Way back last year I was asked to come up with a series of level designs for Conflict: Desert Storm based around a team of hardened Special Forces Soldiers causing havoc behind Iraqi lines during the Gulf-war. I immediately began reading all the material I could on the Gulf-war crisis ranging from first-hand SAS soldier accounts (Bravo-two Zero) to the rather long but very interesting General 'Stormin Norman' Shwarztkopf autobiography. What all these books gave me was a greater insight into what actually went on during the war of 1991.

[Image - '..Baghdad sure is quiet this time o' day']
I then began to flesh out the mission flow of the game using the Kuwait invasion as the first campaign. This seemed like the most obvious start for the game even though the time gap between the actual invasion of Kuwait and the Allied coalition's war against Iraq was a couple of months. The second campaign was based around the SAS and Delta Force's daring raids behind enemy lines to destroy Saddam's Scud missile launchers. The third centred on the ground war and the fourth and last was to be situated in Baghdad itself. Although no Special Forces soldier was sent to Baghdad during the Gulf-war (Or so they say!) I thought that this would be an exciting way to finish the game.

Using this as a template I began sketching out the levels on plain graph paper. Then once I was happy with the layouts of the levels, I began writing them up in Microsoft Word and re-drawing the levels in Paint-shop pro to produce a document that could be passed around the rest of the team.

Once all the levels were documented I began on the next stage of the level design process. This involved mocking up the levels in 3DS Max, a 3D creation package. This was done by creating a Greyscale Height-map which when applied to a mesh in 3DS Max roughly fleshed out the basic level geometry. This could be imported into our in-house editor so I could run around the level checking for errors. This process helped me to get a good feel for the level and whether it needed alterations. All the mocked up levels have now gone onto the artists who are texturing and building the level and the programmers who are scripting the level. Already the levels are looking really polished. It's very rewarding to see a simple paper map turn into a fully working breathing 3D world.

With most of the levels already handed back to me I am now at the stage where I can balance the levels, which is effectively the last part of the level design process. This will involve the tweaking of the character, vehicle and weapon stats. Polishing the scripting and then play testing.