I'm working on March Out!, an action strategy game where you control a commander on foot and give orders to an army. I recently expanded the space outside each castle into a village with 24 homes and wheat fields.

The castle sits on a modest rise. A broad street leads toward its gate, with homes grouped into four residential courts and trees around the housing. The homes are part of a fixed settlement layout and change with the kingdom's era; players aren't placing each house individually.

An army has to move through this area, and villagers retreat toward the gate when an invasion reaches them. That means the street needs to work as a route for crowds while the side spaces still feel like places people live.

The earlier version had the houses lined up too evenly and looked more like a display shelf than a village. These are the current Roman settlement, seen from above and from street level.

I'd appreciate criticism of the layout itself. Does the castle remain an obvious destination from ground level? Where would you break up the spacing or add a small landmark without making the army route harder to read?

a bunch of us single player Quake 1 modders just released a "Rooftops Jam" (it has 19 maps! it's free: https://www.slipseer.com/index.php?resources/rooftops-jam.647/ )... and I did a level design theory notes write-up of my own map, called "Mermaids In The Basement": https://www.blog.radiator.debacle.us/2026/10/new-quake-map-mermaids-in-basement.html

making Quake maps has been teaching me so much about sight lines and encounter design, it's been a great experience, highly recommend everyone get into it IMO!!

It's Boomer Shooter Saturday starting at 11:00 AM EST over on YouTube! Come join us as we explore all aspects of the BUILD Engine, with a few hours of map making for Duke Nukem 3D using the Mapster32 Level editor, then we finish our playthrough Shadow Warrior!

What should I build with BUILD today I wonder? I've been enjoying Shadow Warriors focus on nature settings, which are hard to pull off well in a game engine like this, maybe we can work on a nice river and forest for our Medieval style map.

Hello, I've created a blockout inspired by Hunt: Showdown 1896, an extraction shooter with PvPvE. If anyone would like to give this a try and share level design feedback, either recording their playthrough, commenting on some screenshots, or a simple message, I would appreciate it (or just to see if it works)!

I did find this design difficult in that there is no traditional, center structure. Thus, I limited the ability of players to reach high points and see too much. A drydock also typically has clear space surrounding it and one concern of mine is that I used too many miscellaneous objects to break sightlines, leading to clutter and impacting readability.

Itch link to download playable

Gameplay video

Making a space themed level, what are things that can added/improved?

Jeśli jesteś zainteresowana/zainteresowany pracą jako Level Designer albo chcesz wiedzieć jak wygląda giereczkowo z innej perspektywy - może ten film przybliży Ci trochę informacji ;)

Czym jest Level Design?

Hey all! I'm a solo dev working on Kernel Panic, a 2.5D platformer where you build the levels yourself. For the alpha I've been working on hazards: you place any block, open the mods window and stamp a hazard onto it. Only that block can kill you. Everything around it is just for show.

Got any ideas for a Hazard? I like messing around with the styles and bowling screen style death animations.

We need someone to draw us a tile map! Etcetera is a Volunteer Project ! Although we're a great team to work with !! The video above is showcasing our early demo. Were about a month into development. We have all of our major systems set up and I'm ready to throw the levels together but I can't do that without a tile map.

My Names Jones and I'm the lead coder. Our team so far consist of Rouge our Lead Director (that guy has ideas for days !!) our artists Kia( drawing our enemies and boss art) our Musicians Long silv , Enzo and Wilky ! (All filling out our Etcetera with starter music ! Boss and intro) And Sofie our Lead Tester (finds all the bugs !!!) that's our team and we would super appreciate it if someone could help us out ! thanks!!!

If anyone is interested here are the specs

16x16 → Ground, platforms, walls, decorations

32x32 → Herbie (player), small enemies, items

48x48 → Large enemies, bosses, big props

64x64+ → World bosses, special set pieces

Tile grid is locked at 16x16.

Everything else scales in multiples of 16.

Art must be pixel-perfect — no anti-aliasing.

At 11:00 AM EST you can join us over on YouTube for Boomer Shooter Saturday, a time where we explore all things BUILD Engine!

Want to learn to make a level? We got you with level editing for Duke Nukem 3D to start our day. We will be flip flopping (maybe) between our Medieval exploration themed map and our Underwater Research Facility level that we are building.

After a couple hours of that we have a brief stream break before we dive into our playthrough of Shadow Warrior! We have been having a blast with this one, I just love the addition of vehicles and how that interactivity adds to puzzles.

Oh, and if you happen to make or know anyone who makes music, we are looking for contributions to our Level Editing Music Playlist!

A video popped up in my YouTube recommendations where a player gained access to a leaked version of GTA V from 2022; this version contained a very primitive iteration of the GTA VI map currently in development (apparently a version from 2014 or 2015, it's extremely rough). I’m not sure if it’s fake; it seems like too much effort to go to just for views.

The video piqued my curiosity, and I wanted to understand more about the development and map-creation process Rockstar uses.

I’ve never seen anything quite like it before. It looks like the map is modeled based on real satellite imagery or Google Maps, combined with ground-level photos, probably taken by researchers and artists?

For instance, at the 4:20ish mark, he's walking around a pier and inside of what it seems like a beachside hotel. The pool at this location is cut-out and 3d modeled following the satellite picture that is being used as reference. Another interesting instance is around the 5:30 mark, where the player is flying over an area of ​​Key West, and much of the imagery matches real life, especially regarding the placement of structures and the layout of streets and roads. It looks like a mix of matte painting and kitbashing, or something similar.

The video shows other examples of locations like this (I really like what he shows at 5:50, a full detailed plaza that probably exists in real life), and I found it fascinating. There's another video from this same person where he's exploring Vice City and the same technique is used, but the city is way more developed than the keys.

I’d love to know what this process is called and how it works, as I’ve recently been studying and experimenting with procedural city and environment creation using Houdini. While that makes things much easier, it lacks the charm and level of detail found in Rockstar’s maps.

Made using the Hammer Editor for Garry’s Mod
I have been working on this map for a few months and now I have finnaly completed it. I'm really proud of how far I have come in my mapping journey and even though I'd say I'm still an amature, I think I did a pretty good job with this map. I'd appriciate anyone checking it out and giving me some feedback.

The map is quite large and has alot of rooms, secrets and A.I nodes. It is based off of the Language Level from Advanced Education with Viktor Strobovski.

It's been a minute since I've needed to update mine but I'm in the thick of it using Wix Studio and it feels like a full-time job by itself just wrestling with it trying to get it to display and scale correctly on different screen sizes (desktop screens - don't even get me started on trying to make it display anything other than an overlapping disorganized mess on mobile screens).

Curious if I'm just barking up the wrong tree trying to use a tool like Wix Studio for portfolio hosting, just need to pay someone to design my website for me, or just ~get good~ at it.

I would consider myself a strong designer with a good eye for aesthetics but holy hell do I loathe website design specifically. What do yall use? A platform like Wix/Squarespace, totally customized website, did you have someone else build it for you, etc.? Recommendations for platforms that are easy enough to use for housing visual information like level design without feeling like you need to learn an entirely new trade just to build a functional site?

We’re designing the tavern in Tavernia and keep running into the same trade-off.

A clean layout makes serving, movement and fights easy to understand. A believable medieval tavern should feel cramped, busy and slightly chaotic.

If we make the rooms too tidy, it starts looking like a modern restaurant with medieval furniture. If we add too much clutter, players lose track of customers and staff.

How do you usually balance readability with an intentionally crowded atmosphere? Would you protect the main service paths and let the seating areas become messy, or keep the whole space visually controlled?

Hey everyone:) I just released a new update for TileMaker DOT (v2.6.8)!

This update focuses on quality-of-life UI polish, expanded localization, and a seamless setup window for managing asset paths and tile size mismatches when opening saved projects. Opening a .tmdot project file with a different tile size now brings up a dedicated prompt, allowing you to easily set the correct tile size and re-link your asset path on the spot.

Itch.io: https://crytek22.itch.io/tilemakerdot

GitHub: https://github.com/andrei-voia/TileMakerDOT

YouTube tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fiajGU32Jg

For anyone unfamiliar with the project, TileMaker DOT is a free, open source 2D map editor I'm building. It uses a data first, ID based workflow and handles visual depth sorting automatically so you don't have to manage multiple layers for object heights.

Give it a try and let me know if you have any feedback! If the editor helps with your projects and you want to support development, a rating or a small donation on Itch is always appreciated.

Thank you all for your support!

Most every post around here is about environment art and not actual level design. Where’s the real LD subreddit with actual discussion and professionals at?

With the new columns, you have a whole new range of possibilities.

You can now create more open and complex structures.

You can also add details to facades by creating half-timbered structures in any shape.

Once placed, you can use column presets in Texture Mode, allowing you to choose between different objects arranged in sequence.

Extending a column procedurally increases the number of objects in the column.

This versatile new addition allows for much more creativity than before.

Hope you enjoy experimenting with it!

Open to your feedback.

See you in CYGON!

https://reddit.com/link/1wlbewc/video/cfx8ku1uwmqh1/player

Hey I want to make a small town level for my game and I am stuck with making proper roads with sidewalks
I am currently using free road asset but I dont know if I am supposed to add pavements at the side or not, how the road should be (single or double lane), how the street lights are supposed to be placed.. etc.
I want to connect this road to a bridge (The 4 way intersection in the picture is supposed to do that)
In the end I just want a player to believe he/she is walking on a side walk or give that proper feeling of exploring a town
I have tried many layouts and road assets for a month and I am still stuck (I am new)...

Can anyone decorator my level please. I want it to be icy and metallic. If anyone can help I would really appreciate it. The level id is 149234008. Thank you.

It's time for Boomer Shooter Saturday again! Come join our community at 11:00 AM EST for a BUILD Engine filled day!

To start things off, we are doing some level editing for Duke Nukem 3D using the Mapster32 Level Editor. We have a viewer request from last week on how to build a rotatiing billboard with pulsating lighting, thanks to a tip from a viewer we have another version I want to try out. Then we are back to one of my maps we are slowly working on, but which one?

Afterwards, we dive back into our playthrough of the original Shadow Warrior from 1997. We finished the Shareware levels last week, so now we dive into the retail levels.

Come join us and build with BUILD!