Ultimate Game Design : Building game worlds

your archway mesh, you can place archways all over your map and move them
around like a construction set piece. This method is very useful when building up
maps and levels.
File referencing allows you to create plenty of detail and complexity by making efficient
reuse of models. It is memory-smart, because once a referenced piece or model
is loaded into memory, a game engine can place referenced models everywhere they
are required, knowing how to draw the item in every instance based on the one instance.
Go ahead, put the “archway” piece everywhere it is called for. Every piece is
not utterly unique. Every piece has maximum reuse value, which we need for solid
performance and for building up complexity.
Step Five: Start Checking Layout Details
C H A P T E R 2
After placing instanced items like archway pieces or columns with canopy pieces all
over the map, your level geometry begins to take shape. You can follow your agreedupon
grid system to make early positional adjustments and start to move a character
or temporary character (sometimes just a cube the grid size of an upcoming character).
At this point, you are mainly checking for sizing, scaling, grid issues, and bad geometry
(parts of the mesh that have errors or can be simplified).
GAME PROTOTYPING
One of the biggest current challenges in game development is game prototyping. How
do you test out or “prove” game ideas from concept to execution? These days, before
proceeding with actual game development, game publishers require solid proof that a
game idea is fun, engaging, extremely play-friendly, and commercially relevant.
Publishers routinely require that game developers provide a sophisticated proof of
concept (POC) that demonstrates a working version of their game. For most independent
developers, preparing such a POC for submission to a publisher can involve
substantial costs, and does not guarantee a publishing agreement.
There is no easy and affordable solution for testing a game idea. For example, suppose
your team is interested in building a 3-D isometric combat racing game. The
simple game heartbeat might be to combine traditional racing with car-to-car combat
in an isometric setting. A three-quarters or isometric camera view allows players
to view entire sections of the track at once, perhaps laying down hazards to thwart
their opponent, and gathering power-ups to cause havoc on the racetrack for everyone
around them. How do you test this game idea? If you don’t have a complete game
engine which can be customized quickly, and even if you do, considerable resources
at a substantial cost will have to be thrown at taking a game idea like this through to
the complete POC stage.
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Level Planning and Building