Udemy
Learn the ART of Level Design Part 1
Learn Design Principals and Techniques so you too, can build video game levels like the pros.| Length | 1 to 3 months |
| Effort | 3 hours per week |
| Price | $ 25 |
| Subject | Design, Art |
| Level | Beginner |
| Languages | English |
| Video Transcripts | None |
WHAT YOU ARE GOING TO LEARN:
Design compelling, engaging video game leves like a professional. To do this you need game design skills, and if you want to stand out from the crowd, you need to build your own levels and present your skills to potential clients / employers.
Drawing on 30 years of game development, experience in art and game design, and a game design book published by Pearson Education (not included), I will show you how to create your own game ready levels from scratch. You will begin with learning the basics of creating bubble diagrams and sketching on paper to iterate quickly, then onto creating a 3D game environment presented in Unity. You will learn to use pro builder and pro grids to aid in your level creations.
DESIGN / STORY / EMOTION:
Creating levels for games, is at the heart of this course, but it's also about the ideas and the game design process that spawn the levels and worlds in which we play our games. The story you can tell through level design and the emotion your scene can invoke is also key to creating a successful level, and I will show you techniques on how you can deliver that in this course.
DESIGN PRINCIPALS:
I will teach you over 30 design principals and level creation techniques that level designers use today in top selling AAA games. Principals like; Design From the Core; Foreshadowing; Exposure; Layering; Immersion; Fight or Flight; Up the Ante; Pacing; Progression; Player Feedback; Situational Awareness; Scalable Rewards; Difficulty Ramping; Enemy Placement; Loot Placement; Player Choice; Colour as a Design tool, and many, many more.
You will learn how to build a level in a 3D environment and install a character controller so you can explore and see your level from the players perspective, and come to realise what and iterative process level design actually is.
This course is perfect for anybody seriously wishing to pursue a career as a Level Designer in the video game industry and would like to follow the process of level design by building an entire white box scene using various design principals and techniques.
It's suitable for beginners to Intermediate levels. The more advanced designers may find that you're going over old ground in some areas, but it can still be a worthy refresher course. Over time, the course will get regular updates and keep on trend with industry techniques and standards. New content will also be added in the future.
PLEASE NOTE: This IS NOT AN ART COURSE. Level design is a very specific discipline within the games industry, and here we are primarily focusing on highly detailed, level creation process in white box form. I am also not a programmer so there is no prgramming in this course. However, I am going to add an additional section to cover some basic scripting at a later date, as an extra section to this course.
Who this course is for:- If you want to learn the fundamentals of level design, level building and how to iterate quickly like a pro, then this course is for you.
What you'll learn
You'll learn design principals and skills so you can design game levels like a pro. Quickly iterate, and get awesome results.
Course syllabus
Meet the instructors
Kevin Oxland
Game Developer, Creative Director and Writer
I designed, wrote and sold my first game on the Commodore 64 and have spent 30 years working in the video games industry as an artist, designer and writer.
I have developed games from the 8 bit Commodore 64 era through the 16 bit Amiga and consoles, like the SNES and SEGA Megadrive, right up to current day hardware.
I have worked for some of the top game companies like Ocean Software, Virgin Interactive Entertainment and Westwood Studios, and I've worked on many high profile products such as 'The Lion King' and 'Pinocchio' for Disney, Vita Pets and EyePet for Sony among many others. My current studio also worked on some key titles like 'Little Big Planet' and 'Motorstorm' for Sony, to name a few.
I now work in the industry as a Creative Director, working with the latest software and hardware for all current consoles, mobile devices and PC.
