Game level desing book

hey,

just wondering if anyone go the book : Game Level Desing by Ed byrne.
It's a realy good book, and if you , like me are learning how to level desing and want to learn more in depth information and stuff, i recommend you toget this book, it has a bit of a price tag to it but it's well worth it.

it's learning me al kinds of goodies like what game flow is and how to make the 'flow' in ur map good etc.

that way you can not only make beautifull maps like you guys are already doing but alos make them hella fun to play!

i'm hopping on starting a new project after or while readingthis book! :biggrin:

"Design" man, "design" :biggrin: I haven't had the pleasure of reading that
book, but I've had a look through a few game design books, including
some that touched upon level design. To me the articles I've read tend
to be the sort of thing that, upon reading them, seem very much like
common sense. That said, they aren't necessarily theories or ideas you
would have thought up yourself.

I read a few books on game level design, but none of them specifically used the Hammer editor as examples (they used UnrealEd instead).

But just as ReNo said, most of the points mentioned in the book become obvious after you made a few maps and especially if you belong to a mapping community like the Pit.

I guess if someone who has never mapped before and want a quick start on it, these books would be a good resource. But I still believe that the best way to learn is to make maps and test other people's maps in a online forum like the SnarkPit.

Learning by example and the hands-on experience are the most valuable learning tools.

like most media-production programs, i think online tutorials and communites help out more than anything. (ie, photoshop, 3dsmax, maya, etc.)

What exactly does this book talk about? I really can't even imagine
writing a whole book about level design without sounding pretty
repetitive.

I need to look for some books like this, just to see what's out there. There's a whole world out there, beyond deathmatch or multiplayer level design. It's called singelplayer level design, and it may be the most challenging facet of level design that exists - this is what I would expect to see as the major focus of such a book.

Indeed, I don't think I've come across a level design article on
anything other than single player design, other than those put out by
the amateur community. There are some marginally interesting articles
up on gamasutra that I read through a while back, might be worth
checking out if you haven't already.

I haven't been too impressed with what little I've seen, at least not from my current position. The books I've seen tend to be more entry level, with starting out guides, and focused on moving toward a job in the industry. Seeing as I already have the latter and a pretty stellar team of people with whom to confer and discuss varying theories and such on a daily basis, it's tough to get anything useful from that.

However, it's great to see our side of game development finally getting some more focus in the book division. For people just starting or working toward a goal of a professional job, they're probably pretty useful. :smile:

What I'd love to see is a more advanced theory book complete with postmortems from designers and lead designers about various projects. It'd be really fun and interesting to compare notes with other teams as to what worked, what didn't, why decisions were made, why some were brushed aside, etc. Game Developer's postmortems are pretty cool, but more broad than any one department. Just a collection of those would be incredibly useful as a tool for anyone in the design field.

The book business cannot keep up with the fast-paced gaming
industry. New games are coming out all the time, and new
rendering engines and technologis are constantly being generated.

Just like there are few books on new movies, the gaming industry is not really suitable to be printed.

Maybe we should compile the snarkpit into a book- like the onion did.

thats actually not a bad idea,if you skip all the lame comments and stuff

Maybe we should compile the snarkpit into a book

The audience is too narrow. It would be extremely difficult to convince a publisher that there are enough potential buyers.

Most people from the targetted audience would rather visit the online version.

Or I could take a leaf out of Valve's book (Steam) and just charge people to use this website, rather than using some physical delivery system which makes money for other people? :razz: (or not!!)

Hey as long as I got a Snarkpit Hat, Tshirt, Poster, and Metal Cookie Tin through the mail... that's fine by me...

Hey, that's a good idea. I would actually buy a SnarkPit T-shirt if it's well designed and not embarassing to wear in public.

I would pay $20 for it. Lep should pocket the profit, since he works so hard for this site.

Here's my snarkpit tshirt design (keeping in mind I prefer subtle geekiness to overt geekiness):

A black Tshirt.

On the front: In reasonably sized letters across the chest: "The
SnarkPit" In either the yellow font present on the frontpage header, or
in clean thick white font, something like "impact".

On the back: Inspired by the wireframe view on the top right header of
this websites front page, there should be a fairly large wireframe view
that obviously blends into the black tshirt at the edges.

I personally wouldn't mind wearing that shirt around. It'd be
sweet because you would instantly be recognizable to anyone who likes
level design, but at the same time most average people wouldn't think
twice about the shirt. Plus wireframe views have always ALWAYS
looked incredibly badass.

Not that I'll likely see this design through to a physical shirt... but what do you think?

I've never worn games related clothing before and I doubt that I ever
would, but I think a black t-shirt with the yellow snarkpit logo
(complete with snark) would be pretty f**king badass. I'd be proud to
wear it :smile: Dunno about what would go on the back...I think a wireframe
would look a little outta place.

Problem with getting these things done is that the easiest places to
get them made and distributed charge significant amounts for poor
quality gear. I'd pay ?15 or something for one, but I wouldn't want it
to be some crappy ironed on transfer falls apart after 3 washes.
Quality before low prices, I say.

This is funny, but I know a guy who started and runs his own logo
company, and they do Tshirts as well as a bunch of other things.

I'm pretty sure I could get a pretty good deal, as long as we ordered in bulk (not 1 at a time).

Just getting that out there.

What about this catchy phrase on the back side? It's a mapper's insider joke, and it's almost hip.



This way, even for the general public who don't know anything about
mapping, the shirt will still catch their attention. Heck, you
might even get a cute girl asking you what it means. :wink:

And on the front, there has to be a little adorable snark next to the "SnarkPit".

The snark should be burning, im telling you!

Instead of derailing this thread any further why don't we talk about
the shirt idea at this thread that satchmo created:
http://www.snarkpit.net/forums.php?forum=1&topic=4812&4

Its definitely a geek shirt, since its got "front" and "back" actually written on it :razz:

Apart from that, its pretty cool.