[ QUOTE ] Polyphony Digital. Bizarre Creations. Climax. All used Laguna Seca, a pre-existing environment and played their game in it. Foolish developers. [/ QUOTE ] Meh! You know what I meant. I'm referring to "flaps" ( ) which are new/original/custom environments and scenes created for a game. IMHO racing games are a…
[ QUOTE ] Sprunghunt - PES/FIFA/Madden/MLB/NFL don't have levels, do they? They have pitches/courts [/ QUOTE ] The things these sports games have are covered by the encompassing term 'level'. If it's a different environment then it's a different level. This includes the backgrounds in tetris which changed every so often.…
What Mop said is spot on. But I will add this- If you fancy yourself an environment artist, no matter what company you work for, knowing level design is a HUGE plus. When you have the chops such that you can build art that is friendly to level designers you're saving everyone iteration time and will have art that makes for…
[ QUOTE ] For smaller games and studios I reckon you'll often find a lot of overlap between "designer" and "level designer. But in bigger places you will have the people who focus purely on "core design" (the gameplay features) and never touch a map/layout/level/world, and then the people who focus on working within the…
Level designers is the title thats applied more often at companies with good solid technology where everything is centralized. Most places I've worked at or know of in the UK often have a more fractured development pipeline than here in the states now. By fractured I mean much of the level building takes place in max or…
[ QUOTE ] By fractured I mean much of the level building takes place in max or maya and a number of inhouse tools are used to composite the model assets and script the gameplay. [/ QUOTE ] while this is quite true for many aspects of development, i'm really referring to people who don't and cannot use max, maya or other…
You can call bollocks on me if you want, but I think you're misunderstanding me. What I'm calling bollocks on is the definition of the word "level" - and trying to differentiate between the idea of "level design" and "game design". Simply, how many games have "levels" as, as mop suggests to back me up, tradition…
My summary would be: A level is a discrete section of a game which has a beginning and an end, and does not comprise the entire game. Therefore I'd suggest that a game like an MMORPG like World of Warcraft doesn't really have "levels" as such, since it's all tied in as part of a big interconnecting world that the player…