| I'm sure a lot of
people must be wondering about this, I know I do sometimes. ;) For those
interested I'll try and explain. First off, designing levels for an incomplete
game is a lot more time-consuming than doing freeware maps for already
released games, or levels for an add-on pack. This sounds like a wimpy
statement, but I do miss the "old days" of having everything on one plate
from the moment you start the level. We're working with a changing game,
which opens up a large can-o-worms. Here are some of those worms:
1) Tools progress.
When we first started making Daikatana maps we had no rotation of brushes,
no carving tool, no models (decorative or otherwise) to put in the game
and compile times were outrageous (3-4 days wasn't unusual). As the tools
got better we had to update our maps as the old ones were no longer technically
sound.
2) Technology changes.
We switched from the Quake 1 engine to Quake 2 in the middle of the project.
The new renderer worked quite a bit different from the old one, so changes
in face-counts made many maps redundant. Frequently, areas had to be rebuilt
or scrapped altogether.
3) Level-effects
evolve. When we started out making the game we had a bunch of ideas for
level-effects that were to go in the game. Coming up with ideas is of course
a much quicker process than implementing them, so you're stuck with two
options. One, you design with only what effects you have at the time and
run the risk of your level not being cutting-edge on the effects side,
or you later have to re-design it to fit the new effects. Two, you try
to guess how the ideas will be implemented. This is obviously an inaccurate
science and often lead to just as much work as re-implementing an effect
later. My point is once again, we're working with an unfinished product,
where we can't pick and choose from the game's final palette. This point
is why id's own Doom maps are inferior to many of the later freeware-designs,
or why there was only one level (well I only found one) in Quake 2 that
had the cool
"rising water" effect,
etc.
4) AI. As any level
designer knows, the way the monsters behave will dramatically change the
way your level is made. Well, for the longest time there was absolutely
_no_ AI, and even now the AI isn't 100% done. We keep finding areas the
side-kicks have problems with, which in the worst cases means a map must
be heavily re-designed. We also have to make changes as new monster behaviours
are completed, in order to best take advantage of their combat patterns.
What this boils down
to is that even though the architecture of the maps were finished relatively
early we end up constantly updating the levels, to keep them up to speed
with what the game can do. Playing catch-up with other games is another
bad habit that slows things down, and is best avoided. These problems are
of course present with all games, but I think we've had a particular issue
with this on Daikatana. The team was
after all assembled
hastily and there has been a lot of flux on the roster. We're a strong
group now though and the team has definitely learnt some valueable lessons
on what order to complete tasks for future projects... |
