[APRIL] An Architectural Approach to Level Design by Christopher Totten

[Liz England]

An Architectural Approach to Level Design by Christopher Totten

Written by a game developer and professor trained in architecture, An Architectural Approach to Level Design is one of the first books to integrate architectural and spatial design theory with the field of level design. It explores the principles of level design through the context and history of architecture, providing information useful to both academics and game development professionals.

You can buy it as ebook or dead tree format from Amazon or direct from the publisher - https://www.crcpress.com/An-Architectural-Approach-to-Level-Design/Totten/9781466585416

If you order from CRC Press, you can use the discount code LOYAL for 20% off the price.

This book has only been out for a couple years so there aren't a lot of reviews out there yet!

[Raphael Gaschignard]

Just BTW, trying to pick this book up I couldn't find where to add the promo code, turns out it's on the shopping cart page just under checkout:

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[Christoffer Lundberg]

I read this book for about a year ago, but are planning to reread it, but it will probably take more then a month.

Its a nice book, and a lot of things have changed since I read it last time: I've had some hands on experience in hobby game projects and I read a course in architecture history(tbh I expected it to cover more of the things in the book aka, architecture theory, but most of the course was about culture history and a lot of buildings which is kind of nice, but hard to apply to games. I also got some gems like about post-modernism methods).

I got mario maker for a month ago, so it will be interesting to see if I manage to apply any of the material from the book to mario in a meaningful way. I am also interested to hear about what kinds of levels all of you have built or are planning/want to build, because its a great difference, "how it works", depending on what game the level is for.

[Lisa Brown]

Hi all! I just finished this up tonight and I was really pleased with it as a whole! My favorite thing about the book was how it was able to generalize architectural principles such that they had application to all different types of games from all different camera perspective. That's the one thing I've found lacking in other texts about level design - they were always very focused on first person 3D games - and in this one it can show how one principle can apply in, say, a top-down 2D game and a 3D 3rd person game. The chapter on space as it's related to survival instincts was great, as it gave form and reasoning behind a lot of things that I tend to intuit based on feel when designing levels.

I think a lot of people can easily make a surface comparison between architecture and level design, but this book really connects them to a degree that I actually find useful in practice (for example, I really enjoyed the comparison between city planning successes and failures and multiplayer hubs, and how you can find similar principles at play in an MMORPG city and a team deathmatch shooter map). A lot of the students I interact with who are interested in level design have a difficult time making the jump from thinking about environment art on the surface to really thinking about level layout, flow, sight-lines, and how space shape and size relative to the player can elicit different emotions, and I feel like this book will really help them reach the distinction (it is difficult to get students to play a good level and study why it is good if they are a beginner, because they are often easily caught up in the surface-level details and have a difficult time grasping the bigger principles)

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[Liz England]

I am super behind on my reading this month but so far, as of chapter 3, I really like this book. There's a lot of moments where the content crosses over something I've read in 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School, but that book is really minimal - this book has depth. I wish I had it when I was first learning level design, and I'm going to try to sprint through it before the end of the month. 

I'd like to call out the author's definition of level design as really excellent and elegant:

"level design is the thoughtful execution of gameplay into gamespace for players to dwell in"

-Liz

[Jon Y]

Personally, I found the idea of prospect space vs. refuge space quite fascinating. It reminded me of Dragon Age III, the uneasy feeling of exposure, how it always seems that you are in an unprotected open field when you get attacked by a large dragon :D

I found the last interview particularly interesting, about Humans vs. Zombies, and how he describes the heightened intensity that exposure has in live-action real-life game spaces:

" A low wall becomes a point of ambush. A walk to a cafeteria becomes a challenge of bravery. The shadow makes you feel safe... Your eyes become hyper-aware of sudden movement. Any sound moving toward you makes you freak out."

By way of introduction, I'm from Toronto, Canada and my team and I are building an 'escape room' as a hobby project. So this book felt very relevant. If you are not familiar with the escape room concept, it is sort of like playing the old Lucasarts or Sierra graphic adventures from the early 1990s but in a real physical setting. You find and use items, solve puzzles, unlock locks, but in a live-action setting. Game reactivity is typically driven by arduinos / microcontrollers.

On Friday, April 1, 2016 at 10:21:00 AM UTC-4, Liz England wrote:

[Kevin Day]

I was super bummed that I didn't finish this book this month but things were a little hectic. I only made it up to chapter four, but what I read was really interesting. I enjoyed reading about how the different buildings of the Athenian Acropolis were built with specific site lines in mind. I know in First Person Shooters you have to worry about things like this, but actually sitting down and thinking about it has me wanting to go play some old games to see if and how they handle this. I know The Last of Us comes to mind using different buildings and markers to help the player navigate, but generally I don't think to pay attention to this stuff as I am playing a game. This is something I am hoping to break out of, so I can actually analyze games I play to see what makes them work or not. 

If anyone has more suggested reading along these lines, I'd love to hear about them!

[Christoffer Lundberg]

So I have been trying to write about this book for some times now. When I read this book there's a lot of neat architectural anecdotes, but over all it feels like something is lacking. I first tried explain it by how the book tries to talk about level design without a specific game system in mind. It makes the book kind of general and it feels like it actually is written for implicit unstated game systems. After a while I realized that its kind of got covered by using a lot of game examples and expect the reader to figure out how to apply them on s/he's specific game in mind. I still don't think that its a good premise for a book. It's kind of unsatisfying but doable.

It kind of clicked when I wrote what I expected the book to deliver. It became easier to say what parts some of the different chapters lack.

What I want from the book:

1. Examples from architecture

2. Explaining the transfer from architecture to games - some words on how to transfer the examples to games. Comparing the difference between the purpose of the example and the purpose of the games system.

3. Examples from games - examples from games that apply the architectural example in a meaningful way, and examples where the architectural approach doesn't work as well.

Why:

Examples from architecture, because the book focus on architecture. Theres a lot of other interesting information in the book about other things, but most of it can be read elsewhere and kind of distracts from its core themes.

Explaining the transfer from architecture to games - Because most of the time its not self explanatory why something that work in architecture also should work in games.

One example is about city planning on p.353 where one of the aspects are: “1. Multiuse districts that encourage constant use by people” which is directly translated into the rule for level design :”1. Multiuse gamespaces that give players access to a variety of mechanics (shopping, talking, fighting, recharging, etc)”. I'm not saying that its wrong to have multiuse gamespaces, but as I understand it, the reason the architectural rule exist is because its a hassle to travel far to different places in real life. In games the same practical problem don't exists. You can have shops with identical supply everywhere or let the plays teleport between places. Or you can make it part of the game experience. One counter example to the rule are dark souls where you have to walk to different places to upgrade equipment and buy antiposion potions. The real world hassle becomes a “engaging” player experience. Its not that I think that the “rule” is wrong, its just that there are no reasoning, forth and back, how to transfer the architectural principles into games in the book. Its not that the examinations are wrong, there are no examinations so I can't say if its neither right nor wrong, to be honest.

Examples from games – Its easier to understand concepts if they are in a concrete form. The book contains a lot of general rules, but to be honest it doesn't feels like it clicks. Because the opposite of the rules could also work. Therefore examples show clearly when it works, and if its not noted why it works I can at least checkout the game and see why.

One great example in the book is the part about Tours one page 316. Totten(2014) describe the rock and roll hall of fame in Cleveland by architect I.M. Pei and compares it with Mario 64s bob-omb battlefield. The level's first mission leads the player right through the level, giving the player a overview of the level for the subsequent missions, like the tour built into the building in rock and roll hall of fame, giving a overview of its different floors.

I also think that its necessary to have examples on how to misuse the rule. Because its very easy. It feels like theres more possible ways to use the rule “wrong” then to use them right. I tend to learn more from bad games. One of the interviews from the book said something similar p.240.

Over all the book show a lot of examples from games. The thing that annoys me the most is that a lot of chapters have other theories then architecture and some chapter have no theory at all or example from architecture that are presented in a anecdotal way. Theres close to none description on how to transfer the architectural concepts into game centered systems. And theres no examples of games that use the concepts in a bad way.

That said, theres still a lot of interesting content in the book.

Some of the things I like are:

• Not about environment art or “how to” implementation (xxiv) – I read the introduction online before I bought the book. This thing totally sold me on the book, mostly because theres this widely spread misconception about level design being about other things. (I love Liz's article compare level design and environment art http://www.lizengland.com/blog/2014/06/the-restaurant-analogy-of-level-design/, I wish more people online had read it)

• Nodes / proximity diagrams (129) – Like, the only doable way to sketch 3D spaces and other complex structure, like metroidvania maps. Moves the focus from specific shapes to its intended functions.

• “Nintendo Power method” (82) – Making a overview of the level with specific highlights the way nintendo power made guides. (I recently checked the mario guides from nintento power, they lack enemy placement so they are not super useful for level design. All of them are hand drawn because it wasnt possible to make screenshots and screenshot maps before) If I had the time I would make all of my levels look like this. It usually takes a lot of time to make them, time that could have been spent to make levels instead. But its very nice to have afterwards as reference.

• Oku (258) – Winding streets in between open spaces. I don't know how this exactly can be applied in level design, but it would be cool in 3D.

• Japanise gardens (310) – Not so much about the deisgn rules, but more about the fact that nintendo was inspired by it in mario / zelda. A kind of aha moment.

• All of the hand drawn pictures – It looks very clean and I don't want to know how much time it took to draw all of them. Its pretty hard to get overview pictures of 3D games. Thats a skill that clearly would be handy to be able to do from architecture.

• And more...

It feels strange to spend a page rant about the book, and then post a list of 5-10 interesting concepts. Well thats how it is.

It feels like the format of this book is less rule of thumbs and more in the form of a question; “would this work in my game?” And that is probably the take away: heres a lot of aspects and let the reader answer how they work in different games.