Next Generation Level Creation

Much like The Game Chair's Jake, my first foray into 3D level building was manipulating Doom levels. With good old DoomEd I created an nine room deathmatch map with barrels and funky lighting galore. It was grand fun for my college mates until someone came around and remade our fraternity badge into a Doom level ... then it was merely old hat.

Oh, those silly days of yore. Behold level editing Far Cry on the 360:

Even with inspirational ease of PC Crytek editing, I wasn’t expecting much from the Far Cry Instincts Predator level editor. Surely the console interface would destroy any possibility of a decent creation tool. Boy was I wrong. In many ways, the Xbox 360 version of the Crytek editor is another leap forward in intuitive ease. Every button of the controller is used, but Ubisoft keeps the interface manageable by leaving one word descriptions of each button press sitting on the screen at all times. I quickly discovered that additional functions are found under popup menus accessed by pulling the right or left trigger. Some notable features are the handy undo button, and the very fast shadow generator which recalculated world lighting based on the time of day I selected.

-- Far Cry Instincts Predator - Second Play - Level Creation for the Next Generation

And to think I once spent hours just trying to find the bugs when I recreated my old office for Unreal Tournament. And there was still a hall of mirrors bug when I was done. Trust me, this gen has it easy.



tagged: 360, gaming