[Gideon Zhi]

Okay so I'm on-and-off hacking a platformer game (blaster master.) A lot of the fun here is exploring, and while conceptually I've got the level design in my hack down really awesome, I'm having trouble building rooms that aren't really really bland. So I thought I'd start this thread here, especially since there was that whole discussion surrounding the Zelda Parallel Worlds hack.

What makes a good platformer? Not necessarily in terms of difficulty - I've got a good idea of where I want my difficulty to lie, and I know all about fair jumps and enemy placement and all that. What I'm more interested in is the actual level design. What makes a platformer more interesting than another? How does one keep from making lots of Really Boring Straightaways? Discuss! Someone throw me a bone here.
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Aeon Genesis ~ Ambassador Thorman great man! I do anything he say!

[Intentionally Wrong]

I've been trying to respond to this. My first approach was to try to break down the platformers I've played into several different categories and identify what works and what doesn't work for each category. I wound up with two categories that corresponded roughly to "Mario games" and "everything else". That's a bit useless.

Let me instead say that my patience for obstacles in platforming games has to do with how difficult it is to navigate the obstacle and how appropriate the obstacle is in the context of the game.

Consider Knytt. The Knytt is very mobile; it can run pretty quickly, jump, climb up or slide down walls, jump from walls--there isn't really any terrain that's a hassle to deal with. Like many games, Knytt uses landscape architecture to typify its regions; lots of open or flat space in villages, steep hills in the deserted areas, single-block irregularities in tunnels and hills... Two great examples of this kind of design are the rocky spires a few screens to the left of the Ico-inspired castle, and the underground lake just down and to the right from the village of humans. These areas aren't exactly difficult to traverse, but because their obstacles are so flavorful, I find them cool and memorable.

Because Knytt doesn't contain any kind of map, the only real difficulty comes from the world's layout. Go through the wrong one-way passage and you'll find yourself in a maze-like series of tunnels which cycle back around in a circle; it's much easier to wander through this cycle over and over again than it is to find the exit. These mazes bump up the difficulty, but they don't really do it in a satisfying manner--it's not a challenge to use your abilities in the right way; it's a challenge BECAUSE of a LACK of an ability, and so it's frustrating. They don't add much aesthetically, either, and in consequence I can't remember where they are. I think one might be beneath the rock spires I mentioned earlier? Maybe.


The point I'm flailing away at here is just that arbitrary structures become more interesting when they're put into some sort of coherent organization and in some way recognized.

---

The Mario games use a kind of "mechanical platforming" model, where most of the obstacles and platforms have their own rules: this can be jumped through, this can be bumped, this can be broken, this can be entered, and so on. Interest and challenge comes from novel combinations of these elements; the physicality of the rules leads to a visceral game experience. I only become critical of the design if I'm not being challenged.

(I'm not sure whether this last bit is relevant or not; it's a leftover from when I was trying to categorize platformers. Maybe someone will find it useful.)
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JSNLV is frequently and intentionally wrong.

[Mr. Business]

You could try my (not) patented technique that I used to create a few Zombie City Tactics maps. While ZCT ain't a platformer, it works similarly enough that this technique could be used to create a few interesting jumping puzzles or tightly-packed hallways:

First, choose a short phrase like "fuck you" or "waffle taste." Now, using your map editor (assuming that you have a GUI map editor. If you don't, then this method might be overly time consuming), spell that phrase out in one basic block type on the screen.

Now that you have your words all blocked out, begin arbitrarily removing blocks until the phrase is no longer recognizable as such. What you should be left with is a rather random and usually fairly diverse arrangement of blocks.

Once you have the blocks arranged to your liking in a relatively random pattern, go back through and add details, change which blocks are used where, and generally spiff things up. I can't really help you here, but my best advice is don't overdo it on the variety of blocks. The block arrangement shouldn't look like an exquisite-corpse drawing.

Also, as a general rule of thumb, I notice that a lot of platforming games force the players into cramped, close combat situations. Hallways that are narrow, vertically or horizontally, are pretty great for building tension in the player.
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Taking a break.

[SplashBeats]

I think logical placement of elements adds a lot to making a good level. The Knytt example above made me think of this. Does this cave feel like a cave? Does this ruin feel like a ruin?

A good example of how NOT to do this right are the last couple Castlevania games.

[Intentionally Wrong]

I think a lot of Castlevania's recent problems come from trying to make large, winding maps with extremely detailed graphical tiles--which, for the sake of efficiency, wind up being the size of entire rooms. This is fine for low-impact rooms like save points; when your entire level is made up of these things, it becomes a little tiresome.

Cave Story is still my number one game for using level design to convey a vivid sense of place. With varying level structures, integration between levels and hubs, revisiting levels to find new level architecture, and excellent use of graphical decorations, the world of Cave Story is the most memorable two-dimensional place I've ever explored.

(And to think, I'd never have played it if it hadn't been for the hard work of Gideon Zhi here and Shih Tzu! Thanks again!)
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JSNLV is frequently and intentionally wrong.

[haze]

putting in useless clutter may sound "gamey" but I think maybe there's something to it



these columns of blocks don't really serve any purpose, they might as well have been a flat straight-away. but it makes a fun little obstacle course, something to do instead of just running right. maybe the player is new, and will get stuck in the gaps, then this helps train for jump timing. for most players, though, it's no sweat at all to run and jump over the whole lot. they can ignore it completely, or maybe fool around. use it to see how quickly they can jump it, maybe they'll try to hit the ceiling instead.

it's not really that important, it's just a bunch of blocks with no danger besides that one goomba, there's no reward there for thoroughly searching. i'm not saying it's MIYAMOTO'S GENIUS or anything like that, but perhaps a little sign of whimsy that gives the stages some life.

but hey, there certainly are a lot of secrets in Mario. who hasn't wondered if there might be a secret in one of those ceiling blocks? in an exploration game like Blaster Master, it can add mystery to ordinary places as well. "hey i wonder if there's something on that block up there.... or maybe it's just a decoration"


and another thing which I'm not sure about may just be those rare moments when you get to choose your way through a stage. like the Sand Zone in Cave Story, that one part where you had to shoot your way through walls of blocks, because stepping on the sand makes the crocodiles snap up at you. do you go high or low? even if it's a really simple choice, it makes the player consider what they've learned from the game's physics. say there's an enemy ahead, and a platform in front of it, and the player has to choose whether to attack from on top or below. maybe the enemy's weak and easy and the choice doesn't matter, but at least it gets the gears turning in the player's head.
somehow that leads to fun? I have no idea why. Maybe it's because it feels like "learning" instead of reacting to something you've already seen so many tiems and memorized.


I hope I make sense, I'm horrible at explaining things. Does anyone see these kinds of stage layouts the same way as I do?

[Mr. Business]

[L]

[v84j3gs2uc7ns4]

[Koji]

Metroid games have a lot of lessons to teach; examining them with a critical eye (as well as any other game) would help you a lot. The original NES Metroid, for instance, starts by laying down its design principles: You appear in the middle of a 'cave,' with alien architecture and two hostile-looking creatures (they have spikes) near you. First reaction is to shoot them down (as you should soon learn that you have the ability to do that and jump,) or simply avoid them. But then you have the choice to either go left or right. If you decide to go right you'll face some more monsters, and eventually reach a dead-end: there's a small tunnel half your size, but you can't crouch into it. So you go back left, and find a structure that has the same small tunnel underneath, but this one you can climb. So you climb it and reach the other side. As a player you might or might not notice that you can't go back by those same means, but you're trapped in a room that you can't exit until you grab the Morph Ball item, which sits on a prominent figure, so you can't miss it. You grab it and a fanfare plays: you know that you did something right. So now you might notice that you can't go forward or back by simply jumping or blasting, so you attempt something different, and eventually learn that you can now roll into a ball and go through both tunnels you noticed before.

By this short sequence you have learned that the game is about exploring, that there are hostile creatures in the area, and that you should find items that will help you overcome different obstacles.

Don't create just obstacle courses, put meaning into your level design, in every sense. That's the best advice I can give you.

[Gideon Zhi]

This is an interesting read, for a number of reasons. First off, I have not played the aforesaid hack, although I do know the author. (He's granted me use of any of his ASM-level hacks, provided I can pull them from the hack itself.) Secondly, I wish to make this very open-ended. I don't want each area to be so maze-like that the player gets completely lost in them, admittedly, and the whole hub-sector thing ties itself in well with Blaster Master in general and the ideas I've had for some of my levels so far.

The general concept is that the final Area will require all of the powerups from the earlier Areas to complete, but that all of the other Areas (and their respective Underbosses) will be accessible right from the outset. There will be a couple of different ways to reach each boss, generally a "short" way and a "long" way, with the former being accessible if you have a particular upgrade but with nothing ever actually being completely locked out from the player. The "long" routes will usually have a particular challenge that the player would need to be overcome - a lengthy out-of-tank sequence, a wall that you need to climb using Wall 1 with those flying enemies zooming across the screen, or the like.

I'm also considering putting upgrades in the stages that can't be accessed unless you have a particular item. Example: There's a platform above the player's head in Area 1. Without the hover power, it's inaccessible. If you come back with the Hover power, you get an item that halves the amount of damage received (for instance.)

Here are some more snaps. I made the first room smaller, but the idea of the straightaway has given me a really nifty idea for a later Area.

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Aeon Genesis ~ Ambassador Thorman great man! I do anything he say!

[v84j3gs2uc7ns4]

[Max Cola]

Though I am no game designing virtuoso or awesome hacker, I do think long and hard about what makes platformers good. I think variety has a lot to do with it. Super Mario Bros. 3 is a great example - it uses lots of dfferent ideas. Sometimes it even uses little one-off things, like the Kuribo's Shoe level - something you see and do once and never again.

And could level 8-1 one of SMB be any fucking longer? I ran out of time more often there than in any other level - even the maze castles. Meanwhile, 8-3 is far shorter and contains little platforming, but lots of enemies. It's the final battlefield before you enter the last castle. That's a cool idea and a good example of good level design.
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Everybody hurts sometimes

[Gideon Zhi]

Here's the neat idea that the comment on straightaways spawned - area 4 will be an underground highway, really long and mostly straight, that connects to areas 1, 2, 3, and 5 (and area 8, but only if you have the right stuff.)

My other ideas for stages so far are a weapons production facility, a flood control dam, a genetics research lab, and a bio-organic sort of area, like the last area of the original game but with less (really annoying) spikes. To address the possible issue of difficulty progression, I have the entire world mapped in a rather "tiered" fashion; areas 1 and 2 sit on top, with 3-5 below them, 6 and 7 below them and 8 at the bottom. The further down the player goes, the more plentiful (or at least nastier looking) the enemies will be, and the more uninviting the environments should seem.

The great thing about Blaster Master is that the "forced" upgrades don't generally make you any stronger, they just make you a little more maneuverable. With the exception of the Dive module, this tends to have little bearing on actual combat - Hover mode is too slow to be worth fighting in, Key is almost entirely useless, Hyper and Crusher don't make you any stronger (they let you defeat a guardian monster and blow away weak bricks, respectively.) The only things that might be useful at all are Wall 1 and Wall 2, which let you cling to the walls and ceilings respectively; this makes it a bit harder to control, sometimes, and I'm actually hoping to replace Wall 2 with an unlimited hover upgrade. Other things, like weapon and armor modules which are not part of the original game you'd have to go out of your way to acquire. The player who simply wishes to beat the game may do so, while the adventurous sort who goes out of his way to explore may find himself making the game a little easier. I suppose the trick is then to gauge the difficulty so that it doesn't feel overstrenuous without the extra powerups, so the player doesn't feel obligated to go out of his way to collect them (in a similar fashion to heart tanks in Megaman X) but is nicely rewarded for doing so anyway.
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Aeon Genesis ~ Ambassador Thorman great man! I do anything he say!

[v84j3gs2uc7ns4]

[Baines]

Megaman is a good example of increasing abilities making a relatively free-path game easier as you progress.

There is a possible solution. The funny thing is that Megaman X arguably did the opposite

In Megaman X, beating certain stages affected other stages. Except there it almost always made the other stages easier. Fire is replaced with safe ice. A pit floods with water, making an otherwise impossible jump possible. Etc.

Instead, you could make aspects of the game harder as the player upgrades.

For example, if the player gets a homing shot weapon, upgrade a docile straight flying drone enemy into something more aggressive. When the player gets the ability to swim freely underwater, flood a few areas and put more dangerous enemies there.

You don't have to make everything more difficult. But change a few things so that the difficulty at least keeps pace.

With a lot of power-ups and a large area, you still need to be careful though. You don't necessarily want to shut out an area with too high a difficulty if a player gets a really weird power-up combination. Or maybe you might not mind... Keeping changes related to the powerups could help in that regard. You don't necessarily want pure evil in the skies to appear from someone grabbing a swim boost. (Or maybe you do, if you've got enough underwater alternate routes.)

Maybe a player might not even notice a change, if he takes items in a particular order. Maybe he won't grab the item that triggers earthquakes (reshaping) primarily in the lightning gun and multi-shot areas until after he has both those weapons. Don't worry. Maybe that just was his good luck. (Or possibly bad, if it did make a spot or two easier.) You don't necessarily want the player dreading picking up powerups, though having a knowing player actually pause to consider might be good.

[v84j3gs2uc7ns4]