What do you guys think of my level design? Thread

I made this in class the other day. I spent awhile on this. Indiedb.com
I had to minimize it for this web so you all can see it.

So what do you think of it? What does it remind you of? If there was anything I could do to make this level better what would it be?

So this level is basically a warehouse. It was inspired by Half-Life 1 and Die hard.

The story is that there is a building that has been taken over by humanoid aliens. And now the cops must stop them.

The goal is basically, turn all those valves so a scaffold can take you to the elevator hidden by freights.

If you guys are confused on the picture just download it and zoom on it. I had to scale it back quite a bit.

Looks you have a creative concept regarding level design, however maybe you can increase the size of image for better viewing. Also a nice legend to explain all the colors would help so much to understand what's going on (remember your idea is clear to you, but how can you make it clear to others). I would also place starting points and end points for the player, enemies, items, etc.... Other than that it looks real good, keep working and keep getting better .

-Gabriel follow me at @adventureco2

Thanks, I just added the colors mostly just to make it feel better.More atmospheric. But I thought that too. Next time I will go over one in adobe illustrator. I think I should try critiquing and making logic with my own designs. Oh and what do you mean by starting and end points? Are those supposed to be pathways for the enemies and items?

Great job planning it out on paper, usually my map ideas start off as a couple of doodles and take off from there. Hell I'm staring at one doodle right now.

What Prototypestudios was saying I believe was that you should mark the spawn points for players, enemies and supplies (guns, ammo, health etc.)

Even windows paint isn't a bad place to start doing a map layout if it's easier for you, otherwise I enjoy the notebook quality!
Either way, keep up the good work.

What game do you plan on making this level for out of curiosity?

Thanks, you should post some of your doodles.

Just to let you know those symbols on the map (x's,o's, + signs,clips) Those are the spawn points.

And I wanted a basic feeling look. I agree.

I don't plan on making this level for anything really. Just a show case on how much of a good level architect I am. Unless you want me to make something from it?

That's cool, sometimes I just have ideas and no game specifically to match it too. Either way its still fun to map them out. I'm currently working on a map I lost 7 years ago and just found again. It was a fun idea, but still executed badly. It took me 6 months to do and I never released it.

This is an example of a doodle I did about a week ago.I'll show you what I started since then

This is the top view down on my map in game. I'm sure you can see the similarities between my rough sketch. Though some design has changed,

Another.

I just wanted to post it because I really was serious about using a basic sketch and 3 days later I have a nice base to start working from (as you can see)

So keep it going and if you need any help picking a program or game engine/editor let me know. Keep brainstorming !

It looks interesting. It looks like goldeneye or Thief. It came out look professional besides it's rather strange looking map.
Is it supposed to be a mine? Did you use goldsrc or Unity?

It's using the Source Engine designed with the Hammer Editor for HL2.

Thanks, I've made quite a bit of changes to the design since that post. That was just my foundation to build around.
Feel free to check my profile to see what I mean.

Either way I just wanted to show you that doodling is a easy proven start to making a good level. Lay it all out on paper figure out what might look good and use it as a rough draft blueprint and expand from there.

I like your level designs, however like said earlier, would be nice to see it more refined

Problem is it looks 0 like a Warehouse. I suggest looking at some reference before and after the "doodling".

Where did you get that it was supposed to be a warehouse, SinKing? It looks more like some kind of mine, judging by the pictures on the guy's profile page; you can clearly see above-ground and below-ground areas, and support beams are visible even in the images in this thread.

Here, I grabbed this from Global_Meltdown's gallery:

Definitely a mine.

Now, as a mine, it's not bad. I would suggest adding some stone columns in the middle of the bigger rooms, however; miners tend to leave columns of whatever they're mining out in order to help support the roof.

TerranAmbassador wrote: Where did you get that it was supposed to be a warehouse, SinKing?

He says it in the first post:

"So this level is basically a warehouse. It was inspired by Half-Life 1 and Die hard."

At the moment it is a generic corridor, which - given the right texture - could be a mine, a spacestation, a tomb, a basement. It could actually be a lot of generic things, except a warehouse.

Edited by: SinKing

I was merely posting Screenshots to show 3DWorlds that my doodle can easily turn into a map. This isn't even my thread, so maybe people should get back to 3DWorlds level instead of mine lol.

I was just trying to motivate and give some support to the layout process so other people would realize no matter how messed up your layout on paper might look, it's still a great first step.

3DWorlds you still working on that level? Any Updates?

Oh right, so you are not him, just posting in his thread. Weird we never saw an update from him. My bad, I didn't see that.

SinKing wrote: Problem is it looks 0 like a Warehouse. I suggest looking at some reference before and after the "doodling".

Like a photo? Or a drawing?

Meltdown, was engine do you you suggest I use? And was it hard to learn the Source engine.

Looks good to me.

Your level seems nice. I cant really find any negative things. But you might want to add some more space to the level. Maybe another floor.
I think that you should create more levels.

Thanks, I agree. I want to make it bigger. I had to size it down. I'm not sure if I should make a second level. Because it's a warehouse. I am making more levels for my epic video game.

Well I am looking forward to see more from you mate