Level Design
The mechanics of level building are well documented: Scene Structure for how a level is split so several people can work in it, Level Design Tools for what we built to make it fast, and Build a Level for the steps in order.
What is missing is the process: how a level goes from a brief to something signed off.
Specifically:
- Who writes the brief, and what is in it
- The stages a level passes through, and what "done" means at each one
- When it gets played, by whom, and what happens to the feedback
- How scope is decided, and who says a level is finished
- How level design talks to the kit owner when a piece is missing
This is the one discipline here documented entirely as tools and rules with no process around them,
which makes it the hardest to join.
What we do know
Block-out first. Place simple primitives for the overall shapes (with boolean and extrusion
features, quick room generation with window and door placement, procedural stairs and ramps) and get
the space right while changing it is still cheap. The block-out is then replaced piece by piece
with kit geometry rather than thrown away, which is what our tools are built around.
A level is built by several people at once, which is why it is split into additively loaded
scenes, one per discipline, each with its own owner.
Every level has an owner: whoever owns _Base. They are responsible for the level as a whole
and for resolving disagreements between layers.
Start here instead
- Build a Level: the steps, in order
- Scene Structure: layers, hierarchy, object naming
- Level Design Tools: the suite, and what it can do
- Modular 3D Assets > Grids & Increments: the grid the kits snap to
Related learning
The academy has full courses on this, separate from how we do it: