Level Design

Howdy!

I've been designing levels for quite some time, for Team Fortress 2 and Counter Strike, using the Hammer editor. Unity doesn't have any BSP features ( Shame on you unity ) and I was thinking about using blender for my level design. However, there are no real introduction tutorials on level design in 3D modelling programs. All I have come across is timelapses. I am very confused by how I am supposed to do this. I know my way around blender, and how to model, but I just don't know how to create levels in blender.

 

The same way you'd model anything else. Everything applies, everywhere. And BSP is old school. No need for it.

 

BSP is alot funner for me to create levels and I feel like its faster. Also, BSP is not old school. TF2 uses it, CS:GO uses it, L4D, L4D2, etc.

 

BSP may be old school, but yes, it is still in use. CoD, Rage, the Valve games, etc. Technically, it isn't really about the BSP format itself. It's what that workflow did for allowing design to create and texture levels in a fraction of the time it takes to model.

For organics, no question, it's going to get modeled. But geo editors like the classic GTKRadiant are an excellent example of how to save time creating levels, so long as the majority of your geo features mostly simple, rectangular shapes. Modern environments, essentially, but certainly not exclusively.

Unity has two third-party plugins that create geo inside the editor; maybe take a look at those. One's called GameDraw, forget the other (probably because the author couldn't answer my technical questions, so I moved on.)

After all these years, I'm still shocked no one's taken a look at the freely available source code for GTKRadiant for inspiration and tried to make something of their own, focusing on model export, since most engines have gone down the model route nowadays.