Restrictions breed creativity

Mark says that to write a text under a restriction is easier than to write a text with no restriction. The same applies to cards. Cards that have a restriction of following a theme are easier to design than cards with no specific theme. This fact comes from how the brain works. When you come to face something familiar the brain looks for existing references. If a problem feels familiar to you, you are probably going to try to solve it in the same way you did for a similar problem in the past. If the problem is new, there are no references in your mind. In this case your brain is forced to look for solutions where there isn't any because you have never seen it before. Creativity stems from that.

There is a myth that creativity is favoured when there are more options to choose from. Let's see a practical example. If you have to cut something and have to choose from ten different types of objects that can cut what you want, which one are you going to choose? The one that is most suitable to your needs. For example, a scissor to cut a paper is more suitable than a sword. What if you don't have a scissor? You are going to look for the next best choice. What if you don't have anything that cuts? You are going to workaround it or manufacture some sharp object to cut. In other words, you are forced to be creative. There are thousands of other examples in the same vein. Survival, food, relationships, machines, fixing, money and much more.

To give another practical example let's discuss exams. Every exam has a time limit. What would happen if we give more time, double it? There are statistical studies that prove that after a certain threshold, giving more time won't result in higher grades or scores. It may sound counter-intuitive, but say you have an exam with a certain number of questions to be answered in 2 hours. If you have 4 hours to solve it, it's unlikely that a miracle is going to shine above you and the answers are going to magically dawn on you during that extra time. Scientific articles have a word count limit to force the author to be concise. For the same reason writing tasks in exams is limited to one page. In fact, it may seem absurd, but when one have unlimited time or space, one is naturally more inclined to waste the available resources with useless stuff. There are even studies in psychology that go deep in that matter, but I'm leaving this out of this page.

In a magic card which is the biggest (physical) restriction? The text box. It has a limit of about 8 lines. This forces the text to be clear and short. In level design a good portion of the restrictions comes from technology itself. The hardware doesn't have unlimited technical specs and the level has to be made with those in mind, else it won't run. With the hardware limits in mind a level can't have any size. The number of objects has a hard limit. There are also other types of restrictions that are more about design decisions, such as how many paths a level can have or the number of lights in a level. The gameplay aspect is a restriction that every level has to have.

An interesting effect is that some players self impose challenges that are restrictions placed upon themselves. For example: speedruns restrict what actions a player is going to perform because the ultimate goal is to finish a level as quickly as possible. Under a time constrain the player is naturally going to look for ways to bypass parts of the level, look for shortcuts or even bugs.

In some communities there are challenges such as building a level with a filesize constrain, say 1 MB. Under that constrain people are forced to build a level that plays well and looks good with limited resources, filesize being the biggest restriction. Level design has to live within the constrains of hardware specs and ideas have to be feasible with some target minimum hardware specs, else you have to scale it down to fit the minimum specs.

We could go further and discuss other topics such as living with very few resources or making better use of the available time, but that would go too far for the purposes of this page.

Restrictions in level design

In Duke Nukem 3D and Doom 1993 there is no support for real 3D geometry. The levels are all laid out on a 2D plane and the technology at that time couldn't render multiple floors or structures above others. In Quake and Unreal the newer tech allows for real 3D geometry and multiple floors.

In Doom bridges are not possible, but it's possible to simulate bridges somewhat. The floor can raise to allow the player to cross to the other side that would otherwise be unreachable. However the player cannot walk under the bridge and if there is some objective on the other side there are workarounds such as placing a teleport to cross to the other side. Another solution is to build a bridge from thin pillars that allow the player to walk above by running over them or pass under by walking in between the pillar's spaces. In modern maps there is a trick to build invisible bridges that the player can walk under. The geometry isn't there but there are sprites to show where the bridge is.

In Duke 3D there is a trick to create the illusion of floors above others. The floor above isn't physically above, it's elsewhere in the map. The elevator that connects both floors is, in reality, two elevators. When the player goes up or down they are teleported from one to the other, creating the illusion that the floors are placed one above the other. The same trick is applied to make water that the player can swim in. The underwater part is elsewhere in the map, but the player can freely swim up or down and seamlessly teleport from one sector to the other.

Would it be possible to build a building with 10 floors in doom 1993? It'd be physically impossible, but a way to workaround would be to make one level per floor. Each level would have the same exterior to create the illusion that the player is inside the same building on each level. Duke 3D and Dark Forces can have one floor above the other but to do so they have a restriction: the player can't see both floors at the same time or see one floor from the other. Unreal, Quake and even Duke 3D have a sky that is not really there. It's a trick that places a texture rendered in a way that it remains at a fixed distance and angle from anywhere the player is able to see the sky, creating the illusion of a sky there is always above the player and that the player won't be able to reach.

Most of the restrictions in level design come from technical limitations. There are things that are not possible due to hardware. For example, the absolute size of a level must fit within the available system memory, else the level must be reduced or streamed. To stream data to the system memory there is a hard limit imposed by how fast the data can be uploaded to the memory. If the speed to upload to the system memory is low the level is forced to have points that force the player to halt and wait for the next part to be loaded. Other limitations are about the available processing power. For ex: it costs a lot to simulate water properly. It may be unfeasible to simulate a flood in real time. The same happens with the simulation of wind. Trees and grass also take up a lot of resources. That's when creativity comes in because one have to sacrifice some features or eye candy in favour of performance. When an idea cannot be executed due to technical limitations, one have to look for ways to workaround the limitations or to find another solution for some problem.

Restrictions can't be used to justify failures. They also can't be used to justify lack of quality. Quality itself does not depend on technical restrictions. The are other types of restrictions such as money, time, labour, commercial decisions or creative decisions made. But those are more subjective and perhaps, harder to judge.