CliffyB.com -- Rants and Rambling

Unreal Tournament Level Design Musings

Cliff Bleszinski, Epic Games
Session #4404 at GDC 2000

I've decided to whip up a few design tips that I often wind up telling up and coming level designers repeatedly. I figured I might save myself, and others, some time by posting them. They're mostly Unreal Tournament specific, but they might be found useful for other FPS titles. I use a lot of these mental guidelines to judge whether or not a map will appear on the 0wnage. So, without further delay, here they are!

Put more valuable weapons like the Flak and Rocket Launcher in higher risk areas. Try to space the weapons as evenly as possible; make sure the “great” weapons are at opposite ends of the map so that players have to “run the map” in order to control it. The same goes for the powerups, such as the Amp and Shield Belt. Put them as far apart as you can!
Your map doesn’t need every single powerup. Sometimes just having one or two is plenty.
Impact Hammer jumping for an armor vest isn't worth the effort. No one will go for that. However, doing it for a shieldbelt or damage amp IS worth it!
There is a direct correlation between the size of an area and what weapons are effective in this area. Tighter areas make the flak more valuable, more open areas make the sniper rifle and minigun better. The homing mechanism of the RL is very useful in large areas as well.
Let decorative actors do the work for you- use light fixtures, sconces, and pipes instead of building them into your world. The lighting can be tricky to match up but the end result lets you use more of your limited world poly budget on what really matters- architecture!
If you’re going to use the Redeemer, make sure your map has room to fly the damned thing in! The weapon switches from FUN to ANNOYING really quickly when it is used in really tight maps.
The location of playerstart, or spawn points, should not be an obvious thing to players. I did this in the original Elsinore, and it was a mistake! You should do this with weapons, but if you do it with playerstarts then you’re only encouraging spawn killers.
Personal Preference: I really loathe walls that slope up and away from the player. When you run through hallways like that and you catch on the sides you tend to “ride the wall” a little and movement is very slippery and jerky. This is cool in some spots, such as a sloped wall that’s on one side of a room, but in a long, winding corridor it can be irritating. (an Elsinore mistake!)
Try to avoid “room, corridor, room” syndrome. Try to make your rooms interlock nicely with one another. Remember, a good map is always returning back into itself, like a cloverleaf on a highway or a snake that's eating itself. (deep shit here!)
Good DM levels have multiple entry and exit points to each room. Dead ends should be avoided, unless they’re carefully used with a highly desirable goodie. Good DM levels also have a lot of variation in height so you’re constantly above or below your opponent.
Make sure the bots work well in your map. I find that starting a match as a spectator with one bot in a map and watching him repeatedly will often reveal problematic areas that can often be fixed just by moving a pathnode around.
Try to have a spot for nearly every weapon. Every weapon has a situation for it as well as a player who loves it.
Personal Preference: I dislike the Keg O’ Health in deathmatch. It’s very frustrating to not have any visual indication of such an impressive defensive system. That’s why the shieldbelt works so well, you can see that they have this great defense as you try to strip it away from them.
Personal Preference: I hate lifts that stay “up” too long. I like maps that let them stay up two seconds or less, and then they come back down. This gives the guy you’re chasing enough time to get away from you… but not too much so if you’re good you can hunt him down still!
Try to avoid lifts where your head hits something and the lift returns to its original position. Make sure the lift “well” is clear of obstructions!
Never make a lift crush a person. It’s a “slap on the wrists” form of design that pisses off the gamer.
Avoid areas where you can get “stuck” in the walls. To test for this try running around your map facing away from all walls and see where you get hung up and fix it! You can use invisible collision hulls or blockall actors to accomplish this. I see this “stickiness” a lot with torch holders. Move those babies UP above the player’s head!
Deep thought: A theme map’s gameflow is dictated by its architecture, a hardcore map’s architecture is dictated by its gameflow.
Personal Preference: I prefer maps that have a sense of theme and have gimmicks that don’t mess with the gameplay. A good example of this would be the snow in Zeto, or the cool lava outside Liandri.
Use a program like Lightwave or 3dStudio MAX to build your outdoorsy areas in.
Basic Geometry Tip (that a lot of people tend to miss!) Avoid large, flat surfaces. Try to break up walls, floors, ceilings with supports, recessions, decorations, windows, doors, etc… Sounds simple but a lot of newbie mappers miss this.

Use audio cues in your Deathmatch maps. In Turbine I put health vials near the lifts so you can hear when someone is about to get on the lift and anticipate their moves. Also, you can hear the armor being picked up in the air duct above the Shock Rifle area, so often you’ll know that they’re going to drop down. (A smart player, of course, knows this.) Oh, another favorite audio cue is the infamous “sloshing through knee deep water” trick. Put some shallow water somewhere in your map and players will be able to hear others as they move through it.
When using ambient sounds in your map, try to use subtle ones. This always used to drive me crazy in Tundra- the looping of that wind drove me to kill many small puppies.

Try to have contrast with your lighting. Dark, shadowy areas that alternate with bright spots of light are visually pleasing.
I hate ambient zone lighting. It washes everything out terribly. You can get away with it in some bright, sunlit maps, however.
You can use CYLINDER lights to create nice sharp circles of light on the floors and ceilings of your maps, but don’t depend on them. They tend to light player actors very poorly. Try to use a combination of regular lighting and cylinder lights in special areas.
Don’t be an idiot with your colored lighting. If you’re not sure about how to light an area well with colors, stick with white lighting. You can seldom screw things up that way. Sometimes subtle color is the best kind, a saturation of 222 will work wonders with a light.

Our target node/poly count for UT was 160 polys/350 nodes. (gasp!) To keep your map running on crappy computers, I’d suggest sticking to these limitations. There are a number of other factors that can slow your map down, such as stupid use of dynamic lighting (flickering lights that cover a large area) or bad occlusion (a map that’s too “open”) but if you stick with these guidelines you’ll generally be okay. To see these stats hit TAB and type STAT FPS.
You can see other statistical information by hitting TAB and typing STAT GLOBAL.

In a Capture the Flag map, I prefer symmetrical maps. Asymmetrical maps are just a big pain in the ass to balance, and even when the map is perfectly balance there will be gobs of people out there who disagree.
Flag Bases in a CTF map are a tricky thing. Try to make sure that your flag base is fairly large. This prevents someone from just slipping in and sneaking out with your flag without you even noticing, or stalemate matches where people cannot even get into the flagbases. Try to have multiple entry points into each flag base, and have the flag up in a central location as the focal point of the room. I like maps that have camping platforms around the flag so you can ambush the bastard who is trying to steal your flag!
Try to have multiple routes to and from the flagbase. That way, when someone grabs your flag you won’t always be sure where they’re going.
Try to not spawn players right in the flagbase next to the flag. It’s really annoying to kill someone while going for the flag only to see them spawn right next to you and gun you down with the default gun.

A good Assault map has a sense of progression. If the attackers make it past a certain point or complete a tough objective, reward them by allowing them to spawn further in the map!
I like Assault maps that spawn the defenders in a room where they can teleport, one way, to any destination in the map. That way, when the attackers breach an area and manage to advance, the defenders can get there to have a stab at defending this next location.
Assault is closest to the traditional Single Player gaming that we all know. So, when an objective is completed, go crazy with scripted events and exciting stuff. It provides great payoff for a job well done by the attackers.

A good Domination map attempts to have all Control Points equidistant from one another.
Domination points should be set up like the flag in a flag base. They should be the focal point of a room; they should be set up so that they have lots of defense points around them as well as multiple entry points to the room.