Tips for Level Designing

What are your tips when it comes to level designing ? Personally i struggle with designing abandoned city ,can't make it look "random" and "real" .It looks kinda empty the whole time

 

Props, props, props. Decals, decals, decals. The little details are what makes a scene. The empty, dusty, dirty dumpsters, decaying rusty, and fallen-down street lamps, facades, barricades. The plants starting to grow in on the sides of buildings, between crevices on the edges of sidewalks, buildings, around fountains, street lights, and mailboxes. Fire hydrants with what looks like water that was once there (From them being rusty around it, as well as mossy ground around). All that and more

 

If you make a abandoned city look at references, concepts and other games that has this kind of theme.

You should post a scene your are doing in the WIP or on polycount and try to have people critic it to help you improve it

 

Two useful articles:

• Composition in Level Design: How to make a level feel filled out -- composition layers (foreground, center of interest, background), staffage, etc.
  • Related: Block Design in Level Design: How to block out your level quickly & effectively.
• An Architectural Approach to Level Design: How to make the level functional, both from a gameplay standpoint and from a realistic architecture standpoint.

Following on @Elzean's excellent advice to use reference material, there's no such thing as an abandoned city. There's an abandoned London, an abandoned Moscow, an abandoned Rio de Janeiro, etc., if you catch my drift. Each one will have its own character, colored not only by the city's past but also by the theme that you want to convey in your game.

 

Also shameless plug on a video i made to help level design (it's about unity and not composition). But making better use of Unity will make you more efficient and help for better level design

 

Shouldn't an abandoned city actually look empty?

 

Nice video with really basic stuff everyone should know

Well yes and no.It looks empty cuz of lack of details .I'm not creative person enough to make it look nice and pleasing to the eye so it looks like someone just dragged models on scene and didn't do anything with them + it looks like something is missing the whole time

 

I will literally read this while i'm working on scene , thanks for this really needed it!

Ohh i totally forgot about WIP section.I'll post my work there . I don't want to look at other game concepts beacause i'll unconsciously try to copy them .

Checking them atm,looking interesting and usefull , thanks for sharing them!

 

I don't think you have to worry much about that, at first "copying" is part of learning. If you succeed to reproduce an AAA scene by yourself you would learn a lot. Anyway even if you "copy" i'm sure at some point you will find a way to make it your own and end up with something very different. All artist take references everywhere being real life photos, other 3d scene or concepts

It's more like noticing the details that make a scene, like this guy put pebble and dirt, this other dudes put foliage on lamp post and cars, this scene has dust particle, then checking color composition for post apo scenes etc it's more about taking notice of stuff on multiple sources to identify what makes an "abandon city".

 

I never though that way.Hmm i guess i could see some good scene examples and try to learn from them.I guess Fallout is good example of what i'm trying to achieve I'll take better look at it

 

For the current project I am working on I used a floor plan for a 19th century mansion. Only the first and second floor of my game mansion use it. The cellar and attic are original designs.

 

This is one of the best resources I could share in regards to level design in general.
http://worldofleveldesign.com/