What makes a game work #1: Level Design

How many times have you died and thought, "What happened there?" Annoying, isn't it? Why does it happen?

No enemies in sight, but fifty ways to die.

I let out a half crazed cackle as the last of the demons fell to the floor in red ruin. Sparkling on the ground was the final key. I gasped and reached for it, relishing the solid "clunk" as it dropped into my bag. I glanced around the room, checking I had missed nothing, and headed for the arched doorway in the far corner. The room beyond was dark, black - nothing visible, no sounds of movement coming from within. I stepped over the threshold and a dirty great block of stone plummeted from the ceiling and squashed me flat, ruining the immersive experience of the game because there was no way on Earth I could have known in advance that the left side of the doorway would kill me and the right side was safe.

Annoying when that happens, isn't it? So why do they do it? Is it to make the game more "challenging"? Is it to make the game tenser? Is it all a government conspiracy to improve the nation's memory skills? Well, let's take a couple of the worst offenders and compare it to one of last years most acclaimed titles and see how they differ.

The worst of the bunch

I bet that tree spontaneously explodes if you go near it...

A contentious choice, this, but the worst "Instant Death Scenario" game of last year was, for me, Enclave. A typical level would go: Walk in the door. Floor collapses, back to the start of the level. Walk in the door, round the invisible collapsing part, ceiling collapses, back to the start of the level. Walk in the door, round the invisible collapsing part, dodge the falling ceiling, killed by an unseen sniper, back to the start of the level.

You can see where this is going. Progressing through a level becomes more a feat of memory than skill with a game pad. As long as you remember the exact sequence of events, you'll be fine, but miss any one of them and it's back to the start. Granted, this makes the game a challenge, but doesn't make it particularly fun to play.

The bad and the good

Daikatana - it cheats.

Another example is in John Romero's "Daikatana". After slogging through a swamp for an hour on the first level, you are greeted by a door with two buttons. Pushing one opens the door, pushing the other kills you. The buttons are identical. There are no clues to their function that I could find. 50/50 - live or die. I never played further than this point in the game.

Let's look at last year's star - Halo on Xbox. Halo shows no signs whatsoever of this problem. Strangely, though, the levels in Halo aren't really particularly complex - in a few areas, in fact, the maps are less complex than Enclave. Sometimes the maps are even repeated! Still, Halo is widely acclaimed as being the best in its genre, while Enclave is at best grudgingly awarded "above average". Why is that?

Let's compare them blow-by-blow.

Cause of Death

How it should be done

What causes you to die in Enclave? Mostly the scenery, occasionally hidden monsters, sometimes standard-monsters. What causes you to die in Halo? You do. Every time. Every death in Halo, be it by enemy attack, blowing yourself up, or running out of ammo - you caused it yourself.

Does this mean the scenery in Enclave is more dynamic? I don't think so. Whereas Halo relies on it's fiendishly clever enemies to challenge the player, Enclave has created an "über monster" - the environment itself, to even the odds between the player and the weak enemy AI.

Hang on, though, you cry! Halo is tough (especially in Heroic and Legendary modes) and I found myself dying just as frequently, if not more so, than in Enclave. The difference is, I believe, FAIRNESS. When you die in Halo it's because you've gone charging into a room, or you didn't notice a perfectly visible baddie, or you ran out of ammunition. Every death in Halo is avoidable, which is why it plays much more like a tactical shooter on the higher difficulty settings. With the pre-scripted events in Enclave, on the other hand, unless you have prior knowledge of the event, it simply is not possible to survive it.

You versus the World

Another gratuitous Halo shot

The whole point in playing a video game is to present a challenge, but in order to overcome the challenge; the player must feel he is in control of events. Games like Enclave rob the player of this control.

So, top tip to games designers - build your enemies to be robust enough to provide a challenge to the player. The environment is at the least an interactive feature of the game, providing cover and shelter, and at most an antagonising factor, posing threats and problems. The environment in a game should not be a substitute for the real enemy. A game should provide a fair challenge - it's not real life, after all.

So, what do you think? Am I a wuss? Or do I have a point? Share your most frustrating moments with us by commenting below.

Comments

#1 - 13/03-2003 @ 13:36 : eVOLVE

Considering the environment as an interactive feature is one of the most important features of game design, and is where I think many games will improve in the near future. Take a FPS like Half Life, the environment is where the gunfights all take place, but overall the environment is pretty static. Red Faction, using it's Geo-Mod system to let you destroy parts of the world is the closest I think we've got to truely interactive worlds. With improving physics engines, games should be able to create more and more interactive worlds, whereby you could shoot out a single brick in a wall, or strategically remove bricks until the wall came crumbling down.

Yes, the whole instant death thing is nasty, but nowadays designers are getting over it, and have to look for ways to improve substantially. Truely interactive environments is my bet.

--
James 'eVOLVE' Hamer-Morton
Boomtown Writer

#2 - 13/03-2003 @ 22:30 : [deleted user]

Instant death scenarios is simply bad design that only exists in a game either because the game-designers thought its funny (arnt they a minority...) or because they are new to game design - or both... or neither... in which case they're just dumb :)

I have not played Enclave but I play Halo every day and have done so since I got it about 2-3 months ago. The enviorments are somewhat static but I dont think it matters that much in Halo because of the (at most times) awesome AI of Halo NPCs. I played Truth and Reconciliation and at random, depending on the enviorment and how the odds were in the battle, some enemies fleed to corridor that broke up in a T, making it into a bottleneck – they lay up defence strategies that, of course, is partially scripted but happend at random times depending on how well everything is going – this makes up more than enough for the enviorments not beeing to flexible as the enemies are about the smartest non-scripted enemies I’ve seen to date.

As to have flexible enviorments with high, medium or low interactivity is a tough choice that every game designer has to make because it does have a great impact upon the gameplay but it does not allways work FOR the gameplay.

The most interactive game I know is Deus Ex – not only because of the enviorments with its linear-story with unlinear levels but because of its plain AMAZING gameplay – The world Responds to your actions!
That is, imo, true interactivity in games and THAT is what I really wanna see more of 

#3 - 13/03-2003 @ 22:31 : [deleted user]

 = in future games (dont ask me what happend O_o)

#4 - 14/03-2003 @ 17:47 : jodo

Well, teknomystik could well be right. That bridge that collapses under you when you're halfway over - I admit, I should have spotted that. By the time I got to the part of the level, I should have realised that even a cheesy collapsing bridge sequence wasn't beneath the designers of this horror :)

Seriously, though, whether or not the traps are avoidable is, to an extent, irrelevant. The fact is, full health or not, uber-god or not, they are not survivable. Ever. Once the bridge starts to crumble, if you're on it, you're dead. Once you stand on the trapped flagstone, that's it - you're history.

On the other hand - you could well be right and I'm a complete wuss ;-) Fact is, though, I bought the game to be entertained, but it just frustrated me. It's kinda like the video game equivalent of making sure all the labels on your canned food line up and face the same way ;-)

--
Jodo &amp;lt;jodo@writer.boomtown.net&amp;gt;
Boomtown Staff Writer

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