Making Structures

Guide info#

Tiny: 2-4 minutes

TLDR - What this guide covers#

• Structuring affects both the gameplay and the decoration of a level. Creating good structures makes a level more readable and more intuitive to play. You can do this by directing the player towards essential points, which are platforms and hazards they need to be aware of.
• Structuring can also be used to fix some issues not related to the actual level, such as skips. You’ll have to do playtesting to identify and fix skips correctly.

1: Why Structure?

Structures are important for many reasons. They can help guide the player through your gameplay and influence how intuitive it feels to play.

Additionally, they can help prevent bugs by making it hard for people to skip sections of the level. As the most common element of a level, they’re very important from a decoration standpoint.

2: Guiding the Player

Structures have essential points. These contain the areas the player will interact with, and the hazards they will avoid. Some examples of essential points are the tops of platforms and any spikes the player can die to, as they guide a majority of the player’s actions.

The rest of your structures should be oriented so they point towards your essential points. This will clarify what the player should aim for and avoid. In this example, a player can easily identify where the platforms are, and where they shouldn’t click if they want to make it to the right ones.

Be wary about where you place your essential points, as you can easily mislead players if you’re not careful. For example, since platforms are a major essential point, you can easily trick a player into not jumping when they’re supposed to, like in this example.

You can fix this by adding hazards to show that the player will die if they don’t jump.

3: Preventing Skips

Structures are also very good for preventing skips in gameplay. This is quite obvious; the sides of blocks simply kill players who try to cheese segments. You’ll have to do playtesting to identify where skips are in your level, then you can modify your structure shapes and add hazards accordingly.

If all else fails, put a wall of spikes at the floor and ceiling of your level. You can also put this contraption in your level to stop people from using Noclip.

4: Tips for Decoration

Avoid structuring using :FreeMove: Free Move, as this can be quite annoying for decorators. Try :Snap: snapping your structures to the grid, or aligning them with the half or quarter sized grids.

Additionally, try to make your structures using simple shapes, like blocks and slopes. Leave more complex details up to the decorator.

Credits#

Created by @etherail and @koma5