A Bad Mapper's Bad Map Design - A Visual Companion, Part 1

It's no secret that I'm no good at this.

I mean sure, I understand gameplay mechanics and level design, I understand lighting techniques and balance, but let's be honest here.

I have no idea what I'm doing.

That being said, I'd like to bring up a few (too many) issues with Beta 1.0 of my current map, The Office Park. Illustrations are included, so there's no excuse for not catching these kinds of things in your own maps!

How (not) to map, in order of appearance:


1. Make quality lights. Lighting is important. Like, really important. So don't go cheap on your lighting, even if it means making a prefab and using the same lights over and over again; nicely lit areas are always better than badly lit areas (not to be confused with poorly lit areas, which are spooky. Remember, spooky = good). Unlike the example set by ME in the STARTING SAFE ROOM, use glow sprites and dust motes to make your lights really shine. Using the right model and light color help, too (at least I did something right).


2. Put important item spawns in obvious places. When places aren't obvious, make them obvious. This means putting objects along paths players MUST take, or at least are very likely to take (an exception to this is very powerful items, such as pipe bombs, molotovs, and health kits. Exploration should be rewarded). This also means drawing attention to an item by placing it in a prominent location in a room. Prominent locations do not include empty tables with no interesting features.


3. Good mappers will never leave a large area completely empty. Where there are no gameplay elements to contribute, there should at least be SOME kind of detail to separate one area from the next. This is especially true for explorable areas that have no purpose. And look at those lights! Haven't you read the title of this post by now?


4. Mappers should be careful that they don't extend their brushes too far, unless the resulting clipping is completely hidden. Avoiding clipping entirely is generally a best-practice, just to be on the safe side.


5. Under-extending a brush can be more noticeable, though.


6. Just connect the brushes. It's really not that hard.


7. But of course, even if a real mapper made any of these mistakes, at least the brushes would be textured properly. Right?



That's all of the mental anguish I can inflict on myself this time; the rest of the map's follies are soon to come!

Walking the Path

In my last post, I discussed the difficulties of developing flow in a game like Left 4 Dead, and the specific challenges I've been facing in the large, open courtyard central to The Office Park. I narrowed my options down to two potential paths, pictured again below.

From Mapping

The first path, aptly-named Path A, seemed the most logical choice to me. Here was a huge open area with a number of dividing structures (the planters), obviously it would be best to have the player explore every nook and cranny of that space, zig-zagging back and forth to get to their destination.

This was fine in theory, but putting it into play brought a number of issues to the foreground. Forcing the player to maneuver back and forth achieved what I wanted, in that you DID see the entire courtyard, but it also had the effect of feeling contrived. No matter what reason I might imply for having to take this route, it was readily apparent that it was all just "designed." This is a real location, at least in the mind of the player, and this is an effect best avoided.

Additionally, all of this walking back and forth made for a lot more work cosmetically. Most players don't mind a long trek - after all, it's just a matter of holding the W key - but nobody wants to stare at the exact same scenery for ten minutes. Populating all of this empty space was, as mentioned in my earlier post, proving to be exceedingly difficult, and my attempts were feeling increasingly forced.

The final issue I didn't notice until calling in a friend for testing. My changes since the release of Beta 0.5 have been tested internally amongst myself and a few others who have been following development since Day 1. When bringing an unversed player into this environment for the first time, Path A often found them wandering off into some non-essential corner of the courtyard. While I do believe that the ability to explore should be encouraged, players should NOT be put into a situation where deviating from the most obvious course will get them lost, and this is what was happening.

That said, I have opted, officially, to develop along Path B, and so far it is working nicely. A number of features have been added to the courtyard (cosmetically) to emphasize this route, and after seeing it all come together I'm beginning to wonder why I needed to take a three month vacation to come up with this in the first place.

The new route will be detailed in a future post, but now I must sleep.

Developing Flow in the Courtyard

One of the most difficult design aspects of developing for a game such as Left 4 Dead is the management of game flow in a realistic environment. In order to truly give the impression of being a part of a zombie apocalypse, we must put the survivors in real, familiar environments: the collapsing remains of the places stored in our collective consciousness. Difficulty arises when we try to give the players meaning and direction in what would be an open environment.

There is a great deal to be said on the subject of immersion and believable barriers in map design, far more than I could pretend to have mastered. Where some games may establish a clear path through the use of tunnels and corridors, we must introduce recognizeable boundaries and obstacles for the players to navigate without ever breaking the sense that everything is all connected to a much bigger world. At no point should the player feel that they are confined to a path as an element of a 'level;' rather, they must be presented a situation where the path in front of them is LOGICAL and intuitive, a path that they themselves would follow. This has been my struggle in The Office Park.

For anyone who's had a chance to play the released beta, you will have quickly noticed that the design of the office park itself is inherently very open ended. This was dealt with largely through the use of destruction as a barrier; structural collapse forces the survivors on a fairly direct route, and while room is left for exploration, players can never stray TOO far from the main path.



The problems arose with the courtyard: a massive, flat, open area with only a few planters to break up the scenery. While some would agree that it made for a rather attractive vista, the fact remained that it was empty. What was more, there was nothing to be done to restrict the player from exploring the space which, while detailed and interesting, proved to be very disorienting, as the various nooks and crannies gave no hint leading towards the next point of progression. Something was needed to give the player a GOAL.

There are a number of common techniques for giving an unwitting player direction, the most commonly cited of which (at least in the Left 4 Dead community) being lighting cues. Players, thrust into an unfamiliar environment, are naturally drawn to familiarity, activity, and detail. A good way to suggest all of this is by the use of lighting to lead players from point to point, and an attempt at this was made by placing a security spotlight in front of the entrance to the administration building. This was met with failure, as the size of the Courtyard prevented players from noticing this light until they had travelled a fairly large distance unaided. It was clear that an alternative was needed, and an alternate courtyard was drawn up.


This time, instead of the true-to-life planter configuration, I settled on a much more obstructive design. By raising the height of the planter walls to block more vision and joining each 'set' of three planters into three very large planters, I was able to create hedge walls to divide the courtyard into several sections. This, combined with a number of obstructions (chiefly made up of police barricades), allowed me to force the player on a specific route to cross the courtyard without sacrificing the feeling of open space or the view from the balconies. While the changes brought a new set of issues (populating all of that space interestingly without overextending the bounds of the engine), it made for a much more controlled feel and had the added bonus of showcasing parts of the map that might have been walked past initially.

There's much more to be said, but I'll leave that for another update. I will soon be testing the playability of the two paths shown below, and will be making a decision on which one to develop further.

Pictured below: Two potential routes through the courtyard, travelled from right to left upon exiting the warehouse. Note, the dark yellow boxes are the new planters, while the light yellow boxes are other obstacles (primarily police barricades).

From Mapping

The Office Park - Concept Shots

The first map of the Concrete Bayou campaign, The Office Park, is vastly different from the others in that it provides a sort of maze - albeit a very linear one - for the survivors to navigate. Where the rest of the maps are fairly straightforward runs from point A to point B, The Office Park is almost exclusively centered around one large complex, which the survivors circle several times on their way out. This made for a number of design challenges which are constantly presenting themselves, but also demanded a very detail-intensive approach, as players must spend a lot of time looking at the same scenery.

From Concrete Bayou

I don't mention it very often, for the sake of avoiding any potential conflict, but The Office Park is based off of my old high school. Originally the plan was to keep it as a high school and do a 1:1 replica, but apocalyptic. This idea was immediately scrapped for a number of reasons, but primarily because of the abundance of office-themed content available within the Left 4 Dead resources. With the help of a number of different photographs, I decided instead to focus on the basic layout of the school and surrounding areas, but take plenty of liberties to make it interesting and playable.