9 February 06 · Starting Points Pt. 2

As a case study lets say my grand idea was a train station in the middle of an industrial area. Sure it's been done before, but hey, it's my vision, don't knock it.

So the absolute first thing I do is try and picture the scene in my head. Ok, so there's a couple of rail tracks with a large crane laying down steal I-beams onto a flat car. On one side of the tracks is an old waste management centre. It has a couple of large cylindrical reservoirs on one side with pipes leading into the building. The thing is to imagine a place that you would want to play in.

Things to consider:

• parts of the area that can connect to other areas
• the focus points of the area (trains, crane, etc)
• is it real

Things to avoid:

• a plain quadrangle of buildings
• large flat areas
• large open spaces

The important thing is that the place leaps out at you as fun. You should be chomping at the bit to see how this thing looks and plays in-game. If it doesn't pass that test then there's no point starting to build it in an editor.

At this stage it's quite easy to get fixated on an idea which goes nowhere. It can be quite hard to move on to something else. Still, it's easier to change things at this point than had you actually built it in an editor. And often good ideas will simply come at you from nowhere. It could be while your laying in bed or travelling to work.

Now being able to picture something in your head is quite a talent, not one I'm particularly good at, but it does seem to get easier with practice. To alleviate any form of 'mappers-block' I try to gather as much media as possible to get ideas from. That means photos of course; but I also try to go back and play games and levels that feature similar areas. As I'm doing all this I also attempt to sketch parts of what I'm imagining. I'm horrible at drawing but it does help to nail down details and serves to jog my memory latter.

Only once I've got a solid image of the first area is it's time to plonk myself down in front of the editor and start hammering out a level. Note that at this stage I couldn't give a toss about the layout. All I want now is to build an area that matches my original idea.