Ultimate Game Design : Building game worlds

Building Game Worlds
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U L T I M A T E G A M E D E S I G N
drawings, and then provide some rough lighting and texturing and try to play in the area as soon as
possible to see if it “works.”
Are the areas too big, too small, too boring, or too confusing? Then it’s just a question of feedback,
refinement, and more feedback and refinement. Until, hopefully, a great environment is produced.
TM: Do “real” floor plans translate into exciting game geometry? Do you consider them a point of
reference?
AH: They can, but I think that most often while one can start with a realistic house or town, one is
going to want to tweak it. Exaggerate it for effect. Except if your game requires verisimilitude such as
a baseball field or a car racing game.
TM: When it comes to basic environmental design, what would you say about room entry and exit,
room flow (room to room), and transitioning from interior to exterior spaces? This happens plenty in
most games.
AH: Well I think that the flow of spaces has to be somewhat grounded in reality. In the study of
architecture, flow is an important aspect of designing any space and is equally important in the game
world.
That being said, sometimes one needs to tweak the reality to get a more fulfilling game
experience … I am thinking of Half-Life, for instance, where the spaces are almost caricatures
of actual physical spaces.
TM: Do you build or plan on paper before geometry construction begins?
AH: Definitely. Yes! I sketch a floor plan and some elevations and then do some rough axon metrics
(3-D views) of the space. I go back and forth … plan, elevations, and 3-D and back to plan again until I
get something polished.
TM: What is the learning process like for 3-D environmental work? How does one begin?
AH: A lot of it is trial and error. I travel to unusual spaces or environments. I draw a lot and
photograph as much as possible and then do research for the particular project at hand. Then it comes
down to modeling the environment and experiencing it first hand to see if it works. Trial and error, and
hopefully each time it gets a little easier because each time I am adding to my knowledge of what makes
environments work.
TM: Should game geometry be built with more modularity?
AH: It depends on the nature of the beast. A lot of shooters can get by on modularity, where it’s
almost more the pursuit that’s important.
But if your game required, say, rooms in a mansion, there would be a downside to having it all
modular, as the aspect of uniqueness in the spaces contributes to the feel of the game and forces one
to confront each room as a different puzzle to solve. So it really depends on the type of game you are
making I think.
TM: What would modularity mean for game production speed? Could designers build environments
faster that way?
AH: I think that is definitely a good thing to consider. When doing Mos Eisley we did it in a
modular fashion because of the twin requirements of storage capacity, which was low, and the need
for visual complexity, which was high.
By varying the appearance of the same object by using scale and texture, we were able to create
the appearance of complexity while only drawing on the resources required for a few models. Thus,
modularity was the way to go. And it is faster to build a level this way, since you are using a kit of