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Book Overview & Buying
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Table Of Contents
Level Up! The Guide to Great Video Game Design - Second Edition
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Armed with your level maps, you are now ready to start building (or have an artist start building) your game levels. But hold on there, tiger! Before you even start thinking about enemies, mechanics, or even detailed geometry, you will have to flesh out your level in gray box form.
A gray box level is created within an art tool (Maya and 3D Studio Max are the two most common industry art tools, although others exist, like the open-source tool Blender). The gray box level shows the scale, size, and relationship of basic elements pertaining to camera and character metrics. It is pivotal in determining scale, camera, and pacing. Spend time running your game character around the gray box level. Have others play the level to find confusing areas and trouble spots. Iterate on your level while it’s still easy to make big sweeping changes. You may find that a level works better if you rip out an entire section and stitch the remaining pieces together. A straight hallway may...
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