Sjoerd "Hourences" De Jong is a successful Level and Environment Artist which has won numerous prizes as well as worked with top studios such as Epic Games, Digital Extremes, Streamline Studios, Webzen, Prophecy Games and Psyonix. In his book "The Hows and Whys of Level Design", Mr. De Jong tackles all aspects of level design and gives young and upcoming artists an insight on the workflow and methods of creating convincing, entertaining and original levels. To more experienced artists it gives a new and refreshing perspective for your work.

Game-Artist.Net staff members requiem2d & doylle have enjoyed this book very much and found it of great benefit. For this reason we have also decided to promote this book here, to make it even better, at a $2 discount over the normal price (is now EURO 13.00 !). With its 117 pages and 120 images it's a small bible for all level designers out there.

This book covers both the visual and artistic side as well as the gameplay aspect of level design. Don’t expect any technical how-to tutorials in this book, this book is about the "why". Rather than writing yet another tutorial about how to create a virtual room this book is about how to make that room look cool and play well. Expect tips and techniques as well as explanations of the logic and theory behind design. How does the gameplay in a level work? What’s the reason this kind of architecture gives this kind of feeling or looks better in situation A or B? Why does this color combination work so well? What kind of floorplan can I best use to improve gameplay and why? What type of sound setup should I use?

The book is divided into three major parts plus two smaller independent chapters at the end: Design, Gameplay and Art plus an Example and an Interview chapter. All three major parts consist of multiple extensive chapters. Starting with an introduction each covers each aspect in a chapter: Floorplans, Sounds, Texturing, Lighting and so on.

The book is well illustrated and offers many examples with pictures, nearly 120 to be exact. The book is intended to be universal. Most of the information can be applied to a wide range of games and different genres, gametypes, themes etc. Hourences tried to cover and support as many different types as possible but as he personally has most experience in 3D action games and FPS shooters one can expect most of the focus to be on those; especially regarding Gameplay. In general this book is meant for what Hourences calls "modern" games, not, for example, 2D games.

Hourences wrote this book to fill up the empty hole of "Why" tutorials and books. Most tutorials only explain the technical steps on how to make something but knowing the design side - how to make something look or play well - is just as important to know, if not more. Even a monkey could be taught how to operate a certain program and create 3D objects, but no one could teach it how to make it look and feel nice or play well. That’s where the difference lays.

This book evolved out of a few free tutorials Hourences wrote years ago for the Unreal level design community and after countless rewrites and additions he decided to listen to people's advice and turn it into a book.

Price: €13.00 EUR (roughly $17.00-18.00 USD)

Purchase is handled by http://www.e-junkie.com/, a high quality digital downloads transfer system and recognized vendor of Paypal.

Content & More Information

The first half of the book is split into three major parts: Design, Gameplay, and Audio-Visuals.

Design covers the entire pre-production process: the initial design, the concept, planning the assets, and any problems one might face. Gameplay focusses on both multiplayer and singleplayer gameplay. What elements they are made of, what kind of design decisions can ruin or support the fun in a level, how to add much needed depth in gameplay, and so on. Audio-Visuals is aimed at helping the reader on any audio-visual subject. It covers a whole range of topics from geometry and architecture, to lighting, texturing, composition, natural environments, and so on.

The second half of the book consists of an example chapter and an interview chapter. The example chapter talks the reader through the process the author went through while making two UT2004 levels and addresses the reasoning and explanations behind certain decisions made. The interview chapter contains several interviews with established industry people who have worked on titles such as Quake 4, Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, F.E.A.R. Extraction Point, the Unreal games, Huxley and so on. Every interviewee speaks on their topic of choice: One talks about his view on environmental texturing while another shares his vision on gameplay in levels. More info on the interviewees can be found in the FAQ.