Demi Veritas

One of the main things I despise about map design is the concept that you are moving within a container. This is mentioned in part by the creator of the Minevera mod, Adam Foster. In brief email correspondence with him I mentioned the realism of his maps and mentioned my complete understanding of his levels, and the architectural sense that steamed from the layouts. I then briefly mentioned that I was an architect to him and asked him some trivial questions about the vertical nature of his maps.

His response, which I appear to have lost to an archive, mentioned his grandfather being and architect too and that he took great interest in looking at drawings of buildings in his youth, this point stuck with me. It appears that architectural education is of some benefit to map design.

Zaha Hadid, what a mentalist

While in college I found that planning a project was often much easier in plan, laying out spaces side by side as they would appear from the air, this was a standard architectural student tool at the beginning, at a later stage we learned the benefit of looking at a project in other ways, and understood that it was a very useful tool.

At this point I’m getting ahead of myself, back to the container issue for a moment. It effects many common problems in map design, mappers make routes between areas and frame these with walls, often not considered , the section, that is, they do not consider the ground they will walk on or the roof that covers them.

This is very important in single player maps where everything is controlled, calculated and arranged, the readability of the map must be rigid, must be grounded in reality or it risks being one step above an on the rails shooter. Multiplayer maps are a different breed; they require balance to facilitate fairness, and often times this is taken as an excuse to reduce the clarity of the maps architecture. This should not be the case however, if I may be as bold to take a pint as example. CP_steel, what a map, its multiple angles and game play really were a fantastic idea, but the layout is too confusing, too contrived it lacked any sense of cohesion and only people who learn every nook and cranny really know it well.

Exploring why, and when to move up and down should not be a function of simply adding a stairs when needed, the very surface you walk upon should undulate beneath your feet falling away at times.

With these points in mind I am not sketching my levels in plan; first of all I draw a section, and look at the map in a different light.

Well, I’m going to make a Team Fortress 2 level and just to be controversial I’m going to make it a capture the flag map. I have a few ideas rattling around in my head, I know I want it to have the alpine style, so expect trees, stone, lumber mills and a dark cool night time skybox. Beyond that I know it will have 3 towers.

Boundless, incomprehensible sketches litter my desk in work, fine details are worked out as the larger plan gains solidity. The growing enormity of what I am doing slowly presses into my skull like a swollen thought.

What the hell is this?

The maps name will be ctf_3fort_alpine, the similarity is intended.

We have all heard the fanboys yell their mantra “The GFX are rly bad!”, It usually revolves dipolar to the clichéd answer “Yes, but gameplay is king!”, so the question is, are gameplay pishers merely another camp that is as bad as the visual whores or are the two really at odds with one another?

Design in general has rules and guidelines that help define and make it easier to solve problems; often the checklist of three is cited as a good basis to complete, in any attempt at a design project.

1: Aesthetics: All designers love aesthetics, it is what set them out from pure engineering solutions.
2: Functionality: The ability to use the solution without going mental or giving up.
3: Innovation: The keystone of good design, the carrot that leads the rest.

But how would these relate to game design?

Aesthetics is obvious, it links up with the appearance or graphics of the game, note however that aesthetics is subjective, the current trend towards realism is not a move towards an ultimate aesthetic and as such the beauty of a game cannot be judged purely on the merit of graphical believability. Instead the game must be pleasing to the eye, polished and stylish, this does not of course divorce realistic graphics and aesthetics, indeed some day realism will reach a pleatu and beauty will be all that is left.

Take the stylised appearance of Darwinia, Civilization, Grim Fandango or the upcoming Team fortress 2 and Defcon. These games do not rely on utter realism to convey themselves but instead take a feeling they wish to convey and build upon it with the right appearance, not by rendering it photo realistically. Indeed some reasonable games could have been made better if they had decided to go down the route of “simplistic” graphics.

Functionality, usability, gameplay, are all closely linked, a fun game is one that is easy to play, to use and derive its function from, bad functionality leads to a bad experience. This is the area where realism is actually necessary. We actually exist in reality; as such we have a set of skills that we have all learned that we can use in many situations. For example, we know that water will not support our weight, we also know it will quench fire, and cause the ground to become damp. That is reality and until games can be realistic in that manner, in multiple aspects they will continue to be frustrating, un-compelling and plain silly.

It is by combining this pre existing knowledge we have with a small subset of new game specific rules, and using these to solve problems in a fun manner that allows games to have good gameplay. Why for example do certain characters abilities defy belief, like seeing through walls, taking a bullet to the head and still being able to call for back-up, struggling to climb a ladder, take cover or maintain radio silence, and most baffling of all running backwards without tripping, I have never seen anybody do that. In short visual realism is only a piece of the puzzle.

Innovation is what gets you that wow factor, it is not a gimmick, it is something new, something daring that is both considered and successful. The creation of a new genre is an oft cited example, others include new interfaces both virtual and physical, new technologies that improve your experience and most of all the simple willingness to leave that which was successful and move on to something new.

So is gameplay tops, in a word no, its an important part of the design of a game, but fixation on the concept that, what is created these days is only a game confuses this comparison, they are more complicated than that, and so should our opinion on them.

Hmmm, well my online presence grows with every step I take, soon I will have mastered MYSPACE!