Does writing articles count as a level design portofolio?
I'm dreaming about the industry and have made some few levels for unreal, quake, but with tech that is 20 years old by now. I began to read a lot of articles about design, game design, level design and started a site to collect all those readings and write about it myself. I ended up writing much more than really producing practical levels.
The site began after I played some FPS games with bad level design that left me lost with no clues about what to do, where to go. I asked myself "If I were designing a level, what should I avoid? What mistakes can I see in those games that I can learn from?". From that question my site began. The first pages covered some basic visual stuff that I've learned from some old unreal tutorials that are long gone because they were hosted on sites that no longer exist or the author closed his or her own site long ago.
I'm currently on the process of rethinking the site becase as it is now it's a mess. I choose to no focus on any specific tech but stick to concepts. From what I know about my own skills I'm not on that side of producing concept art, illustrations and such. I wish I could learn a bit about AI and 3D graphics but I need also to be aware that knowing it all is not possible.
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writing about level design will not supplement a portfolio but, it may enhance one. if you were to put your research and observations into practice, your writings will become more informed and provably valid.
You are pretty much right. I added a new category to analyse my own maps. The idea is to apply what I learned to my own levels. After doing this for three levels I realised what you just said. How can I talk about gameplay if I didn't had that focus when I made the level? I just can't! Then how am I supposed to talk about gameplay of levels that I didn't make? While I can say that there are issues here and there, I can't know what the developer was thinking.
For now I decided to stop adding any new articles to my site. It's going to take quite some time to repurpose it. There is no value in talking about problems in levels without showing how I can solve then. How to solve problems in level design is what I need to show.
https://sites.google.com/view/leveldesigner/english-version/case-studies?authuser=0
Finished analysing my own maps. 7 maps. The other maps are not worth a portfolio. They were drafts or child's play.
And the truth is: my current level of quality is just too low, not even close to the minimum bar.
I'm focusing on blockouts. I made some design analysis and blockouts.
I was considering renaming my site to "Environment Design". As it stands it mixes env art with level design. I really need to rearrange everything in it because I never really tried to sort it properly.
I haven't applied to any studio yet because I don't think I can without having any completed project. I have the old maps but I want to have at least one completed project on a modern engine, which is why I'm making a CTF map in UE5. In the last few months I bought a new high end computer and did two blockouts, with a design alysis published under "case studies" in my site.
Instead, focus your effort on gathering your existing work and presenting it as well as possible, as well as producing more work representative of position you want to land.
Leveldesigner - Deck16 analysis (google.com)
Now I'm attempting to make a CTF map. I choose CTF because I played so much CTF and arena maps that I felt I was more comfortable with it than making something else.
Level Design Breakdown | "Infiltration" Blockout - YouTube This really inspired me to make something similar, after I'm done with the CTF map. I really have the intention to learn scripting in some form because there are multiple ideas that I have that can only happen if I learn the scripting part.