Level Design 101/Visual design

As well as the gameplay of your stage, the visuals play a very large part of the player's experience on a map. Proper texturing gives the stage a unified look and feel as well as giving the player visual cues and drawing their attention to important level elements. Inconsistent visual design can confuse and disorient the player and lead them to make wrong assumptions about the level's architecture, such as whether or not a platform will crumble. On top of that, good visual design can make the stage more appealing and inviting to the player. Nice visuals are never as important as interesting gameplay, but a pretty stage is going to leave a better impression than an ugly one.

Theme

• Where are you? An underwater factory? An airship, high in the sky? Ruins in the forest? Underground cave network?
• What's it made out of? Different locations will use different materials. Different materials create different shapes.
  • Architectural spaces (temple ruins, factories, castles) use square, rational shapes.
  • Natural spaces (caves, cliffs, grasslands) use rough, organic shapes.
• Keep color coordination in mind. If you're using SRB2's included textures, this probably won't be a big problem. Keep an eye out for clashing colors.

Detail

Well-implemented detail fills up empty spots in the level's layout and adds to the stage's aesthetics. Creative sector-based scenery makes a level feel unique and can also add realism.

• Levels always look nicer when they have a perfect amount of detail. Too little detail can make the level feel empty, but too much detail can make the level feel cluttered.

• Balance the level of detail across the map. Add detail to all rooms, evenly across each room. All spaces in the level should feel equally developed.

• Scenery should not obstruct the player's movement. Sonic will automatically step up floor height differences of 24 and smaller. Height differences of 32 and greater require a jump. Wall-based detail can be recessed into the wall, and you can keep the player from snagging on the detail using impassible lines or fake floors.

• Large rooms hold more detail than small rooms. Large rooms are rarely filled up entirely by gameplay-relevant structures, so sector-based scenery can be useful to prevent the rest of the room from looking empty. Too much detail in large rooms can impact performance (framerate), however.

• Add detail with both sectors and things. Sector-based scenery is essential to make your level less flat and is good to fill up empty areas. Sometimes, scenery elements can also function as platforming elements or host hidden items. For example, the small crates in Arid Canyon Zone Act 1 are sector-based decorations, but they can also be used as stepping stones in platforming. Thing-based scenery on the other hand is good to decorate areas that already have a complex sector layout or that would become cluttered from sector-based scenery (e.g. hallways). Both types of scenery should be usually used in a level, although use of one more than the other can give the level an unique style.

• Structures in the stage need structural support. SRB2 takes place in an abstracted version of the world, but stages still need to feel grounded. A structurally-nebulous bridge will make the player feel that something isn't right about the world (though they may not consciously realize the problem). Both natural and artificial structures need some attempt at structural logic. Small floating platforms are an exception to this rule, however.

• Don't connect sectors to a thok barrier whose floor heights are higher than that of the thok barrier. It can cause mild to severe slime trails.

Texturing Tips

• Texturing is about contrast. Apart from its aesthetic value, texturing plays an important role in gameplay. When used correctly, it draws the player's attention away from the insignificant and towards the relevant. That can include identifying the property of a structure (e.g. whether it will break when spun into it or if it will collapse when stood on), helping the player to find the edges of the platform when viewed against the background, or simply drawing attention to some aspect of a room. If something needs to stand out because it's important for gameplay, use a texture that contrasts with the surrounding textures so that it is easily visible. Contrast can be achieved either through different colors or through different shapes. For example, a low-detail texture contrasts with a high-detail one and a dark texture contrasts with a light one.

• Give structures with the same function the same texture. For example, walls that can be spun through should always use the same texture to make them easy to identify for the player. This gives players a sense of familiarity and instantly makes realize what they have to do. If you suddenly change the texture for an important type of structure, players will assume it's something new and get confused.

• Don't texture randomly. Choosing the right texture is a complicated and often overlooked part of level design. All the textures in the stage should fit together as a cohesive set. Clashing textures or textures that don't fit with each other should be avoided as they hurt the player's understanding of the chosen theme as well as looking ugly. Even a distorted reality concept needs a mild amount of consistency with each theme shown.

• Don't use too many or too few textures. An ideal texture set should be mid-sized, so that the level looks cohesive but still has some variation. If there are too few different textures, the level looks boring and you will struggle to achieve contrasts where it is necessary, but if there are too many different textures, the level will look random and confusing. Don't use too many different textures in one room, spread the different aspects of your theme over the whole level instead. It is important to strike a balance between many and few, and between different-looking and similar-looking textures.

• Make sure the texturing allows the player to see. Using extremely similar wall, floor, and ceiling textures obscures the pathway and makes it extremely difficult to navigate the stage. Use different textures for the walls and floor so the player can see the edge of the area they're in. Use midtextures such as GFZGRASS to allow the player to see the edge of the platforms they're on. Remember that it's more important that the player be able to see what's going on around them than the area be as pretty as possible.

• Use simple, large textures on large walls. Small repeating patterns are good for details, but when used on larger walls, they will tile a lot, which is painful on the eyes. The larger the wall, the simpler and larger the texture used on it should be. For example, Sapphire Falls Zone uses the tiny Green Hill texture set for most of the stage, but the outside walls use a texture with a much larger pattern. For similar reasons, one-color textures and liquid falls are also not appropriate textures for large walls.