dissertation
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dissertation [2012/09/10 21:15] khullett |
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| ====== The Science of Level Design: Design Patterns and Analysis of Player Behavior in FPS Levels ====== | ====== The Science of Level Design: Design Patterns and Analysis of Player Behavior in FPS Levels ====== | ||
| {{:gr03-020005.jpg?200 |}} | {{:gr03-020005.jpg?200 |}} | ||
| - | My dissertation ties together my research in [[level design]], [[game data analysis]], and [[player modeling]]. | + | My dissertation ties together my interests in [[level design]], [[design patterns]], [[game data analysis]], and [[player modeling]]. |
| - | Our goal is to better understand how designers use level design to create gameplay, and give them tools that aid their craft. For this research we choose to examine single player first-person shooter (FPS) levels, as it is a popular and well-established genre. | + | Level designers create gameplay through geometry, AI scripting, and item placement. There is little formal understanding of this process, but rather a large body of design lore and rules of thumb. As a result, there is no accepted common language for describing the building blocks of level design and the gameplay they create. This dissertation presents a set of level design patterns for first-person shooter (FPS) games, providing cause-effect relationships between level design patterns and gameplay. These relationships are explored through analysis of data gathered in an extensive user study. |
| - | Based on discussion with designers and extensive analysis, we have formed a theory of how [[design patterns]] are used to create gameplay in FPS levels. We identified recurring elements in levels, and speculated about how the designer intended to use them to affect the pacing, tension, and challenge of the level. We also explored ways these patterns could be varied, and how that would alter the basic effects of the patterns. The resulting pattern collection can be seen [[http://ldp.soe.ucsc.edu/doku.php?id=single_player|here]]. | + | Our goal is to better understand how designers use level design to create gameplay, and give them tools that aid their craft. For this research we choose to examine single player FPS levels, as it is a popular and well-established genre. Based on discussion with designers and extensive analysis, we formed a theory of how design patterns are used to create gameplay in FPS levels. We identified recurring elements in levels and the designer's intent in using them to affect the pacing, tension, and challenge of a level. We also explored ways these patterns could be varied, and how that would alter the basic effects of the patterns. The resulting pattern collection can be seen [[http://ldp.soe.ucsc.edu/doku.php?id=single_player|here]]. |
| - | Explicitly using the identified patterns, we built levels for a mod of Valve's Source Engine (a.k.a. the Half-Life engine). This mod serves as the testbed to collect data on how player behavior is affected by these patterns. Analysis of this data (in progress) will allow us to validate or modify our previous findings to make the pattern collection a more useful tool for designers to develop gameplay more precisely. | + | Explicitly using the identified patterns, we built levels for a mod of Valve's Source Engine (a.k.a. the Half-Life engine). This mod serves as the testbed to collect data on how player behavior is affected by these patterns. Analysis of this data gave insights into these connections between level design and gameplay. |
| - | + | ||
| - | Level designers create gameplay through geometry, AI scripting, and item placement. There is little formal understanding of this process, but rather a large body of design lore and rules of thumb. As a result, there is no accepted common language for describing the building blocks of level design and the gameplay they create. This dissertation presents a set of level design patterns for first-person shooter (FPS) games, providing cause-effect relationships between level design patterns and gameplay. These relationships are explored through analysis of data gathered in an extensive user study. | + | |
| This work is the first scientific study of level design, laying the foundation for further work in this area. Data driven approaches to understand gameplay have been attempted in the past, but this work takes it to a new level by showing specific cause-effect relationships between the design of the level and player behavior. | This work is the first scientific study of level design, laying the foundation for further work in this area. Data driven approaches to understand gameplay have been attempted in the past, but this work takes it to a new level by showing specific cause-effect relationships between the design of the level and player behavior. | ||
dissertation.txt · Last modified: 2012/09/10 21:30 by khullett
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