[HN Gopher] The Level Design Book
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The Level Design Book
Author : keiferski
Score : 290 points
Date : 2025-05-25 11:03 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (book.leveldesignbook.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (book.leveldesignbook.com)
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Unfortunately level design has evolved into a complex indistrial
| process. The earlier days from DOOM to Half-Life was a lot more
| fun.
| deadbabe wrote:
| No worries, one promising use of LLMs is that we could describe
| a level someday with all its key features and just have it
| created fully formed, instantly!
|
| Imagine a game mode where you as a player can just describe
| what you want while the LLM builds something fun and
| challenging! I think in simpler games such as Doom this should
| be possible already.
| monkaiju wrote:
| Are you an llm?
| deadbabe wrote:
| why would I be an LLM
| globalnode wrote:
| use of grammar and overly excited? (or are you trying to
| make a point? like look how bad LLM's are... hard to tell
| on the inet. or x2 are you trying to emulate an llm to
| see how many people you can catch?... its all so
| confusing now)
| deadbabe wrote:
| I'm a human being
| iamacyborg wrote:
| [citation needed]
| boredemployee wrote:
| I think the confusion is here:
|
| "...we (humans) could describe ..."
| hyfgfh wrote:
| that's what a LLM would say
| hexasquid wrote:
| I can believe we'd get a level, but I'm not ready to believe
| we'd get something as refined as the undead burg (a case
| study in the book).
| sph wrote:
| Trying not to mention LLMs in any Hacker News comment section
| about anything challenge (impossible)
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| "we could", but how many people can actually describe a level
| with all its key features? It's not this easy. In your other
| sentence you mention that the LLM builds "something fun and
| challenging", but how would an LLM know what fun and
| challenging is? You, the "prompt engineer", would have to do
| that. An LLM can only replicate what it already knows,
| meaning that level design would be copies of existing level
| design instead of something creative and novel.
|
| Sure, it can be done. But you can already generate levels and
| environments generatively. How is AI going to be better at it
| than a person that clicks around in the Unreal editor?
| nativeit wrote:
| That sounds awful. What's the actual point? If you don't
| enjoy level design, do something else.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| Some people just can't understand that the process of
| making art is enjoyable by itself. They think the product
| is the hobby.
| user432678 wrote:
| Thankfully there's not enough money in hobby level design for
| AI slop investment, so this won't happen.
| rochav wrote:
| I keep seeing comments like this and can't help but feel like
| that would be like suggesting someone who makes pottery as a
| hobby could make it way faster by just ordering the vase they
| want from someone else; I imagine the fun part in this, as in
| many other hobbies, is making it, because if just want to
| play something someone else made, you can already do that,
| can't you? Maybe it won't be exactly what you wanted, but the
| LLM generated one won't also.
| blargey wrote:
| That's just procedural level generation with extra steps. Why
| ask humans for input when you can just as easily ask the LLM
| to generate a list of key-features that would be received
| well by user_profile 400231862?
| sandspar wrote:
| Level design can still be an engaging hobby. In fact there's
| never been a better time to be a hobbyist level designer. Never
| before have amateurs had access to so much tools, education,
| and resources.
| LinuxAmbulance wrote:
| Except if you want to do level design for existing AAA FPS
| games other than Counter-Strike, the days where user maps and
| modding were allowed have come and gone long ago.
|
| There's nothing out there like there was for Counter-Strike
| 1.6.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| Good thing those are still around.
|
| I had a blast making levels and sharing them in BBS and FTP
| servers 1996-2002.
| vkazanov wrote:
| Well, there's always Trenchbroom + Quake 1 + community = the
| incredible, amazing Arcane Dimensions.
| krige wrote:
| I cannot stress enough how artful, imaginative and incredibly
| fun Arcane Dimensions is - while still being very much Quake
| 1.
| quakeguy wrote:
| Thank you very much!
| userbinator wrote:
| _Game_ level design, to be precise; those who have been doing
| electronics and struggled with level-shifting between all the
| various standards are forgiven for thinking this was about
| something else.
| atoav wrote:
| That would probably be called _amplifier design_ then,
| attenuating signals is a comparatively simple problem (although
| in RF anything that seems simple can become black magic
| wizardry).
| Cerium wrote:
| Ah, also not: "design of organizational job levels".
| stronglikedan wrote:
| And here I was thinking it was about designing a tool one would
| find at Home Depot.
| mmooss wrote:
| Who wrote this book? I don't see that information.
|
| The Internet is an odd place. Imagine a printed book without an
| author listed (even 'anonymous', which is a rare edge case).
| Imagine a non-fiction book without a clear thesis, and one stated
| up front.
|
| In addition, we are overwhelmed with information and options on
| the Internet in ways humans with only printed material couldn't
| imagine. We need these things - especially theses clearly stated
| up front - even more. I'm not willing to read things without it -
| I just have too much to read and too little time.
| Cyphase wrote:
| There's this: https://book.leveldesignbook.com/appendix/about
|
| I agree it should be easier to find, e.g. an About link in the
| main nav.
| mmooss wrote:
| Thank you. How did you find it?
|
| For others:
|
| _Core authors / editors_ ...
|
| _Robert Yang is the founder of this project. As an indie
| game developer, he is most well-known for his Radiator games
| about sexuality and intimacy. In the past, he also
| contributed levels to projects like Black Mesa Source, and
| conducted interviews with level designers for Rock Paper
| Shotgun. (https://debacle.us)_
|
| _Contributors_ ...
|
| _Andrew Yoder has worked on Paladins and Warframe, and
| specializes in multiplayer social spaces and combat design._
| Cyphase wrote:
| I clicked into the Overview from the Book menu in the main
| nav. That only shows the sections in "Book 1, Process", not
| books 2-4 and the appendix.
|
| Overview took me into the content, which has a sidebar; I
| scrolled to the bottom of that and found the link to the
| page. It took me a moment to realize it did show that info
| about the author/contributor.
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| I want create a game
| soulofmischief wrote:
| Look around for game jams, short competitions where you don't
| have to worry about perfection and can just dig into the
| process of making a game. After a few of those, you'll have all
| the base skills you need to tackle something bigger.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| One thing I've never understood, as someone who only has a
| passing curiosity in game design, is how people learn from
| them? It always seemed to me that the whole idea was 'Here's
| a theme, make a game.' But if you don't know how to make a
| game, where does the knowledge come from? I get you can do
| independent study, but you could do that without a game jam.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I understand the appeal of game jams, I
| just don't understand why I see it offered as a learning
| experience so frequently, as opposed to a practice
| experience.
| zovirl wrote:
| I learned an enormous amount from in-person game jams by
| chatting with other game developers at the event, most of
| whom were more skilled than I was. I've also found game
| jams made it easier find collaborators, easier to get
| feedback from other designers, and easier to see how other
| people approach the same theme.
|
| > But if you don't know how to make a game, where does the
| knowledge come from?
|
| If you're at the stage where you feel like you don't know
| how to make a game, you might find value in doing the
| exercises from the book "Challenges for Game Designers" by
| Brathwaite & Schreiber.
| mclau157 wrote:
| Godot software is free and very easy to do the "blocking"
| method in this article, there are nodes called CSGBox3D which
| are resizable boxes with collision that you can drag, rotate,
| etc. and box out your world
| thal3s wrote:
| I can never say enough good things about the Godot engine.
| mvanga wrote:
| Does anyone know if there is something similar for 2D
| platformers?
| nickledave wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44115494
| doshaa wrote:
| cool
| xdkyx wrote:
| There was a fantastic resource about Multiplayer Level design
| from David "DavidM" Munnich. Although done in Unreal Tournament
| context it was really informative. I don't know if it's still
| available (could not find it), taking into consideration it was
| hosted at the defunct planetunreal I doubt it survived.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| That's the one I was thinking of too, but also, how relevant is
| that still today? "Levels" in various categories of video games
| have evolved far beyond the fairly basic arenas of the UT /
| Quake era.
| amlib wrote:
| In terms of geometry density (detail) they have definitely
| improved by many orders of magnitude but in terms of layout I
| think most games have actually gone backwards with vastly
| simple levels to navigate. That (exagerated) meme about level
| design in 2010 is still fairly relevant [1].
|
| [1] https://imgur.com/a/LfZouTK
| hnlauncher wrote:
| I think I found them on the wayback machine here:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20040603010041/www.planetunreal....
|
| Are they the ones you're talking about?
| keyringlight wrote:
| Another one is Sjoerd "Hourences" De Jong, a lot of UE3/4 era
| stuff, which was around the era Epic made their engine widely
| available
|
| http://www.hourences.com (no https on the site)
| nathan_compton wrote:
| I need this for 2D level design.
| nickledave wrote:
| Same. Anyone know of a similar book for 2D level design?
|
| Some random search results:
|
| - https://www.tadeasjun.com/blog/2d-level-design/ mostly talks
| about Celeste
|
| - GDC talk from Maddy Thorson linked from that post:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RlpMhBKNr0
|
| - previous HN post (original link seems to be dead) with links
| to other talks: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20177157
| rendaw wrote:
| Not a book, but Cave Story is interesting because the first
| areas in the game are too large and shapeless, but later
| areas are very well defined. I feel like the author went
| through some sort of level design progression while making
| the game.
| nickledave wrote:
| Found this paperwork on a framework for platformer level
| design: https://eis.ucsc.edu/papers/smith-sandbox-08.pdf
| Sharlin wrote:
| I've been reading "Level Design: Concept, Theory, & Practice"
| by Kremers. It's a dead-tree book, and more of a theoretical
| treatise on all kinds of level design concepts, tropes and
| patterns rather than a hands-on guide, but might still be of
| interest to you.
| diggan wrote:
| Seems a lot of it applies to 2D levels too, I did some quick
| skimming and didn't see anything that jumps out as not being
| applicable for 2D levels. Anything in particular that seems
| very 3D focused? I know the images happen to be 3D, but most of
| it is basically the same for 2D.
| mentos wrote:
| I often wonder if game level designers now play it too safe much
| like the movie industry does with its proven plot points.
|
| I think about classic maps like de_dust being the Mrs Doubtfire
| of game level design..
| ChrisfromLees wrote:
| "the Mrs Doubtfire of game level design"
|
| I love that line
| diggan wrote:
| > about classic maps like de_dust
|
| AFAIK, de_dust (and de_dust2) were hastily thrown together by a
| young amateur (not in a bad way) map maker, not a professional
| and carefully designed + user tested level.
|
| So maybe what we need more of, are designers and developers
| throwing shit together with less analytics behind their
| choices? It does seem like the more data-driven a decision is,
| the safer but also more "boring" it becomes.
| feoren wrote:
| Yes: there are no "average gamers". Everybody gets something
| different out of games, and the beauty of early HL1 online
| play is that there was something for everyone. Severs that
| were AWP-only playing sniper-focused maps; servers where AWPs
| were banned. Servers that only ever played de_dust; servers
| that only played crazy user-made maps. Team Fortress Classic
| and Counterstrike and HL1 Deathmatch and Science & Industry
| and so many more variants that I've forgotten playing. And
| what one player wants to play changes with their mood and the
| phases of the moon. As long as there were at least 9 other
| people interested in what you felt like messing around with
| in that instant, you could do it.
|
| If you make a game based on average metrics, you get a
| single, average experience. If you make a game for the
| average player, you make a game for nobody. (Although you do
| seem to make a lot of money ...)
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(page generated 2025-05-28 23:01 UTC)