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1/8 A random advice for beginner Level Designers based on my experience: try to balance two approaches to designing levels. The 1st - rushing to build your idea(s) in editor asap. And the 2nd - trying to plan for everything outside of editor before building it. #leveldesign #tips
2/ The flaws of the 1st one: you'll most likely be stuck pretty soon. Not knowing what to build next, how to meaningfully connect spaces together can be very discouraging. Or if you've enough courage the final result may be incoherent/inconsistent. Unless it's a small level/area.
3/ The flaws of the 2nd approach: you will probably be putting too much efforts into a beautiful 2D/3D map without checking scale, distances, LOS, height differences and other important stuff directly in editor. When you finally build in editor your plan may start to fall apart.
4/ Balance= Iterations and applying two methods by turns. Start with a rough idea of what you want to build. Use Molecular Level Design, flow charts and think about pacing. Think in spaces: "connection between spaces", "stealth/combat/traversal only space", "opportunities space".
5/ At this stage keep the selected theme(s) in mind to arrange spaces and distribute Landmarks and Points of Interest meaningfully. To aid Players with mental mapping later in these spaces. A good read on this: clement-melendez.com/portfolio/arti… Also read the whole article, it's great!
6/ Then jump into an Editor, build those spaces roughly. Don't go too much into details. But place human-made objects and NPC (even static meshes will do) for scaling reference. At this step it's very important to check scale, distances, LOS, height differences directly in game.
7/ Checking your initial ideas and planning directly in a game will help you to identify issues and fix them earlier. When you find them - adjust the planning accordingly. Keep you geometry simple and easily adjustable. Use good tools: Geometry - UE4, ProBuilder/SabreCSG - Unity.
8/ The more you do this exercise "Idea -> Rough Planning (Flow charts) -> Build in Editor -> Check in game -> Adjust the plan" - the less adjusting will be needed and the better level designer you will become. I hope this ranting will help someone. :)
