-of-us-multiplayer-level-design-process-r57/
Introduction
The following is a recap of an article from David Ballard that was posted on 80 Level. Follow the link at the end of this post for the full article. In this article, David walks us through his multiplayer level design process.
The level I will use to help demonstrate the multiplayer level design process from The Last of Us is Bill’s Town. It is a competitive multiplayer arena map originally designed and converted from a cooperative objective based map. It is a rectangular map consisting of 4 main building structures: Garage, Clock Tower/Town Hall, Church, and Office/Diner.
David explains that he had originally build for co-op play.
Coop was ultimately cut from the game and with limited time and resources, I had to edit the level designs to accommodate competitive gameplay.
Representation of the Player
In order to be able to understand the players will feel and interact inside a play space, it's critical to put yourself in digital shoes. From there, you must understand and support the overall conceptual goals and approach of the game you're designing for.
For The Last of Us multiplayer, the level design theory was driven by a 3 lane concept. This concept states that between point A and point B, there are 3 lanes of traversal available. On a macro scale, this translates to 2 bases connected by 3 major lanes. On a micro scale, this means that at any point of cover, the player has 3 options of movement; forward, left and right. Part of the fun of designing with this restriction was making the 3 paths vary in challenges, gameplay, strategy, art, and moods.
Blocking Out the General Space
At the Blockout stage, David worked on things like geometrical focal points, movement options, and scaling. He started off with a drawing, and made adjustments as needed as he transitioned it into a 3D world.
Player movement speed greatly determined the distances between major structures. Additionally, I designed each of the 3 major routes to have varying gameplay; the middle street was open for long-range combat, Town Hall was mid-range, and Office/Diner was close quarters. Some thought was given to cover though I tried to remain in a macro mindset in the initial stage. Like a painter, I start with large brush strokes and move to smaller detail strokes.
Lighting
Let there be light... LIghting proved to be a very collaborative process.
Lighting needed to be brought into the process early on. It was needed for testing purposes and informed technical limitations and artistic decisions. Lighting also affected the design process by defining combat spaces and was important to creating the level by informing player experience. The texture artist needed the lighting implemented early as well to inform their texture and material creation.
The working relationship with the lighter would continue until shipping the game. It was a two-way lane of communication where both of us would approach each other with ideas, needs, and solutions. Lead artists, the art director, and anyone who had suggestions would give us feedback from art reviews and playtests.
The working relationship with the lighter would continue until shipping the game. It was a two-way lane of communication where both of us would approach each other with ideas, needs, and solutions. Lead artists, the art director, and anyone who had suggestions would give us feedback from art reviews and playtests.
Making Adjustments
As is always the case in a collaborative environment, it's critical to be flexible, and able to develop creative alternatives quickly.
The lead artist had an idea of adding a clock tower on top of the town hall for artistic purposes which helped with landmarking. When I converted the map to support competitive play, I wanted to add a bridge between the town hall and office/diner. Using the narrative, I added makeshift bridges that connected on top of a semi-truck container. Some of my decisions were made to support navigation via landmarking, like dilapidating a roof to see the clock tower when ascending an interior stairwell, or framing the church steeple from a piece of cover.
Adding Assets to the Level
It's time to get fancy. After plenty of playtesting and iterating, David's next step was to begin adding assets.
Every section of the map had unique looks/assets which added to the difficulty of getting this level in memory. In single-player, each location would stream-in the necessary textures, however, they had to all be loaded simultaneously for multiplayer.
A lot of the fun of set dressing was telling stories about the history of the environment, like placing bricks on the ground next to a building, indicating the direction they collapsed and a possible event that occurred to make them do so.
A lot of the fun of set dressing was telling stories about the history of the environment, like placing bricks on the ground next to a building, indicating the direction they collapsed and a possible event that occurred to make them do so.
Conclusion
Finally, the level is complete. David looks back at the rewards and lessons that came of it.
Designing Bill’s Town was incredibly fun and rewarding. There were many lessons learned during development that informed the design process for the subsequent levels. Each location presented their own unique design, art, and technical challenges, keeping development fresh. Additionally, each level’s design got better and better, building upon the successes of the previously developed maps.
Effective collaboration with people from every department was required to finish these maps and ship the game. Input came from every corner, from art and design to QA and company presidents.
Effective collaboration with people from every department was required to finish these maps and ship the game. Input came from every corner, from art and design to QA and company presidents.
Source: 80.lv/articles/the-last-of-us-multiplayer-level-design-process/
Follow David
Site: www.davidgballard.com/
Twitter: twitter.com/DBal
ArtStation: www.artstation.com/dbal