

Learning From The Masters: Level Design In The Legend Of Zelda - rhufnagel
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6582/learning_from_the_masters_level_.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+GamasutraFeatureArticles+%28Gamasutra+Feature+Articles%29

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neovive
I still remember saving up for Zelda and finally opening up that gold NES
cartridge. IMO the original Zelda and the follow-up SNES version are among the
best games ever made.

The opportunity to explore and build your character was amazing for its time.
The replay value was so high opposed to other popular NES games that required
you to start from the beginning each time you turned it on. Zelda is a great
case study for new game designers to learn from.

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HankMcCoy
It's amazing that they knew what they were doing 25 years ago! Where did they
have their knowledge from? They were pioneers!

I always thought "it just worked" and they analysed it afterwards, silly me :)

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njharman
Electronic games, esp console versions isn't where this knowledge was
learned/pioneered.

Numerous PC and even "mainframe" electronic games predate LoZ. Pen & paper
"adventure" games are 40 years old at least.

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danko
This type of analysis can be performed for any of the early Nintendo-designed
NES games. They knew what they were doing. The first few levels of Super Mario
Brothers are ingenious at how they subtly teach the player the context of the
world and the physics of moving Mario. It is the artistry of these subtle
touches that distinguished these games from ordinary, competent platformers
long after they'd been knocked off to oblivion.

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jonnathanson
_"In most modern games, there would be fewer enemy types and the rooms would
ramp in intensity by combining monster types together."_

This is a very interesting observation. It seems that modern open-world RPGs
(Skyrim, for instance) have opted for larger and more elaborate worlds at the
expense of enemy variety. This is probably the result of the "territory race"
that has been taking place in the genre for well over a decade now: each new
RPG is expected to have a world twice as big as the last. The player's sense
of novelty, and of world scope, is more easily cued by landscape ("room")
variety than by enemy variety -- and so, focusing resources on landscape
variety usually yields better payoffs.

Even still, I can't help feeling that something has been lost along the way.
While I am extremely pleased with the immensity and variety of modern-day
world maps, I _do_ notice the emptiness of them, or the repetition of NPC and
enemy types. (While enemy level-scaling is a nice feature that keeps enemy
encounters relatively fresh, it can also be a crutch that keeps developers
from thinking about variety of encounter design).

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lurker17
"It is possible to achieve the feel of non-linear level design by taking a
linear path and adding short offshoots."

also called a "maze".

"As with the other levels, there is a minimum amount of re-traversal required
to get through this level, as the critical path is extremely linear."

"The flow is generally linear and ramps well, as with Level 1, but the
designers stop the player in Room 6 and won't let him continue until he gets
the ladder in Room 8."

"One surprise was that the silver arrow is not technically on the critical
path even though you can't beat the end boss (Ganon) without it."

So we see that these mazes are linear, except in parts where they have
branches, and some branches are required, and there are a few loops.

So, what exactly is the point of this analysis? That this great game has
structure, and isn't a completely open world? OK.

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eslaught
Why is minimal dead space (i.e. space not on the critical path) not a design
criteria? In level 9 (in the appendix[1]), for example, there seems to be a
large amount of space that isn't on the critical path at all. I understand
that this increases the non-linearity of the level, but it seems to me that it
would also significantly increase the amount of re-traversal required to get
through the level.

[1]:
[http://www.gamasutra.com/db_area/images/feature/6582/Zelda-L...](http://www.gamasutra.com/db_area/images/feature/6582/Zelda-
Level-9--Skull-med.jpg)

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aidenn0
Arguably more dead-space later in the game makes sense. You want to make it
really hard to get lost early on, but start to make it harder later on.

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JonnieCache
Also you want a feeling of greater size in the later dungeons, for aesthetic
reasons. They're supposed to be more important and powerful as you go on.

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jakejake
The amount of entertainment I got out of these classic games is in many ways
the same, if not more than I get out of modern RPG and FPS games. The graphics
have gotten way, way better but the fundamentals that make it fun are the
same. In fact some modern games, even though they look great, they just aren't
as much fun to play.

Those old games seem a little slow now because the bar has been raised as far
as speed and eye candy. But the amount of thought and craft that went into
them made them so much fun to play.

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justindocanto
The comment on the article about all the maps fitting together reminds me of
html/css sprites. clever use of 1 file for multiple uses. great article. never
knew this stuff...

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shasta
Zelda took place in Hyrule, a land which I would years later learn is
topologically a torus.

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T-hawk
Not exactly. A rectangular world that wraps around on both axes is indeed a
torus, and appears in many video games, but not Zelda. Hyrule in each of the
first four Zelda games in 2D is a flat rectangular world with impassable
edges. (Perhaps a game cheat device could let you walk through a wall and wrap
around the edges; it's arguable whether that would mean the world is
toroidal.)

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rkowalick
The only thing I can think of is:

10th Enemy Has the Bomb

