Ed Bryne Building a Simple Level

This blog entry is an article from Ed Byrne which is describing the key components of level design.

Level  Design Building Blocks:
The basic components of a level or the building blocks are:

• Concept
• Environment to exist in
• Beginning
• Ending
• Goal
• Challenge to overcome between player and the goal
• Reward
• Way of handling failure

These are the basics of all games but with more advanced games like the next big block busting game they will just need more of these basic building blocks.

You need these to create a level "If any are missing, the level will almost be incomplete.You can have a great level with great flow, but if there's no challenge, it won't be fun at all."

With the original Tetris we can use the building blocks as a check list to see if they have the "basic requirements" of a game level.

"Concept: Find a place for the blocks or lose the level.

Environment: The active play area to the left of the game data.

Beginning: The player starts with an empty screen and a score of 0.

Ending: The level is over when the player either creates the correct number of vertical lines (success) or the blocks pile up to the top of the screen (failure).

Goal: Create a number of lines that meet the target requirement for success.

Challenge: The speed of descent, type of blocks, and number of lines needed.

Reward: The player moves to the next level, or receives a brief animated sequence.

Failure: The game ends and must be started from the beginning."

What About Story?:

""Shouldn't a game, and therefore its levels, also have a story?" Well, the simple answer is no-it's  not a fundamental requirement. A story can enhance a level and give the players information about what they are  expected to do, what they might need to avoid or seek out, and so on."

With chess you do not need a story as it can be played without the story of war and politics. Some games do not need background stories to be fun.

"Ideally, a level will to some degree allow the players to create a narrative as they play, even if it's just a series of personal achievements."

"A story does not need to be an epic to be entertaining."

Putting It All Together:

At this point in the article Byrne creates an example, simple level to demonstrate how they all work together. Here is what he said on each point directly from the article:

Above is the image showing how the seesaw element of the game would work. This in real life would break the seesaw but this is where the elements of gaming comes in to play as in game we can obviously do and get away with things that wouldn't happen in real life, this is called "Game Logic".

Useful terms that can be applied to this game:

Intrinsic knowledge:"Knowledge gained about the game from within the game itself" - Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams on Game Design

Extrinsic knowledge: "Knowledge applied in the game but gained from another source, usually real life"

People use their extrinsic and intrinsic knowledge to accomplish challenges within the game, the knowledge of how a seesaw works gives the player the knowledge on how to achieve this goal of the game.

From this the game can also be more challenging by adding height factors as an example. See below.

The game is now set and ready to be played with no hints just the players intrinsic and extrinsic knowledge to guide him/her through.

I apologise for the amount of copy and pasting but i believed it the best way to show you what was said without copying out the whole chapter as the majority of the article was about the creation of the game Clownhunt, following the basic level design building blocks that Byrne established at the start of the chapter.

Overall i thought to be a good and enlightening read.