Crafting Level Design for Combat - Max Pears, Level Design Lobby.

[Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music] I'd like to welcome to the stage our next speaker this morning with a 20-minute solo session on crafting level design for combat we've got Max pairs from a level design Lobby uh Max are you ready to take to the stage he's coming up now a round of applause for Max everyone so uh thank you all very much for coming to this talk before we get into this though can we just have a huge round of applause for everyone who works really hard to make this the best experience for all of us as well [Applause] so thank you all very much for coming I

have a lot to talk about in a very small amount of time so I'm going to be going quite rapid throughout it but the main focus is how do we best facilitate combat when we're designing that of our levels now with this there are a few outcomes that I want you all to take away as I progress through this talk first what is the role of level design there is a lot of teams involved in that of making combat itself but what is it that we need to do to facilitate combat in that of the role of level design itself now what is an encounter it takes many different forms there are many different games out there that all use different types of encounters and then finally that of how do we prepare our levels for combat what do we actually need to think about to best make our levels best work for the combat within the games that we are making now falling into this we'll talk a little bit about me my experience working with combat and my understanding of what I've learned throughout my career as well now I've been in the industry now over 10 years worked on a range of different tiles

from mobile Indie Triple A much more I've got to work with Incredible different teams on incredible different projects most recently with the upcoming release of the DLC of cyberpunk phantom Liberty as well and all of this really comes from the perspective of me being that of a level designer I'm currently a contractor as well which has allowed me to work with more teams around the world and really understand how they best work and best to help them now when it comes to the role of level design though it really does all right on the second team uh there we go it really does depends on each Studio that you're facing really but generally the way to think about it is that we are The Architects of the virtual world alongside that of concept art and environment art as well making sure that there is style and substance to the world because this is the the playable spaces that we are creating making sure it facilitates that of the gameplay that the player is going through and exploring and while they're exploring

it's on us to help guide the player throughout these levels making it clear that they understand their goals and how best to achieve them by controlling the flow of the mission understanding when it's time to raise the player's heartbeat but also a chance for them to catch their breath as well and of course we do this by scripting the events as well but when it comes to that of the role of level design in combat we need to make sure that we facilitate the combat that there is enough space for it to actually take place and happen that we need to provide choice for the player give them agency so they feel that they are in control that they are making an impact on the challenge ahead of them as well as keeping the player engaged while doing this making sure that it feels fresh new not only in that in the perspective of our levels but the overall game experience as well and then providing clear fronts now we will talk a bit about that later on as well as that of cover placement and Design

as well now when we talked about cover placement I'm really referencing that as something saying more shooter focused then that may be of perhaps say uh God of War but if it isn't covered there are still other elements that it's on us to implement within the space now when it comes to this it is a team effort it is not just us we need to work with narrative design so it makes sure that the combat feels really part of the story not just Michael Bay explosions everywhere but it really helps to describe that of growth combat designers they're ones that work really behind the scenes to make sure it's clear what AI works best with one another and what challenges and space that they need to help execute the cool mechanics they offer AI programmers there is a lot of expertise that goes into making these enemies and without them we wouldn't be able to know how to get them to move left from right and then finally weapon designers I'm sure many of you have played Ratchet and Clank or other crazy cool games where they just make in

strange weapons but we need those to understand what best we can provide within the space of usage now when it comes to understanding this as well we need to understand the AI itself really understanding that of the elements of what it is that we need to to use and combine different AIS together from this understanding what can we use to best highlight the enemy's weakness as they are going through our space as well as using it for the dangers of the environment but also we need to think about how do we highlight when the player is in danger or when's the opportunity to strike as well communicating that with the animators is a great way many of us with from software that have played their games really understand the timing so it's all of that when we combine them together that makes it feel that when the player makes a mistake they're mad because they haven't learned the patterns and don't blame us is where they think that we're out to get them so now with that let's talk about what is an encounter an encounter really is that of a puzzle in the sense that

enemies are the puzzles here's a layout that I did on cyberpunk from a top-down perspective and the way that they approach this is that they're solving it with the abilities that we have given them whether that be the different mechanics in the example of cyberpunk you upgrade your cyberpunk to really play how you want so we offer different routes for the players to take and different abilities for them to take advantage of and it comes in different forms as well it may be that of a really hardcore boss battle or just as simple as two enemies around as well but not only that it's a great way to raise the intensity of your mission overall now when we think about this there's a lot to think about as well and how we mix this up that really comes from the objectives we can change the way that players move through the spaces whether that's on the back foot having to defend or putting them on the player on the offensive as they're off to kill a certain amount of enemies but we can also change it up as

well by making them solely focus on a certain aspect of the level whether that's destroying a certain object or trying to weave past enemies that are stopping you from chasing down a certain enemy as well again a simple objective change can have a big impact on the overall encounter as well so another element to think about is not just the objective but the solutions that we can give to the player whether that ranges from stealthily taking the enemies out or just going on in guns blazing non-stop really it's up to us to figure out the best way to spice this up as I said through objectives or through that of how we solve the puzzles as well now where encounters take place is through different areas really it can be that in main missions or that of the open world the big thing is the player won't necessarily feel it but you will feel it as an LD because you won't necessarily say have the same budget from a main mission versus an open world event your space will be more limited but just

because you're limited on certain things doesn't mean that you are limited on creativity so really think about when you're going through and really expanding on your encounter how can you best make use of it from this no I'm just going to skip that one but the really important thing is encounters really are well crafted combat these are the memorable moments that we need to make the player really take their breath away cause stress for the player or that of something that they can brag about to their friends but in order to make these memorable there's a lot of things that we have to understand the first one really is to have the three C's thinking that of controller camera and character understanding all of that will then impact and change that of your actual levels as well there is much more understanding your enemy types how they best work together understanding the best ranges which we'll talk about a little bit further on it's also important for us to think about how can we solve these as well what kind of Beats do we have do we have a constant wave of enemies or do we have a certain enemy encounter and then a low

be allowing the player to catch their breath again changing up the pacing for it which brings us on to sorry guys we've misaligned the text on this one now of the that of Engagement versus the level duration right when you can see when you look at this as a basic graph here you can see that combat generally four players is more engaging because you need to make Split Second decisions in order to progress versus say something like a cut scene which you can still bring intensity and engagement but the player can put the controller down versus needing to have to have the controller in their hand as they're being shot at now when it comes to saying up these kind of com areas whose responsibility is it it can range from the encounter combat team as well as that of the level design team I will say I do think it's hilarious that there's one kid in that picture who's using rubber nunchucks but has a face guard clearly there are some mistakes they're made but the other thing is making sure when we are setting this up is communication

because otherwise we can set up bad areas that the player can cheese it with and really break that immersion and really lose that factor of how dangerous this combat can be so communicate with your team the big takeaways from what an encounter is it is well crafted combat it's really important to make sure that we Pace this overall we don't want good combat just to be waves and waves and waves and waves and waves and that's it we need to know when to give the player a moment to breathe really increase your communication for this because the end of the day it takes a miracle and a lot of people to make video games so communication is vital and remember Teamwork Makes the Dream work so let's go talk about that of the overall level design and what you need to think about as you're making your level itself the first one is understanding your metrics this is the foundation for all levels it's such a super important element yet not many people talk about it we need to know how much space is given to that of the players so they can best use that

when we're sorry given to the LD so we can best use that for that of facilitating that I'd say our architecture but not just that but also say elements like cover when we can offer such things as Low cover to High cover as well making sure that it is readable for the players they know which cover what options they have as they progress and move through not only that but the spacing between cover cover buffer is also known this is the moment where we give the chance for players to decide which cover are they moving on to because the end of the day we need to make it feel that risk versus reward so when players go to move to something strategical they also feel it comes that sense of danger as well but also highlighting for the player what kind of paths are available to them the main path or say that of the side path which may be a flanking route we do that all through metrics again really showing the importance of readability and spacing for it but also we've got the weapon metrics as well understanding how

long each range has for different weapons on this this gives us a great chance to experiment if we want the players to get something close and personal we make a spoiler space because of this we allow them to use shorter range weapons say like a shotgun versus that of a male long-range encounter like a sniper rifle changing and using this can really spice up your combat as well decision points are super vital as well as these allow us as the player to observe what are the challenges in front of us we need to make sure the player gets a chance to observe everything in front of them before they just run in guns blazing there is a Counterpoint to a decision point though make sure that this isn't a super safe place where the player can just sit camp and destroy all the enemies from we need to make sure that they are exposed and encouraged to then execute their plan as well another thing to think about when you think about decision points is Rainbow Six Siege uses that of Leaning itself to

become that of its own slowing method down to lean between that of the say pillar here from the right to the left or a door slowing down the pace one thing we should think about for it as well is building momentum for the player this may not work for every combat encounter but our idea is to make the player feel like a badass right and you can do that this so by giving them an easy win the first enemy just constantly gives the back to the player so we can start to build that momentum forwards and remember we are not the enemy against the player we're not here to beat them we're here to make them engage and enjoy their experience and we can do this by providing choice for the player offering them different routes so again they feel that they are in charge they're not just you know endless Corridor but making decisions from this and from that we need to make sure they understand where the enemy is coming from what can we do to make it clear where they're going from that of clearing up the spacing and the cover to make it clear okay the enemies are in

this Direction versus all over around us so we can again start to see how we progress through that of a level as well now Gears of War did a great thing with changing your front so once you progressed to the end of a level they might reward you with a Turret so then you could go turn and face the area you've just came another thing to think about is mixing up your covers we talked about the High cover and low cover but really mixing them up can again create such a great place for players to decide and again have a better decision from this another one is elevation remember it's easier to shoot down than it is up but also we can tie that in with our narrative giving that emotional beat if we're entering the pits of Hell or if we're having a Redemption Arc going through the story as well and we've all seen that of these red barrels as well and we can use them to make again the player feel much smarter because of this so there's a lot to think about and those are only just a few elements when we're making level design for combat so

just remember that iteration is key the only way your encounter is going to get better is if you keep play testing communicate with your teams eventually all of this can really help to make it a much better experience and then the final aspect we're going to talk about is the tempo of an encounter each game is different so the speed that they're going to tackle this is very different as well so it's on us to figure out how do we slow this down this can come from the systems where it's like division where we are a cover shooter so you have to take cover slowing the players down for movement versus that of Doom where you're rewarded with that of resources by going in and killing people as violently as possible but all that comes down to how we determine how fast we want the player to move but we can do this as well with cover density by having more or less it allows us to decide if players are going to stick behind certain things or move through freely flowing like water to start to move from one another or we can

have special moves with more gruesome ways to encourage again that closeness for it but if we also want to help encourage players to move different ways then make sure the mechanics are different as well that they cross over from that of expiration towards that of combat as well and the final thing that we can really add upon this is the actual shape of the rooms we build if you look a lot of Call of Duty theirs has a lot of figure eight movement encourage both forward pressure and backwards movement as well if we want to slow the player down like we talked about rainbow six then we can have a lot of 90 degree turns in order making tension build behind each and every corner so remember that we control the pace as LDS we need to figure out what it means and what speed we want very early in the game and then to how to facilitate the gameplay around it and encourage Mastery from the players understand their mechanics and best get out for it so thank you all very very much I appreciate your time we did rattle through that as fast as possible okay if

you want to know more I've got a mentorship books on it and please feel free to contact me as well look Thanks Max thank you very much and I know that uh typically you give a longer talk than that yeah I appreciate you condensing that for us today to hear fantastic because that's some great insights into there and I can and I can see my um uh on the stage so I can see many of those uh uh those things you've mentioned in games that I've I've played so um do we have any questions uh from the audience for Maxwell here I see there's a hand at the back there please we'll get a mic to you if we if we can um just uh well um while the mic comes to you just a little note that we're recording these sessions so after the fact we'll send you an email so you can re-watch and I'd appreciate those three stages so you might miss something but that means also that if you have a question grab the mic because then the camera picks it up um guess go for it please yeah uh morning thanks for the presentation I have a question from single player yeah universe so when you make a really good

level yeah for example in the sugar like Mass Effect 2 or cyberpunk right but the player plays on the easy or normal so they just go YOLO and they don't utilize all the you know obstacles whatever you made for them to have fun they just like go through what do you feel like is this some sort of way you know like unnecessary work or you expect this or you expect them to play like this so it it depends because we've had talks where for example in cypunk and we went on the division we'd set how many enemies it was per difficulty right so for example uh it for division easy was four enemies medium became seven and then I think it was 10 for hard difficulty right so that came from a lot of discussions from us to how do we best solve that and not feel as you said something they can neglect but still have a challenge for it so it's really important to sit and talk to your team about that I think that's the most important thing for that all it is a shame but also for example

in CD project red the the mentality was story is King and as long as the story was being facilitated that was the most important aspect for it so again understanding what each Studio wants allows you to figure that out but again talk to the team to see if you guys can set those rules of for example X enemies the stats on it stats aren't the sexiest part of video games as we know but it is really needed for it so I think as long as you communicate it can get better from that point mate so I hope that answers the question thank you mate you for it I think we have one question over here and then I'll jump off the stage perfect thank you ah sorry oh okay thanks for the speed run good stuff uh question for the kind of earlier part of the production yeah do you have tips and tricks uh to the case when the metrics keep changing while you are also like trying to do the levels yeah so I mean I wish I had the

the perfect solution uh but it is just one where it's just worth adapting and just from trying to remember that the metric change will hopefully help better improve it for it because we had a lot of metric changes throughout Division and that was really hard to go back and just make everything feel bigger without it being like knock on offense of another day to two days work so obviously it just stretches things out as you know I think it's just one where as long as the team accepts that and there's no silly deadlines or pressures from higher up it's just best to be adaptable and flexible and also use that time for you to test your metrics as well and go because at one point on side Punk three meters was our corridors and we're like actually no combat works here and we expanded it to four meters and that ended up being better so my devices ride with it use it time to break it down healthily and just communicate with higher ups from it so I hope that helps there mate for it so yeah okay my time is up I can see it so thank you thank you very much thank you

appreciate it I appreciate it thank you