Level Design?

Evening everyone!

Looking for some training on how to improve my skills as a level designer. Video tutorials preferred.

Needs to be theory-heavy, so nothing centered on a specific engine (Unity, UDK, CE...). Simply want to hear from others on what goes where and why. Scifi, medieval, modern, etc. Anything and everything is accepted.

Did some forum and youtube searches, nothing quite caught my eye.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

 

I was looking for resources on this as well not too long back. This is what I came up with, its not training but its worth a good read and a bookmark. The guy uses specific tools (Illustrator and Maya) but not technically, its more an explanation of his process.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/130735/illustratortomaya_how_to_design_.php?print=1

 

Thanks!

 

Big fan of:

- http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Game-Design-lenses/dp/0123694965/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_y
- http://www.amazon.com/Level-Up-Guide-Great-Design/dp/047068867X/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_z

 

I think you should go on your own path and go all out artistic, then twist that into something that is good for gameplay. Look at 2d castlevanias, Quake 1 Doom. A lot of 3d games are just based on real world but the old ones had some really interesting levels and gameplay.

Flow, interesting(art), Puzzle, difficulty I think are things you want to consider you can pretty much change the look of any shape so it's the path you go on you want to consider. Castlevania actually has pretty bad level design overall, it's not it's strong point, super meat boy is probably a better example for that genre.

Studying what games are out there is more important than theory, imo especially when creating something new and refreshing.

When I design levels I take my mouse at low speed in gimp or paint dot net and quickly sketch out some flow its a good way to do it don't have to worry about hotkeys or anything. you can do it with a black background and white paint too. Don't have a tablet I just use my mouse. You could use the Paths in gimp to turn that paint image into a more accurate map as well.

I found Uncharted 2's level design interesting but decided against going down that road.