Greyboxing / Blockout

Focus on Terrain Shape

It is highly recommend to make a Rough Base Map in VoxEdit before this step for an easy to use, well designed reference to build more quickly.

Use Game Maker's grid system to easily size and measure areas in your Experience.

This Experience was built with a theme for the Oracles faction made by The Sandbox

Add Blocks

This stage is called greyboxing because level designers use grey blocks or a few basic coloured blocks when framing out an Experience so their focus is mainly on the shape of the terrain.

Add a Few Assets

Once the terrain is well defined, add large assets that define the Experience shape or assets that help players navigate to key areas, such as bridges. Moving platforms can be added as well.

The playable space should be easy to explore when tested in play mode with no traps where players will get stuck (2 blocks or more deep). Test often to consider the player's line of sight as they explore and adjust your design for the most attractive visual result.

Blockout Aesthetics

Once your shape and critical assets are in place, it's time to modify the blockout for aesthetic appeal.

Using Blocks

Some level designers avoid adding liquid blocks until much later in their project and notice slightly increased performance while building.

There are only a few variations of block types, but there are a lot of different uses for them.

To learn more about block proprties and types, use cases, and how to place them, see our documentation about Using Blocks.