Steam

Steam is a popular online game store that sells people games for download instantly after they buy it. It was made by one of my favorite game developers, Valve, and it became instantly successful when it was first made, many years ago. I can tell you myself, it’s gone a long way from the online video game store it was.

What Steam did was revolutionary, instead of running to the store to buy a video game, its already downloading on my computer. I always had to manage about five CD’s at a time, which was a really big hassle back when it took an hour to install a single game. Although downloading takes a bit of time, it’s much easier than buying the game at a store that’s miles away.  Also when I want to reinstall an old game I have, I have to run around and find all the CD’s, the CD-Key, and then install it all over again, but with Steam, all I have to do is re-download it, removing most of the time it takes to gather the required materials to get the game installed again.

It also helps me manage the games I do have installed with the Library section of Steam. Although Steam doesn’t have all the games I play on their store, they still let people add “Non-Steam” games to their Library tab and Steam boots it up for you when you select it. It even adds an overlay to your game which lets you talk to your friends that have Steam and it also has an internet browser that you can use. It’s really fun to listen to Pandora while I’m playing Counter-Strike or Team Fortress 2.

Through the years Steam has given its users more and more new features, like a screenshot gallery, it’s a small thing, but it really helps people who like to take screenshots of their games. It actually helped in the making of this blog. The screenshots you see below, they were all taken using the Steam screenshot function. Overall Steam really isn’t a store anymore, it’s a platform for video games, they just keep coming out with new features, and new options, it seems like there is nothing they can’t accomplish.

A Look at Customization

Nowadays people are expecting more and more from video games. Back in the day all I cared about was that there was something to shoot at. But people want more, and luckily the video game industry can keep giving more and more. People will always want variety in anything they do. Otherwise we’d still have black and white television, an ice-cream shop called One Flavor, and so on. So it wouldn’t surprise anyone that games today have more variety and customization than ever.

The Battlefield franchise is probably the best example of this evolution of customization. It all started with Battlefield 1942. Which had many mods and then a sequel was made called Battlefield 2, this new system that allowed people to rank up and get new weapons for themselves. Then Battlefield 2142 came along and let the player customize their character even more, it let them have upgraded weapons. This was expanded further upon by Battlefield: Bad Company (1 & 2) by letting the player customize their soldier’s loadout even more by selecting attachments to put on their weapons. Now Battlefield 3 is coming out and it will involve even more weapons, more attachments and more “perks.”

But what is variety without different types of variety? Hmmm? Sure you can give a person different weapons, but what about changing all of it, yes that’s right, ALL of it. There are many mods out there for games. Most of the total conversion mods, the ones that change all of it, are for Half Life or Battlefield, although many of the less well known games could have one or two. They literally take the game and change it to something completely different, there is a mod out for Half-Life 2 that institutes a whole new style of game play, instead of running around shooting aliens, two teams are pitted against each other and have to take over strategic points to gain resources, then they use those resources to build tanks or facilities which gives them an edge over their opponent. Both teams have one commander which plays the game like a strategy game with a birds eye view, and the rest play it like a first person shooter.

There are so many ways that developer’s change the way the game is played; it’s like a whole new world. Of course I can’t tell you all the ways that they do this, because I don’t think I’ve even experienced it all.

Basic Terrain Techniques

I use the Source Engine because it’s a relatively easy engine to use, and it’s used for many of today’s games. Besides, most level editors are too “complicated” for the company to release. In other words, they want to make money off of expansion packs.

Sure, one can argue maps can be good without advanced techniques, just make a couple rooms, two spawn points, and a light, and it will figure itself out. But I think what makes a good map great, is that extra bit of detail; it could be a bit of roughness in the wall, to a hollow crate with a part of it missing so you could see inside, or maybe just a giant hole in the wall.

So let’s talk about displacements, displacements is basically just a fancy word for editing the roughness of the terrain or environment. In this little scene I use displacements to make the level have a little bit more realistic feel to it.

 

Since it’s raised it doesn’t have as much of the “I’m trapped in a giant square box” feel. This is really handy when you are making an outdoor environment. Not that great for indoors though, unless it’s a ruined building that has a lot of buildup of earth. Although this looks good, we can always make it look nicer. By adding displacements to the sides of the walls, we can give it more of an outdoors feel. The Source SDK, or Source Development Kit, also gives the ability to “paint” the walls with grass and dirt so it looks much more like rock wall and less like a movie backdrop.

Now that the entire corner is rough it looks a lot more like a real outdoors environment. I also added a little bit of green to the rock to make it look better, and the ground displacement much less steep. Although it’s slightly difficult to correctly set up the horizontal displacement since to make the walls displace outwards out you have to change the axis, and it changes for each direction. Next up is a giant hole in the wall. No really, small things like holes or gashes in the level can be useful by adding more detail or making a way to get up something without using a ramp. You use the carve tool in the Hammer Editor to do this, and you could probably use the displacement to compliment it as well.

 Here we can see a basic hole in the wall. Beautiful, isn’t it? Things like these can add a level of detail to your map and will really pay off in the long run. Instead of jumping through a window, why not jump through a gaping hole in the wall? Why take the stairs when you can fall through the floor? These are just some of the many complex questions easily answered by today’s giant gaping holes used in level design.

Well, well, well. What do we have here? A box… Yes… A box… But not just any box, this one’s hollow, and It has part of it clipped away so you can see the inside part. Brilliant, isn’t it? Honestly I was just trying to show how the hollow tool and the clipping tool worked, well… Now you know.

A Maze of Corridors

The problem with many level designers, experienced or not, is that they want to make a large, insanely detailed map that is really complex and amazing. While this is good, because honestly no one wants to make a level with four walls and a crate, it's really counterproductive to the flow of the game. If you are playing a team-deathmatch game and there are as many exits and entrances as there are players, it might take a while. If everyone goes off in every which direction then they will cause the game to be much longer, because if one player is on the opposite side of the map, and a player of the other team on the opposite side, it will take a very long time for them to engage and for their teammates to get back into the game.

Also if a level is too sparse of cover and just empty space, players won’t be as happy playing it, because there is no cover, just a wide open space for them to get cut down in. Putting in tons of props, like crates or rocks, can make your map livelier and give the players something to hide behind. I know that even the smallest amount of cover helps, because I’ve hidden behind random objects such as poles before, just to evade enemy fire.

Although letting the player have multiple paths to choose from is a good idea, don’t make too many and don’t make them too far apart. It will limit game play and make the level long and un-enjoyable.

Sandbox Games vs. Linear Games

For those of you who don’t know what these are, they concepts about the flow of a game. They are also polar opposites. Sandbox Games offer an open world for the player to run around in. Examples of this would be Minecraft or the Elder Scrolls series of games. You could do nothing in those games or do everything in those games, but never do the same thing twice. Linear Games on the other hand, offer little deviation from the set path. Sure you can hang around in the same hallway for hours, but little will come from it.

Sandbox Games offer the feeling of, “Oh Wow! I did that!” once you complete one of your great goals. Take Minecraft for example, I love it because I can do what I want and build whatever I want in the seemingly endless world of blocks it provides. Take this for example.

The "Wow!" factor of Sandbox Games

 

Linear Games on the other hand, offer heart pounding action and instant thrills because they have a scripted set of events for you to accomplish or do. Although the replay-ability of these games are very low, people like me, who make maps, can make the game fun for years and years past the initial release.

What worries me about linear games nowadays is that game companies are replacing the user-created content with their own DLC (downloadable content). This is an obvious way for them to milk more money out of the people who play their games, but what they do not know, is that they are taking a major part of their game out of the hands of players by doing just that.

Sounds of Video Games

Sure, you can have the nicest looking game out there, but if you don’t have any sound, it will lack when compared to others. It might be the simplest concept when it comes to making games, but many people look past it and only want to make a visually stunning landscape. Have you ever seen those game trailers that have the thunderous music added to them? Try watching this video, about the upcoming game Elder Scrolls: Skyrim.

How does it make you feel? If you were to mute the audio, and just look at the video itself, I bet it would feel a whole lot different. As developers are getting more experience and a bigger budget, games will become a lot more detailed, such as that one.

Sounds are very important to a game, almost as much as the visuals. They can induce feelings of raw emotion, and can help the player go deeper into the storyline, or express emotions of characters that would be otherwise impossible due to game limitations. How would you like to play a baseball game that has no crack as the ball hits the bat? What about a racing game without a screech from the brakes of a sports car? You just can’t have a good game without it.

Small tricks developers use with lighting

Developing a game is serious business, I’m serious. Even the smallest things you never think about, such as lighting, have an impact on what the player thinks about the virtual environment he is placed in. For example, in the game Half-Life 2, developers use different lighting methods to convey different feelings to the player.

 

The use of colored lights can significantly change the mood of a level. Take the above picture as an example. The faint red light can clue the player into a more dangerous atmosphere ahead of them. This is because people react differently to different colors. Red for example is believed to make people have feelings of extreme emotion, which can fuel feelings such as danger or love, and it can raise the heartbeat by stimulating the viewer. This is a great color for level designers because it can help them bring out a wide variety of emotions in the player, which can help the players enjoy the game more.

 

Lighting can also make the game look nicer. If you add a sun-like entity or environmental lighting in general to the game, it looks more realistic and the shadows it creates, such as the ones in the pictures above, give the level more beauty and believability.

The Art of Color Correction

Post processing, which simply means adding special effects, this includes tools which allow you to change the way the viewer sees things, and this is where color correction comes in. Color correction lets you modify the way the viewer sees things. Take this image for example; it’s an in-game screenshot of a map for Counter-Strike:Source I was making. It has no color correction but that’s going to change soon.

I only have a basic knowledge of color correction but even with that I can noticeably change it. One of the color correction’s properties is to change the brightness/saturation in the picture. Here is an example of that.

As you can see, the textures are slightly darker because I adjusted the brightness scale, which can give the map more character if used correctly. But if you use too much it might look like a white screen with very strange colored shadows. Now we can add a tinge of color to the screen, this can give the viewer a slightly different feel of the environment.

For this I just adjusted the picture to have a bluish tinge. It doesn’t look very pronounced because blue is very subtle compared to other colors, like red.

 

 See? It’s pretty obvious compared to both the normal and bluish screenshots. Since red is such a pronounced color against the normally blue sky and dark yellow textures it just pops right out. Although it’s unnatural it can still be used if the desired feel you want it to be fits the color. Remember, there’s a time and place for everything.

General Thoughts on Mapping

Game design is a big interest to me, after playing these games for years, I feel I can add my own name to the list of map developers, I love the feel of a community made map, with all of the rooms and corridors made for optimized game play, but the look of a map is what brings a lot of users back to them. I figured I can do both, make an evenly balanced team map, but also make it look great. But development is only half of it. Getting players to actually play on it is a whole different thing altogether.

I’ve seen many good maps passed by because of small things that make them obscenely unappealing, such as their name. That’s right, their name. It’s the first thing you see before playing the map, but it’s the last thing you think about. I hate those map names that are insanely long and complex like ctf_longwall_reach_version_6_c. It makes it really unappealing even though it could be a great map. If you’ve played a lot of games on the Source Engine, then you’ll come across a lot of these. If only I was in touch with the person who made it, I would scream at him and say, “NO DON’T NAME IT THAT!!! Give it something simple, like ctf_longwall!”