Understand Multi-Faceted Level Design Thread

I suppose this is more a general thought topic than anything, but I felt that it's something very important to think about and something that I need to be working on rather soon. Given that I've been playing Deus Ex: HR over the past couple days it seems given that I have my mind open to the various possibilities that one can traverse as level.

Anyways, hi, I'm GoodguyA. I've made lots of mods before but haven't released them past my computer due to my terrible habit of not being able to optimize and often having projects crash because of it. I understand the workings of a mod and how it goes about, but mainly my focus has been on Source mods. Within the last two years or so I've been tampering with some other toolkits, primarily the ones for Oblivion and Morrowind. I've not made anything too extremely huge in it, but I always liked to observe the given maps and take in exactly what went into the designer's minds when constructing them.

Now I've preparing a new mod for Skyrim, The Dance of the Dragons and preparing myself for the practical applications of what I've been merely looking at for a long time. With this though comes troubles, as it does with Bethesda itself. I have indeed tampered with the idea of approaching a level in many different ways, even in Source the capacity exists but as you should know The Elder Scrolls are huge open world games. This means things can be approached from all angles, except from above (in most cases). Trying to make this exciting is an extreme challenge, and I'm sure people who have played these games have an idea of both its failings and its enhancements to the experience.

As I said, there is no real question or problem in this thread but merely a train of thought. I've imagined a few of the cities that the team will have to construct and I try to think of all the ways it could be approached i design. Obviously there's a frontgate, a few secret ways in, a sewer system or two, but what else could there be? There's a bit of limitation due to the fact that Skyrim's cities are walled (I.E they are instanced) but I still feel that there a lot of ideas I've not even laid a single thought upon one how to approach an area. An air of realism must always exist, but in that you must also create a fine game along with it. To think that this is only a single thing that I must think about in a world full of a multitude of varying areas.

What have all of you learned from dabbling so long in designing mods? Are there tricks that you think are very important that others don't latch onto? What are your thoughts on allowing so many options in an open game? Should I even be worrying about these sorts of things?

I go in saying I'm asking no specific question and then I ask quite a few! That's a good sign that this entire thread was stream of consciousness!

What have all of you learned from dabbling so long in designing mods?
Not directly related to the modding aspect but ... PR is so very important if you intend to release your mod to the public and actually be noticed. You can't just assume that as long as you keep working and making progress, people will notice your mod. That's simply not true.

1) You basically have to create articles and post them across multiple viral outlets (twitter, facebook, moddb, wherever it applies). You also need to release these regularly and constantly remind them of your site, IRC, etc. in a subtle way. (see below)

(I completely failed here. Other members of my team were better at doing this consistently than me, but still not enough ... In retrospect they really could have used my help in this area as well.)

2) You need to create a place for your fans to congregate. This is important because if you don't they will often lose interest in waiting for your mod and wander off. By creating a forum or IRC or whatever, you give them the capability to entertain themselves with each others company and you establish a means to communicate to the community in mass. This helps out a lot because you can easily obtain a lot of opinions/criticism quickly if you need them and by setting this up you can spend less time compiling things to entertain them. Eventually they will grow to become their own little community.

(We did ok, in this area ... we established several places for the community to congregate, but without articles few people showed up and the community never reached "critical mass")

3) Do media stunts. This basically means, hold contests, organize competitions with other similar "community sized" modding teams for cross promotion, and basically goof off and post it. If you get bored of developing, build a robot out of boxes and post that.

It seems goofing off has a pretty positive effect with the community as well as it does for team morale. It may seem like a waste of time, but it pays off later. The key is just not to goof off too much.

(We failed here as well. We did very little goofing off in our community and worst of all we viewed other mod teams as rivals. It was a very very stupid thought and because of that we completely missed out on the opportunity to cross promote.)

4) ATTITUDE IS IMPORTANT! be pleasant, nice, polite, etc. If you are not pleasant to your community, even if they're total assholes, they may raise so much shit that it could rip your community (and even the mod team) apart. I've seen this happen to modders before ... they gather a community and their attitude becomes so pessimistic and loaded with bitter sarcasm from either repeating what they said over and over or because they naturally are pessimistic and bitterly sarcastic that parts of their own community start resenting them and looking for things to pick on.

Pure faction was a genius effort by a guy to eliminate modders in multiplayer from the game red faction as well as add new features to the game such as auto downloading for community maps.

However, the people who represented them ... kinda acted like total dicks. Pure Faction was accused of installing malicious content, of bullying regular RF players into accepting Pure Faction, and all sorts of shit. It was basically fueled indefinitely by the attitude of Pure Factions PR department and their basic response of "You're an idiot!" rather than "I assure you we would never intentionally harm someone's PC, and if we have we're very sorry." They never admitted to being wrong. They never apologized for misunderstandings. Worst of all, they openly insulted people in their community.

Now there is so much drama around it the developer basically went AWOL and the project is dead, yet their "PR department" still defends it with a very shitty attitude.

To be honest, this rule applies to practically every aspect ... It's quite amazing how far being humble, polite, charming, and generally professional can get you in many aspects of life.

(We were great at positive attitude. Infact, we were so good we had a very nice little community that got along with each other and even produced great content. Our mod kinda developed into a unofficial "open source" and we would host community made maps on the site as well as release them with the next version or patch of the mod with their consent.)

Are there tricks that you think are very important that others don't
latch onto?

Work in a small team ... more is not necessarily better. Most mod teams consist of about 3 or 4 very skilled people. The more you add to your team, the more likely people will slack off, management will get harder, more conflict will arise, etc.

What are your thoughts on allowing so many options in an
open game?
Option are good. Options increase replayability. Open games are largely successful because they have so many options. To me it seems games are getting less and less linear all the time.

Should I even be worrying about these sorts of things?

YES. and no ...

Thinking about these things are important. But to be honest, volumes could be written on the psychology player when you should consider mapping, psychology of the community, etc. It is impossible to know all the tricks, so its best to use good judgment and make sure to use the tricks you do learn either from your experience or someone else's.

Edited by: Assaultman67

Well, thank you for your insight no matter how off-topic it was! It's good to here there's people around here looking out for each other in this community, and willing to spread wisdom where it's needed. Rest assured that I've the general idea of successful teamwork in mind, though the situation differs depending on what mod and what team. I'll take the words to heart and do as I can, so thank you again.

All right, now back to level design!

For a mod, I say that the most important part of the engine(the game to be moded) should be exploited at it best. In the especific case of Skyrin it going to have a awesome AI work put on it, among others, and see what can be achieved from it hold be amazing.

So open world with a complex AI that give life and make the world more consistent and thus reaching the goal, exploited in the ways that only the moder can see.

Stunning reply from assaultman there ,
Anyways back on topic of level design there are a few dozen tricks and tips for walled city places ,
Firstly Access... Depends on exactly what sort of function your after so bear in mind how one enters should have at least three different ways if not many more.
They are not always so "self explanatory" for instance Ramps are good for the inside ,ladders internal corridors and other things should find themselves useful.
Gateways come in variety of functions and may or may not contain ramps within them.
Murder holes .. these i don't see made use of much and sadly many mods and places seem to lack full understanding of what these are.
They come in a variety .. holes from the roof looking down usually sometimes they come in gateway entry's one would have to pass through before attacking or passing a gate.
Sewers... okay everyone loves a good sewer and I doubt this would have been neglected,
Wall scaling , this is the one most open to interpretation , Things such as Catapults over walls , Siege towers + ladders , Rope swings , Spring jump points and the Good old oh the wall is broken partially here all are good candidates ,
Others Could include some flying mechanic such as dragon/bird/insert your own flying unit here.
Of course you said no flying.. then there is magic/other ways where a charector is merely "teleport" someplace.
Bribe an official to enter ,disguise oneself somehow or Perhaps a nice big Battering Ram ,
How many NPC's are you considering placing into this city and of course show due evidence of there existence.
Subtle details could take you a lifetime and its up to you to decide where to stop.
While not Knowing your format im fairly confident about certain aspects of level design work being universal.
do try the level design subgroup here too its quite useful.