Hey all

[patches34]

There is not much to say about myself yet, but there will be more as I move up the ranks of the game industry.

I just graduated from Rochester Institute of Technology with a MS in Game Design & Development. I've landed a job working for a small software development company as the design lead for their first game project on the iPhone. In the past year I've co-presented a poster at SIGGRAPH call Design Goal-Oriented Level Design and had a map I created for Portal 2 featured on ThinkingWithPortals.com's roundup.

Although I have not achieved much with my career in the games industry I have been working on games for the better part of the last decade. If anyone is interested in what I've worked on so far you can see my best work on my portfolio.

[Fr0Z3n]

Ah, a wild designer appears!

Howdy and welcome! Your Poster on Design Goal-orientated level design is interesting. I assume that this type of theory could be applied to single and co-op levels? I'd think that it would become a little more intricate if more players are involved, since there would/could be more "roles" to play in each chunk of a level.

[patches34]

Thanks for the warm welcome. I've been using this site for about a year now, but just never joined.

Your right that this process in its current form is better suited for linear levels. The pace of a level in MP is more determined by the players in that game then the design of the level. To me the level designer should be crafting the flow of a map instead of its pace, and I think grazr's guide does this justice.

That being said after thinking about it for a while I do think that part of it could be applied in MP maps. All maps have their low, medium and high paced areas; I'll use my two favorite maps to show my point ctf_2fort and pl_badwater.

The low areas in each of these maps would be inside a team's spawn rooms. Spawn rooms should be the only guaranteed place where a player can stop and do something without the fear of being killed.

Each map 2fort and badwater I my mind have several areas that have almost a 100% guarantee of being a high paced area. For 2fort these would be the intel room, the courtyard and the bridge. For Badwater I would say outside blue's first spawn room, the second checkpoint and the last checkpoint.

These areas I'm calling high paced because they focus most of the players to them and are set up for frantic action from both sides. Notice how the flow of these areas allow for multiple ways in and out for both teams and have aspects that suite every class. In my limited amount of time playing these maps the areas that the craziest things have happened have mostly been at one of these locations.

The rest of the area in a map can certainly have the possible of being a high or medium paced area based on what the players in a particular game are doing.

These are just my thoughts as of right now. Who knows what I'll think in a month or two after spending a good amount of time building my first map.