With the recent success of my blog, True game development, if you are looking for some help on how to start out in level design, i am here to help!



      Section 1, choose your engine: I will only cover unity in this series but ill go onto Unreal soon enough, later on a few others.
If you are interested in unity this is your guide, Get unity here. once you have installed, run the program, and select create new project and make sure it is set to 3D and select all the basic assets to install and name your project (this is semi-permanent be careful)

      Section 2, Some platforms: Last section was short, due to what it was About, this part will be of more length... let us start out with the left side, the list of assets used (like camera and such) first right click the camera asset. Click delete because this will cause issues with our character controller, which is if you think about it, the actual player and what it uses to log your actions and control the character. So now at the bottom we can see the asset list which is where you can select your models etc that have been imported (i will go over that in part 2). Now double click standard assets and select character controllers and go to first or third person controllers (your choice my friend, but i prefer first person as you do not have to deal with animations as much as a start) drag which ever you chose out to the asset list on the middle left. Now that should appear somewhere in your scene but if you do not see it, click it in the asset listing, and on the right (asset inspector) you can set the x y z values to 0 and then look for it with it selected. To look for it hold right click and look around and move with WASD like a game, toy around with this (you can also change perspective using the perspective tool on the top of the scene, but i do not use this as it is confusing at times) now that we have that we are going to add a platform in for the character to walk on, if we do not we will just fall endlessly through the bright abyss. On the asset listing, we are going to right click on a empty space, go to 3D, and select plane (or terrain but that is really large) you can edit the size of this on the asset inspector under scale, you can also click on the asset in the listing or the scene and move it. Now, use the inspector to make the platform large enough to have a nice floor for if you fall off the platforms, once you have done that we are going to start making the platforms themselves. On the asset list right click go to 3D and add a cube, edit the size to your liking, but know taller means you might not be able to jump on it or smaller makes it harder to jump on it. Add a couple going up, then down (but make sure you cannot get on it without going up first all the way then leaping down). This should give you a feel of how creating a simple level works. now at the top there is a sort of I> looking button, make sure to press that when you are done to test. WASD, and space are the default controls for this, it can be edited in the coding but that is advanced. Now go ahead and make sure you can reach all your platforms and make it to the end, if not adjust it.

     Section 3, adding materials to your cubes and floor: Ok so i am going to leave two .pngs here for you to use.
Image One (floor): Download Link for image
Image Two (platforms): Download Link for image
Once you have downloaded those two, press minimize on the application (unity) (not to task bar but just so you can make it smaller on screen) go to wherever you downloaded the two picture and drag them to asset list, once it finishes importing move to the next step. Now we drag the floor image onto the plane in the asset list on the middle left, and do the same with the platform png for the cubes. 



Congratulations you have made a quick platforming 'game', this is the first step most people take when learning level design, next i will explain what level design actually is. Thanks for taking your time and reading this wall of text, and make sure to subscribe so you get my next part :)