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General discussion (archive)About 90's FPS level design(6 posts)(6 posts)
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Posted July 27, 2013
I love FPS games from early to mid 90's because of their level designs. Medium sized, semi-linear playgrounds filled to the brim with secrets. By semi-linear I mean that there is a certain route to be taken to complete the level, but wandering and backtracking are allowed, and there are sometimes alternate routes. The fact that many times the singleplayer levels also acted as deathmatch levels, tells something about how non-linear some of them were. Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, Blood, Shadow Warrior and Redneck Rampage are all good examples of this kind of level design.

This made me wonder... How come this style of level design disappeared in the late 90's? Did Half Life make the "roller coaster spectacle" -style level design that much more popular? From a design standpoint, I can see that a guided journey from point A to point B is much easier and faster to make and keep interesting than a sprawling playground, but IMHO it isn't nearly as much fun to play.

Could the increasing budgets for AAA games also explain favouring simpler levels? With so much money at stake, they feel the need to minimize risks and make the games appeal to the widest possible audience. I know that not all people have good spacial awereness. Heck, most players today would probably get hopelessly lost in the first level of Duke Nukem 3D. Yes, non-linear levels can be tasking and sometimes a bit cryptic (I'm looking at you, Duke Caribbean. Hiding essential switches as if they were secrets? Seriously?), but for me the big part of the fun is to study the level and search every nook and cranny for goodies.

What do you people think? Should this kind of level design make a comeback, or is it just a relic of an era long gone?
Post edited July 27, 2013 by NerdKoopa
Posted July 27, 2013
It is a shame that different design philosophies apparently can't exist simultaneously in the modern market. Though the corridor-shooting-gallery (CoD)is unfortunately the market leader; there's a lot of mileage in the open world (ARMA, STALKER) and large-arenas (Half Life, Halo, Bioshock, Serious Sam) that are closer to the old model while not being the same.

I don't believe that old-school FPS design sensibilities are sacred and 'the right way', but completely abandoning them, as the AAA market seems to have done, is a damn shame. Though I don't think budget would really come into it as much as y'might think. All the money in the world can't buy good ideas; if anything a high budget seems - ironically - to be a more restrictive environment for developers.

Also, be careful of generalising that 'modern gamers' couldn't handle old design sensibilities. Usually the only reason they haven't is because they haven't been given the right introduction. It's down to the game, not them.
Post edited July 27, 2013 by wizardtypething
Posted July 27, 2013
Maze-ish backtrack-ish explorable design was pushed aside into action/adventure, action/rpg hybrids.
A good illustration is the Doom 2 demake of one of BioShock levels http://vectorpoem.com/arcadia/
It's not bad by Doom design standards, but a generic modern FPS would not use this layout.
Posted July 27, 2013
avatar
NerdKoopa: I love FPS games from early to mid 90's because of their level designs. Medium sized, semi-linear playgrounds filled to the brim with secrets. By semi-linear I mean that there is a certain route to be taken to complete the level, but wandering and backtracking are allowed, and there are sometimes alternate routes. The fact that many times the singleplayer levels also acted as deathmatch levels, tells something about how non-linear some of them were. Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, Blood, Shadow Warrior and Redneck Rampage are all good examples of this kind of level design.

This made me wonder... How come this style of level design disappeared in the late 90's? Did Half Life make the "roller coaster spectacle" -style level design that much more popular? From a design standpoint, I can see that a guided journey from point A to point B is much easier and faster to make and keep interesting than a sprawling playground, but IMHO it isn't nearly as much fun to play.

Could the increasing budgets for AAA games also explain favouring simpler levels? With so much money at stake, they feel the need to minimize risks and make the games appeal to the widest possible audience. I know that not all people have good spacial awereness. Heck, most players today would probably get hopelessly lost in the first level of Duke Nukem 3D. Yes, non-linear levels can be tasking and sometimes a bit cryptic (I'm looking at you, Duke Caribbean. Hiding essential switches as if they were secrets? Seriously?), but for me the big part of the fun is to study the level and search every nook and cranny for goodies.

What do you people think? Should this kind of level design make a comeback, or is it just a relic of an era long gone?
Serious Sam level editor allows for massive secrets galore! Unfortunately I believe the editor is only good for Sam.
I had a hidden door in a wall in a dark area that you had to keep pressing against clicking to trip open. It was going to have a stairwell leading above the whole level with a one-way mirrored floor that bullets could penetrate.
Posted July 27, 2013
That's a popular question with no easy answers.

To add an odd point into the mix, I sometimes wonder if people simply never appreciated the level design all that much - at least until it was gone. From my pov only recently people seem to have realised how good level design used to be (perhaps since a certain TB video?).

Over the last few years I have heard many people reminisce about Duke 3D. 95% of the time those people mentioned how they miss the 'humour and satire' of the game, barely anyone referred to the level design. This always struck me as odd, for me the maze like levels in that game were probably it's strongest point, the comedy was always an afterthought. Perhaps as a result the new duke game tried to be all funny and no level design, and it fell flat.

FPS like half life would have provided welcome variety to the genre back in the day. I don't think half life killed level design, but the success of such games wouldn't give devs a reason to return to the older structure. After a few years of A to B fps I guess people started to miss things like doom, but with sales figures looking good, devs wouldn't have a need to go back. Anyway just my oddball perspective.
Post edited July 27, 2013 by rice_pudding
Posted July 27, 2013
Well, to be fair, it didn't disappear, it's just not quite as prominent as it used to be. 'Back then', it was the only way to create levels. Nowadays, however, there are many design approaches which can be taken while designing your game - strictly linear with very little in a way of freedom, which are games like Bulletstorm or Call of Duty.

Then there's the 'middle road', which is probably the most similar to the oldschool approach - those are games like Crysis 2, Bioshock 1 and 2 etc.

And the last relatively new thing (as in lately popularized) are complety or at least partly open world shooters - STALKER, Far Cry 2 and 3, games like that.

There are no strictly maze-like games anymore which would feature precisely the same level design as oldschool shooters, but the 'middle road' I have mentioned have, for the most part, the good bits taken from the oldschool design.
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General discussion (archive)About 90's FPS level design(6 posts)(6 posts)
(6 posts)