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2. Please Note
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3. Collaboration Within the department Across departments Top to bottom
Saying “we need better communication” is not enough
Moving on
Collaboration
As equally unsexy as workflow
Equally important
Types
P2P across departments
P2P within a department
Lead/Supervisor with developer
The key is good communication
Easy to say, hard to do
Saying “we need good communication” lacks the courage of clarity
It should be an outcome, not a requested action
I’ll talk about one thing we do to help create a collaborative climate

4. The Environment Design Guide
Established Clear Goals
Image heavy
Full of specifics
Establish clear goals that everyone agrees on
Allows us to frame requests in concrete terminology
Allows us to compromise on specifics
We don’t need to argue about a rock, because we talk about the purpose it serves
This doesn’t work 100% of the time, but it helps
Created environment design guide
Clear, concise, image heavy
Contains specific layout & object placement guidelines
Allows us to frame requests in terms of goals, player experience
Allows us to dodge fuzzy language “it’s better for gameplay”
Helps to avoid debates about feelings… “it doesn’t look good” “it doesn’t play well”
I’m going to step through one guide
We have other as well
Collision guides, encounter guides

5. The Rules Some of our rules For artists & designers
These are the high level rules of environment creation, specifically related to pathing & object placement

6. Effortless Movement
The player can traverse the world with minimal thought. Our game is not about jumping puzzles or complex navigation, so the levels should be smooth and easy to navigate.
This includes minimizing unclear path choices as well as situations with tricky collision.
We test this by running around objects in the map. If you get stuck, then the collision needs work.
Halo levels are always a great example of effortlessly navigable spaces, through the use of large clear obstructions and a lack of small objects to catch on, thus the image.

7. Clear Goals
At a glance, upon entering the world, the player can always see a clear path to their goal. The goal should be visually significant enough that it communicates its importance to the player.
This objective space is clearly the most important area in this region

8. Clear Cover
At a glance, the player should be able to determine the type of protection they will receive from a specific piece of cover.
This large concrete block clearly will protect the player from heavy ordinance

9. Abundant Safety
No matter where the player is in the world, they should feel like they are within reach of a location of relative safety. The player should never die thinking that they had no control over their fate. This is represented in a simple unreal unit distance. If you can drop this sphere in the map and have it touch nothing, then you need another piece of cover of some sort.
The player is never more than a few seconds from a place of cover

10. Interior LOS blockers
At any given moment, threats can come from a manageable number of directions.
This room is one in which the player can know every point of entry, but has no place where he can guard them all. Our interiors adhere to this. They all have entrances arranged such that you can’t watch every entrance from any single position. This forces the player to make a risky decision whenever they set up inside an interior

11. Support player tools
Every tool choice that the player makes should have a valid usage in as much of the map as possible.
There are specific guides for many mechanics here that I can’t go into

12. Limit LOS
Snipers and long range weapons should be limited both by the mechanics and by the environment. Mechanics as a sole limiting factor as inadequate, as the limits become too obvious if the environment doesn't also support the range limitations.
Many things obstruct the line of sight from this raised roof area

13. Protected Spawns
There need to be areas of relative safety from the objective, for safe player spawning
These points are protected from the main conflict area of the active objective

14. Meaningful Choices
The environment should always present the player with meaningful choices. At a basic level, this means allowing them to choose between different unique cover options. At a more advanced level, this may mean giving multiple clear paths into a space with unique advantages and disadvantages.
In this situation, the player can choose from multiple different entrances to the barn, each offering unique gameplay opportunities
Basically if every path through a space is the same, then it needs to be fixed.

15. Travel Times
Travel times should be balanced and equal for each team from spawn to objective. Specifically, it needs to be less than 30 seconds run time.

16. Max Z/Encounter Range
The player should need to periodically look up and down, although not at such extreme angles that
threats could be coming from far outside their view frustrum. We use this encounter ruler to validate heights for enemy placement.
There are multiple heights for conflict, but all fall within the standard field of view of the player
We can drop this asset into any encounter to validate enemy positions.

17. Landmarks
Our environments should be easy to mentally model into a complete image of the map. This means using clear regions, nodes, paths, landmarks, and borders to enforce the idea of 'neighborhoods' within a map.
This image shows a mental map of downtown Boston, from The Image of the City
As a rule, someone should be able to describe every major space within a map with a simple one or two word description that will not describe another place in the map.

18. More paths out than in
In MP objective spaces, the defender should have a stronger position than the attacker. To support this, objectives should have more paths out than in wherever possible.
This image shows that attackers need to approach the space from low ground, and the defender can escape in any direction

19. No Bad Paths
We should never lead the player down a path that they need to turn 180 degrees to exit, or that takes them on an unusually serpentine route to the other side.
Although a small example, this represents an area that would be a bad choice for pathing
You might also call something like this a path bucket or trap.

20. Infantry Safety
Infantry should always have a safe area from vehicles with which to meaningfully effect objectives. Vehicles should be able to effect some objectives, but it is not a requirement.
This objective can be capped by infantry and vehicles, however infantry has dedicated safe space

21. Break the Rules! That was a lot of rules Reference in times of strife
Break them, but make sure it’s for a good reason