This a short technical paper that covers the planning phase and layout sketching in level design.

It’s a good thing that many people grasp the importance of planning in every action they undertake, yet, many level designers fail to acknowledge the concept of planning in their projects. Running without a clear plan will ultimately lead to the project’s failure and scraping, or, if the final work ever sees the light, it will most probably be a mess and a source of embarrassment rather than pride.

I have heard many excuses about why designers, especially beginners, refrain from planning their levels. Aside from utter laziness, many rookies will use the easiest leeway of “I’m just doing this for fun; why would I need to plan and do the serious stuff?”

Another popular excuse is “I can’t draw; I’m not an architect/art student/draftsman…”. There are probably more lame/weird/lazy excuses that I will not bother listing here but you get the general idea about how people bypass the planning phase and jump straight to the actual level building.

I believe the best way to teach and motivate beginners to do things the correct way is to show them clear and easy examples. In this short paper, I’ll try to depict my way of planning and sketching my levels with actual images of hand-drawn sketches and in-game screenshots. Keep in mind that this approach is not the only one valid; it is just my way of doing things, and hopefully, it will shed some light on the “mysterious” planning phase in level design, in a way to get through and inspire aspiring level designers.

Although not a prerequisite, I do recommend reading my previous paper here covering a systematic approach to level design where planning is the first phase of this approach.

The paper is in PDF format (22 pages, 3.38 MB) and can be downloaded from the below link on Mediafire:

Planning To Win Sketching Your Level

Update: Here is an alternate link hosted in-house on Gamebanana

Planning To Win Sketching Your Level

A big thanks to natko for his continuous support.