30 July 06 · City of Delusion

There are a lot of “best practices” in level design that simply aren't documented anywhere. In retrospect most of them are dead obvious, but all too often I'm busy working on other things and don't notice the forest for the trees.

I mean most level designers realise that it's quite important for lights to appear as though they are coming from a real light source instead of just floating in space. But something I've only just come to realise myself is how jarring it is when a sound originates from the middle of nowhere.

So yeah, I was messing around adding sounds to Algiers today and it struck me how wrong things sounded. Up to now I have been placing most of the sounds in the centre of an area so that sound would carry to the edges of the space; but in retrospect that's a pretty poor way to do it. Sounds should really be placed in much the same way as that lights are: Either coming from a particular source inside the map, or seeming to originate from somewhere outside of the playable area.

So I've started going back through Algiers, fixing all the sounds following a simple rule: Players should never be able to touch a sound entity. For things like music I've placed the sounds above the buildings so that it seems as though the sound is coming over the building from the next area. The other sounds, like the rustling of palm trees I've placed where they would occur, among the leaves of the palms.

As I said it's something that seems like a pretty basic idea. Until now it's an idea that I've been completely oblivious to.