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Old 01-13-2007, 03:52 PM   #1
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The Hows And Whys of Level Design - Released!

Hourences has just released his new book
Quote:
I've released my book on level design "The Hows and Whys of Level Design" !


The newspost can be found on http://phalanx.planetunreal.gamespy.com/

Ordering can be done at http://www.lulu.com/hourences

More info can be found on my site http://book.hourences.com/


About the book:

The 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/book 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 reasoning behind art and design decisions. 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 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.
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Old 01-14-2007, 03:13 AM   #2
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Hey sweet, I was just looking at this the other day. Thanks for the heads-up.
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Old 01-15-2007, 05:16 PM   #3
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hmmm shoulda put this in mapping
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Old 01-15-2007, 05:25 PM   #4
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i thought that myself ;o
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Old 01-15-2007, 07:08 PM   #5
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Yeah, it would probably get more attention there. Moved.
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Old 01-15-2007, 07:18 PM   #6
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hi Jiggles, how are you?
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Old 01-16-2007, 01:38 PM   #7
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I'm not overly impressed to be honest. I mean his work is good, but not good enough for me to want to buy his tutorial book.
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Old 01-16-2007, 03:10 PM   #8
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Exarch
I'm not overly impressed to be honest. I mean his work is good, but not good enough for me to want to buy his tutorial book.
Its not so much a tutorial book its more of a, in this situation this is the best thing to do book. Its not telling you unreal specific things that I noticed its all general ideas about lighting, layout gameplay textures and similar things.
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Old 01-16-2007, 03:36 PM   #9
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Though I've never played it, his thinice level looks amazing (you can find pictures of it on his site).

I liked playing on Rankin as well.
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Old 01-19-2007, 08:21 PM   #10
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just a heads up, book is absolutely horrible. Don't get it.
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Old 01-19-2007, 09:27 PM   #11
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TwiNCannoN
just a heads up, book is absolutely horrible. Don't get it.
You cant say that without at least giving us a few reasons why your opinion is so strongly convinced of this.
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Old 01-19-2007, 10:11 PM   #12
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TwiNCannoN
just a heads up, book is absolutely horrible. Don't get it.
If anything, your attitude is absolutely horrible.
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Old 01-19-2007, 10:53 PM   #13
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I'm sure its useful if you're good at mapping. If you are very new to mapping you probably can't even use any of the tips. The extent of my mapping skills would be making a box.
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Old 01-19-2007, 11:06 PM   #14
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When all this info is free (either by asking someone or finding it on the net), why would someone want to buy this book? Not being negative, just asking why.
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Old 01-20-2007, 01:27 AM   #15
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Based on the examples on his website (which it said were exerpts directly from the book) I do not like his writing style.
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Old 01-20-2007, 02:17 AM   #16
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Quote:
Originally Posted by STA_SirTiger
If anything, your attitude is absolutely horrible.
plz. You're the one that's always trolling.

Anyway, I'm not bashing it, it's just horrible. That's all there is to it. Here's my reasoning to make sure that none of you buy this because you'd be better off simply flushing the money down the toilet.

The examples on his site are definitely like, copy/pasted right into the book. The sentence/paragraph structure is horrible. It really looks like he just pasted it into Word and told a company to print it - I can't imagine any publisher would ever let a book like this get into production. The lettering goes to the center of the page so you have to bend the pages to read everything. It randomly ends mid-paragraph and starts a new paragraph without double-spacing and is horribly ugly and hard to read. He re-uses screenshots for the same example showing a general sense of laziness (for example, he used a screenshot referencing a lighting tip also for a texturing tip later on - I double-taked at first and wondered if he had simply copy/pasted the same section twice).

Some sections just start without warning. Most sections have a big preface, like you'd expect in any educational book, but sometimes you'll flip the page and it'll just randomly have at the top in normal size font "The Theory of Texturing" when you were reading about something completely fucking different. It's bad to that point that just reviewing it is making me angry.

It's thin as hell (but obviously it tells you how many pages it is when you order it so I can't fault it for that) but it's an absolute ripoff when you conider it's not hardcover and it's only 150 fucking pages, and with shipping it came up to like 50 bucks.

Oh, I haven't discussed the actual content yet, haha. Well, if you have common sense, you don't need this book. I was hoping he would've done study about colored lighting and the implications from color theory/mood lighting in maps but basically all it goes into is that "don't color an entire map one color, and don't make it a rainbow mess of colors" - I think that example is on his site - and seriously, that's pretty much all there is to it. The same goes for texturing, he explains that textures that aren't scaled up and repeat over a landscape look bad but if you scale them up they look good. There's seriously little side-by-side screencaps with the text "BAD" and "GOOD" and then like 2 sentences of a bullshit explanation.

blarg, it's just terrible. Shame, too, since this is basically like the first "real" book about level design (which is why I bought it).

Hopefully this one will be a touch better, although it doesn't claim to do anything other than teach the programs so I don't know if it'll have value past that. I'm just interested in basically anything that covers mapping, really. It's a shame that this one was disappointing being that it was, like I said, pretty much the first real computer graphics book dedicated to level design, but sadly it's below even saying "you could just look it up on google" - it's just common sense. What looks good and what looks bad, pointed out in 150 pages of obnoxiousness. Blerg.
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Old 01-20-2007, 03:34 AM   #17
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I like you buddy, nothing against you. My intention was to get you started and actually explain yourself, and it worked ! Now, most of us will know WHY not to buy it at all (although that's why you download such things instead), instead of just receiving "oh it sucks!"
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Old 01-20-2007, 03:58 AM   #18
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Quote:
Originally Posted by STA_SirTiger
I like you buddy, nothing against you. My intention was to get you started and actually explain yourself, and it worked ! Now, most of us will know WHY not to buy it at all (although that's why you download such things instead), instead of just receiving "oh it sucks!"
Well, as you can tell (at least from my opinion/description, who knows, I'm sure at least ONE person out there will love the book heh) at least in this case "it just sucks" is justified.
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Old 01-20-2007, 04:03 AM   #19
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Completely agree with you, but now we know why! !
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Old 01-21-2007, 05:22 PM   #20
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TwiNCannoN
Hopefully this one will be a touch better, although it doesn't claim to do anything other than teach the programs so I don't know if it'll have value past that.
That book should be good.

I helped him out for parts of it! Plus its Waldo who was on the DoD team!
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