Level design implementation

Hi,

I'm planning to do a little test "game" where you go through "corridor" like environments like in the game Dead Nation on PS3. If you haven't seen it here is a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-syxOHFqN0k

I'm not an experienced game developer, so my question is what the best strategy is when building levels like this. Is it to create the whole level as one model (streets, buildings and all other static objects) and then fill it up with all the dynamic objects? Or do one create own models for roads, and every building is an own object and so on?

 

Well for something like that, if you're sticking to that kind of camera view, you don't have to worry as much about occluding geometry and view distances and all that since you have more control over what's seen at any one time.

What I'd do is build the basic layout as a single big object (this one would be the least detailed) it would mostly be just the road layout, holes in the ground from explosions and so on. Static of course.

I'd make the buildings separate objects, so they could be instanced as prefabs and reused (rotated, redressed etc.) so give the impression of more while using less. These buildings would just be the basic shell, no extra's actually modeled into them. These would be static too.

The extra's, light fixtures and so on I'd do as separate objects, and for the most part would, due to the small size on screen. Use a single texture atlas and material for all of them (different UV's). These would be things for detailing the various buildings and area's, still static.

Then I'd do the more basic dynamic objects, the stuff with physics applied to them.

Emmisive objects and other special effects using certain fancier materials I'd also try keep together with the same textures/materials.


Once I'd setup the whole map, I'd go about setting up the lightmaps. In this case pretty much everything could have a very low texel size because they're so small, with the buildings having a slightly higher size, and the base road surfaces having the highest. I'd probably use tons of lighting, all set to bake only, and then place very few actual realtime lights to effect the dynamic objects as bounced light (though by the time we get light probes, that step might not even be needed).


At least that's off the top of my head, in practice it'll be more in depth, but it should give you an idea of one possible route you could take (by no means the only one, and maybe not the best solution either).

 

Thanks a lot for your answer Frank! Didn't think about using the buildings as prefabs, good thinking. Now I have a good idea of how to get started.