Level Design Tools

To make level design fun, we build a suit of tools.

These include:

  • Physics-based placement
  • Procedural, non-destructive, scatter tools based on splines, paintings, areas, etc.
  • Smart snapping / surface stamping

Aswell as a system specifically build for modular kits that includes:

  • Socket/connector system for snapping between parts of the kits
  • Grid + rotation snapping
  • Auto-wall/auto-floor fill
  • Kit palette panel

The spline tool can be used for roads, rivers, fences, pipes, tunnels, scattering, and more. It handles:

  • Scatter: placing meshes along or around the spline, with density, jitter and surface alignment
  • Spline-to-mesh extrusion/array/generation
  • Spline-based terrain carving

And we put special focus on grey-box-/block-out first workflows:
Place simple primitives for the overall shapes, including boolean and extrusion features, which can then be easily replaced with pieces from our kits.
This also allows quick room generation with window and door placement, procedural stairs/ramps, etc.

The UX

For the best UX for making levels, we have created:

  • In-scene tools for easy editing/creation. A pie menu with everything quickly accessed
  • Auditory and visual polish
  • Infinite Undo-Stack
  • Multi Select
  • Folders, parenting, tagging, grouping, etc. for organisation
  • Favorites feature
  • Live stats overlay (vertex/triangle count, draw calls, etc.)
  • Quick screenshot tool
  • Annotation and sketch tool