Starting a level

If you asked most designers about how they begin their levels, their answers would vary. One designer may transcribe his idea, and write it into an exhaustive and detailed design document. Others may plan the important elements in their head and prototype the key elements relatively quickly, by making them playable as soon as possible. There might, however, be situations where mixes of both the techniques are used, or if you are working within a team environment, more or less of the design might need to be communicated. For this chapter, we will concentrate on getting a playable level together, and then iterating on it by adding and modifying various gameplay objects.

Creating a spawn point

The spawn point entity is easily the most important entity for a level to be considered playable within the CryENGINE SDK. The spawn point dictates the starting location and view for your player as soon as the level is started.