Level Design - General Layout Guidelines

[Elinora]

[paragraph:1rdep49t]So i've come to the conclusion that, layout has a greater importance than the beauty of a zone. The layout is there to give a flow and make the zone time-efficient. So you may have this awesome idea of a zone (and i've have not realized it for 2 years of wow map modding) And you tend to just build it out of your head(This is called happy accident). This usually results in a rather clumsy-yet-pretty layout. That is sadly not very good when looking at it from a layout perspective.. The zone may be pretty, but the layout is perhaps terrible and the quest designer then have to work around the horrible layout[/paragraph:1rdep49t]
[paragraph:1rdep49t]So basicly I am going to pull you through the process of first, drawing up the zone (in noggit, no need for mad photoshop skills when you're doing the landscape concepts)[/paragraph:1rdep49t]
[paragraph:1rdep49t]Now before I start.. Keep in mind for a few key shortcuts & colours i'll be using

• Red = House/buildings
• Blue = Road
• Black = Sketch Outlines
• Yellow = Misc
• EC = Enemy Camp (which usually refers to as the area where you have your enemies, and in those areas you usually have to have a few doodads representing a hostile creature
• SEA = Obviously a sea, or a river
• +<number> = the height of the terrain or waterlevel
• The Doghead = minicliff (kinda like a pylon of rock)

[/paragraph:1rdep49t]
[paragraph:1rdep49t]I will also include some reference gathering art and how to use them. - So lets start
So super basic, I have a zone here, I call it 22 - I won't say the actual name, but it's 22 for us. Now I want this to be a zone with jungle & a bit of beach and open space.
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[paragraph:1rdep49t]So what I do is that first, I paint it all white, to give us the sense of a sheet. And then I lay out what I wanna do
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[paragraph:1rdep49t]in addition to that, before you start moulding the terrain and texturing the zone, You have to make sure you got the scale checked out before you begin. - For that I use a 250 cube, a 350 cube (I know it isn't in the menu) and a 500 cube. - Together with a human scale figure & I textured a road to a fitting scale. This way we now know what scale we're heading for
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[paragraph:1rdep49t]So now i've done the basic terrain for the zone, and it's time that we look at how it's starting to take form, I untoggled the height contour but the ground is also uneven to make it look more realistic once it's all textured, because ofcourse there is no nature in real life that is perfectly flat.
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[paragraph:1rdep49t]Now i'll be picking the colour pallet & then i'll begin texturing the zone, which is a long process depending on the details, I personally stick to the very blurry painterly theme so I don't spend more than 17-18 hours texturing this kind of zone, sometimes faster, sometimes a bit slower, depends on how focused I am! - A lot of people ask me to show them how to texture, Really it isn't something you can teach people, it's completely something you learn by yourself, and everyone does it differently.
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[paragraph:1rdep49t]Now while texturing & adding models, I can talk about confidence in the level design.. Once you're confident, messing up with the layout, or doing spontaneous designs, isn't something you're afraid of.. Look at this image.. This looks terrible now right? But in the end it will all look great, because you know better than anyone, how good it's gonna be in the end, because you just planned everything and you know exactly what you're heading for!
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[paragraph:1rdep49t]Now Since I wanted this guide to be out quick I'd like to add the finished zone layout design later since it will take me a couple of days to make it due to the next couple of days i'll be busy with some life stuff! - But to end it for today, i'll add some different rock/mountain types, just using the same texture as I use in the tutorial zone.[/paragraph:1rdep49t]
[paragraph:1rdep49t]So yeah here are 3 of the different mountain types, i'll not include all of the types I can figure out, but these are some of them, roughly textured!
[/paragraph:1rdep49t]
[paragraph:1rdep49t]So to pull a few key things together in this first part of the guidelines:

• Seperate the zone in half, have perhaps a horde and alliance side, or areas dedicated to them.
• Use the 3-6-9 template we know from writing books, that you always have atleast 3 of said things.. For example I tend to keep my EC's above the 3, even if the zone is 4 adt's.. which is pretty much the smallest you can call a zone.
• Remember to figure out the road.. You want it to be smart so you don't have to fight with texture limit.. if possible, don't ever have the road near a rock.. if you do, make sure you're not in need for extra detail texture (like flowers for example)
• Always scale it properly.. Make sure that when you've drawn the sketch, that you've also scaled it properly.. For example, a loose road in the jungle is only above 2.66-3.20 brush size.. Rarely ever more than that.
• The doghead is always the aesthetic mountain.. A mountain that is there only to give the zone depth.. or to make the terrain seem less flat.
• always try and introduce sea, or valleys. to give it a sense of nature.
• try always to make the EC's stand out. Build a camp, or darken the grass, for example in this tutorial, the EC's are corrupt orcs, so i'll be making the terrain corrupt aswell.
• Try it in-game to see if the scale is proper.. Run around and see if it's too much running, before you start with the detail texturing

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[paragraph:1rdep49t]that's it for me
Please check back in about a week and i'll have the full guide up![/paragraph:1rdep49t]

[Jøk3r]

Nice!
In my opinion this was missing on modcraft!
In think this will help people making a "playable" zone and not just a beautiful one : D

[Elinora]

Nice!
In my opinion this was missing on modcraft!
In think this will help people making a "playable" zone and not just a beautiful one : D

Actually a layout plan CAN make it prettier :3

[Pinkhair3d]

Excellent guide, covers a lot of fundamentals that are often missed.

[Elinora]

Thanks for the feedback :3

[TheBuG]

because ofcourse there is no nature in real life that is perfectly flat.

Lies, go to the Netherlands! (Picture!)

Besides that, not a bad guide, but remember that it might not apply to battlegrounds (in general they are mostly symmetric).

[Steff]

Another tip is to start with details doodad sets and detail doodads and have a look that they fit. I just started to dd ground effects and find out that then the mass of doodads i have already spawmed dont fit to the ground effects sets.

[Elinora]

Yeah steff when I get back to work i'll add it, And.. Screw netherlands

[TheBuG]

Yeah steff when I get back to work i'll add it, And.. Screw netherlands

    :cry:

[Elinora]

Yeah steff when I get back to work i'll add it, And.. Screw netherlands

    :cry:

<3

[Elinora]

because ofcourse there is no nature in real life that is perfectly flat.

Besides that, not a bad guide, but remember that it might not apply to battlegrounds (in general they are mostly symmetric).

 This actually encouraged me to create a BG layout guide

[axel0099]

O:

Screw the Netherlands ;(
^
^
^
nice to tell you, I am from the Netherlands :/

[Elinora]

O:

Screw the Netherlands ;(
^
^
^
nice to tell you, I am from the Netherlands :/

Ok ok ok! Screw the flat parts of Netherlands then!

[TheBuG]

O:

Screw the Netherlands ;(
^
^
^
nice to tell you, I am from the Netherlands :/

Ok ok ok! Screw the flat parts of Netherlands then!

Like 95% of the Netherlands are flat!

[Elinora]

O:

Screw the Netherlands ;(
^
^
^
nice to tell you, I am from the Netherlands :/

Ok ok ok! Screw the flat parts of Netherlands then!

Like 95% of the Netherlands are flat!

PFFF STOP MAKING ME LOOK BAD!