Environment Design

Environment design is a fundamental pillar in the development cycle of a gaming title. Many consider the world that players inhabit to be nothing more than just shells for the character to run through, yet there is a lot of detail hidden beneath the surface. Gaming levels do not just inhabit the realms of the third dimension. Many consider them to be purely visual creations and dismiss their involvement with sound, player direction, scripted events, artificial intelligence, gameplay and dynamic features. A lot of thought and consideration is put into developing a gaming environment. Many contemporary companies such as valve create silhouette levels, which allows them to judge spacial values, player navigation and story direction. These levels use very simple box geometry and flat colours to increase the speed of level creation and allows the developer more time to create a number of level varieties. An example of this silhouette mapping can be seen below.

Environment creation requires alot of consideration and often dominates a large proportion of development time. Many companies invest hours upon hours of BETA testing to ensure that a level flows correctly and is ready for the market.

This topic is increasingly more relevant considering we have recently embarked upon our horror/survival environment. Researching and discussing the importance of level design allows us to develop an insight into environment creation, and proceed into our project much wiser than before. Website such as this in particular, aid us in our effort to create an original and appropriate environment for the project. Discussing relevant topics such as the importance of cliches, storytelling, pacing, relationships and morality within the environment provided a strong foundation for our ideas and developed guidelines so we did not stray off track.

Ultimately level design is the frontier of storytelling in a computer game. Characters, locations, events and decisions all occur within the realms of an environment. The designer controls all aspects of a players interaction and experience within the game world. Hopefully this research will convey into the final product of our team environment.