n. lyn-marie charlene excelsia

[ 500x500 #5 - 6/03/2024 ]
prints / ko-fi

After years of on-and-off development, Vanillaware artist and vintage game fanatic Shigatake's vertical STG DEVIL BLADE REBOOT is finally complete and on the verge of release—this is the latest game in a loose series of hobbyist STG they've been making since the original Famicom version of Dezaemon way back in 1993, and their first commercial, self-published title. Shigatake's understandably been busy with their day job in recent years—not just the likes of Unicorn Overload¹, 13 Sentinels and the GrimGrimoire remaster, but also helping out KEIZO with new HD illustrations and assets for Astlibra Revision—but they've been very insistent about getting this game done, and I think it stands a shot at finding a large audience.

This new game was developed using Shooting Game Builder, a STG-specific shooting game creation tool that underpins many of the more interesting doujin STG of the last 10+ years, including globally and/or Switch-ported games like Mecha Ritz, Kaikan, GRAND CROSS: ReNOVATION and many others. Shigatake handled all the art, programming and game design, with music by hasu2010, who you might recognise by their recent work on the early-access dungeon crawler Path of the Abyss; they also received production help from buddies in the STGBuilder scene (many of whom also got their start with Dezaemon, unsurprisingly).

The "reboot" aspect comes from the fact that this game is basically Shigatake reimagining all their old Dezaemon-era ideas and wishes using all the new tricks afforded to them by their new engine, not to mention their own ever-expanding skillset and eye for production tricks. They've also thrown in a retro mode that recreates the look of the PS-era Dezaemon version—this isn't just a fun extra but, as they've explained, an attempt at staving off refunds from those people who bash STG for a dearth of content.

They put out a one-stage demo way back in 2018, which you can still find here. At the time, Shigatake wrote up their concepts behind the game systems as they relate to the "STG Dilemma"—I translated them way back when and I'm reposting them here, mostly just to get them off pastebin, but I can't guarantee these ideas will still be reflected as-is in the final game:

1. never not saying this

I've been doing low-poly video game level design and environment design as a hobby for about twelve years now (since about 2012). Most of this time was spent making maps for Thief, but I've also spent some time mapping for Doom 2, Duke Nukem 3D and Quake 1. I have several thousand hours of experience now, and I've developed certain styles in my approach that might benefit other level designers, environment designers, mappers, and 3D game devs in general. In this post, I want to go through some of these ideas, and general best practices and ideas of level design that you should know, and illustrate them with examples from some of my past work. All gameplay screenshots in this post are screenshots from a Thief level made by me in 2022, called "House of the Architect" - level geometry, asset placement, texturing, AI patrols, ambient sounds and lighting are all done by me, in these images. Thief tends to look dark on mobile, so if the screenshots are too dark to parse on your phone, consider reading on desktop, if you can. This is gonna be kind of a long post, so, let's get started.

-Non-linearity (Jaquays the dungeon) / Layout, loops, limit dead ends
Some games are more linear, and some games are less. As a fan of immersive sims (Thief, System Shock, Deus Ex), I favor a nonlinear level. A good nonlinear video game level has quite a bit in common with a good dungeon in D&D, and there are certain principles you can follow in the early phases of layout planning that can be good for either. Basic ideas include the following: avoid dead-ends (have multiple ways in and out of each room), have multiple ways into and out of the dungeon / level itself, and have the dungeon change over time. Layout is one of the absolute biggest determiners of a level's quality. You should have areas loop around on each other, have some areas visible from other areas, tease the player with places they can see but can't get to yet. There is a process of making your level "more nonlinear," called Jaquaysing the Dungeon, which you can learn about here:

This method of dungeon design is named after Jennell Jaquays, who was an extremely important person to the history of D&D and video games in general, and who was also queer, and whose legacy has been mostly forgotten. The video doesn't go into much detail about her, so you should also read her wikipedia article here:

As a last note on nonlinearity - sometimes, it makes sense to be linear. For example: my most recent Thief map was largely nonlinear for 90% of its playtime, and then at the end, at the weird climax, I changed to a linear, focused layout, to funnel the player along a more guided roller coaster leading up to the end. Nonlinearity and linearity are each appropriate at different times - consider this when planning your level's layout.

-Environmental Storytelling
This is best described by the phrase "Show, don't tell." This is a principle we see not just applied to games, but really to a lot of different kinds of fiction - movies, stories, and so on. More often than not, information about your setting, characters, or plot is better conveyed through evidence than through literal verbal exposition. In my Thief level, House of the Architect, I don't have an NPC tell the player "The lord of the house is an evil man," rather, I let the player stumble upon his torture chamber. Rather than leaving a note about how wealthy or eccentric or dangerous a character in your level is, you can simply decorate their house as such. Don't tell me two characters are best friends and they go way back, let it be obvious by the way they talk to each other. Environmental storytelling can be used for characterization, it can be used to demonstrate past events, like a break-in or a murder, it can be used to demonstrate the age or character of a location, etc. It's a way of conveying information to a player without beating them over the head with it, which can be a way of breaking immersion. I don't need Navi (or worse, Fi) hovering over my shoulder telling me about how these ruins are old. Let me deduce it myself, from the vines, the collapsed ceiling and the crumbling walls.

-Purpose and/or history of each space
Related to the last point - think about the purpose and history of each space in your level, not just the dungeon or zone as a whole, but also, you can break it down to the level of each individual room - this is the captain's quarters, this is the storage room, this is the kitchen. This also works at the scope of an entire level, though. For example, I had a plan once for a map that had multiple layers of history - it was once a crypt, occupied by a gang of bandits, who were then driven out by the awakening undead, who were later tamed by the current occupants, a necromancy cult. In this case, you can leave both physical evidence laying around, as well as diaries and notes from the different factions, illustrating the location's changes over time. This can be observed also in Thief 3's famous Cradle mission - the Cradle was first an orphanage, then an asylum, then, finally it burned down and became haunted. Consider the history of your space, both at a micro and macro level, for more interesting stories and better immersion.

-How would the space logically be constructed?
If you really want to excel at constructing an immersive space, you need to think about the way it would be physically constructed. Features like, support beams, weight bearing architecture like arches and columns, air vents, pipes. There are certain logical requirements to a constructed space, according both to the needs of the space itself, to physically remain standing and support itself, and also according to the needs of its occupants. Human occupants are going to need food, water, air. They're going to need viable ways to access each room - doors, stairs. They're going to need toilets. Consider too, the age of a location - with ancient ruins, some pieces will remain standing, and some won't. Why will the pieces that remain intact do so? Well, materials like stone will last longer than materials like wood, which will have rotted away. Consider too, which parts of the space are more exposed to the elements. The outside of a structure takes more of a beating than the inside. If an environment's occupants have changed over time, for example, ancient ruins now being occupied by beasts and animals, what changes will the new occupants have made to the space? Will they burrow tunnels and construct nests? Will they hoard bones in the corners? How do they live? Consider too, the relation of rooms to one another. The kitchen should logically be close to the dining room. The storage room should be near the delivery entrance. What sort of layout makes life easiest for the type of occupants that would have constructed it?

-Lighting
You should have some understanding of lighting, and the effect it has on the mind. For example, lighting something from below makes it more imposing and intimidating, makes it appear taller. Different colors of lighting can produce different moods - red feels threatening, green feels artificial. In the first Matrix movie, the color green is used during early scenes to indicate the "fakeness" of being inside the Matrix itself. Lighting is also a critical tool for player guidance. Lights can be placed above doors, or used to make critical items, like keys, unmissable. Speaking of...

-Make critical locations unmissable
If critical locations or items aren't made absolutely unmissable, players will miss them. Players do not have the prior knowledge of your level that you do. A famous example of this is Valve's difficulty in getting players to look up. I once received a bad review on a map because a player got themselves lost in a linear passage. Do not, under any circumstances, underestimate the player's ability to miss things. Make keys large, bright and obvious. Color, light, architecture and sound can all be used to guide player attention, and it's the level designer's job to do so.

-Details
You need to add a sufficient amount of detail for a space to be believable. Think about the time, place and setting, and make a list of appropriate details. An old castle might have torches, carpets, beams and statues. A scifi ship would have other details - computer panels, seating, maintenance ducts. It will be easier to come up with appropriate details to include if you've gone through the work of considering the history and purpose of each space. What do I put in this room? Well, it's a dining room, so it needs tables, and chairs...
Something to consider when it comes to adding details like props, is that a few clusters of things crowded together looks better than everything evenly spread out. Have three candles on one end, two candles on the other. Not five candles spread evenly across a shelf. The eye wants focal points to rest on, and empty space to skip over. Also: asymmetry is almost always more interesting to look at.
Finally, something that can inform and determine your choice of details is a choice of theme. I like to theme my rooms, and sometimes build them around a central object, like a giant tree. In House of the Architect, I had a dining room filled with about twenty clocks of varying sizes. Rooms can be themed around a type of object, or an activity, or a color, for example. I also had, for example, a gambling room garishly themed in the style of an in-universe ancient civilization. Theming your spaces will keep them memorable and distinct and easy to detail.

-Romero's Level Design principles
When it gets down to nitty-gritty details, you should be familiar with John Romero's principles of Level Design. Back in the day, Romero published a list of level design principles, that had to do with things like, contrast between light and dark areas, tight and spacious areas, how to break up different wall textures, how to deal with changes in floor height. Even today, many of these ideas are relevant for good level flow. You can read more about them here:
https://www.helldoradoteam.com/2018/12/19/john-romeros-level-design-tips/

-Pacing
Pacing is a subtle element that's kind of hard to nail down, but is still very important. Pacing can be achieved through bottlenecks, it can be achieved via landmarks, changes in ambient sound, and through noticeably distinct zones. When I make levels, I break them up in my head into different areas - different floors, for example, and think about the kind of textures, sounds and vibes each zone should have. The basement should feel different than the first floor. The first floor should feel different than the top floor. There should be certain moments that are noticeably climactic, even in a subtle way - a sudden change of soundscape as you walk through a door, into a room with different textures, different enemies, different architecture. Think about how each part of your level is intended to make the player feel. You gotta have a sense of pacing for players to feel satisfied with their journey.

-Cross-contaminate Your assets
If you're just making a free level for some retro game, cross-contaminate. You'll be able to achieve a lot of novelty just by importing Tomb Raider textures into Thief, or by putting Duke Nukem textures into Doom, or whatever. Cross-contamination is an easy way to get "custom assets" without going through the work of actually creating them. Obviously, if you're making an original game you're going to sell for money... don't do this.

-AI encounters
The types of enemies you encounter in the game, and the way you're meant to deal with them, should inform the construction of the surrounding space - a hallway in a stealth game needs little places to hide. Certain types of shooter games need cover. Beyond this, AI encounters will be more interesting if they're made dynamic - if multiple waves of enemies spawn over time, for example, if different types of enemies appear from different places. Where do the snipers go, where do the flyers go? Think about the type of AI encounters you're planning to have in your level as you're constructing the space. On a related note:

-Gameplay over realism
Video games are not real life. While realism is sometimes an advantage for the purpose of immersion, when it comes to a conflict between realism and gameplay, gameplay should come first, every single time. Yes, people in real life will actually see you if you peek at them by leaning around corners. No, that shouldn't have any bearing on the design of a first person stealth game. This concept also has applications to the process of designing spaces for gameplay. Some games, and some spaces in games, should be more or less realistic than others, but for example, it's more important that the layout of a space be interesting to explore, or fun to move around in, than it is that the layout "makes sense" - in real life, it makes sense to construct a living space in a way that's symmetrical. In a video game, a symmetrical dungeon is the worst part of the video game. Put gameplay first.

-Scope creep (keep it small, realistic, doable)
If you're new to level design, or mapping, you need to start small. You first few levels are going to suck, and there's no way around it. You need to decide on a small, doable, reasonable scope that you can actually bang out in, say, 1-3 months, and be done with. If you bite off more than you can chew, your map will join the graveyard of abandoned maps that were over-ambitious and never finished. (Every mapper has several of these). Start with a tiny level, and don't be embarrassed about it - make a level with ten rooms, give it a beginning, a middle and an end, give each room some actual time for polish, and enjoy actually getting to ship.

-Room shape (no cubes allowed)
I watched a video once about how to make a good looking Minecraft house, and the number one rule they emphasized was that the house should have an irregular footprint - L shape, S shape, U shape, whatever, pick a letter, just make the footprint of your house anything other than a rectangle or a square, and it will immediately be infinitely more interesting and better looking. So it is with rooms in level design. Making a video game room with the shape of a basic cube is like playing Stairway to Heaven in the guitar store: Don't do it. Pick a letter, make the footprint in that shape, and go from there.

-Don't forget the narrative
When I released my latest map, everyone said the same thing: Great map, but not enough story. I had chosen not to include readable notes as a stylistic choice, but I paid for it in the end when I strayed too far from player expectations. So, while environmental storytelling is great, you still need some kind of concrete, verbal story of some kind, conveyed in notes, dialogue or whatever, or people are going to riot. Yes, this depends a little bit on what game you're mapping for, or if you're making an original game, but 99% of the time, an actual, verbalized story will only be a plus, or will be seen as a requirement by your players. Consider yourself warned. This brings me to my other big blunder:

-Have a real beta test
When I was done working on House of the Architect, I wanted to beta test without involving anyone from the Thief community proper, so I outsourced my beta testing to friends of friends, people I knew, people I was dating at the time, even though none of them really had much or any experience mapping for Thief, or playing it at all. This was a huge disaster. We assembled a group of 10-20 people who all said they wanted to test the map, and then only 2 or 3 of them actually did. The map shipped with bugs, and people noticed. So, please: 1. Beta test your maps, or levels, and 2. Beta test with people who actually play the game you're mapping for, experienced beta testers, or preferably, experienced level designers and mappers who will understand the stakes at hand. Learn from my mistakes.

-Use existing assets for novel purposes
Whether you're making your own assets, or mapping for a game with assets already provided for you, you can get a lot of fun, creative uses out of textures and models that can surprise you, and your players. A tiled floor texture can be resized to make a chessboard, or piano keys. A circular window texture can become a clock face. A texture with a spiral on it can be scaled and moved on the end of a cylinder, to make a rolled-up rug or towel. Rather than making whole new assets, see how you can produce the desired effect with assets you already have.

-Get Weird With It
You know what's memorable? Weird is memorable. At the end of my latest map, I got weird with it. I had the player go through a spiral hallway, into the black lodge from Twin Peaks, and finally to a city floating in the void, like the arcane sanctuary from Diablo 2. No, not every space should be weird. There's a time and a place for it. The first 90% of my map was normal and grounded. But the ending is what impressed everyone the most, and what they remember. We need more weird levels in video games - Constantine's Mansion from Thief 1, the Body of the Many of System Shock, Xen from Half-Life. Some of these levels were better executed than others, but you know what they all were? Interesting and memorable.

Keep some of these ideas in mind next time you do some mapping, level design, or environment design, and you should find yourself coming up with new ideas that benefit you, your players, and the level itself.

You can see a playthrough of (most of) my Thief map, House of the Architect, here:
https://www.youtube.com/live/Q8_WaePlrL4?si=AW55EpBqqLpi-FXm&t=481

If you happen to play Thief maps, you can download it to play here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1T5lgCg91RI0Vo3yiNpF6zOrYoJr8FLdz/view

Thanks for reading,
Sarah / Goth Donut Games

the prevalence of twitter and the way it suddenly became "the town square of the internet" (before elon took dynamite to that idea) for over a decade has, i think, brought forth some very negative ripple effects to the way people use the internet. in the case of this post, i specifically want to talk about the way in which negativity and reactionary behavior have become the extreme standard of the average internet user.

we all know that negativity is the most viral force on the internet. while positivity can be just as viral and have its own can of worms to deal with when it comes to internet discourse, i think the reactionary negativity has created an overall worse, more anxiety-inducing, more dread-inducing environment to even just be logged on in the first place. it almost doesn't matter what site or service you are on, it's very clear and easy to see how addicted we get to negativity. the moment we hear an ounce of bad news, we all have to react to it not just immediately, but with our absolute worst thoughts, worst case scenarios, most pessimistic forms of discoursing. as many of us were still developing political thought and praxis, we used to talk so much shit about "reactionaries" and how quickly they bite onto discourse and other peoples' reactions, only to, years later, become reactionaries ourselves, albeit in a slightly different way. maybe we don't regurgitate alt-right talking points, but we do make snap judgments, "discourse" incredibly unproductively (and in a lot of cases, overly insultingly), willingly-or-otherwise spread misinformation that we don't bother to fact check, and spread and platform misery, negativity, and anxiety.

we have to assume the worst case scenario in all cases, and talk about things as if the worst case scenario has already happened -- which ironically enough, i think only feeds further into the worst case scenario actually becoming reality as users give way to pessimism and defeat, paralyzing everyone into inaction.

and while me talking about this is brought up in the way that people have been discussing the latest cohost financial update (both on and off the site), it's a pattern that i've been noticing multiple times throughout the years, that just happens to be relevant in this context. people have already started forming "exit strategies", talking about "where do we go now that this place is cooked?", ignoring the fact that this place is still fully functional, still being developed, with plans already in the works for how to address and solve the issues.
some (not all, absolutely not) people are talking like this is the last day this site will be in operation, despite the fact that the staff has explicitly said that they are not planning on closing. and while i won't choose to speak for staff, i will say that when you work on something and put your heart and soul and blood into it, and you have to be open about the fact that you are working on solutions but things aren't perfect, and people start immediately dooming about the place being gone already and talking about jumping ship, i can't imagine it would be very helpful to your resolve or motivation or morale to continue your hard work. we need healthier ways of engaging with the problems that we face.

yes, i understand that the last decade of life in general has been significantly trying. people are worn down. people are tired. people don't feel good about the unstable state of the world. people have concerns that they wish to voice. all of these things are true and valid. but i think we need to be more responsible in general with how we use our voices and our platforms to speak up and speak out. because even if all of these social media websites (and let's be clear -- 100% of them are not financially stable. everyone on twitter or tumblr talking mess on the cohost financial situation are throwing stones from a glass house.) were to up and evaporate tomorrow, and something new were to pop up in the ashes, these new spaces cannot and will not become something great, or something that can grow in a positive way, if we do not use our space within them responsibly.

there is enough doom in the world as it is; how much do we really need to contribute more to it?