The newest dev diary comes from the Fallout 3 level designing team and talks about level design.<blockquote>This exposed perhaps our most daunting design challenge; how do we communicate to the player who has been conditioned to expect to “complete” a level that D.C. is just too big to tackle in a sitting?
The game world is filled with tiny cues to try and communicate to the player that they should leave from time to time and return later. Most players realize soon into exploring downtown that the scope of the area is expansive. Character dialogue reinforces that the city is vast and dangerous. Connective areas are generally very short, and share a naming convention to reinforce that they aren't full-length level experiences, while full fledged levels are given names unique and more meaningful – such as the Museum of Technology or the Capitol Building – to hint at the nature of the level within. Expeditions into the heart of the city also tend to be much more trying than encounters in the Wasteland around Vault 101, the player's starting point. Low-level characters can expect to run home licking their wounds if they venture very far into the municipality of post-war D.C. There are also many discoverable map markers in the ruins. Each of these provides a fast travel point to return to as well as a small experience point reward for finding them. These cues serve as a sort of optional checkpoint system, reminding the player that they can take a trip to town, sell loot and rest up, then easily return to this spot to resume scavenging D.C. at a later time.
We also filled D.C. with small stories to help build the larger arc of the player’s experience. These stories are side quests from our quest designers, traditional levels with their own secrets to uncover, or one of numerous terminals, notes or recordings. Fallout is a world rife with the unfinished tales of lives cut short by nuclear holocaust, as well as those of unlucky survivors who scrabble out a meager life from such dire circumstances. With such a deep well from which to draw inspiration, time was the only limit on how many tales could be told. D.C. is full of these stories, told through any combination of text, dialogue, or more subtle venues.
The written word is a powerful and direct tool for storytelling. Much of our storytelling as level designers, however, is told with the voice of the world. For every space in the game, however minor, we asked ourselves “why is this here” and “what’s happened here?” Even when this back story isn’t conveyed directly to the player, it informs even minor level design decisions and lends an honest quality to the space. A lonely grave, a heap of human gore, or a long-abandoned outpost convey atmosphere and meaning without a single written word. These small stories all contribute to both the truth of setting and the unique narrative of each player’s experience playing Fallout 3. Their distribution through the world is designed to intersperse the player experience with more punctuation marks to keep time playing the game from blending into a hazy, forgettable miasma.</blockquote><center>
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Thanks Ausir.
The game world is filled with tiny cues to try and communicate to the player that they should leave from time to time and return later. Most players realize soon into exploring downtown that the scope of the area is expansive. Character dialogue reinforces that the city is vast and dangerous. Connective areas are generally very short, and share a naming convention to reinforce that they aren't full-length level experiences, while full fledged levels are given names unique and more meaningful – such as the Museum of Technology or the Capitol Building – to hint at the nature of the level within. Expeditions into the heart of the city also tend to be much more trying than encounters in the Wasteland around Vault 101, the player's starting point. Low-level characters can expect to run home licking their wounds if they venture very far into the municipality of post-war D.C. There are also many discoverable map markers in the ruins. Each of these provides a fast travel point to return to as well as a small experience point reward for finding them. These cues serve as a sort of optional checkpoint system, reminding the player that they can take a trip to town, sell loot and rest up, then easily return to this spot to resume scavenging D.C. at a later time.
We also filled D.C. with small stories to help build the larger arc of the player’s experience. These stories are side quests from our quest designers, traditional levels with their own secrets to uncover, or one of numerous terminals, notes or recordings. Fallout is a world rife with the unfinished tales of lives cut short by nuclear holocaust, as well as those of unlucky survivors who scrabble out a meager life from such dire circumstances. With such a deep well from which to draw inspiration, time was the only limit on how many tales could be told. D.C. is full of these stories, told through any combination of text, dialogue, or more subtle venues.
The written word is a powerful and direct tool for storytelling. Much of our storytelling as level designers, however, is told with the voice of the world. For every space in the game, however minor, we asked ourselves “why is this here” and “what’s happened here?” Even when this back story isn’t conveyed directly to the player, it informs even minor level design decisions and lends an honest quality to the space. A lonely grave, a heap of human gore, or a long-abandoned outpost convey atmosphere and meaning without a single written word. These small stories all contribute to both the truth of setting and the unique narrative of each player’s experience playing Fallout 3. Their distribution through the world is designed to intersperse the player experience with more punctuation marks to keep time playing the game from blending into a hazy, forgettable miasma.</blockquote><center>
Thanks Ausir.
