How many level designers worked on Doom 3 and Quake 4?

[hardcore_gamer]

I know Tim Willits was the lead level designer for Doom 3 but how many people were responsible for making all the levels in the game? And how long did it take them to finish all of them? Ditto for Quake 4.

 

EDIT: Wtf I was reading about Tim on his wiki page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Willits

 

When I saw this bit: "Willits required assistance with developing doors in future levels and games."

 

How can you be the lead level designer for a fps game and not know how to make doors properly? 0_o

Edited October 12, 2018 by hardcore_gamer

[Quasar]

Somebody is clearly trolling with that. It's pretty popular to make fun of the dude because of some of his uptight attitudes and propensity for taking credit for things like inventing deathmatch levels or "designing Quake" (w/o qualification).

[Vorpal]

Starting around the doom3/hl2 era "level designer" lost its meaning, as nobody has enough time to end-to-end make a level in these engines. Instead you have guys who do layout, or lighting, or AI scripting, or modelling. The lion's share of work is probably in the modelling department these days. On the rare occasion that you do encounter a commercial quality fanmade map for a modern engine, if you check further you often find that it took the guy 2-4 years to make.

[Steve D]

25 minutes ago, Vorpal said:

On the rare occasion that you do encounter a commercial quality fanmade map for a modern engine, if you check further you often find that it took the guy 2-4 years to make.

 

Whoah. So it takes teams to make a modern map? I guess one question in my mind is how they do the architecture. Back in the GTK Radiant days, a single person could still make a map on their own for the Quake games. Where was the cut-off point? Doom 3? Crysis? Far Cry? Half Life 2?

[Vorpal]

4 minutes ago, Steve D said:

 

Whoah. So it takes teams to make a modern map? I guess one question in my mind is how they do the architecture. Back in the GTK Radiant days, a single person could still make a map on their own for the Quake games. Where was the cut-off point? Doom 3? Crysis? Far Cry? Half Life 2?

 

Yeah, I mean I'm sure plenty of indie games have one guy responsible for the top to bottom of a map e.g. Grimrock, but for big studio productions nobody does "everything". I believe Casali talks about it briefly in a recent podcast with 40oz. I use doom3 as a cutoff because that's when id went on a hiring craze, primarily for art/lighting talent - so a sort of inflection point at least for id, other companies probably shifted to the compartmentalized approach to map design way before id.

[Steve D]

1 hour ago, Vorpal said:

I use doom3 as a cutoff because that's when id went on a hiring craze, primarily for art/lighting talent - so a sort of inflection point at least for id, other companies probably shifted to the compartmentalized approach to map design way before id.

 

Thanks for the link to that podcast. Listening to it as I write.

 

Would the art team be primarily concerned with textures and prefabs? Or would they be involved with modeling as well?

 

I downloaded GTK Radiant, so I plan to eventually do some Quake mapping and also take a shot at Doom 3 . . . in the fullness of time. ;) 

[Caffeine Freak]

As I recall, the principal level designers were Matt Hooper, Jerry Keehan, Mal Blackwell and Tim Willits. In game development, a lot of people will have their hands in the creation of levels, so it's a certainty that others did things as well, such as terrain/cave modelling. Also, somebody else created all the level soundscapes, not one of the level designers.

 

But yeah. 4 main level designers if my recollection is correct.

[DooM_RO]

8 hours ago, Vorpal said:

Starting around the doom3/hl2 era "level designer" lost its meaning, as nobody has enough time to end-to-end make a level in these engines. Instead you have guys who do layout, or lighting, or AI scripting, or modelling. The lion's share of work is probably in the modelling department these days. On the rare occasion that you do encounter a commercial quality fanmade map for a modern engine, if you check further you often find that it took the guy 2-4 years to make.

 

I know this is the case but then how are people able to churn out maps for the Dark Mod on a semi-regular basis?

[hardcore_gamer]

8 hours ago, DooM_RO said:

 

I know this is the case but then how are people able to churn out maps for the Dark Mod on a semi-regular basis?

 

80/20 rule.

 

80% of the effort is spent on 20% of the detail. Hobby mappers spend as much time working on the map as they have to in order to make it look good, but skip on some of the more advanced levels of detail and polish that an actual AAA studio would produce. The end result is a good looking map that while impressive overall still doesn't really look AS good as something made by actual pro devs.

 

Example: All the little cables and pipes in the main Doom 3 campaign. Those little details took A LOT of effort to make.

[DooM_RO]

13 minutes ago, hardcore_gamer said:

 

80/20 rule.

 

80% of the effort is spent on 20% of the detail. Hobby mappers spend as much time working on the map as they have to in order to make it look good, but skip on some of the more advanced levels of detail and polish that an actual AAA studio would produce. The end result is a good looking map that while impressive overall still doesn't really look AS good as something made by actual pro devs.

 

Example: All the little cables and pipes in the main Doom 3 campaign. Those little details took A LOT of effort to make.

 

I know what you mean but there actually are quite a few Dark Mod levels that have that level of quality.

 

For example, most levels by Bikerdude and Melan. There is also Down by the Riverside and other fantastic maps.

[DooM_RO]

It also probably took longer because they were innovating and making new workflows. 

 

Even if you are making a map for a wholly different game what you played before has a huge impact on the creation process and Id likely didn't have a point of reference for that level of detail.