Anyone know of any good books on general level design. Or what kind of stuff they might teach in a level design class. It occures to me there''s a lot of stuff in this area I''ve never considered. People do actually get hired on as level designers, what the heck do they know that gets them the job?

Gamasutra has an excellent level design resource guide. The level designers I know, working in the industry and on mod projects, are very detail-oriented, have a good sense of 3D spatial issues, understand at least basic architecture, and most of all, know how to set up a level in such a way as it''s fun for the kind of gameplay you''re trying to acheive. So, an arena map is going to be different from a CTF map, which will be different from a single-player map, etc.

R.

But what about non-3D non-FPS games.

Anything usefull for side scroller games like Mario? What about cities and mazes for RPGs? Maps for an RTS? Is there any kind of basic theory that covers everything or is it just "make sure things are setup so it''s fun for what you''re trying to achieve."

(I''ll check out Gamasutra after work, thanks.)

Make sure its fun.

I don;t know about you, but that''s what I play games for