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Sean Hollinshead
Level Design
Best Practices in Creating Stealth-Based Combat Levels
The purpose of this thesis was to determine if there is a set of best practices that a designer can use to create a stealth-based combat level . To accomplish this , I conducted field research on articles , books , and games that cover this subject matter .
I chose this topic because as a combatfocused level designer , I was intrigued by the challenge of building an effective stealth level . Stealth is a hard thing to get just right , as players will often get frustrated if they are unable to sneak their way to victory . The challenge is that the designer can place everything the player needs to utilize in the level but cannot control how the player utilizes it . This thesis was all about finding the right assets to give the player and how to encourage the player to use them .
I found that a designer can most effectively create a stealth combat level by incorporating an abundance of both hard and soft cover , introducing the player safely into the space , including vistas , using predictable AI ( artificial intelligence ), incorporating multiple paths through the level , and having clear objectives . To test these findings , I built a level in Far Cry 5 .
The thesis was ultimately a success . Playtests proved that these best practices are effective in creating a stealth level and showed which aspects were most effective and which needed to be improved . The thesis took roughly 10 weeks to complete , and its results showed that this methodology could be adopted by the video game industry to improve stealth combat in games .
48 LEVEL DESIGN