Developer Medal of Honor Shows How Level Design Sausage Is Made



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Video game enthusiasts rarely get the chance to see games in anything other than their finished, shipped state – or something very close to it. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that, but video games don’t come out of the console fully rendered and out of the box; there are a lot of invisible stages in development that players just don’t see.

On Twitter SaturdayRespawn Entertainment senior game designer Alexa Kim has pulled the curtain down on part of the development she was involved with in the recently released VR game Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond. Specifically, Kim touched on the prototyping step of level design, which aims to define the “function” of a particular level, she said. The tweet has since gone viral, with players amazed at the differences between the prototypes – called blockages – and the finished product.

In the thread, Kim said she was responsible for showcasing the blocking prototypes and then adding the gameplay. From there, adjustments are made: “In my case, it was a shooter, so it was player movement versus AI movement, lines of sight, cover, etc.” Kim said on Twitter. “This level is playable at this state, but not visually polished.”

Once the level works in regards to gameplay, art is added. The art at Kim’s levels, she says, comes from development studio Virtuos Games, which has been involved in games like Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Dark Souls: Remastered, and Call of Duty: Black Ops 4. It handles everything from game development to art production, according to its website. Kim said she “tweaked the gameplay” throughout a collaborative back and forth between the artists and her team.

Kim followed her Twitter feed with a YouTube video posted Sunday, with the developers commenting on Medal of honor: Above and beyondThe “Back on the ground” level. (You can watch it embedded above.) She walks through the level with the player, outlining the process behind the decisions made during development. For those looking for more information, Kim has another video on YouTube, in which she talks about another Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond level titled “Welcome to Norway”.



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