Level design

[Aggrav8d]

There's a lot of talk on here about bullet patterns, what language to use, and whether or not to use game making software. That's all well and good but I'd like to raise a different subject.

Lately I've been struggling with content. I've tried and tried and tried to find an artist that could design levels and art in the style & quality I hope for but to no avail. Since I have been so unsuccessful I have decided to do it all myself. I've had a lot of success building my first editing tools using wxWidgets - they use OpenGL, they compile cross platform, it's all good.

But here's the rub: when I sit down with a big sketch pad and try to design levels...

...time passes and not much else happens. I don't know if I'm suffering creative block or if my inexperience that makes the task subconciously daunting. Either way, I need some help. So my question to you (all) is:

How do you go about your level design?
Do you have any kind of systematic approach?
Do you have some strange, quasi-legal ritual to get in the Zone, like sacrificing a chicken naked under a half moon? (what is a strange idea. who ever heard of a chicken with pants.)
How do you tackle such a big and nebulous task and break it into smaller pieces?

Any and all ideas would be studied, analysed, dissected, deboned, saute'd, memorized, and then secretly hidden away in a bunker under graceland.

[landshark]

That was my biggest stopping point. Content. I've made several engines, hardware abstraction layers (before win95 existed), windowing systems, etc etc etc... can do it in my sleep.

But content. Holy crap is that hard to come up with, specifically the art.

Level designs can be inspired by looking at various things in real life. Look at websites filled with cave (rocks) pictures, then look at pictures of oil refineries. Think about ways to splice them together (pipes and corridors moving in and out of the caves). Then think about ways in which parts may be animated: gears turning pistons which may crush rock or make it explode causing level damage... just let your mind wander.

Look at deep sea pictures and you'll see some really strange organic life and you might instantly draw images in your head of what some enemies may look like. What might you actually see down there in terms of level'sh stuff. Hot steam vents, volcanic leaks, etc... an entrance to a secret level?

My mind gets sent into other directions if I see stuff such as the alice in wonderland style of art. The really eerie, not-quite-right like stuff. You can get some really weird level ideas out of that (and even weirder enemies).

But then you need to find a way to get those ideas into pixels. And thats where I always failed, and lost interest in whatever I was doing.

Music may also help. Music can get you in the mood, thinking in various ways.

I also find that some of the most weird shit I think of happens JUST as I'm waking up from or drifting off to sleep. That sorts state where you aren't quite awake, but you can think. That's also where I think of new methods of implementing solutions to existing problems both on the computer and mechanically. Kinda weird.

[raiden]

I didn´t quite get whether you are talking about "level design" in the sense of creating backgrounds or in the sense of designing enemy formations. For backgrounds, I´d try to decide for a setting first, preferably a unique one, but most importantly, for one that you can actually realize. For example, you might like a character based theme with very detailed figure animations, but find yourself unable to do all the work required for that, so a military style shooter with little animation and plain landscapes might be the better option, then.
The good thing about a setting is that it makes graphics more convincing, because people already know what to expect. If you want to do something wild, with completely different stages, players will often wonder what things are supposed to represent. Of course, you can always go abstract and just draw a few moving lines for background, but this has been slightly overdone by people like Kenta Cho already. Stars are another easy way out, but won´t excite anyone.
For enemy placement, there´s no other way than playtesting the thing over and over again. Start with something small, like 5 formations / 30 seconds playtime, put enemies at random points or in any generic formation, see how that plays and start rearranging them until it plays better. Once you´re satisfied, keep adding small fragments of 10 seconds until you have a stage. Try not to repeat yourself. Give people something to memorize, specific enemies signalling to get ready for something wicked.

[Eltrotraw]

I generally sketch out enemy formations and attempt to put them in as best as possible. Of course I usually compensate since I usually overkill some enemy formations or make them waaay too easy, i.e. Dodonpachi amounts of bullets with large hitbox.