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SAE Magazine 13-2

this day. Playable worlds ealth of detail is exponen- e and hardware progres- ing levels and generating are no longer in the hands hin the production this is ctions and tasks. Increas- ailed worlds require more order to fill these worlds. expectations of consum- require a qualitative and The ideal situation is to results using high quality once. Due to the high production of areas which iew field of consumers in en must fulfil their quality es odular level design can be consistent module size, nd a precise concept. The ined geometry is depend- and the background story mer experiences the town s possible to see individu- modules then consist of a of various building geo- xperience the environment on perspective it is more logical to separate the floors of a building and to treat these as individual modules. In these circum- stances modularity means that the floors of a build- ing form a third different building in combination with the floor of an additional building. This process can be applied to all environments with similar cyclic elements. The choice of module size also is im-por- tant in determining the scene’s degree of detail. Working with grids The choice of module sizes is directly connected to use of the grid. Virtually all modern game engines and all premium 3D software have an integrated grid. Continual use and exact adherence to the grid are indispensible for a modular level design. At the beginning of the creative process first clarify which software the underlying grid is based on and stand- ardising this. One evaluation option to guarantee consistent proportions is to use test geometry. A cube with an edge length of one metre, which will be imported into all applications integrated into the workflow, guarantees that even complex geometry will always be displayed at the correct scale. If the technical requirements are standardised it is im- portant to consistently adhere to the grid and to only work with exact grid units. If there is software that simulates the building height with 256 units, the aim is to produce additional details with 128, 64 or 8 grid units. It is possible to use real dimensions in the creative process using this procedure. Real measurement data can be converted to its own ➤ Index ners

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