Get ready to conquer the basics of building a strong level or mod for your games. "Beginning Game Level Design" covers everything from putting your ideas down on paper, to creating spaces and architecture, through placing units and scripting their behavior. You?ll cover each important area of expertise that goes into creating a great level. As you cover each new topic, use the end-of-chapter projects to test your newfound skills. "Beginning Game Level Design" gives you a step-by-step look into the tasks a successful designer goes through in order to create levels that keep players coming back for more.

good but could have been great

This book makes the same mistake most every other book does having to do with game design in that the author assumes the reader has never played a video game before and spends the first few chapters explaining "game design concepts" that are beyond obvious and would only benefit someone who has lived in a cave for the last 10 years. When the authors finally get around to explaining how to do game levels, they dont give any particular button pushing instructions, its all "we did this, and then we did this.....". Despite these shortcomings this book is quite a bit better than the other books on game level design that are out there.

Every page is full of precious information

This is the 3rd book I got about the subject and I can say that this one in my favourite. Is short but covers everything very well. Also, the authors really show a lot of experience and very good writing skills. A really hope they write and intermediate book covering more stuff and using a RPG Toolkit like NWN2 one. You can’t go wrong with this book. GRAB IT !

Great book! Good for aspiring devs and everyone else.

This book does an excellent job of teaching you all the different elements in game design. It also includes some of the tricks pro developers use as well! A nice bonus. The book is written in "simple to follow" English so as to not discourage anyone from following the lessons. I highly recommend this to all the gamers out there that want to get into game or level design!

FYI: Important tidbit of info not covered in description

I ran across this book at a bookstore last night and whenever the author goes into step by step building, he is using the Crytek editor that comes with the game FarCry. An excellent and *powerful* editor. A lot of other information is also covered in the book and it looks very nice after browsing thru it at the store.

Be aware, I have not spent a lot of time with it yet, so I will give it a 4 star based upon brief inspection and not to skew future ratings.