What sort of things make a level look good?
Everyone says that it's the architecture (or however you spell it) and textures. Textures I understand, but what does everyone mean by architecture? I've looked at plugins for steps and arches but where should you use these? i've found it hard to pick it up from other levels (actually, besides the Lucasarts ones, I only have one decent level (STV by MikeC - great level!)). There don't seem to be any tuts on architecture in general, I might do one once I figure it out but at the moment I have no idea!
Please can someone give me an idea of where architectural stuff should be used and the best ways to make levels not look blocky (something i suffer from greatly )
Thanks

Look around your house for inspiration. Is everything perfectly square? Use negative space. Add doorframes, beams, just subtle things. Lighting also helps the atmosphere.

Glad you liked it.

Architecture is something that comes with practice. Look around through the LEC levels and other custom levels to get ideas as well as in the real world. Don't use a lot of rectangular rooms/areas. Try cutting off the corners and using different angles and curves. Try adding accents like columns and beams to break up rooms and add detail.

There are a few things you can look at for help. Massassi has good tutorials on things like making stairs and ramps. Also look into some of the perfect pipes and polygons tutorials, domes, and some of the others. Also I think there are several articles written on level design over at The Admiral's Command Chamber.

There are a few pluggings that can help over at www.code-alliance.com - One I like is Get Bent.

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For the love of God, use the consistency checker!

Have Lightsaber Will Travel

By the way, If you want to see some really good architecture here's a couple of levels to look at:

Imperial Siege at Derra IV - JK single player
Drazen Isle - JK multi-player

There are a lot of other really good ones out there, those are just a couple that come to mind right now.

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For the love of God, use the consistency checker!

Have Lightsaber Will Travel

Thanks guys. I like the idea of looking around my house, didn't think of that. I'd check out those levels but I use MotS, not JK. I could install jk but it's probably not worth it if some MotS levels have good architecture too, right?
Thanks again, prepare to see some very nice looking levels from me .

Also, if you have a good library in your town or city go and read some books on architechture. They always have plenty of images in them and if you were working as a professional level designer you wouldn't spend much of your time looking at games, your inspiration is much more likely to come from real life. Watch films with great set design (like the StarWars series) and you will get plenty of new ideas.

Take Care,
Gary

If all else fails, look at screenshots from other games. Look at how professionals put their levels together with today's engines. Inspiration from other games is always good.

You want to play Imperial Siege on Derra IV. It's pretty much the best user-made level to date. I'm a MotS fanatic too, but some JK levels are actually worth checking out.

Truth is, you should play a lot more of the good add-ons. That's the only way you'll get a good feel of what we can do with this game's engine. Go to The Admiral's Command Chamber, and anything with a score over 70% should be downloaded. There's also a link a little further down the page that will connect you to more great architecture...

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Sith Temple -- The Website
Strike Force!
The Continuing Adventures of Mara Jade

Ya, if you haven't played Rhettman's The Continuing Adventures of Mara Jade yet you should. It's a MotS single player level that absolutely rocks!

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For the love of God, use the consistency checker!

Have Lightsaber Will Travel

Get an art history book and look at the architecture. Aside from some crazy modern architecture most will fall back to themes that are easily translated into JK.

Classical building structures
-Look at Roman or Greek architecture or the Capitol building for Arches and flying buttresses, Columns and pediments , and Domes. Put them together in different combinations...like crisscrossing arch vaults which create barrel vaults. Check out the cathedrals. Check out bridges.

Other "architectural" elements in level design can refer to just the enviroment and not "built structures". How real they look is the basis on how good that architecture is.
-caves, swamps, mountains...

Contents of a building can also be considered architecture in level design. Like what in a wherehouse building makes it a factory?
-big 'ole I-beams, trusses, pipes, ventilation shafts, fans, machinery
These types of things are better suited for 3dos typically.

Lastly, the funnest stuff, you create your own architecture because this is Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Star Wars and you can make whatever you want anyway. Star Wars has its own architecture, which we still get to see more of in upcoming years. With metal you can build any structure. And when you put enough metal together you can even build a small moon-like space station. So bottomless metal pits lit up with lights and crisscrossed with catwalks end up looking like great works of architecture.

When you make it up you can have any door or window shape you want. Any building you want. Who cares if its structurally stable? Make a building float in the air, who cares? Look to Star Wars or the Jetsons Frank Llyod Wright...look around through a junkyard and find some interesting shapes and recreate them. Actually look anywhere around you...humans create alot of unusual geometry in general things we see everyday.

With Jed (dont know jkedit) it just boils down to cleaving, scaling, mirroring, arraying, skewing and manipulating your boxes to your will. To work negatively act as if you are drawing a floor plan and cleave out parrallel cleaves for the walls. Then delete the walls.

I'm one to overuse beams and pillars. Octagon rooms look good, and lighted right, make and AWSOME(sp) sniping arena. Think about it, you walk into a room, with a dim red light, and you can't see the corners. Then you see a red laser fly by you. You draw your saber and deflect the next blast. The opponent runs out of ammo(after getting in a few light hits on you) and comes out, saber drawn. THAT'S a good fight. More corners+good lighting= great gunning. Try that effect with a dome with pillars in the middle of the room.

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... and you KNOW that this dog had to've been shocked like 1,000 times, before he relized that this was bad. Because we love our dogs, but let's face it, they AREN'T the brightest animal that ame out of the pet store, are they? No their not, it's the same animal that goes for the fake throw,every time.
-Bill Engvall, Dorkfish Tape

Ok riddle me this....arent there certain circumstances that 3dos are preferable than carving in jed? I am confused by the last response and not just by the tag. I like octagons too, but light and architecture are not the same thing. Good architecture can be lit well by many methods...although Jk has sh*tty lighting. Heck...its an old game now! So whats up noodle soup?

Architexture is what makes a level, its what makes a level come to life, in a cliff section you won't just have a boxey area, you would have lots of random cleaves, dangerous jumps, caves etc... And in an imperial base a box room with a few Stormies in won't do the trick, try making the roof have pipes, on the sides have collums to make it more interesting, it sure works...

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Stormie

There are a lot of instances where 3dos are preferable.. Say you've got a room with a row of circular pillars.. You'd wanna use 3dos for the pillars, or your framerate would go all to hell.. Basically it comes down to, if your architecture is going to cause a lot of unnecessary adjoins, use a 3do..