Interview: Level Design : Sjoerd "Hourences" De Jong

[requiem2d]

This months interview is with no one other than Sjoerd "Hourences" De Jong ( Website ), having been and continuing to be a successful level designer, he has recently released his book the "The hows and whys of Level Design" ( Book ). Instead of a lengthy introduction, lets get right into !

Game-Artist.net - Thank you for taking the time to do this interview. First off, congratulations on releasing this book! I'm sure it wasn't easy, but you made it and that's what counts. Could you please tell our viewers who you are and maybe give us a small look at what you are currently working on?

I am Sjoerd "Hourences" De Jong, a 23 year old level designer. I started around seven years ago in the Unreal Tournament mod community and started working professionally in 2002. I have released dozens of standalone community levels, I worked on a number of big UT mods such as Operation Na Pali, Xidia and Jailbreak and have won several prizes in the huge 1.000.000$ MakeSomethingUnreal Contest with my levels, including a first place.

Professionally I've worked either permanent or freelance for companies like Epic Games, Guerrilla Games, Digital Extremes, Khaeon and Streamline Studios on games like UT2004 and its ECE Add on pack, Killzone and Shellshock, The Chronicles of Spellborn and Warpath. For UT2004 I made some of the most known levels out there such as the demo levels DM Rankin and ONS Torlan.

I am currently preparing assets for my first custom UT2007 level, an outdoor nature level set in a number of canyons surrounded by a pine forest and waterfalls with an Art Nouveau inspired house as the most important landmark.

Next to that I am also working on an article for my own site about the games industry in general, which I might be turning into a book in the distant future, and I am also working on a number of commercial next gen game projects, both in freelance and permanent positions. Can't say anything about those yet though.

Game-Artist.net - When searching popular sites such as Amazon, one will find a lot of material on level design. What differentiates your book from others offered on the market?

Well I don't think there are that many books about level design yet in the first place, so in terms of books there is not that much competition. Compared to those books that do exist my book differentiates itself because unlike most online tutorials, it doesn't aim to explain the reader how to make something, how to make a room or script an event for example, but rather why a room was designed like this and how to get that room to look good and play well. It explains how to improve levels rather then how to make them in the first place. What things to keep in mind or look out for when designing a level. Design theories. The basic concept behind certain decisions, the point of gameplay in levels and the way floorplans influence the gameplay. How a cold color or a lot of vertical pillars can strengthen or weaken the visuals and so on.

Unlike some other sources of information my book also covers both visuals subjects as well as gameplay subjects in a single book and the relation they have to each other. And lastly my book mainly targets 3D action games and first person shooters like Half Life and Unreal or Oblivion and Splinter Cell. It thus provides a more specialized view than other sources of information.

The book gives insight into what goes on in my head when I am working on a level. Why I make certain decisions and how I achieve my results.

My way of doing it may not be the ultimate way and at the end everyone will develop their own style and approach but it does give people a solid head start by supplying them with some of the knowledge that took me years to acquire.

Game-Artist.net - Could you please give us an insight on what tools or workflow you use outside of your level design application? How dependent are you on say 2D, 3D applications as well as landscape generators?

I rarely use landscape generators like Terragen since the level editors provide equal functionality but I do make very extensive use of 3DSMax and Photoshop. Today's level designers are very dependent on assets like models and textures made in specialized 2D and 3D programs and they can chose to either use already made retail assets or make those assets themselves. I chose the latter whenever the time and type of project allows me to.

I like to have maximum control over what happens. If a texture is slightly too saturated or a decoration mesh has a pipe that is too long I want to be able to adjust it so I can get the maximum visual result out of it. That also goes for originality. To be able to stand out as a level designer you need to do something special. The 400th City17 level is not going to catch anyones attention visually, a very freshly themed level however will.

Another important reason to make as many assets on my own as possible is my own satisfaction. I can't be really satisfied if the level I made looks like any other level out there or if it is mainly made up of already existing assets.

I usually spend somewhere between a week and several weeks in 3DSMax and Photoshop, preparing models and textures, before I start working on the actual level in the editor.

Game-Artist.net - What was the hardest & most challenging part of your development as level designer and how did you overcome it?

Like most young professionals: starting. Most jobs demand experience, yet you can't get any experience without a job, which you can't get because you have no experience and so on. An extra challenge was that there are few game studios in my area and that none of the people in my surroundings took my decision to work in the games industry serious at that time, because hey, the game industry is "this alien monster that only exists in bed time stories". So I was pretty much up to it alone, but since it was what I genuinely wanted, I never gave up and kept on going until I succeeded.

If you keep on going long enough it's always going to work out one day and one way or another. Once you're past that initial barrier it is also a lot easier. You can find jobs quite easily and there are more opportunities available. It also becomes more enjoyable since you gain more control and influence.

Game-Artist.net - What do you think is the most underrated tool in UnrealED and if you had the chance to talk to Epic Games today what tool would you ask them to implement in the next release?

I am always surprised how much simple tools are underrated in any program, including Photoshop and even Windows itself. A number of simple tools and optimizations would make any designer's life a lot easier. You click your mouse a hundred thousands of times when working on a large level. If a widely used function is hidden in the sublevel of the rightclick menu, and you have to use the function a lot you are going to spend thousands of useless clicks opening the sublevel menu. If every click was worth a second you would have lost thousands of seconds at the end of development, time you could have invested in actually improving the level.

One of the biggest features I am lacking in UnrealEd is a snap-move tool. If you want to move an object from position A to position B all the way on the other side of the level you currently have to select it and drag it with the mouse all the way to the other side. That is incredibly slow and it causes RSI. It would be much faster if you could simply select the object, return to the other side of the level using a camera bookmark and then simply hold down a button, click the floor and it is immediately snapped to the position you click.

That also goes for other things such as a quick rotate short cut. Dragging an object until it is 90 degrees rotated is slow, instead I want a short cut to immediately rotate an object 90 degrees.

Game-Artist.net - How do you see the level design workflow change in the next 10 years? Are you looking forward to it or do you see coders doing more of the "art" work?

I am actually expecting artists to do more code work, albeit with extensive help from programmers behind the scenes. I think tools that can easily generate assets using artist inputs and visual interfaces will become more popular and one of the only ways to develop high resolution assets with limited time and resources. Things like that are already happening to material and scripting tools. Instead of requiring a programmer or scripter and a text editor, complex materials and gameplay events can these days be created by simply linking nodes in a big visual node editor. And that greatly improves the workflow, speed and accessibility.

Even though plenty of industry people will argue that extreme specializations are the only way forward, and thus basically splitting level design into a dozen professions like a material artist, a lighter, a particle artist and so on I don't really share the same vision. As also explained in my book I am not a fan of splitting up level design between too many different persons since it actually slows down the overall work speed because of all the discussions, schedules and organization and it can decrease the quality because all those people have a different view on the environment they are working on which isn't great for the consistency and quality of the world.

I believe that the more powerful the tools are going to become, the easier it will be for a single person to develop a level largely on his own again. He won't need to learn complicated scripting languages anymore to add gameplay since he will be able to use either generated scripts or a relatively easy visual scripting tool, for example.

Game-Artist.net - Increasing performance potential has spawned many FPS's which boast "large open environments" and toys such as a "24 hour day cycle" or "altering weather". Do you feel the industry is losing vision of clever designs such as "Coret Facility" (Unreal Tournament) or "Dust 2" (Counter Strike) with visually impressive worlds as can be seen in Crysis or ET:QW?

I enjoyed games a few years ago more too but I also think it is partially a psychological effect. I don't really believe that the games of today are necessarily less good than the games we had a few years ago. If anything they are equally as good. However people get emotionally attached to some of their first real game experiences, type of nostalgia. The same is true for levels. Players simply tend to stick to the retail levels of a game and no matter how good your custom level is, the retail levels will always be more popular than any custom level no matter what its quality is. People are emotionally attached to those first group of levels.

Another aspect is that the players have gotten used to more extreme things. While a cool blocky outdoor scene may have made a lasting impression on players a few years ago they now want entire outdoor planets, preferably with entire living cities included. It simply is much harder to impress people.

Some games do lack innovation though, not just with gameplay but also visually. Plenty of games that get released these days lack a strong visual style. They all look like copies of each other and full of fake "next gen" effects. Plenty of fancy effects but no visual identity.

Things like open environments and day and night cycles are certainly important too but it does happen that more attention is placed on those gimmicks than on the actual game. From a designer's point of view I can't understand that, however from a marketing point of view I can. It is hard to sell gameplay and a good story but it is easy to sell very obvious features like a day and night cycle and a huge open terrain.
Again, this same issue can be applied to level designers. A level designer that has only gameplay based levels will have a much harder time selling himself than someone who has a lot of visual intensive environments simply because visuals are very obvious and very universal. Gameplay is very hidden as it is very hard to show on pictures and it is very dependent on a person's taste. There are dozens of types of level gameplay. If you are a Quake/HL/UT level designer and you apply to a company with a great level gameplay portfolio then what are you going to do when the interviewer has absolutely no idea of how a fast action FPS gameplay works, or perhaps even dislikes it?

From that point of view I can definitely understand all those special features and I am also not too worried about it, it will likely solve itself in a couple of years. There is going to be a time when every game out there is going to look photo realistic and when cool "next gen" features are nothing special anymore.The only way game studios will be able to stand out is to either offer a great visual style or great gameplay/story since their fancy shaders and effects are not going to save their games anymore.

At least I hope it will work out that way.

Game-Artist.net - On a lighter note, what is the craziest level you've ever seen put in a mainstream commercial product and why?

All the levels in the game Alice were pretty crazy, in a good way. Strange but good levels.

At this point, we'd like to thank Sjoerd again for the interview, always a pleasure to have creative artists here at Game-Artist.net .

He has kindly provided us with the complete PDF version of his book "The hows and whys of Level Design" and there is no doubt in my mind that this will find a place in the hearts of every amateur FPS level designer out there. This book is perfect for those people who have some technical skill, but have however not been able to attain that certain magic with their levels. Whilst hitting all elements of level design, the book also boasts a large number of images tagged with good & bad comparisons which are great visual aids. Added plus's are not only the 6 interviews in the back, but also just the tremendous amount of information in this book!

The e-book is available in PDF with more information here

[doylle]

Intersting read, thank you. I wish hourences the best with his book. I ordered it 2 days go, so i hope to get it next week. Looks promising to me...

[mainframe]

I just ordered this book a few days ago . Great interview

[Talon]

A good read

Very tempted to pick up his book. I'm not a level designer but I still find the reasoning behind the decisions interesting.

[Jonas]

Great interview!

Ordering the book in a few weeks..

[Chewy Gumball]

I like these kinds of interviews, and that book looks interesting. Ill have to take a look next time I'm in a bookstore.

[MrDev]

I get paid on thursday

From the short segments he posted on the moddb, I'm sure its worth it

I started out in level design when I first got into gaming way back in 95-96 messing around with games like doom and quake, now that level designers and environmental artists need to work more hand and hand its almost a given to have both skills.

[Nysuatro]

I was in Khaeon but you were already gone. To bad
I wanted to meet you

[chris89]

nice article
dutch/belgium people are tof

[IchII3D]

Holy shit, I remember this guy. I used to talk to him in IRC back when I got into UnrealED. Dam... looks like he made a lot of himself. I wish I could get a job. I need the skills first though :P

I saw a lot of his work a while back and dam it was amazing. He was sort of my inspiration to UnrealED. Well I never got very far because I went into modelling. But still :P