Rough Base Map

Plan your Experience shape ahead using flexible tools to avoid more work later.

Use of 3D Space

A common mistake some creators instinctively make is to build your Experience linearly as it flows from start to finish. This leads to an imbalanced prioritisation of quest space, with earlier quests getting the highest priority despite the ending often being the most significant event in most narratives. It can also lead to oddly connected spaces, poor line of sight of spaces that deserve better visibility, and a lot of extra time to make adjustments.

Using VoxEdit to create a mini map to scale with your Experience (one voxel = one block) makes it easy to build quest areas and move them around as you test your ideas. This offers a big advantage over Game Maker, which only allows you to add, remove, and replace blocks.

RECOMMENDED: SKETCH YOUR MAP IN VOXEDIT Blocks can NOT be moved in Game Maker, so it's not an optimal map planning tool as much as it's an excellent building tool.

Instead, make a mini map in VoxEdit to scale with your Experience size (one voxel = one block). Then you can move voxels with ease, colour code quest areas, and more!

Mini-Blockout

Begin with sketches, then build with a 3D tool like VoxEdit or MagicaVoxel

Define main areas players will use for major activities (social meetups, quests, boss fights, parkour, quests, view points, etc.)

A quick reference of design intent for

Level Designers to build the next stage:

full level blockout

Example: