Who designed what levels in Q3?
Who designed what levels in Q3?
There's a list like that on Wikipedia for Quake, but I haven't found one for Quake 3. Tried searching Google, but couldn't find any info about it. Does anyone know who designed what levels in Quake 3, or did they never tell?
Things are not as easy as it seems, levelediting @ IDsoftware is pretty much a coorporative effort. Basic layout ideas might have come from single persons, but the rest was pretty much like the 'pass the map' stuff going on in the mappers community.At least that's the answer we always got from Paul in the time he still frequented this site.
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GONNAFISTYA
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- Joined: Sun Jan 23, 2005 8:20 pm
This is exactly how all levels are created in commercial games. No one level designer is responsible for EVERYTHING in a level...it usually has several people putting their hands all over it.Hr.O wrote:Things are not as easy as it seems, levelediting @ IDsoftware is pretty much a coorporative effort. Basic layout ideas might have come from single persons, but the rest was pretty much like the 'pass the map' stuff going on in the mappers community.At least that's the answer we always got from Paul in the time he still frequented this site.
Oh, I always thought they designed everything themselves. Collaborating with other people with a map always seemed like it would take longer than if you made it yourself.GONNAFISTYA wrote:This is exactly how all levels are created in commercial games. No one level designer is responsible for EVERYTHING in a level...it usually has several people putting their hands all over it.Hr.O wrote:Things are not as easy as it seems, levelediting @ IDsoftware is pretty much a coorporative effort. Basic layout ideas might have come from single persons, but the rest was pretty much like the 'pass the map' stuff going on in the mappers community.At least that's the answer we always got from Paul in the time he still frequented this site.
Of course when I think about it, I understand that it's a whole different thing when you're in a team working on maps together and always communicating and giving critique to one and other. Collaboration on maps I guess is natural then. Cool.
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GONNAFISTYA
- Posts: 13369
- Joined: Sun Jan 23, 2005 8:20 pm
Sometimes it's a matter of a level designer simply coming up with the layout or mission structure (mostly by the lead) who assigns it to another level designer who adds gameplay, while another designer could add cutscenes or update certain areas due to iterations in the design. Also, depending on scripting, new features or changing all enemy archetypes (or pickups) in a level....this could be done by other designers.
Hell...I designed the layout for the "Research" and "Treehouse" levels in Far Cry but another level designer finished adding the gameplay to those levels while I did other design tasks. For the games we do at my current studio...every single level designer on the team (four of us) has done something to every single level/mission in the games....so no level belonged to anyone.
BTW...this isn't a case of "pass the map". It's because of the many (and expected) changes in the overall design as it progresses through production (even well past the beta stage) and has alot to do with who's available to work on it. Hell...some levels or missions get dropped completely and never see the light of day.
Again, depending on your skill or knowledge, level designers can find themselves doing alot more than just making levels (for example: designing/tweaking weapons or vehicles or scripting game events)
If a level designer in a commercial game tells someone "this is my map" and gets upset with any notion of someone else making changes to it....he's in the wrong industry.
Unfortunately...I've met and worked with people like this.
Hell...I designed the layout for the "Research" and "Treehouse" levels in Far Cry but another level designer finished adding the gameplay to those levels while I did other design tasks. For the games we do at my current studio...every single level designer on the team (four of us) has done something to every single level/mission in the games....so no level belonged to anyone.
BTW...this isn't a case of "pass the map". It's because of the many (and expected) changes in the overall design as it progresses through production (even well past the beta stage) and has alot to do with who's available to work on it. Hell...some levels or missions get dropped completely and never see the light of day.
Again, depending on your skill or knowledge, level designers can find themselves doing alot more than just making levels (for example: designing/tweaking weapons or vehicles or scripting game events)
If a level designer in a commercial game tells someone "this is my map" and gets upset with any notion of someone else making changes to it....he's in the wrong industry.
Unfortunately...I've met and worked with people like this.
Cool. Nice to get some insight into what's it like in the industry, thanks!GONNAFISTYA wrote:Sometimes it's a matter of a level designer simply coming up with the layout or mission structure (mostly by the lead) who assigns it to another level designer who adds gameplay, while another designer could add cutscenes or update certain areas due to iterations in the design. Also, depending on scripting, new features or changing all enemy archetypes (or pickups) in a level....this could be done by other designers.
Hell...I designed the layout for the "Research" and "Treehouse" levels in Far Cry but another level designer finished adding the gameplay to those levels while I did other design tasks. For the games we do at my current studio...every single level designer on the team (four of us) has done something to every single level/mission in the games....so no level belonged to anyone.
BTW...this isn't a case of "pass the map". It's because of the many (and expected) changes in the overall design as it progresses through production (even well past the beta stage) and has alot to do with who's available to work on it. Hell...some levels or missions get dropped completely and never see the light of day.
Again, depending on your skill or knowledge, level designers can find themselves doing alot more than just making levels (for example: designing/tweaking weapons or vehicles or scripting game events)
If a level designer in a commercial game tells someone "this is my map" and gets upset with any notion of someone else making changes to it....he's in the wrong industry.
Unfortunately...I've met and worked with people like this.
