Grub
Green Marine
Posts: 33
Registered: 02-12 |
purist said:
3. A strong sense of the authors intentions. E.g. - purposeful thing placement, intuitive mapflow or well executed set-piecies.
I agree a lot with everything you've said, but this one is especially important to me!
That is, when the author has intentions, regards what might be going through a player's mind at any point, and builds accordingly.
There was a really magical moment in Doom where I was running around at full speed, and I came into a room with lots of weaker demons. Being somewhat low on health and not wishing to get into an immediately dangerous battle (which I knew I could probably win but didn't want to risk receiving further damage at that point,) I decided to skip it and take the other option, which was an unexplored door just nearby --- opening up into a tiny room with a single baron of hell who promptly emerged and chased me around.
I laughed a lot at that. The mapper actually anticipated me being low on health and not wanting to fight the group of little demons, and threw in a baron to surprise me. I love little things that show a mapper consciously thinking about how someone might be playing.
I don't know how many people here have played Super Metroid for the SNES, but a MASSIVE chunk of the level design for the game was like that. They threw challenges at you, but they knew how to speak the language of level design and they knew what you might be thinking at that time. They knew what was fair, what was unfair, and not to abuse the player too much.
Every time you really needed something, or thought about a possibility, it was like the level designers thought about it with you and there it was. It wasn't blatantly obvious either, but completely natural and exciting. These fruits of adventure are, when presented, not handed to you but instead dangled on a nearby vine. It will take effort, but they know you know how to do it and they're confident it won't rip you to shreds getting there.
And that's my kind of level design. When a level is well-thought-out enough, it's like having the mapper right there with you, creating the adventure on the fly. Or for anyone who's played DnD, it's a little like having a silent dungeon master. And there is no doubt about it --- the best doom levels are fun little adventures :)
purist said:
4. Switch hunts.
When you mean switch hunts, how bad are we talking here?
I think it can be entertaining from time-to-time when you flip a switch and you hear (or see) a platform go down close to you, which in turn asks you to run for it before it goes back up (whilst of course giving you a reasonable amount of time to get there.)
Another example is the timed secret-within-the-secret platform in E1M1 of KDitD. You hear the platform go down, and you can race to get there. Sometimes taking expectations of how things work and mixing them up a little to keep things fresh can be fun as long as you don't abuse the tactic :)
Last edited by Grub on 02-12-12 at 20:01
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02-09-12 07:05 
