Effective talk: Making levels that are better connected
Year of Talk: 2021
It's important to understand that maps are meant to help represent different locations and how they all relate to each other. This way, people can understand roughly where everything is and can base their routes on where things are relative to themselves.
Cognitive maps:
They are mental maps that people or animals can create which help them determine the general direction a point is relative to themselves. If the original way is blocked, it allows someone to find new routes to their destination.
Getting lost:
This usually happens when you are in a new area with different things but believe you already know where certain things are. It can lead to a bad time because it causes a lot of confusion and wrong turns.
This can normally happen when various components of the area change or the user's relationship to the area. This can occur when a user hasn't built the appropriate cognitive map of the area so minor deviations can cause the users to easily get confused. Since they can remember certain points of interest in the area but not other general information it can be easy to get lost.
Paths are some of the main ways people move around an area and build their Cognitive maps based on said maps. They are easiest to remember as they tend to be used the most by people.
Dead Reckoning and Path Integration are the principal terms used when trying to explain how someone finds out where they are concerning a previously known location and the steps taken to reach the new location. This occurs either multiple times in a walk as well as at the start and end of the walk. A way of thinking it is that each step is a frame of a movie or animation. Individually there might not be a lot of movement but when put together sequentially someone can see all the walking as one singular event.
Using a combination of Paths, Dead Reckoning, and Path Integration will allow the devs to guide players through different destinations even if they start getting lost. In a way helps reduce the amount of possible directions that the user can go towards to a handful of options.
Doing so also helps connect larger areas or two far-away points. This can be a way to help incentivize exploration as players might want to see where all the roads lead. It also helps players understand that even if they start getting lost there is a common route they can return to.
Landmarks:
Using landmarks makes cognitive maps easier to build as they tend to be very unique buildings or structures that are easily recognizable to many people. They can have stories or something else that makes them stand out. This helps them become common reference points for a wider amount of people as they will have frequented there or use it as a reference for their cognitive maps.
Using landmarks can also help give players purpose or better orient them. As players explore new areas of a map they can anchor a landmark that is visible in both the new area and another area they already explored. This means that as they learn the new map and create a new cognitive map they will have an internal reference to something they already learnt and experienced.
District:
By having districts you can have unique areas in a city that helps give broader unique landmarks depending on the district. It can also help create more cognitive maps as players can use certain districts as references and know what districts connect to other districts.
At the same time creating districts allows you to build similar events, buildings, and landmarks near each other. Which can help the player remember where certain types of mechanics or buildings are found. It also helps as having a city without districts will mean that everything is spread out evenly and the player would not have any incentives to explore new areas and just stay in the same small area.
Edge:
Certain separation needs to exist that help make it clear where the playable area ends and where the non-playable area starts. This can be done with walls, cliffs, or oceans. It tends to be easily identifiable landmarks as they might have substantial elevation differences or will appear purposely toxic and should be avoided.
Having edges integrated into the world also helps limit where the player can explore and makes sure that the developers don't need to make a lot of extra assets that are relatively unnecessary.
It's important to make sure that the edge is clearly distinguishable by the players to make sure they understand what are the areas they can or cannot play in. Having more pronounced edges will make sure that the border of the map is more visible and won't cause any confusion instead of a blurred edge. Will also help reduce the risk of players thinking that the area they are walking towards is still in the playable area.
Node:
Nodes are areas that have multiple paths that converge, normally an intersection, train hub, or bus terminal. These are areas that have multiple ways of entering and leaving it as well as the fact that it helps the player move around the map through different routes. If they are strategically placed they help the player more easily navigate certain areas as they can quickly use said nodes as landmarks or to move to new areas.
It is important to make sure that enough paths are given that lead to said nodes. This will make sure that they stay useful throughout the game. It is also important to give the player incentives to go through the node instead of trying to use other indirect routes.
Implementation:It's important to go back on previously designed levels and see what different buildings and areas that are currently in the levels fit with the different groupings. It could reveal that there aren't a lot of routes through nodes and players might not have incentives to use them. Or a landmark can be updated to make it more recognizable to the players when they travel through the level.
It's also useful to make sure the level is readable, not only to build and implement but also for players to be able to traverse through the entire level with as minimal problems as possible.
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