Topic awaiting preservation: Level design for games - general advice? (Page 1 of 1)

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The poster has demanded we remove all his contributions, less he takes legal action.
We have done so.
Now Tyberius Prime expects him to start complaining that we removed his 'free speech' since this message will replace all of his posts, past and future.
Don't follow his example - seek real life help first.

For terrain, I prefer hex.

Spline n-gon with 6 sides, non-circular.
Make sure all anchors are corner.
Add a spline to connect opposite anchors.
Divide the spline/segment to get an anchor in the dead center of hex.
Add more splines all the way around until 6 triangles make a hex.
Surface it and set to the interations(?) as high as you need to go.
Use a height map and Displace to move the verts into a terrain.
Collapse and touch-up.
Maybe even use Optimize.

Umm... yeah.

Polys

When you're designing games levels polys are not your friend. Too high and the game lags. Too low and it just looks crap. Getting that balance right and optimising your models to keep the higher polycounts in the models where it matters is very very important. It's all about the looks. The more polys, the smoother a surfance is and the more 'organic' it will look. Think about that when designing your level. What is supposed to be organic and what isn't? Give the organic things a higher poly count allowance. And remember is 3D Studio MAX that your poly count = faces / 2

for terrain you might consider using a heightfield.

we did that in http://www.embege.com/trace

and one tip for making games: its ALL about textures!

Well, you've already gotten some good technical advice so I'm just going to throw some general level design advice in here. Forgive me if this is not what you're looking for or if you've already taken these into consideration.

1.) Scenery

I know that in a racing time this will usually be a blur, but in a rocky mountain setting you have a lot or room open for winding curves and tunnels and other scenery enhancing devices. These will give the gamer a bit of a thrill and add to the excitement of the game.

2.) Layout

Since it is in the mountains, you won't have too many long, flat streches but if used well these can really increase the level of immersement. Just imagine coming out of a twisty section and seeing a long stretch of road ahead (just before the next twisty section, of course ).

3.) Difficulty

Depending on whether this is the first level of the game or the world championship, you want to tune the difficulty appropriately.

4.) Fun

No, seriously. It's easy to get really into the design process and kind of lose track at times. If you can, race through your level a few times and see how much fun it is. I realize that this is usually done in the QA process, but doing a bit of it during the early stages of development can't hurt.

The poster has demanded we remove all his contributions, less he takes legal action.
We have done so.
Now Tyberius Prime expects him to start complaining that we removed his 'free speech' since this message will replace all of his posts, past and future.
Don't follow his example - seek real life help first.