Empowering the Player: Level Design in N++
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- Опубліковано 22 січ 2025
- How do you produce thousands of levels without repeating yourself or sacrificing quality? This GDC 2016 talk from Metanet Software's Mare Sheppard and Raigan Burns summarizes the level design lessons they learned over the course of the decade-long development cycle that led to N++.
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This was a super interesting presentation & very helpful to someone currently immersed in level design. Here are some notes I took while watching this, maybe they'll be useful to someone. Thanks N++ creators!
Notes on N++ Talk:
* Movement is a performance that needs to be learned & mastered
* The level should be intriguing & fun to navigate & manipulate
* Ways in which levels can vary:
* The general difficulty of the level
* Length & duration of the level
* Types of Movement required by the player - Traveling Vertically or Horizontally or a mix of the 2
* Flat surfaces or mostly angled surfaces
* Types & Combinations of Enemies / Objects in the level
* Various types of Pacing, whether the level peaks at the beginning, middle or end
* Types of skills required on the part of the player - do you have to be patient? Or have really good reflexes?
* Types of space in the level - more wide open or more narrow
* Being productive is often about managing expectations & keeping yourself motivated & having the freedom to scrap an idea at any point
* If you’re rating levels from 0-2 scale, 0 being repetitive & plain, 2 being challenging & with lots of variety, you don’t want all your levels to be 2’s. You want a nice mix between the 3 types, you want good DYNAMICS - like in music, the quiet parts make the loud parts seem even more loud. DYNAMICS BOI. Remember that.
* It gets exhausting & boring to work on the same level for hours at a time - a remedy to this is to iterate through multiple levels updating those as you go
* It can be difficult to fine-tune all the details of a level at one time, switching back-and-forth between them can break your concentration on other details - such as placing coins / gold, that is something you can go back & do for a bunch of old levels at a time, with the new insight you’ve gained as you’ve progressed
* The N++ team has multiple routes for completing a level that they design: There is a basic completion route, there is an all-gold route where the player must collect all the gold pieces, this allows the player to modulate the difficulty of the level on their own
* “Our philosophy is that levels are kind of like a conversation you are having with the player - we want that conversation to be playful & intriguing & constructive & loose, but never bullying or mean. N++ is difficult, if it were unfair or took cheap shots, it would just be infuriating.”
* Use repetition to help players hone their skills, but don’t re-use exact chunks of levels, use them with subtle variations.
* Sibling Levels - 2 different takes on the same idea
This indeed was helpful - thank you :)
Very well put together comment, thanks
Amazing talk, N++ is surely a level design masterpiece.
It's the best combination of form and function I've ever seen in a game.
godlike
not the first game to design it a bit like this, but then again they made a more "safe route" to build such maps.
for 3D maps/games to other things can be harder and way more diffecult to "perfect" it for different players, children, tutorials etc.
Even though they say MP is a different beast, its kind of a yes and no (depends on the game).
at least a method that works fast and simple in shooters/RTS or PvP games in general is creating half of a "perfect" design then turn it so its sym and it would most likely work well (with a few tweaks).
She was talking about N++ specifically so yeah, MP is a different beast because they have various game modes and levels that play different, have their own set of design rules and goals. It would have taken another good hour to cover them (which I would have enjoyed listening to).
Map symmetry for specific game modes in a competitive game is almost obligatory because you don't want to give an advantage to one team over the other. With asymmetry, you'll have to work hard on balancing the game out and that requires you to iterate over your level design after each play test session to cater for any player found advantage over the opposing team. And in 3D, that can be annoyingly hard.
The problem is, symmetry is boring and asymmetry is hard to balance.
These kind of talks are one's you truly learn from. I've always hated those analysis youtube channels that will only talk about 'high level concepts' when there are so many other things that go into design.
Those metanet tutorials were huge, I'm so thankful for them
integral part of any game devs reference material
Definitely one of the greatest platformers of all time. Back in college my internet went down for a couple weeks and all I did was play the original N to completion multiple times. Most games I don't even bother finishing, let alone try to 100%. The creative freedom in level solving (rather than pure memorization and pixel precision) is what makes this game so special. Rocket is my favorite enemy, sometimes I just relax and dance with it for a while rather than trying to win. :)
Original N like the one with 30x5 (150) levels or N_v14 with 100x5 (500) levels?
I like the hitscan lasers 😂😂
This are people who play their game and understand it. This is how it must be done. This deep understanding of what you do and how you do and what it comes out and how it works... Those people are incredible.
This talk is great. High-level level design concepts brought back to real world examples over and over and over.
Also played N in OG flash days 2004ish/5/6 so it's rad to see into their minds. I loved the game as a great simple feel, deep design flash game. In school we would all see who could get most gold or get through most levels before class would get out. Double thanks!
She was super nervous. But the talk was beautiful and really interesting!
Early on she was nervous but I think by 20 minutes in she seems more comfortable.
Great talk. I'm amazed at how fresh and original many of the levels in N++ feel, even after I've played thousands of them.
This is one of the most lucrative games out there. Insane replayability, super addictive. Great talk!
This game is like a study in level design. Great inspiration!
I remember playing this on our high school's computers back in like 2007
thank you for your insight
So not only did that one guy get his start doing a contest for for N+, but N itself was the result of a flash games competition? Competitions may be far more important than I thought.
There are multiple national and international game jams every year and sometimes those jams produce games that make it to be released as full games. Games such as SUPERHOT and Surgeon Simulator are the results 7DFPS competition and Global Game Jam, respectively. Goat Simulator was the result of the studio's internal game jam as a joke project that "matured" into a game on Steam. In addition to Global Game Jam and national game jams, some game engine developers such as Epic Games, creators of Unreal Engine, have a yearly game jam as well.
Double Fine has an internal competition yearly as well, where the best game(s) goes on to being made into full products (at their discretion ofc)
One of my greatest joys is Ludum Dare. It's a 48 hour competition where a flash game has to be designed within particular parameters set by a constant such as a "theme". Though the games tend to be buggy, the concepts that come out are remarkable, and there is a lot of categories that you can aim to win in terms of your design. As an example, the theme could be "prison" or "it's dangerous to go alone", but you don't have to be the best because you can be the coolest or most unique in your form.
"Racing improves the breed."
Ive been playing N since I was seven years old. Needless to say, I bought N++ the minute I found out it was on Steam. So fucking good.
Same but with N+. Played all of the games
this was amazing to watch, I used to play in school lunch breaks back when it was "N-Ninja" maybe 12 years ago now, really inspiring to watch as I'm just starting out in games dev myself,
Came here expecting a coding language - leaving with my mind blown.
@floofle of course he wasn't. Isn't that very obvious?
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@@sudhakarmilk8006 Same
More should look at this presentation for great examples illustrating what you're talking about as well as well organized and thought out. Was a huge fan of the original, glad to see what they've accomplished.
Never heard of this game before but it has an interesting mechanic. Usually physics platformers are terrible and devs go out of their way to avoid physics stuff in favor of tighter controls, but it's nice to see one that has some acceleration and reflection put to good use.
I agree. I really don't like most of those physics platform games, because it just feels too slow, and similar to a lot of other games (generic Unity games for example).
But this game did a really well job making it work. I spent countless hours playing this back in the days.
So much good advice, a lot of it is very intuitive but easy to overlook. I like that there are 8 rough difficulty estimations, for example, this level of granularity should make it a lot more accurate
Great talk! Very interesting. Going to have to give N++ a try.
Have you yet? You won't regret it. Best platformer of all time.
I love these two people. Thank you for n++
N, N+, N++ are AMAZING!
23:16 I like how this level pops up with that particular commentary
its exciting to see game developers be passionate about their projects
OMG!!! I used to play this game all the time on the "Torontotron" at Site 3!
Really interesting talk! Perticulaly regarding the movement dynamics
51:36 lmao the evil smile Raigan gets
I loved the original N game, but I remember it being a hassle to find because with most search engines the would only search words with 3 characters or more, so I eventually lost track of it. So I'm delighted to see there's N++, I'll definitely give it a try!
Loved it!
I remember this game! Soooo good
Great talk.
I haven't heard about this game in so many years
where's Shawn McGrath?
I was just playing that game yesterday
Amazing video!!! i fucking love when designers are passionate about their work
They are extremely passionate about their work for sure. Raigan stopped by my stream one day just to watch and have a chat because he thoroughly enjoyed watching people play his masterpiece.
Something I took away from this: form follows function. The geometry of the level is only important insofar as it facilitates the content and the level's purpose.
Absolutely amazing.
The player level section of N++ is better than Super Mario Maker
Yeay! Commander Sheppard! :)
0:12 Canadians do pronounce the T. Ben Affleck lied.
I thought this videos was on making levels on notepad++😅
Didn't know Notepad++ was a game.
Poor Mare looks so nervous.
She a qt
Yeah, I wondered if I could toggle all the mines and survive as well. The answer: occasionally, yes, but usually... *BOOM* *ninja parts going everywhere*
I'm looking at you, 'pixelightning'. ALWAYS THE LAST ONE!
It sounds like she constantly want to cry,
But I would sound like that too in front of thousands of people
*mic inhale*
These people look like the characters from Being John Malcovich
Oh man you're so right hahaha
Be interesting to procedurally generate backwards:
Regulate jump count and required accuracy for level difficulty.
Start with a number of walk, jump, climb points.
Plot multiple journeys, selecting for each challenge type.
Place jump surfaces; fill in unused space; populate hazards.
Self Play AI to test and confirm difficult based on extant levels... 🤔
"an experienced player playing through the LAST SET OF LEVELS" if only they knew...
36:21
I played that game when I was younger I think it was pretty cool.
26:00
20:01 hung among us
plus plus
20:00 I'm sorry
She sounds SOOOO distressed and terrified.
Am I the only one getting deep anxiety by listening to this?
It's super interesting, but it's killing me
would love to listen to you presenting your life's work to a big audience
I am distressed just by watching, she is a total badass for being able to finish the presentation. I'd probably break down crying.
47:28
5 hour
aaahhh... my dreams are finally coming true.... i can watch super smart, hot women talk about game design!
Anyone else thought this talk was going to be about Notepad++?
why is this lady so out of breath...chill out man. it was interesting but SO hard to listen to... sounded like she was touring her self because of how nervous she was
some people are super nervous. i know i would be when presenting. just a skill to be learned, not everyone can do it naturally.
It was mostly just poor mic placement.
or it could be asthma. But the real issue probably was how close the mic was
talking in front of hundreds of people can be stressful
I get like that reading aloud in class :/
Hearing her breathing in my headset was not very nice, it was distracting me a lot :(
It would have been difficult to make the presentation without breathing :o
@@drbuni tru :p
Pretty funny to hear her say how "they created and FOR N++" when those features have existed in N+.swf since the dawn of Newgrounds
Bro, they made all three games
Jesus Christ.
Lode Runner rip off?
The game isn't even close to Lode Runner, what are you smoking?
Too little. I can see a red thread going on from Loderunner.
They are not even close to being the same game.. The only thing they have in common is that they are platformers.
Loderunner don't have the gravity but you follow the same guidelines. Down to the small character you control. Have you even seen it I wonder?
Maybe you should take a second look at Lode Runner, they have nothing in common except being 2D platformers.
Space Panic and Lode Runner are more alike than Lode Runner and N++, if anything Lode Runner is a Space Panic rip off. But I bet you don't even know what Space Panic is. *inb4 you are googling it*
Loved the talk, though she breaths very heavily.