Level Design ft. MiniToon, Erythia, Cullen & Tohb transcript

[Music] hello everyone i'm erin also known as breakfast candy on roblox and it's my pleasure to welcome you all to our level up round table on level design featuring developers minitoon arithia tobe and skele donut as well as roblox's own game insights game designer dan aka dspath dan take it away thanks aaron and welcome everyone to our first edition of level up in the new year 2022 i'm really excited to be here today because this is a topic i'm specifically interested in we're going to jam on some topics on level design today and i'm joined as aaron mentioned by three really talented development teams uh with level design experts and we're gonna trudge through a lot of really good level design topics today so i'm gonna stop talking i'm gonna let them introduce themselves first we have rodeo interactive and we have tobin skele donut here they're the developers of riot fall do you two want to introduce yourselves tell us what you do um hey i'm skela donut i am a level artist and level designer on riot fall um i've been on the platform for like 12 years now so i'm kind of a veteran when it comes to making things um a bit underground but you know you got to work your way up somehow uh but yeah awesome welcome oh sorry hey everyone uh my name is uh tobe on roblox and i'm also a level artist and level designer on riot fall also a veteran of uh making things i suppose um yeah super stoked to be real quick can you two tell us a little bit about ride fall what kind of game is it like what are you guys working on these days sure so it's a it's a first person shooter that we started working on in the summer accelerator last year early started working on as a group and we're now working on the game under the game fund which we just joined back in january so it's a very uh fast paced and competitive first person shooter and we're trying to aim for the highest level of visual and design quality so that's kind of what cohen and i are working on for the next year that will be under the game fund awesome well thanks for joining us on level up today we're excited to hear your perspective from uh first person shooter level designers perspective uh up next we have arithia of seminar studios arithia how about you introduce yourself hi i'm arithia i work with sonar studios llc as a creative director since 2019 and i basically come up with brand new and really exciting projects and i'm also also the animator and modeler while i'm managing the newer projects um so yeah it's quite a handful you seem pretty busy erie what are some of the main projects that the folks at home might know so right now i'm mostly working on creatures of sonaria and that's where you're a made-up creature surviving in a world i used to work on dragon adventures where you take a tiny baby dragon and raise it into a fire-breathing beast where you explore the world and i'm currently designing our newest project tasty farms which is a super chill game with super aesthetic and adorable foods and then we also have the winds of fortune game fun game and i i'm not working on that but it's it's a cool pirate game i was gonna say i don't know how you're juggling like three four projects at once it's pretty crazy thanks for joining us so i guess is it fair to say that you're gonna be coming at this level design topic from a more open world role play social experience yeah exactly okay great and finally history being made here on level up our first return uh panelist for level up mini tune for those who have been living under a rock on roblox who are you what games have you been working on ahoy i'm minitune uh i i wear pink sunglasses did i make roblox games i've worked on piggy a game about anthropomorphic animals i'm surprised i got that word right getting infected by a mysterious virus that turns them into feral monsters and i'm also working on an upcoming game called piggy intercity an open world multiplayer rpg in which the narrative and the world is centered entirely around the choices you decide to make throughout the game so in other words nearly every decision made will change both your future and the future of the game's world okay so you're coming at level design from a storyteller's perspective right yeah great so just to reiterate for everyone at home we have three really talented level design teams here all coming from very very different genres all to talk about various different topics today on level design we have an open world social role play experience with airy we have storytelling uh with mini tune and we have tactical covering hiding behind cover traversing the world with first person shooters with our ride fall team so with that in mind i want to hop in and arie i'm going to throw the first question over to you and then the other feel free to hop in and give your insights as well but arie what does level design mean in your game so as you all know all of sonar studios games have been super open world so level design to us is designing a very interactive space for users to utilize and make it their own experience and that can include exploration and adventuring and we have to design that to be more fluid and allow users to have their own tools and create their own experiences so we really provide them with a variety of tasks that they can enjoy such as combat collection or even building okay so to sort of compartmentalize you create the space and then it's up to your players to sort of decide what they want to do with it right exactly so you're definitely going to have the most open interpretation of of what level design is because that's really up to your players when they're playing right yeah and the most important part with that is still being able to kind of hold their hand and guide the guide them through their progression yeah so that must be like a really hard sort of line for you to toe between giving them freedom and also not letting them be hopelessly lost and unsure of what to do right yep exactly all right ride fall team skeledona tobe what does level design mean to you so level design to us uh it should be complementary to the gameplay loop like guiding players on routes they want to take um to you know capture objectives and you know to kind of take control of the map um so preventing players from getting frustrated or stuck in and giving them options to approach different situations like in as many ways as they want to however kind of curating that down to a streamlined experience so for a first person shooter the level design is a really important part of the gameplay and and how players sort of choose where to go and where to hide and that sort of thing right so it's a lot more functional a lot more focused in that regard there's a lot more thought to like each specific piece that you're putting in and and uh what that means for the actual gameplay right yeah sorry go ahead sorry yeah i suppose so um i think for us it means like trying to understand everything that we can do within a map um to create good gameplay and also reinforce some of our mechanics um which is probably like a shared sentiment across any genre of game that you're working on but um so like that could be us trying to consider some of the more important gameplay mechanics of the larger ones so designing an entire map around certain game modes um or it could be smaller things like like a player's ability to crouch or vault over objects and actually we're adding um an rc car kill streak to our game soon so like if you get enough kills you'll have like a little rc car you can drive around so we'll actually be redesigning some of our maps with that in mind um so so i guess uh you know like if we want the maps to be enjoyable there is like a pretty broad range of things we need to consider on the level design end yeah okay interesting and and really brave of you to add something like carts and as you're saying now have to redesign all of your work that you've done before right yeah well at least we don't have to program the car stores yeah yeah that's nice yeah all right and finally mini tune what does level design mean for your game uh so level design to me is kind of uh the opposite of aries whereas you know for her it's uh it's it's being it's being able or it's giving the tools to the players to be able to tell their own stories whereas for me the level design is what tells the story it's essentially another way of being able to tell it to the player be it through its shape its look or its details so it's capable of conveying a lot of information to the player with such small details like so much as a let's say spaghetti stain on a wall or pizza on the ceiling right um every little detail tells the player more about the environment that they're in and the world they're surrounded by so in other words it complements the story and narrative aspects of the game so that's three very different answers to one single question so hopefully we've thoroughly confused everyone at home and they have no sense of what level design is i guess if we could is there any overlap that you all see between each other's answers like what is something that's like sort of a common thread between all of your different very different genres um that sort of encapsulates what level design sort of means for for all development cycles uh uh i would say player immersion you know being able to uh to really interact with your environments and uh immerse yourself in this world i would add to that functionality and just making everything work together while making sense at the same time yeah that makes sense i guess like if you just had a blank canvas you know it's very hard for a player to actually get in the game if it was a shooter right for the rifle guys everyone could just shoot at each other at all times wouldn't be very fun huh all right so i'm going to dive into another question here and um you know for those who might be confused of a level designer's responsibilities maybe just talk us through uh let's see aries starting with you you know what are some of the responsibilities that the level designers have on your team so level designers have to be very intuitive and almost be able to take the space of our players and you have to be able to visualize yourself in the world especially if it doesn't exist already and you you have to be imagining where those users are going to be moving to where where they're going to be exploring and how you can lay that space out in a creative way with assets buildings tools interactive spaces so it's important for our team members to be able to visualize a very large space and kind of where everything is in that space we're going to definitely dive into that process later but i guess maybe a quick question for you like how do you sort of visualize or sit down and think about um you know what you want the space to be like what does that create a process look like so usually what i do is i take our main game mechanics so dragon adventures for example there's collection there's egg location there's mob combat you have to think of where all those items are going to be laid out in the world and then after you have those core interactive features that are meaningful to the progression then you can kind of build off of that and start designing your visuals such as assets and things that they're not going to interact with that and then from there you imagine how players are going to be navigating all of that space and it's a lot of redesigning and drawing and blocking and gray boxing everything out yeah tobe skeleton do you all have anything that sort of adds to that like level designers responsibilities um yeah in our case uh like colin and i are both currently the only people working on the maps so our responsibilities range from like drafting the maps to testing them and then to the level arts so um i think our biggest responsibility is just making sure that the maps we create are fun to play before anything um i think like traditionally if you're making a game on roblox that's striving for a level of realism that that's usually going to be priority number one but uh you know especially for a game that's as fast paced as rival i think having good level design behind that is is much more important okay mini tune for you uh yeah for me a level designer's job is to ensure a variety of things uh one being you know different areas in a level make sense and fit the overall theme of the level uh as well as you know that the the map itself isn't repetitive in its design but the most important thing for me is that the story told in it is coherent and understandable with a little bit of imagination like a guesswork as to what happen so for example we don't want the whole story to be told through the level but we will also want enough so that players can come up with their own theories and stories as to what happened whilst retaining like the general message of the level and its details interesting so like in a way for your game your level is also kind of content for the players they can sort of dig into it in their free time and sort of figure out what's fully going on there exactly yeah more than meets the eye so okay so i guess uh i want to throw this one over to the ride fall team tobin and skelo donut what does collaboration between you guys as level designers and you know other disciplines on your team such as the other game designers or the engineers or the artists look like like how does how do you guys sort of work together with all of them so it's a it's a very intertwined process um basically like since tobe and i share both the the level designer and the environmental artist uh kind of hat um we're gonna be collaborating more with like the level or like the uh game designers and our engineers uh which though that is uh spencer and emil and um that's just working our game loop system around our maps and like they'll come in and they'll give us like information on hey this this checkpoint needs to be here this you know you might need to add more cover into this area because you know this this flank routes not working quite well uh with our movement system and the way the weapons are balanced you know so it's it's really intertwined uh we actually do like multiple calls a day based on like our new maps our new drafts um it's like i said before it's definitely intertwined and complementary to the gameplay so it's definitely crucial to get that feedback from our engineers from our uh systems people you know it's definitely all intertwined now do you also work on the assets like the art assets for the levels or are there like artists that you collaborate with as well yeah so um up until recently we've been the only ones working on the assets so we've done uh from graybox to our assets props things like that we have a shared um asset pack that we kind of use for everything to keep a cohesive theme to make it easier on us uh but yeah we're pretty much wearing the hats for all everything art and level design so yeah i know depending on the size of the team a level designer can either just be placing assets kind of like lego pieces or they could also be i guess what's called an environment artist and they're sort of building those assets as well so i guess that depends on the size of your team and the scope of the project area i guess for you um do you do you see the process that was described there similar for your team or does it vary depending on the projects that you're working on it 100 varies on the project where dragon adventures we have builders and environment designers so we butt heads way more on that project like i envisioned the world a specific way and i'm asking for specific features and that can take way longer a scene an end product from that but where it's tasty farms or sonaria it's mostly me as the map designer asset creator and creative director of the project i know where i want everything to be and i have people in general challenging me way less so i i can usually get it done and i don't have people you know to rely on but yeah definitely some head butting on bigger team projects so what does that look like then i guess like when you're working with another artist i know as an artist maybe it's frustrating because you're like well i could just hop in and do it myself but like what does that collaborative process look like in terms of the back and forth feedback that that you do there yeah so definitely on dragon adventures i kind of took a step back when i was envisioning these designs and i gave it to the modelers and environment designers to kind of understand why i wanted certain layouts the way i did like for for a lobby space i i was very specific about that and it took us you know two weeks to finally get to something we were all happy with and i i try to not be involved with that as much and just and give them my vision and eventually we get to that end point but take some time was there like a learning point for you or like i guess if you started over is there a tip that you could give the audience for you know good collaboration between level designer and artist in terms of aligning on the vision that you want for your game yeah definitely i would say the biggest point is even though you are the level designer it's important to listen to builder feedback because they might have an opinion that's different from yours and that's okay the level designer is not always correct and i think it's okay to be challenged and i think that's a good thing you should listen to everybody's opinion and take that into account because maybe maybe their opinion is a little bit better or more appealing to the community yeah i guess i mean level design is design and with all design that conversation and that collaboration ultimately makes for a better experience right exactly yeah okay mini tune i don't know how many other disciplines you work with but what does your process look like for collaborating with others and if not collaborating with yourself on your level design well i haven't had much experience working with others because the only person i've worked with on piggy was ikea's an optic on build mode but um so what i might say is a little general i can say that like uh the more the merrier in some cases because everyone adds like another layer of much needed detail to the project that they're working on it's like uh it's like making a cake and every little job is like a different ingredient and uh you know every ingredient adds something invaluable to the mix you know a little more flavor and sometimes you don't want to be cooking this cake on your own because sometimes you have no idea what the heck you're looking at and it might turn out to be awful so it's always great to have little helpers along who um you know may or may not disagree with you but at least they give you pointers and uh and could also you know guide you in some ways to uh to make a better cake so okay cake metaphors only here on roblox um all right so i've been teasing it i really want to dive in here because i think this is going to be the most beneficial part of our conversation today but let's talk process and even before you start concepting in your process minitune i'll start off with you what goals do you have or establish and questions you ask yourself when you're sitting down to design a level uh so to me it's mostly uh how can i make this one stand out from the others to offer players a fresh experience i think that's the most important one because i've struggled especially with the earlier chapters of piggy where a lot of the levels just kind of felt very similar in terms of play style so that's probably the most important one uh but also not just from like a gameplay perspective you know i wanted to stand out in terms of a narrative story perspective as well i want to be able to tell a different story a unique one or maybe one that continues uh off of the previous chapter so i think that's the most important one uh giving players a fresh experience and something new so okay what's your style of planning do you like to write things down or you kind of just take the time to sit down and think about it so yeah i would like throughout my day i'll always just uh open up my notes app and then write like awful notes that uh make barely any sense to anyone else but will always make sense to me um and what i do uh for for my levels is because i don't really have like a concept artist or something i'll uh i'll like search up real images of like locations sorry images of real life locations uh and get some inspiration from that uh in addition also consider what types of puzzles and or situations someone in these specific locations might uh come across so that's how i kind of brainstormed the puzzle so they make sense within the map and i also uh draw like a 2d map of a level to get a very basic layout that's exciting but also includes very little travel and more interaction with the environments around them so okay so before ever opening up studio there's a ton of just different planning and prep that you do to sort of think out what you want your experience to be yeah give me an example you mentioned that you look up images can you give me an example of like a level where and like what an example like google search would be for you i was doing like some like some uh some doc map once and you know i would just go to google images google like dry docks and then i found like the one i used specifically was one in like ireland um you know i would just look at i would get like five different photos maybe more maybe less and then just kind of like uh grab the my most favorite parts of these uh photos and kind of uh design my own take on them in my own style so it's not like just copying and pasting the photo into studio i like to change it up a bit and make it like mine uh using real life locations and stuff like that so so it's at least believable okay i want to open this up to the rest of the teams this is a really interesting point in terms of planning do you all sort of do the same process do you look up images and other inspiration for like designing levels um yeah so uh usually with our maps um at least with the last one that we completed we uh usually spend about a week prior to uh actually breaking ground on the map just researching the location that we're basing it off of so uh for example we have a map called rooftops which is inspired by the kowloon walled city i'm not sure if anyone's familiar but uh it's like a really interesting location in hong kong uh that was demolished like 20 something years ago and uh yeah we saw that and it was like the most densely populated place on earth and we wanted to do like a close quarters map so we were both kind of like oh yeah like this is the one so yeah we spent about a week gathering as much as we could uh we built a massive mood board for the map uh so we used trello at the time but now we're we're kind of between uh notion and pure ref for that part of the process um we actually actually ended up getting like um like an art like a museum quality uh photography book of kowloon voices only like a hundred um and that was a huge help for us uh we briefly made contact with someone who used to live there as well um so yeah the research part is is a huge step for us and um i think that if you gather a really solid idea of what you want your map to look like before you jump into it that it'll pay dividends in the end interesting okay airy you're the most free form of all of the developers here do you plan it all or do you kind of just go with it well now sometimes imaginative and non-existent spaces can actually be just as challenging as real life spaces because when you imagine this made up biome or environment you have to imagine all of the environment that is there with foliage and assets and how it's all unique to that space so you know for dragon adventures each world has a very specific theme that really works together well and there's you know fantasy volcano swamp prehistoric we have all these really unique worlds that have foliage assets and collectibles that are incredibly unique to that space and having a full team of people who are modelers and creators design that space can be really challenging it all needs to fit together and make sense for that imaginary made-up bio so do you do you guys sort of sit down and collaborate together visually what it looks like do you do you go to the internet as well for images of inspiration what does that look like for your team i would say our creation process depends and varies on each project sometimes it can be incredibly chaotic but usually we do we're lucky enough to have concept artists to design those assets and kind of help us visualize that space but you know looking up imaginary pictures on google can really help us um but usually for our most recent projects um it's all spat out on google drive and documents and that's how i work now everything's on google google docs google docs so you guys don't don't go to google images you go to google docs for your inspiration okay i guess just to throw the same question at you um how do you how does your team sort of define their goals when sitting down like you're sitting down for a new level how do you how do you sort of collaborate with one another and define what the goals are for that level so for open environments we are always thinking about the interaction that that's the biggest point how we how can we improve their experience and for us this is where it gets really hard because we're thinking about individual play styles and that's the explorers people who are paying to win and how they can have more fun our creators who are crafting and even our youtubers in a lot of cases how they can access the world better and be able to show that off so we're really thinking about every single type of play style and how we can cater to all of those as best as we can so we're always relying really heavily on concept artists and we have a really really smart tester team as well that we rely on very heavily so actually like testing a level to make sure you're not like falling through the world flipping in the trees yeah and they're always giving us technical feedback as well they're very smart people okay well since we're kind of having a nice transition over to that arie what does like the prototyping phase look like so you sort of sat down you planned out your goals you've done the whole concepting process how do you start to put that in the studio and sort of test it out right so after i get a good few sketches and drawings and i have my horrible paint.net artwork that's when i i don't generate terrain with um like blender i do everything by hand so for tasty farms i just started with a square of terrain and i slowly build off of that and add you know gray boxes and blocks to where i want things to be like fences and trees and windmills uh super dumbed down assets so i can really visualize that space and actually walk around and be like this is pretty nice or like i don't i don't like this um and that can include a lot of tearing up the entire map and redoing that multiple times so you threw out two really important topics here that i would sort of want to dig in the first is you're talking about your concepting phase of minitune you had mentioned this as well you draw out the level originally right like you don't just hop in the studio and just start i mean you do in a way but before you do that you you draw it out on either a piece of paper or whiteboard right like why why do you do that first why not just hop in the studio uh well funny thing is i used to just hop into studio and uh it would not turn out very well it would go horribly wrong uh because like i i even then i wouldn't gray box i would just go straight into like detailing it and oh my gosh if there was one thing i didn't like bye bye level deconstruct it entirely and then rebuild it if there was like a tube that i wanted to put there oh i gotta i gotta remove this whole wall put in the tube build around it like it's it's a nightmare it's so much easier like the the more you plan the easier it will be in the long run even then there's still some like some challenges like maybe you know it looks cool on like a 2d map but uh when it comes to uh when it comes to actually laying it out in 3d it's not as interesting or isn't as fun uh so that's when gray boxing really comes into play uh and erie talked about this a little i think it's so useful to be able to maybe not like fully visualize it um in terms of like detail yet but like visualize the layout and you know be able to walk around it all and just using like something as simple as gray boxes and very very simple shapes so yeah so this is a pretty important concept and this was the second concept that i wanted to get to which is gray boxing um i am not a level designer but every designer i've worked with throws out gray boxing all the time for those who might not be familiar with the term i guess anybody on the panel can sort of answer this um what is gray boxing and why is it so important to the the process of developing a level uh well i i think it's very very important because like i said before you know if you design the level first like or like fully detail it or whatever and suddenly you wanted a passageway here or this doesn't work out then uh too bad so sad either live with it or redo it you know uh that's why gray boxing comes into play i guess i should explain what gray boxing actually is yeah my bad i just jumped right into it uh gray boxing is well to me it's different for different for for all sorts of people but for me it's just placing a block like a gray block and then shaping it like resizing this gray block to to match whatever i'm going for so if it's like a if it's like a table then i'll just use like five blocks like four for the legs and then one for the top like it's very very very simple geometry um and it really really helps uh get like a grasp of the layout of this world and without like spending too much time on it and being able to fine-tune it really really easily because you have not much to lose you know you don't have to sacrifice detail or anything you just have to sacrifice gray cubes so right so you're really just trying to get a layout first not worried about any art assets or anything just getting the layout of your map correct yeah and then you're slowly painting over it with your real assets right yeah exactly it's like for example painting without a canvas you know you kind of need that canvas to paint on if you're doing it without a canvas then it's uh it's quite difficult or no sorry it's more like line art you know or like how some people before they get to painting they they draw it out with a pencil yeah because with paint it's like really yeah sketching um it's really really hard to to erase paint uh i don't know if it's possible maybe it is i'm not i'm not an artist sorry uh but um yeah sketching you can erase it easily and you can change whatever you don't like about it before you can get into the the coloring and the painting the more permanent stuff i would say so yeah many many cubes have sacrificed themselves for the betterment of the level exactly f's in chat for cubes out there so tobe it's skelly donut um does that process resonate with you or you know your level design is hyper specific to the actual gameplay right it has many implications for vantage points to engage and those sort of things like what does your prototyping process look like sorry about that um yeah so uh i guess a gray boxing for us is is um trying to get a sense of uh our layout and the playability of our maps um so that's definitely the step that we do all of our testing in because you know as mini tune mentioned like it's really nice when you only have to sacrifice these gray boxes rather than this level after you spent a month on um but as for like the entire like you're asking about like the whole prototyping phase for us right yeah so um i guess that involves uh well lots of play testing so like we have a qa group that uh oh yeah here's our phone we do have images um yeah so uh this is this is a map that call andrew recently um i've been working on for a bit so this will be one of our upcoming maps um so we usually start out with this kind of sketch and uh all of the research and mood boarding comes a little bit before this but um yeah so i don't know colin do you have anything to add to this one here yeah so like don't mind how ugly it is uh it's it's done really quickly to try to get a concept and a feel for how the map's gonna play um it's really essential in this stage to kind of get the choke points and get the the like objective locations down along with um like rotation points um like points of interest and at this point like in this prototyping uh you can also kind of draw towards like uh how you're going to guide the player where you're going to add that cover where you're going to draw the player towards um so like if you kind of notice the middle it's going to be a larger style building it'll really help the player orient themselves around the map um and then we'll go into gray boxing i think that's on our next slide um no the gray boxing for us is just visualizing what we have on paper uh putting it into a 3d space so we can walk around and really get a feel for how things are gonna look uh things are gonna play and like minnie tin was talking about earlier iteration is really really a key process of this um yeah just changing these without sacrificing level art and time and resources um is really crucial to this stage um like i could go and say wipe out a whole building like wipe out the blue building if it doesn't work well for our map um and and really kind of refining those like focal points and refining those rotations and those choke points and it's it's it's a really kind of it's the most important part of of the level design process uh just visualizing it and making sure it plays well and making sure you're keeping a cohesive theme throughout the entire map so the players just don't feel overloaded and or lost right so skeleton you gave an example like of of the iteration process like removing a building what might be some like reasons during that process that you decide ultimately that that geography needs to sort of change so um it comes down to um keeping it even for both sides uh making sure it plays well i i guess it depends on if we're going for a more symmetrical or a more um you know uh what is it like open feel i guess to each map like this example right here is something that we it's actually scrapped entirely for for this map um this was a white box which is basically kind of placing props to kind of get a feel for it um so like this whole area was scrapped because we we found out that it just did not play well like the stairs were just not fun to go up the uh the rotations on this part were just not a not a not a fun process to play through you know it was a no-go um i don't really quite know what you mean uh by like why we would scrap something because i think that's just like pretty obvious to yeah well i'm thinking here right like maybe if the one team is spawning up above they have a vantage point like a clear advantage here versus the team that maybe spawns at the ground or something right yeah absolutely um yeah i guess you know a lot of it comes down to our testing and um being able to watch other people run around on the map and see how they interact with it um i think we're that's where all those little issues will come to light but um yeah just to add to that um like some other things that we're looking for in the gray boxing phase um as of recently would be um opportunities for modular assets um which for us is like breaking a building up into pieces that we can kind of mix and match and create a bunch of different uh facades or storefronts um it's something that we were kind of like hesitant about doing it first because we thought it would end up being super repetitive but it actually adds um like a much more refined architectural style and presence to the maps um it's not really like a one-size-fits-all solution but um if if the if performance is something you're worried about and you're working with a lot of uh imported assets then it's definitely worth some something worth uh looking into i suppose um and we're also just trying to make it clear uh you know like things like which buildings you're able to enter um you know like which end which windows you'll be able to shoot out of little things like that so um yeah there's a there's again like a pretty broad range of things that we consider here but um i i think the next image was from our fi okay yeah this is a little bit further along in in the white boxing phase so this is starting to add a little bit of detail to the levels um this is after we've tested things and we're pretty confident in our basic geometry and structures um so as many tunes said we're starting to kind of like paint over everything a little bit and you can see that here i suppose um yeah fascinating interesting yeah and then and then we had a few images from our our finals as well this this one's actually kind of good because the the truck is kind of like like this little uh well not little but the semi truck here is kind of like uh like the ultimate mini diorama of like all the different play styles that we're trying to support um so so i would say like the three big ones that we want to support would be like stealth players so people who want to like duck around and hide in the map and kind of camp out in these little spots um so like you can crawl underneath this truck you can hide inside of it um and then there would be like the general like assault roamer type of player where they just want to sprint around and uh jump into combat as soon as they can so you're able to just kind of bypass this area and just sprint right alongside of it and then we also have the sniper which is another thing that we want to support so um you're able to climb on top of the vehicle or i guess you could even uh you know post up behind it as well so uh yeah and i think we had a few more images as well from uh those maps yeah i don't know colin do you have anything to add no i don't have anything to add well it's an interesting point you brought up tobe which is um when you're designing your levels you're thinking about not just all players but the different play styles that are going to be going on in your game and how you can sort of accommodate to each of them right yeah absolutely that's also kind of a factor in um the way yeah definitely factor in the way we design maps um i think we need to weigh our map variation against the different play styles that we want to support as you're saying so um i think our whole ammo is kind of like high map variation and then low roll specialization i would say um which i guess would go for probably any first person shooter game aside for like something like overwatch which would be the opposite i guess um but yeah i know like we're always trying to consider um you know how people are playing in the maps and how they're interacting with them so that's definitely a big factor in uh what the final result looks like okay and these are just a few more images of completed maps um anything else to add to your process here any anything else uh colin did you have anything i'm sorry i've been dealing with like she walked across my keyboard messed up my audio um so actually to kind of take it back to the um like prototyping phase uh when you were talking about if we ask ourselves any questions or any goals or anything like that um we actually do have a couple of questions we asked ourselves before uh designing and like actually laying down and prototyping our map it's just like uh does this map fit with the overarching theme that we have with all of the rest of the maps like does it play similar like things like that um and then how do we support multiple play styles and gameplay variety um so like that's super important of course like toe bitter uh iterated that on the end and then i think for me personally it's just like would i enjoy playing on this level and i think that's kind of what you got to step back and ask yourself it's like am i actually making something that's enjoyable for the players or am i just making something to kind of get to ends me you know okay i'd want to live in these levels they're gorgeous we're actually uh improving these levels visually as well so we're going to take these levels what they what we have now and then take those to the next step as well using uh pbr materials and blender assets so how do you improve perfection well we'll we'll show you [Laughter] please do please do i think that's what we have for that so i wanted to move on to the next phase then so there's our process of prototyping at least for an fps and you know mini tunes spoke to it as well arie i wanted to throw this one over to you because you had talked about it briefly but now we're actually on the topic play testing right i guess first for you is there anything else you sort of want to add to the process of prototyping and then following that how do you sort of test that out like what's your process okay so we have a tester team for every project that we work on and we're always asking for them to hop in but we usually do that before larger updates or game releases and the biggest thing that we're asking them is on a base level like what what can we improve immediately because we're not exactly designing the game for the testers but it's vital for them to at least on a base level suggest where we can improve but in the end it's really going to be the feedback from the players and the community themselves how we can make the overall experience much better and make it better for those individual play styles that are existing within the game okay and i guess just to take it a step further for everyone here how do you evaluate or like know that your level has reached your goals and and how do you sort of measure that after the fact i guess aries starting with you since you know you're leading us off yeah no problem so uh when we identify weak spots in the game then we kind of redirect that back to our level designers our engineers and how we can improve areas specifically might where like users might be disregarding an entire system like why aren't why aren't people utilizing this and honestly that's kind of where analytics might come in a little bit um so we can see you know what items aren't being harvested and why how are people making so much money off of this feature and is this skewing the economy so there's a lot of analytics that go into that honestly and i i think everybody needs analytics in their game actually so what do you use for for analytics center is it like straight numbers a heat map like what does that look like for you um usually the engineers are the people who do that sam i'm not sure the tech the tech of that but usually it's all kind of spread out on a document and that's where we see you know for stone area for example what creatures aren't being played as often how we can improve that and you know when we find stuff like that recently we implemented a boost system where every day there's new creatures that are featured with unique stat boosts or recycle boosts so they can try new things so whenever we identify stuff like that we try to find a way that we can you know make people notice all the content that we've created for them so you're not if you're not afraid to like hit the publish button and if it doesn't work out sort of change up your map based on what your players are doing right yeah yeah you know game development is so fluid and we we've learned in sonar studios that the community is so strong and their opinion is incredibly incredibly valid and important to the direction of where the game is going it's just you kind of have to balance that as a game developer and recognize okay i see the community is complaining about this feature how can i maybe meet them halfway and have it make sense for us as developers but also improve their experience right so in other words you sort of take the problems that they identify and then you bring your design solutions exactly because you know they'll have crazy out there solutions and we're like whoa soda but why can't you give them infinite money i don't understand yes mini tuna i want to toss it over to you how do you evaluate like success or failure based off of like the goals that you've established and ultimately like what you create so there's actually a few uh things that i use to evaluate such things or i i have like these these criteria points for myself um one of the biggest like these are more gameplay orientated uh for the evaluation but there are some story ones and they're a little bit fun but i'll get to that so uh on the gameplay side of things what i do is i um i ask myself you know is it too confusing or difficult to navigate is there too much in the way are there too many dead ends uh does the map all look the same and uh there's of course the other side of the spectrum you know is it too easy uh do i even encounter the enemy or if i do can i just run around with the enemy forever like a kite without running into any obstructions or obstacles um so that's kind of how i evaluate some of the uh the the gameplay side of things um as far as the story goes what i do is i actually take like photos of like um locations that really have i don't know how to put this storytelling aspect of them like maybe maybe notes or or maybe like a scene like maybe a door was trying to be closed shut but didn't quite make it and maybe there's like some tool left behind uh what i'll do is i'll take photos of that and then send them to some friends and ask them if they can like piece together what happened here and uh you know based on what they say i'll know whether or not i i made it understandable and uh and coherent so i like to use analytics as well uh for me personally i i can't really use analytics for the story side of things it's kind of a bit hard to get into players brains but as far as gameplay goes what i do is i keep track of a player's progress in a given level and uh doing so i can identify easily like what parts may or may not be needing a change uh for example you know i look at the analytics and ask myself like what parts do players have trouble with most what can i do to make it less confusing and or less difficult or you know again opposite sometimes maybe it's too easy it needs to be changed in which case i ask myself you know what can i do to make it more difficult without hindering the players experience and making it like frustrating so okay awesome well with that we've been talking for a while i want to open it up to the audience and uh erin uh do we have any questions for our panel here we have some great questions the first one is how do you change your approach when you want a player to pay attention or go here directly versus it's okay to wander around uh i guess i could i could talk a bit about that um because that's something that i have to decide a lot in my levels um how i change my approach it varies of course with the location but typically what i do is if i want a player to go to a specific area i'll keep the the location very linear and uh maybe add like a little point or sign on the wall or something um but when i want it to be open you know i make the map look open i want it to feel inviting maybe it's not so open maybe there's like obstacles everywhere but i would say just like um i don't know the visual cues of a more open space invite the player to explore more whereas if you want to keep it you know on rails or like on a track then you know something as simple as like a thin tight corridor can really help with that so that's that's how i approach certain things when it comes to you know finding variation between it does anyone else i i have some stuff to add to that because visual cues are really important in open world games as well um and that's because you know there's so many different users playing and so many different play styles that we have to be so visually overbearing with particle effects billboard gui's spiraling auras and kind of really designate that this area is really important and those like auras are something we use everywhere and that lets users know like shiny thing here i can go here and i can interact with collectibles or there's mobs spawning here um definitely all those shiny bright lights and literal pointer clickers on objects are how we just we make the experience available for all ages and all different experiences and all different types of people i guess [Music] yeah so actually i want to iterate on that as well um like everybody said visual cues are super important we use ui cues as well so if you want to go towards an objective we'll show you where the objective is we'll show you what team is attacking how many people are on that point things like that but visual cues especially are super important for fps maps so you don't get lost and so you know where you are at an exact location because it kind of is super important for competitive play to know where you are at all times you know awesome all right we have another question we are unfortunately going to have to limit it because we are starting to get low on time so the next question is uh what are common mistakes or key things level designers look for after the first pass of a level is finished what are some common flaws in level design that tend to be overlooked i can speak on this right now one level design feature that always gets overlooked and recently was overlooked is the social aspect and where users are spawning in that lobby space it can be so incredibly vital in tasty farms we had 25 plots all around an area and it wasn't feeling like a little neighborhood so i had to delete all of that and shove all the buildings into a little town and it feels so much better but getting that social aspect down and user-to-user interaction can honestly be overlooked and it's really easy to fix but just keep in mind how people are going to be talking trading and interacting with each other i honestly think what i touched on earlier is pretty important too uh keeping your level uh cohesive to your gameplay mechanics so i what i've seen a lot on um like at least first person shooters recently is they have like an excellent movement system but the level is not complementary to that so like um keeping it really cohesive and really tight um is is pretty important and i think you can get a little carried away when designing a world um you go a little too far away from what your game mechanics are actually like yeah for me it's more so of a feature i i agree with they said what they said but for me i find that lighting is very underused in a lot of games and and it can make such a big difference without having to actually physically detail anything you know from dynamic clouds to atmospheres and post-processing effects i don't think i see those used enough in a lot of games so all right we have another question uh what tips would you give for open world level design how do you avoid levels feeling excessively big and avoiding players getting lost or bored okay i feel like i can kind of talk on this one a little bit um so for making your world spaces too big definitely start with a size that is reasonable you know we used to start with 2k by 2k even larger world spaces and people wouldn't even you know reach specific locations so downsizing that and focusing on your important interactable features such as collection combat and shop and all that stuff kind of concise it down as much as you can and then slowly expand that into movement and natural world discovery and how users navigate the world but never start bigger than you need to always start smaller than you need to and you can expand off of that that'd be my advice for that part at least all right well thank you aaron for and the audience for asking those questions we're definitely going to have a lot more time coming up so please continue to get those questions in and we'll try and get as many to this panel as possible and with that i want to move on to our next topic so we talked about high-level process just in terms of designing a general level i wanted to hop into some specific applications now and sort of pick all of your brains in terms of how you think about the problems that you're trying to solve so i guess starting with maybe a player's first time experience like when you're designing let's say the first level of your game or you know the first open world of your game what are some of the things you're considering as a designer uh maybe arie you know you got a question about this in q a just now so i wanted to start with you and and just have you sort of leverage what you talked about before yeah it's awesome because i have you know prioritizing the social aspect here um but you know those spawn locations and how users are interacting with each other and of course all the objects that you give them but the most important thing is building off of your core loop and this is where i've been struggling with tasty farms a little bit the core loop is so simple so i have to think about how i can create all the game mechanics and features to also inspire from that simplistic mechanic and goal and still be able to create a really great experience for users and also focusing on early progression is so vital for a game if users aren't leveling very fast immediately and getting that immediate gratification you're not going to be able to kind of kind of lure them in for too long you have to make them feel like oh i'm getting all these new great things like i'm really understanding the gameplay i'm having a really great time and i'm getting super awesome rewards like i'm really liking this and they'll feel rewarded and good and want to continue playing your game so definitely progression core loop and the social aspect is important for those first-time users very nice so now i wanted to hop over to i guess tobin skeledona um you don't necessarily have like a first lobby that players hop into you have like a first world is there a difference between that very first sort of level or map that you have players hop into um do you have players hop into a first map or is this just a general policy that you have to think about for all of your levels that you're designing um yeah i guess it is kind of a general policy um i think working with a first-person shooter game we can kind of expect people to come into it with a level of familiarity to the genre so um i i guess we feel like we don't have to make much of an intro like people kind of get it um but we still do want to make the player onboarding process as friendly as possible so um spawns as earthier mentioned are a very important thing to focus on um you know even if a map for us doesn't have like uh distinct sides at a glance um we do want to make sure that the rotations of spawns um kind of supports the idea of the map having sides um we also definitely want to give players a chance to orient themselves within the space and recognize where they are in the map so uh a few things we kind of do there are um make sure that each of the maps have some very like easily recognizable views and vistas or focal points um so for example in that snow map that we showed earlier we used alaska as a reference so we have this massive uh water tower towards the back of the map so if somebody drops in for the first time and you know they run around for a bit and then they get killed and they're like okay well i want to go find that guy but i have no clue where he is then maybe they'll look up they'll see that and okay they'll be like okay well i have a rough idea of where i'm at now so off i go um so uh yeah that's a very important thing like we want the players to be able to uh i guess like build a mental map of where they are as quickly as possible and i think the accurate minimap is is really helpful as well in order to keep players oriented on on on our levels interesting so meetings you know i wanna i wanna throw it over to you does anything that they said sort of resonate with you i know you have book one chapter one but your players might not necessarily be hopping into that every single time that they're playing the game for the first time right so like what does it mean for you in terms of designing your levels be accessible to like new players yeah so uh one of the biggest things that i i try to keep in mind is the spawn points of you know each level i want to make sure that the spawn point is is very welcoming and inviting to the player uh that it serves like a smooth interruption an introduction into uh what they're about to hop into um even for returning players you know when they when they enter a new map like it's still gotta feel comforting to them and you want the player to feel connected to the environment the moment they hop in so they can spend less time thinking about what on earth they're even looking at and more time understanding their surroundings and uh being able to progress through the level so so what i'm hearing from all three of you is spawn point spawn point spawn point just super important to make sure that your players feel comfortable when they hop in your game absolutely yeah okay well arie i'm gonna have you lead off this next question again because it seems most relevant to your game lobby's in communal areas how do you make that sort of welcoming for players how do you get them to sort of aggregate and social can you talk about that a little bit yeah so for example in dragon adventures we have really open central space with like minimal assets and our most important interactive buildings such as missions and shops are kind of around this and we really give that large open space for users to show off their dragons and kind of a trading central if you will even though there's a world for that but having a social space not too distracted by assets is how how users are going to talk to each other and create experiences together and kind of make new friends even so yeah i would say little few decoration there and focus on the social socialization and you know minimize your map in that area a little bit okay i'm going to throw a really abstract question to you here but you've worked on a lot of games you've designed a lot of levels there's a sort of a common thread to these social hubs and spaces that just message to users that this is where they should be hanging out like what's the commonality there um i guess the fact that it's usually a large open space and we actually have a a very massive and obtrusive particle effect on our spawn pad it's a giant ray that shoots up and there's like huge floating like orbs and race around it so you see that you're like oh like you that's kind of what your viewpoint is for the world and you know all of the assets in our games are usually really blown up to make you feel small and like curious about the world around you so when you're in this open space and you look around and there's just huge trees and all these areas that you can't see it it encourages exploration but after after the social aspect well it's really interesting because i was talking to a level designer before and you know particle effects and big beams aside there's this concept called landscaping which i guess originally comes from like theme parks or in theme parks you can see something big off in the distance that attracts your attention it makes you want to walk over to it maybe it's like a big famous ride maybe it's a giant statue of a character or something so in a way like your beams and your particle effects you know i joke about it but that's kind of like a land landmark in your world right where yeah you have these big open spaces forests mountains and stuff but when you look off in the distance you see hey this thing this grabs my attention as a player let me go over here and check it out right yeah exactly and there's beams and you know unique giant objects all over the world that kind of draw your attention to be curious and explore right well i want to toss that over to the other panelists maybe tobin skeledona first does landmarking sort of resonate for you even if like in a map you know you're traversing it a lot like do you guys think about that at all when you're designing your levels yeah so landmarking is super important um especially sorry about that landmarking is super important especially when designing the levels because um not only will it plot where your art is going to be uh you know it'll give you kind of a feel for how things are going to go and how things are going to play so like saying our alaska map like i did a covered bridge uh it's going to be really easy to orient yourself around that covered bridge and it even in a way to the to the game design thing it's really easy to orient the map the rest of the map around that covered bridge because you know you've got to have something go under it got to have both sides connected to something so when designing these landmarks uh not only is it easy for the players to understand where they are immediately it's also pretty easy to to actually just like branch off and design the level around those landmarks mini tune how about for you how do you sort of grab your players attention and your levels uh so what i do is i make sure that uh you know every space has its own kind of look to it i i find that uh sometimes uh in a lot of in a lot of games uh rooms that look very similar to each other players will be confused as soon as as to where to go so i use like different colors uh i don't think i've ever really used many landmarks because the the levels are very very very like small and closed off there are some different cases where like for a narrative reason if there's like a big building in the distance that serves some purpose you know i'll include it there um but it's more so uh the the environment and the the colors and the props and like the details that um that kind of grab the player's attention uh i think landmarking is more important to what i'm working on with piggy intercity uh because it's you know an open world project and uh you know a lot of what are you saying is very very useful i'm actually i've got like some notes on the side here that i'm keeping um uh what i what i'm planning on doing for it well what we've already started working on is uh some of the more major locations that we want players to go to are going to be very big and you know and uh and make a big impression on the player uh we want it to be very very open in the sense that you know the player can go where they want to go so there's going to be you know a few different options obviously but they're all going to stand out from the rest of the landmarks and i think that's going to be very useful as to uh how to like guide players and show them where they should be going if they don't really know where to go so okay well now we're talking about the differences and aaron i believe we we have some images here for mini tunes game could you talk a little bit minitune about the specific applications of like level design for your game or what's unique about your genre of game narrative driven horror in this case versus you know some of the other games that we were talking about here uh so it it's very very it uh it varies it very has the word i'm looking for it varies because there's all sorts of different types of horror games uh something i've seen time and time in a lot of horror games is that they're very confusing to navigate i know that some horror games use that to their advantage uh they they tend to have like maze-like components to add to the feeling of despair and and hopelessness and while it serves many horror games well i find that it can also be a little harmful to the player as the lack of new surroundings and areas can make progression feel almost non-existent you know for example if you open if you unlock a door inside a gray hallway only to be met with yet another grey hallway uh it's not as rewarding and as exciting as unlocking a door and revealing a whole new area uh or at least one with new visuals like maybe uh maybe the walls are oh they got a fresh cone of paint or maybe they're even more decayed so this is what i do with piggy we try to make sure that every new unlocked area looks different from the one you were previously in uh while staying true to the theme of the map so it helps reward the player and motivate them to keep going to keep uh exploring and to keep unlocking so here is a photo of the the piggy camp map um and then the next image it shows the whole kind of spawn area we created the spawn area to invite players to their surroundings and to encourage exploration of the military camp so this is the this is the spawn area they started the gate in the bottom right we wanted to we wanted it to be very open so that they can immediately feel comfortable in the space that they're in um without you know being in a tight corridor because if you spawn in a tight corridor that's that's like very very uh limited in terms of options um so in the main area there's a few puzzles in order to solve in order to progress and to get to into some of the buildings but not too many uh one of the key things is we have to find a balance between the map being two linear and too overwhelming with options because once again you know comfort once a player spawns in is very important if we uh if we have like all sorts of puzzles everywhere then they're not going to know what to start with and they're going to be like you know going crazy over should i start with this one maybe it's better if i start with this one so we have like two or three puzzles available at first so that they can branch off from there uh we also made sure to make to make every building look unique in some way to make each building easier to remember um so the next image will show a building locked with a green key and how it was given like a green coat of paint in order to uh help players remember where to go you know just that tiny little color difference really helps to guide the player and remember uh where this green key has to go uh and even the interior space of the building itself is green just just to give some more indication and guidance as to uh where the player is going i believe that's the next image it shows yeah yeah so it's it's very subtle but um you know it's it's green walls green key you know it creates that image in their head that okay green goes with green i have to go here to this place and uh you know it helps them remember where it is we also you know as i've said before want to help the player feel as though they're progressing through the level so having them use objects around the map in order to uh blast away into a collapsed cave uh the setting of this camp by the way is in like a it's in like a snow [Music] area on top of like a a kind of mountain hill cave thing so um uh yeah uh so we wanted to incorporate that into the map and let them explore a completely brand new environment uh so um you know uh the the next images actually it shows the interior of the cave um and it's kind of more like an abandoned outpost section that was kind of just left off because it was sealed off um but yeah like as you can see this is like a new area it's quite different from what you've seen before and therefore should catch your attention so new sites are always a breath of fresh air you know um once you see this you're like oh my gosh i'm actually making progress you know i'm actually going somewhere as opposed to um just like let's say you go to another part of the camp right so yeah nice very nice well arie i wanted to throw it over to you as well because i know you brought some examples for us as well like what's different about your genre of level design and how do you find success within that genre um well i guess i would just like to touch on the fact that uh all of sonar studios games have really unique genres in a sense and they all have um unique assets and stuff also the images aren't showing up wrong screen oops technical we got some insight we got some insight okay awesome so it's actually really awesome but a lot of sonar studios games we share similar asset styles and map styles because all of our designers and producers kind of have worked with us on various projects so you'll often see similarities and we put a lot of pride into keeping that theme cohesive throughout games so this is wins of fortune they really wanted a lot of pictures on here because their game is super aesthetically pleasing and they have so many cool asset designs and they're uh using those new roblox features of the surface appearance and then the new materials coming up so they've been using that throughout the game if you want to tab through the next few pictures i think they're mostly um yeah i'm not working on this project but they're doing some really really awesome stuff but yeah once the winds of fortune is kind of the the first game actually that's stepping away from our typical um uv projection design and they're doing more of an artistic style and that's mostly because they have uh the room a little bit to play around with those different styles and i think that's pretty pretty unique of them yeah here's here's some cool like concept art i guess and how we kind of visualize our games before we start hopping in and this is pretty important you can see at the top right there is that over overview layout and kind of pointing to specific locations throughout the world another awesome world design um and this is the project that i'm working on all that is pretty much gone now but um you can kind of see this is our usual style more of that uv layout projected and we've kind of been messing around with different styles and different appearances and um i hate those trees so they're much cuter now they're more pillowy and that's just a step in game design and map design sometimes i thought the stars were a little bit too distracting so i completely changed up that asset and you know to me even that was gray boxed as well just slightly slightly more detailed gray box i think we have some dragon adventures pictures next yeah awesome so here in dragon adventures you see that same kind of uv projection layout as well and i like these games because they they share similar styles but they're also unique in their own way and i believe this is one of our boss fight arenas so you can see how everything is visually drawn to that center point and you got the whole swirl on there and really it's so good aesthetic wise that here you don't need too many particle effects or obnoxious beams to say go here because the building the design already kind of points in the center very nice well thanks for sharing that unfortunately we're out of time for our conversation uh but i wanted to save some time at the end because we got some really good questions that are being asked for the panel here so i will throw it back to aaron for now erin please take it away with some questions all right let's see what do we have here do any of you work with a producer and if so what things can a producer do to make the job of a level designer easier and improve the process as a whole the answer might be no it doesn't work with a producer i can kind of speak on this because i would call myself a game producer i'm the one who says what the concepts are i would say as what i could do to make my own job easier is honestly produce the perfect like idea off the bat and just like be able to roll with that but uh taking lots of feedback feedback and criticism being able to intake that is super important and there's some developers who are just so hard-headed and stubborn with their game it's their ideas but really it's your community who are supporting you it's your developers who are listening to you so to make the job easier for everyone just take criticism and don't think of it as a bad thing but take that as a good thing and people want the best for you and your game so being able to listen to other people is very important yeah absolutely i i love both of what you said you know having going in with like a very solid idea uh that's what i'm doing with my new project uh with answer city you know i um right now there is like a demo version out right now but it's nothing compared to what it's going to be i wouldn't even call it a demo um but um uh i i like i opened up this this um design document and just wrote down like every little bit of of detail i could about uh my project and it took me like two months to get it all down but uh once it was done i was then ready to like you know start bringing people on board to the team and i'm still doing that still still figuring things out but having the plan ready so people understand what they're working on is very helpful you want them to have a solid grasp of what they're doing uh and also um yeah just you know uh take criticism i agree listen listen uh it goes both ways it goes both ways you don't wanna hire people who aren't going to take criticism from you because you know it's it's your it's your child it's your baby it's your project but also you want to be able to take criticism as well because uh sometimes your ideas aren't that good you know i have awful ideas all the time it happens uh nobody nobody's perfect so it's always great to hear what other people think and uh and their thoughts so uh be sure to keep an open mind and uh listen to whatever area you just said you know all that all that very important all right thank you um let's see the accessory marketplace is huge and players spend hours customizing their appearance how and if do you implement the player's avatar into your game so as as of right now um the player's avatar is their like clan identity so anything social side to our game so like our clans our trading um even even to an extent just like the main menu area uh your player avatar is shown for that i don't know if we're gonna be transitioning to the the um soldier customization in that case but as of right now we're using that for your player identity in the game i'll add to that a little bit because it's it's a little bit different in games where your avatar isn't necessarily displayed but in dragon adventures where you are your avatar um we kind of tried to build off of that by you know we have like cute little backpacks and we try to expand on that ourselves but in games that aren't necessarily centered around the role play aspect or you know more of a social game you kind of don't really really need a customization system for that because the customization is honestly more in the gameplay itself and what what you customize for yourself and we just we just provide some extra tools to make your character look even more cool i guess and fit with the game all right how do you incorporate the fact that your games can be played on multiple different device types when designing a level does that impact the level design at all thankfully no uh well for me at least i don't think it impacts the the level design as much uh besides you know making some things easier to uh click tap or or press on um i think it's more so when it comes to the ui and stuff like that where different platforms really make a difference specifically xbox but um yeah for level design for me personally i don't know what it's like for the others i don't think it makes too much of a difference so what do you guys yeah we're in the same boat um but that's actually that's a really interesting thing to think about um yeah it's a great question um i'll add to that uh that's honestly why i say for open world games don't have a super huge idea because those mobile players who are gonna be playing are gonna be struggling the heck out of that exploration feature they're going to be struggling you know with sprinting you know we struggle to get a sprint button in there um so having a concise but still explorable region is really important for mobile and pc players just because mobile is such a big market you kind of have to think about them when you're doing a huge open world and you can end up going overboard in some cases yeah don't make it too taxing that's for sure rip mobile users that is such a great point all right how do you hide level limits to avoid players seeing emptiness outside of the map uh mind if i speak this is probably one of my favorite parts of level designing i i love doing like detail outside of maps and out of bounds uh when it comes to city maps for example like i'll create these like fake buildings out in the distance just to block off um any view outside like of the sky box outside uh i love adding those details you know adding like props and and giant buildings in the distance helps or if you're going for more of a natural landscape than uh you know maybe mountains or something like that just so they can't see straight so uh that's that's what i do that's what i do i don't know if anyone else has better tips but yeah so actually for us um we use it not in terms of level design to like block off the view we we use it to enhance the map location so we place vista we that's what like we call it um we use uh buildings we use um trees uh we we enhance our location and kind of add to it to make it feel a big cohesive map rather than just kind of just blocking a big big building right in front of it um sometimes you can actually see the horizons in our vista uh so like if you see the mountain ranges uh we go even further back from just blocking straight view uh we go even further back basically to the player uh site limits um but basically vista is just complementary to the level level art to us and not really too much involved in the level design process um i'll add to that too but what all of our games do as they are imaginative and creative a lot of them are just on floating islands so there's floating islands all all around the world including the huge assets that kind of break that view so every you know world and dragon adventures is you're on a giant floating island and there's a bunch of assets and other floating islands that break your view and kind of make you forget that um but for other games there's just a giant ocean and for tasty farms actually i do something really hacky where i grab the new terrain tools and i make it super tall and i basically like draw mountains so when you look at it you're like whoa that's a that's a really big mountain but when i look at it i see a paper thin like little drawing there so the users would never know that because they can't get that far but it adds a lot it enhances the world and um another thing i like to do is add skyscrapers in the in the background and just be like let the users wonder like i wonder if somebody actually lives there in um yeah just just cool assets that add to the curiosity and creation when you said uh paper mountains i know exactly what you mean because that's something like i'm working on an open world project and that's something i just started doing so it's so funny oh my goodness all right we have time for one last question when you're doing quality assurance on your maps what is an efficient way of diagnosing bugs and then fixing them i feel like i can speak on this a little bit i'll go really fast because we just we just opened tasty farms for mvp alpha whatever um what i did was you know announce it we got a bunch of people in and i just watched them i just watch how they interact with the world what they do it's it's a little bit soccer-ish but when you watch them you know teleport to different locations and be like oh arie we're having trouble finding the spot then i realized like okay i don't want users to take this much time to access the location so i'm going to move these around shape it differently work around it and um like i said testing is the most important thing for making your map the best it can be yeah i've i've never i've historically never been too good at testing my own work uh my community can attest to that but um one small piece of advice i can give you is touch everything like absolutely everything so that's just a small little thing um yeah i guess for us um like qa is a huge step and um i think we're we want players to uh make sure everything works but also be trying to break it as badly as often as they can um so you know you know like when we tested i guess we're also we're trying to be the the smart like more tactical player but also the um like newbie player as well and uh make sure that that um the maps we're designing are suited to all of those different roles um i i think qa is kind of a funny thing in that um you know depending on who's testing it like we have kale from the the game fund uh look at our game every once in a while and i think the best feedback we can get in that situation is just none like if he looks at it and goes this is good it's like all right sweet like that's that's the best thing we could hear so um but i guess that that's the kind of stuff that we're looking to to diagnose i suppose all right that is all of our questions that we have time for thank you all right thank you aaron thank you audience again uh i believe we're going to wrap it up for this level up and i'm again going to throw it over to aaron but i just wanted to personally thank arithia tobe scala donut minitune for joining us today and talking about level design really appreciate you all being here and hopefully uh for the audience you learned some really great things about level design today yep that is all the time that we have so thank you all for attending and asking your amazing questions of course i also want to thank minnie toon arithia tobe skeledona and dan for their awesome roundtable conversation as well as missimo for her support of this event for everyone who is watching on youtube thank you for tuning in drop your questions and comments below we would love to hear from you and don't forget to like and subscribe to the roblox developer relations channel more level up videos are coming soon [Music]