Unreal Engine 3 level design tutorial to be presented at GDC 2010

[Flak]

Jim Brown, Epic Games’ Lead Level Designer, will be among the speakers on tap for the day-long GDC tutorial “Level Design in a Day: Best Practices from the Best in the Business.”

The focus of the presentation is Unreal Engine 3, and the panelists are some of the best level designers in the business.

The Game Developers Conference (www.gdconf.com) runs from March 9-13 in San Francisco, CA, and this session will be held on March 10. Check out the GDC website for more information. http://bit.ly/7EHbnP

[micahpharoh]

That's cool. March is a long ways off, though.

[Crozz]

Will this by any chance be recorded and made available somehow?

[anomandarius]

Will this by any chance be recorded and made available somehow?

The GDC will link quite a bit of content around a month after but they don't post everything.

[Brexer]

Sweet, just sad it would cost me like 2000$ just to fly there, so doubt that will happen :)

[Piranhi]

How did I miss this announcement? This is amazing, but being a student and living in the UK, I won't be watching this unless it's streamed or available for download. Would definitely fix peoples bad habits though, I'm sure I have a lot.

[TimesNewRoman17]

Would this be considered one of the days where you'll need the All Access pass rather than the Main Conference pass to attend? I'd love to check this out but at $1195 vs $665... kinda hard to justify. Would you please be able to provide more information on what will be covered so that my (and possibly other people's) purchasing decision can be better informed (and please, before the 22nd of December, when my alumni Discount would end).

Edit, whoops, I found the page with the information on it:

http://gdconf.com/conference/tutorials.html#201

[Flak]

Giving this a bump so people remember to sign up!

[avoak]

wish i could go but it's too expensive. will this be available for free streaming or download?

[UDKKutigi77]

Will this by any chance be recorded and made available somehow?

That will be a plus for those of us who cannot make it.

[Akash]

I am pretty new to the Level design Field. Currently am doing my masters in entertainment technology. This tutorial looks like a really good way to get a sort of grip on level designing\modding.

I will be attending it at GDC. Just had a question.

On the site they mention the intended audience. But how much Unreal 3 Engine should I know for attending it. Are there any perquisites?

My Experience: I have worked with the Warcraft 3 Editor. I know the basics like BSPs and actors and stuff and am currently doing tutorials on UDK.

Thanks

[Mangopork]

Youtube?

Anyone got a flip video cam?

[Togeo]

I'll be there too. I'm getting my personal project off the ground in UDK and I'm looking forward to learning from some of the best.

[Master Lucky]

So, does anyone know how was this session?

[Piranhi]

So how did it go? Any chance of a video or at least a review of the session?

[Entropy]

We're working on getting some of the slides online, but the session wasn't recorded. Will post things ASAP!

[sueds]

We're working on getting some of the slides online, but the session wasn't recorded. Will post things ASAP!

Is there any hope to get also the new on the new level creation toolset ?

[IllpIll]

the features that epic descussed at gdc are already in the udk in rudementary form.
to create roads/train tracks/trails/vines you need to look for spline loft actor on the forums, I have posted guids on how to use it. Note that the tool does not allow collision on your meshes yet. The procedural building tool needs more documentation/further emplementation before people can use it effeciently.

[Piranhi]

We're working on getting some of the slides online, but the session wasn't recorded. Will post things ASAP!


Awesome, Cheers Jim! From what I've seen already, it seems like you made an amazing level.

[Froyok]

http://cmpmedia.vo.llnwd.net/o1/vault/gdc10/slides/Perry_PrototypingBasedDesign.pdf

Speakers: Lee Perry
Track / Format: Game Design / Lecture
Overview: 1

-----

http://cmpmedia.vo.llnwd.net/o1/vault/gdc10/slides/Schoenblum_Dan_BuildingAnXLSPGearsOfWar2.pdf

Speakers: Dan Schoenblum
Track / Format: Programming / Lecture
Overview: Attendees will learn what it takes to build a robust and massively scalable back-end platform for a game with millions of future players, drawing from Epics experience with Gears of War 2. Attendees will walk away with knowledge about the technologies used as well as what went right and wrong during the development of the system.


Source :
http://www.gdcvault.com/showConference.php?category=free&conference=280

[Piranhi]

First PDF is interesting, the second went over my head lol.

[iniside]

That's nice but without actually someone presting it it's just plain text and you have to figure out 80% of it mean :D

[Froyok]

First PDF is interesting, the second went over my head lol.
Me too ! :D
But I preferred to put all that concerned epic games.

[DELTATHUND3R]

ty for that, both were very interesting..

[micahpharoh]

Am I the only one who couldn't watch the videos in the Prototyping one?

[iniside]

Am I the only one who couldn't watch the videos in the Prototyping one?

Videos ? :O

[MorganRoberts]

I hung out with Jim Brown at GDC and he sent me the link to where he saved the GDC slides - but I guess the link he sent me was only the "test slideshow". Either way, I'm sure he'll get 'em up soon when he's not busy. ;) - I don't wanna pester him about it.

[Piranhi]

I hate nagging, especially for free stuff, but I'd really love to get a look over them slides if anyone could put them up?

Kind Regards.

[Flak]

I'm sorry Piranhi! Here you go:

http://unrealtechnology.com/Downloads/Slides/GDC2010_Brown_LevelDesignInADay_ToolsMakingBetterG ame.pptx

[micahpharoh]

I'm sorry Piranhi! Here you go:

http://unrealtechnology.com/Downloads/Slides/GDC2010_Brown_LevelDesignInADay_ToolsMakingBetterG ame.pptx

Again, I can't seem to watch the embeded videos. Can I get a link to those?

Thanks

[Flak]

That's a powerpoint file. Right click, save as.

[Piranhi]

Awesome, cheers Flak :D

[micahpharoh]

That's a powerpoint file. Right click, save as.

I know, but some of the slides have nothing but a big gray square in the middle. I assumed they were videos, but maybe they were trying to show big gray pictures for some reason?

[Piranhi]

Yeah I'm guessing quite a few of the images/placeholders in it were videos. I knew it was useful to make the level out of BSP to get a general feel for it, but I've never seen a massive truck made out of BSP haha, so cool.

[Froyok]

# GDC 2010: Zero to Millions: Building an XLSP for Gears of War 2, Dan Schoenblum (PDF (http://download.udk.com/gdc/Schoenblum_Dan_BuildingAnXLSPGearsOfWar2.pdf))
# GDC 2010: Prototyping Based Design: A Better, Faster Way to Design, Lee Perry (PDF (http://download.udk.com/gdc/Perry_PrototypingBasedDesign.pdf))
# GDC 2010: Designing Shadow Complex, Donald Mustard (PDF (http://download.udk.com/gdc/Mustard_Donald_DesigningShadowComplex.pdf))
# GDC 2010: Bringing UE3 to Apple's iPhone Platform, Josh Adams (PPTX) [Not available, bad link]

And more (but old)... here. (http://www.unrealtechnology.com/whats-new.php?ref=downloads)

(Sorry, not realy new, it's just the downloads are available on the epic website.)

[Entropy]

Finally got things posted: http://www.slideshare.net/LevelDesigninaDay/gdc-2010-level-design-in-a-day-part-1-preproduction-ed-byrne-creative-director-zipper-interactive

Note that this is one of 6 presentations (they are all chain linked I believe) that was done over an 8 hour day so you might miss some points as they were more talking than showing on slides. The whole presentation was great fun to take part in, and was followed by a 4 hour QA session. Long day!

Cheers,

-Jim

[Entropy]

Also just got this awesome E-mail from slideshare (thanks everyone!!):

"GDC 2010 - Level Design in a Day Part 1. Preproduction: Ed Byrne, Creative Director, Zipper Interactive" is being tweeted more than any other document on SlideShare right now. So we've put it on the homepage of SlideShare.net (in the "Hot on Twitter" section).

Well done, you!

- SlideShare Team

[Piranhi]

That's great news! And thanks for the presentations.

[iniside]

Yeah i would realy like to see narration for those slides. But looks nobody have recored presentations :(.

[Entropy]

At the bottom of the slideshare window you can tab over to see the speaker notes, if that helps. Some people notes are more thorough than others; I flushed mine out a bit post-conference, but didn't dictate word for word. Tutorials were not recorded, however, for the GDC vault.

[Entropy]

Someone is doing a full writeup with a good amount of detail. They're not perfect, but when paired with the slides and notes you can get a pretty good recreation of the event:

http://worldofleveldesign.com/categories/wold-members-tutorials/sylvain_douce/gdc-2010-level-design-part1-sylvain-douce.php

[avoak]

This makes me wish that i was there even more.

[freek3d]

Thanks for posting that!

it is often hard to find leveldesign theory on the internet.
plenty of tutorials on how to use engines etc.

but the thoughtprocess behind leveldesign,
the organisation of space and why it is organised that way is often undocumented.
(aside from some bungie and blizzard keynotes)
and now this pops up, great :D

i will read into this thoroughly once get home!

thanks again.

Freek

[ariel ~]

Oh yeah, that World of Level Design site is amazing. Kudos to Alex for that!

ariel ~

[UDKKutigi77]

Someone is doing a full writeup with a good amount of detail. They're not perfect, but when paired with the slides and notes you can get a pretty good recreation of the event:

http://worldofleveldesign.com/categories/wold-members-tutorials/sylvain_douce/gdc-2010-level-design-part1-sylvain-douce.php

Thanks a bunch for the post.

[desigpa]

It seems that the jungle map has been available, some people have made reference to accessing it. Is there a download available?

[TorQueMoD]

Why don't you use a normal level transition and simply overlay a "teleporter effect" onto the screen a second before the transition starts? Would probably give the same result without the complication.

[ambershee]

You're replying to a phantom post from a thread that's a year old ;)

[desigpa]

So that's a problem? You discourage this, apparently the topic is not relevant enough to add useful information to, but just relevant enough for you to chime in a year later?

[josh_caratelli]

Please stop the flame war, if you want to continue please do so by other means don't pollute the threads.
Team13

[TorQueMoD]

I don't know how my post ended up on this announcement thread... sorry guys. Was just trying to help out someone.

[Turbonator]

Wow, thanks for bumping this up.

Otherwise I would have -completely- missed this out.
That link on page 2 is something I have been looking for.

:)