The Hows and Whys of Level Design by Hourences

This is the book that a few have requested from me to re-upload, from years back. It's an excellent book to this day.

Description from his website at

Aimed at amateur and aspiring level designers who wish to improve their skills.

Covers design, gameplay, and visuals.

Does not explain how to create a room or a light. Rather it explains the reasoning behind why you would want to make that room or light. It describes the reasoning behind the creation of virtual environments.

Primarily focuses on level design for first person and third person action-orientated games.

Well-illustrated with over a hundred screenshots.

Features interviews with six game industry professionals.

Level design is one of the most important, influential, and complex aspects of video and computer games. It is a fairly new design form and is maturing rapidly. As the available hardware capabilities and associated technology continue to increase in complexity, level design will also become increasingly complex. This book will help both aspiring and veteran designers come to terms with future changes in level design. Rather than addressing the usual ?how to make a room?, or ?how to place a light?, this book tackles how to make that room look good. The book details why certain decisions are made in order to achieve the design goal, and how to plan the route to the goal: the hows and whys.

The chapters within describe all aspects of level design; from the initial design phase, to gameplay for singleplayer and multiplayer levels, to visual aspects regarding lighting and architecture, and more. The overall purpose is to explain the theories behind level design. It covers why light color X or architectural feature Y would work better in situation Z rather than color A or architecture B. It describes why a level is fun and what the level design does to enhance it: the ?do?s and don?ts? of creating environments for games.

Enjoy!!