LVL UP 5×02 – Acting with Victor Cerezo

To continue with the thematic trend of this second season, it was expected that we would start at some point with possibly one of the sweetest topics of all: Level Design. It is an area of video game development that is especially plastic that connects very technical aspects as well as visual ones. We can include concepts such as space design, pacing, missions, player objectives, navigation flow, and many other super attractive topics that end up converging in this discipline. The level design specialty requires a very interesting balance of skills, from sketching, diagram and schematic map design to using blockouts or greyboxes to make 3D prototypes with basic geometry based on primitive objects and assets. In this area, many resources are usually used to develop navigable and playable prototypes that help validate the team’s hypotheses, including the main gameplay. The level design work begins in the earliest phases starting with simple objects and reaches the final stages such as dressing or polishing. These later, more artistic phases where other team members integrate final assets, lighting, effects, textures, characters, and animation with their final geometry will be critical dependencies for the level design. All of them are part of a set of decisions made that we must maintain in an efficient, functional and correct balance with the dependencies of level design as we advance in the final production. Today we have with us a colleague from the industry with a super interesting and varied career with a strong background in Level Design and other disciplines of video game development…