Learning From The Masters

Level Design in The Legend of Zelda:
"The NES was the Wild West of game development, I thought, lawless and free... As it turns out i was totally wrong."


"I found an excellent primer in the fundamentals of non-linear game design."


Shigeru Miyamoto creator of The Legend of Zelda


What to look for when doing in depth analysis of game levels:

• "Level Flow. How do the spaces in the level fit together? Where is the player supposed to go, and will she know how to get there?
• Intensity Ramping. Does the intensity of the experience ramp up in a satisfying way? Do monsters get more difficult as the level goes on? Does the player get a chance to learn how the enemies work and then display her mastery later on?
• Variety. Is there sufficient variety in the game play? Do enemy encounters frequently repeat themselves? Are the spaces varied in interesting ways?
• Training. If the design requires new skills from the player, does it teach and test those skills appropriately?"

Level Flow - breakdown:

"First, I analysed the critical path. The critical path is the shortest path through a level without using secrets, shortcuts, or cheats. Basically, it's the path the designer intends the player to take through the level unless she gets really clever.

It's worth noting that the critical path often doesn't require a player to complete 100 percent of a level; it just requires her to complete the mandatory objectives within the level."

"The player begins in Room 1 and can choose to go to Room 2 or Room 3. Rooms off the critical path are faded.

Optional rooms (and sometimes entire paths) branch off from the critical path and reward the player with bonuses. The levels are also full of shortcuts that cut across the critical path. If the player has bombs, for example, she can skip from Room 5 to Room 8 in the above diagram."

Analysis:

"What I found out was that the Zelda development team was able to create the illusion of very open level design by using a few very clever tricks:

1. As I've mentioned, the critical path is almost entirely linear. This means that it's much easier for the player to find her way through the dungeon without getting hopelessly lost.
2. Rooms branching off of the critical path make the level feel less linear.
3. A small bit of room re-traversal at the beginning of the level makes the level feel less linear, but because it only includes a small number of rooms the player probably won't get lost.
4. Giving small, hidden shortcuts through the level allows the player to feel clever, and allows the designer to disguise the linearity of the level.

In short, the optional paths and shortcuts give the feeling of exploration, but the linear critical path means that as long as the player visits every room in a dungeon she should be able to find her way through....It would seem from analysing the flow that the level design strikes an excellent balance between giving the player the feeling of exploration and keeping them from getting too lost."

Intensity Ramping - breakdown:

When analysing intensity ramping you should generally look for these two things:

"

1. The enemy encounters should usually ramp up in difficulty over the course of the level.
2. No encounter should be repeated twice. This gives a greater variety, and also keeps the player constantly answering new questions as she goes through your level."

When looked at in the correct order, the enemy setups ramp up in difficulty well and never repeat.

Analysis:

"The monster sets and room layouts ramp up VERY clearly along the critical path.....Basically, it's clear that the design behind these encounters and their placements in the levels were intentional, subtle, and very well executed."

Variety:

Analysis: 

"One criticism I would lay, however, is that there might be TOO much monster variety. In the 10 rooms that contain monsters, the developers use six different types of monster and a boss. In most modern games, there would be fewer enemy types and the rooms would ramp in intensity by combining monster types together. For example, if the dungeon contained only Stalfos, Bats, and Moblins (and the boss, of course) some of the later rooms could contain all three types, and would be more difficult because of those combinations.

The game does this kind of mixing much more often in later levels, so it's hard to understand why the team wouldn't do it here. Perhaps technical constraints?"

Training - breakdown:

"Many AAA games were including training in their designs, but it seemed very rare on the NES.

Interestingly enough, the original Legend of Zelda does contain some training -- though it's much different than it is in modern games. In The Legend of Zelda, training is accomplished mainly by the "black rooms" where an NPC gives you a hint."

Not the most helpful of hints, unless you're playing the Japanese version.

"The Japanese version of this game the hints were different than the American version. For example, the Japanese version of the message in Level 1 tells you that you need money to shoot arrows. This is a much more useful bit of training."

Analysis:

"This finding surprised me more than the others. I remembered the black rooms, but I'd never considered them to be training, since they were fairly useless.

Once I found out about the translation issue, that all changed. It's clear that Miyamoto and his team were trying to guide the player, and to train them on important things they need to know.

The black room method was not very successful, which is why I think they eventually abandoned it in later games."

"What Did We Learn?

• It is possible to achieve the feel of non-linear level design by taking a linear path and adding short offshoots.
• Ramping encounters up along the critical path still allows you to have a good intensity ramp even if your level designs aren't all linear.
• Miyamoto and company intended to have training in the game, but it was excluded because of localisation errors.

I want to point out how awesome it is that they were making this stuff up back then. These Masters of Game Design discovered these tricks and built on them as time went by.

How fortunate we are, to be able to look back and learn from them"

Hey guys sorry for the amount of copying and pasting but i found yet again it the best and most efficient way to portray what the article was showing me, i believe it to be a very well written piece and if i can understand it then anyone can. As well as this i thought that if i had tried to translate what this article was showing me the ideas would probably become mixed and i didn't want to confuse you as i believe that this was a very good article and didn't need changing or tweaking by an amateur game designer as everything we needed was their, clear as day.

Happy Reading :)