Hey everyone, most of you know that I've now released the level design kit, but I've got a lot of questions recently about that more on the business side.
So I thought I'd go through, break down how it is that I created the kit, what was the pipeline, the process, and talk about that of the funds afterwards.
So I hope that you enjoy, and well let's get into it.
Hey everyone, I hope you're well.
Playing and making the games that you all love.
You're joining me, your host, lead level designer, Max Pez.
Absolute pleasure to be having you with me whether you're listening to this morning, evening or night.
Thank you very much for taking the time to be here and I hope that you and all your loved ones are well.
As I said, this one's going to be a bit more of an interesting one as it's going to be talking about that of the level design kit but more kind of from that the business side what it is inspired this as well as that of kind of what happened after this released what was it that came about from it and that to me something that i'm very much interested in and really making sure that you enjoy seeing this and seeing the other side that goes on behind that of the creating it so without further ado let's go talk about it hey everyone i just want to give a huge shout to hopefully have you vote for me
for the game dev heroes what we do around seems to be more focused on that of the uk but focusing on celebrating those who contribute so much to our incredible industry and it seems cheesy i know but i would would really love for all of you if you can to take the time and vote for me for that of your game dev hero now i will send a link to this and have it down in description below but in terms of things that need to be filled out along with your names and my name for your nomination name which would be max pairs category design my email is level design lobby at gmail .com my role is lead Level
Designer and the Studio Workout is people can fly.
If you wouldn't mind giving back for me giving to all of this incredible industry that I have for over the years I would genuinely really appreciate this as I would love to be part of this incredible ceremony with the Game Dev Heroes.
Many of you know I've been doing the podcast now for I think seven years around there.
Crazy to think along with sharing all of my talks out there for you to see with books about that of exploration traversal and combat and most recently that of the level design kit as well so if you wouldn't mind taking the time to vote for me and nominate me in the game dev heroes 2025 nomination i would sincerely appreciate that so yeah this one is going to be talking about that element of our actual kit in general right so i'm going to be talking a bit about that kind of talking all about fine -tuning the smooth jazz so that you can actually hear it as well.
Yes, so I want to be talking about the level design kit.
For most of you who know by now, I worked on this level design kit, where it's something that you can now pick up over on Fab for Unreal, and be able to actually go block out your your levels with that within the kit pieces as well as add life to it with that of the blueprints that we've added so you can instantly add that of the interactability with this.
And I thought it'd be really interesting to talk about kind of what inspired me to do this.
What was it that made me go and pursue creating it right?
And that's something I want to lead on with all of this.
now when it came down to this I have it really all started like way back six years ago as I actually wanted to make a kit like this back in 2017 2018 as I've seen that it was something that I was using on a day to day basis in terms of what I was making for that of my own self to use for personal projects and work and I just thought this would be super cool something that we can really use and others could use it as well but that's when I decided to discover that others were starting to make this some of you may know about the polygon prototype by synthese studios they make a really good one as
well it was something that I really enjoyed and used along mine then we also had over those for radical forge who made out a blockout kit I believe it's called which is free at unity and then there's another one I'd also seen as well which I think is called like the gray box package and I had collected all three of these throughout my time and some other bits and bobs and these were really fun to use really ones that I enjoyed and then I just started to notice that like as great as these was or great as they are something just felt missing and it felt like a bit of a shame that even with all these
pieces together from other crate developers something was not helping me hit the end goal now hold a second guys and going to let's change this we're gonna switch this up That's number 1 so I want to make sure we're having some fun with the music.
yep and with all these great packs and pieces i started as i said to start to collect these ones that we've seen that i've shown reference right we're able to go off and see which ones really worked and seeing all these basically all these amazing pieces out here already it kind of made me go i don't necessarily think i need to do this however when i was doing that for my When I started to create these block outs and it was for my people can fly test I started to notice like as good as these pieces were and how much they allowed me to start and go off and make all of these elements here I started
to feel that I was always scaling them right and it just felt like in terms of what I was looking to offer it was missing something and that's when I thought right well I want to be as quick as possible as I'm sure many of you do especially when you're facing level design tasks and I thought well this is the time to do something I had a bit of free time coming up and I thought why not take advantage of that so really I had a few different goals for making this kit right we had number see how bad life it was we really want to make something that matched what am i doing my time's match and LD metrics
the first frustration I found with these kit kit pieces themselves was as great as they were they also weren't necessarily always to metrics and every game does have different metrics however throughout my time i have noticed that there are some safe bets in terms of shared general metrics right that your floors tend to be what i mean floors i mean like if you're on the first floor or second floor a wall tends to be either four to six meters height wise that's kind of the generic for it doors are slightly different but almost the same there it's more about centimeters are saying difference than meters
in terms of that covers roughly the same it's either zero i've seen it go as low as 0 .8 for low cover up to one meter and so on right so i was just like well why are these things constantly why am i spending time when making when times are the essence when i'm making say something for an LD test. Why do I have to constantly scale things up?
It doesn't feel good in that situation.
So that's the first thing, making sure everything was to that of metrics, too.
What I really wanted to make sure is that you were able to communicate design intent right so what you're seeing with a lot of these kit pieces right is and you'll see it and we'll talk a little bit about further they tend to have over like 400 500 unique assets which is incredible but nine times out of ten you're not actually using that and we'll come back to a little bit later so instead of having all of these great or number of pieces right like in terms of being like wow holy heck you've got all these all of these kids or meshes they were the import was actually showed what you're aiming to
do now number three was that of I won't lie to you it was something to also help build my brand when I think about that of and it's very cheesy guys but it's something where I think about right like in terms of what I've done with the podcast then I wrote the books I was thinking well what else is there to do in that sense that can still fit into something I love with level design right you'll see other people go make t -shirts and things like that but that's not what you come to this podcast Cast 4?
It was all about that of making sure I still am able to communicate level design, but make something that served you as well.
So, build brand serve Sorry guys, it changes.
For those of you listening, I am taking notes to make it more visually entertaining, but I'm still going through and communicating what I'm saying notes on.
Build brand serve right so as I said the two books that I've wrote have been great and something that I've generally found that were useful for all the people that have picked them up and really enjoyed them and it felt as I said something on topic with everything else that I've created right so that was a really important one for this to make sure it's not only said it's in line with what we're making in line with the stuff that we're constantly creating right Oh yes, that's what I need it to be.
Four The fourth reason why I wanted to go off and create this was that I like to block stuff out.
I wanted a one place where I knew, hey, if I need to make something that this would be the place that I find it right as I said during my time using other people's I had about three to five different kits and there's still things you're going to be using that anyway but in terms of as you'll see different props different parts that do help with it but one to me that I just thought man if I could just continue blocking my stuff out but I had everything I wanted in one one place then that's really really what i want right so no need to get multiple packs there was no doubts of ah this thing doesn't
this package doesn't have the thing that i need it's all there and i can update it with things that i want right off the bat and the fifth reason now i don't i'll be this one i didn't fully want to share but i think it's important to just say for what I intend to do right so five an ld course one of the things that I really want to make at some point in this year is that an actual level design course right I really want to create this for all of us share my thoughts and really help people improve on their level design and one of the things that I've noticed and seen when teaching at cgma taking
level design courses myself is they tend to use some other's works right and or they'll give you a quick starter pack and i thought well i don't necessarily know the legality of getting other people's work for the courses so i thought well why am i not just going off and making something that is mine i can update it when i want i think it communicates it's clear I get to share my kind of thought process with all the design kit when I create this course then all the people I have the course are able to instantly use that the tools available to them I can make sure that when I give feedback all
of that is there for everyone who takes the course so these were my five reasons one is a way to make sure all these LD kit pieces actually matched LD metrics I think that's really important to make sure we're able to communicate design intent after all right we don't want to just have it where it's more artsy we want to actually make it clear what it is the player is supposed to do here three build the brand serve the listeners it's actually a product that fits within that of level design it's not just a t -shirt it's something that i felt was able to actually help and serve the thing that i love
the most the thing that you guys come to listen about four i wanted to create a kit that had all of my stuff inside I like to block stuff out so this was my own way of creating my own personal thing and toolkit that actually can be updated as I steam and see fit and finally five help create that of an LD course in general as well so these are the main reasons as to why I was creating this kit the kind of goals I had and intended right now in these it's really cool to see but how did we then go from this point what is it that we did in order to go from this paper my designs my ideas to heading
off and making it well the next step was that of actually going through and making a list of of what I thought was going to be a great kind of LD kit, right?
So the first thing, for those of you who cannot see, I'm holding up my kind of electronic notepad and going through the list that I had sat down, wrote down, what do I think would be good in this kind of LD kit?
What is it that I think would actually work, slash really help to sell it?
What is it that I think we as LDs need in order to make good levels, right?
how can we deliver this what kind of props do we need from it so those how I first wrote it down I run it past some other people that I knew as well kind of got their thoughts on terms of what is it that they need from this to right and from there that's when we started to look for someone to help me create this kit Now I went and used that of Upwork.
Upwork is a great place where I found incredible editors who actually are editing the podcast probably now as we speak, as well as just great things that have helped me create more different ones.
And that's why I put up my job post to talk about or highlight I'm looking for someone to help me make a simple low -poly level design kit.
kit so this is when i put it up and i found caro caro is an incredible artist who's helped me out now at the time and again we're going to talk transparently because that's what i think is important about this is there was a lot of offers that came in right and caros was not the cheapest caros was about 30 an hour right but it was because the fact that she had worked on dead by daylight was one of the reasons I decided to go with her I remember talking to my partner and some friends about should I go for someone cheaper because I do think it will take a while or is it worth that of how do I say
investing in someone who is more expensive however is someone that has has the skills to create what I need.
And because the fact Cara had worked and still does work in the industry, I thought well great, she understands what a level design kit is used for, so we don't have to communicate that, and she knows what it is, that's the intent from this, right?
So that is why I went with Cara again.
Cara was great and I really enjoyed working with her.
So now that we've got Cara all set up, selected, what's the next step?
app right now carla was about five to six hours behind my time she's based in canada i'm here in the uk right and that proved to be a bit of a challenge in terms of when we're communicating right like she would log in before work check up with me talk about the tasks i would then uh review it uh review it afterwards elements like that right and so it was really important for me to to make sure that we had a way to communicate.
And so obviously we're messaging regularly.
She would send over pictures, et cetera, but we'd start to talk about the different kinds of elements where we were building it.
She was sending over a zip package for me to open in Unreal, review, test out, et cetera.
But the first thing was create kind of my LDKit checklist. As you can see here, for those who not looking, I have four columns where I have a backlog of the task in progress review and done and then I had that of the name of the pieces so I've called things like we came up with the naming convention right like ones that would follow Unreal's so SM stands for static mesh so we'd call it static mesh underscore floor piece underscore whatever that one was it would start in the backlog she would then pick the ones that she was going to and move it over to the in progress once it was in the review
then she'd send me over a package for me to review it in and I would go review it if I liked it put it in done if there's some feedback I'd describe it to her and put it back to in progress by having this here we could track where things were what was the state of them what's the progress as well as allowing each other to know what's happening and updating without communicating and that was really important so I was using Miro with this one i think it's really a great tool for those who will see a lot of stuff on youtube being sponsored by miller note which again is another great tool notion as
well but miro is a lot of what i'm seeing in the games industry we have wherever i work at least three or four companies recently obviously with contracting where they are all switching over to miro so i think it's a great tool really powerful can do much more than what i've showed but you can see here on done there's 197 pieces involved right so we went through a lot i kind of divided it up where we had it for floors walls materials mpc static meshes icons props metrics and metrics were more kind of things that again would represent the design intent all right now where was I sorry I had to nip
out to get some shopping and never blends well but yes we looked at mirror mirrors kind of where the future of kind of design documentation is right now now it doesn't actually mean that other amazing stuff out there are the tools we can't use but just a trend right now is very much everyone seems on board with mirror so yeah that was the kind of next step we were communicating and one of the biggest thing was I was constantly asking other designers for their thoughts their feedback you know what they thought would help with them with their blockouts right which is why I came with this list this originally
wasn't so close to 100 right it was a list that kept growing which I will say just as a flaw that is one of them right team that really plan this out thoroughly.
Now there's definitely moments where something had come up and then me and Kara discussing like yes this would be the best thing to do this is where we should take it and that is why we kind of had these elements of adding the additional ones but there's definitely times where I was adding too much and we'll talk about the ramifications from that but I think make sure you're planning thoroughly and as you can see here there's 197 elements and I was just thinking to myself God how is that competing with the others we talked about right as I said Cintiq has about prototype pack 400 and that was one
thing that constantly kept being on my mind this kind of arbitrary number of will they have more and we were going at a rapid pace like really incredible work by Caro here was just the amount of speed that she was constantly cracking this out at and that was kind of what happened next right we had these elements now finished we were able to go off and put it in a package and head off and give it to others to review there is actually one of the thing that I'll talk about that went wrong with us so when I was creating this right like I really wanted this pack to work on the UE basically everything
from 5 .0 plus right and I didn't realize this and this was a dumb mistake on my side that their kit or number engine you making in it can can only be that minimum and then go forward. I was using UE 5 .2 at the time and Kara was using UE 5 .3 and that was one of the bigger mistakes that I made was I didn't realise this I thought we could retroactively do it you cannot and that was a huge huge mistake because I should have made myself and Cara know that we're sticking to 5 .0 and then that way it's better but because Cara was using 5 .3 she told me and that I'll download 5 .3 to check it out so that's
something to keep in mind so as I said we're moving at a rapid pace I think by By two and a bit weeks, we had most of the static meshes in.
And that's when I went to start looking at feedback, right?
So, the first one I got from was by Oli.
Some of you may know Oli.
Oli was a senior designer over at Ubisoft. Then he went to join the team to work that made, created Disco Elysium.
And now is that of a full -time lecturer.
And one of the things he definitely pointed out to me was obviously all these other great ones exist, but how do we stand out?
And that was something I kept thinking about as well.
How is it I stand out?
And part of the thoughts then how I addressed that was coming up with our kind of gameplay assets, right?
Something as I talked about, one of the goals was making it clear that hey, we're able to communicate what the design intent is through these assets right off the bat.
so we have things like squeeze -throughs to make pushable objects kind of these arrows which showed the jump distances ropes and ladders dispose body disposable units for stealth elements like that and that's where i thought okay well this is where we can start to to shine this is where we can start to stand out as all these other assets that i'm seeing others make from different packs are more just assets versus these kind of showing our kind of gameplay mechanics right and that was a real big one the next feedback i got was from tim and this was the biggest one where he's saying it's cool but what he
was looking for was something more than just models can we get systems now he talked about if we do Yes he has mentioned I don't know if you guys have seen it But I definitely have referenced it before Is Jakob is creating Basically that kind of An unreal kind of Last of us style Kit that he's taken from the advanced Locomotion system and started to really make It his own and it's amazing genuinely incredible incredible work now when Tim's giving me this feedback I'm thinking I can't create those type systems and I'm also thinking myself it's also not a job as a level designer right these integrated
3 C's working AI that's not level design so I had to think a bit more on this one and then the third big of feedback I got was from Johnny which is oh Tim has worked on if you haven't seen Tim, Tim does design let's bring that up across for it senior level designer as well camera where he is now he recently recently has moved yes which is his channel here please go check him out very good designer just overall good dude and I thank everyone for their their feedback as well um so yeah and then Joey said yeah I can see himself blocking out a level but what else can we do to show more and this is when I
started to think about okay well this hasn't gone as well as I had intended slashed hoped right we're about two weeks in and there is obviously all of this This me paying for Carro is coming out of my paycheck, right?
And I'm aware that, oh God, I can't keep paying Carro forever.
And also if I release it as it is, well, clearly it's not going to do what I want.
It's not going to have the impact.
And then right, how is it going to stand out?
So from this point, I thought, well, okay, well, what can we do to make this better, right?
So I started to think about the different kind of, how do I say, pipeline that we create as level designers and every one is different but we have L0, L1, L2 and then L3.
right instead of a traditional sponsor what I'm offering now is that of joining the mailing list social media is constantly changing all the time as we're seeing some people are leaving twitter others are choosing to remain blue sky threads all of this so it's really hard to reach out to all of you incredible aspiring and current game devs so what I'm offering here is that of a emailing list so if you want to be kept up to date with all of the great level design news as well as get your free guide which is my 10 tips towards better level design then please join the mailing list you'll be making
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Now these are all kind of the different quality bars you'll see at different studios.
Every studio defines it differently and they can have different names for it as well.
I've heard Alpha, Beta, Gold I'll call this prototype whatever have you, but for L0 what I've tend to see is basically it is that, sorry two seconds guys, where, I've made a mistake now, it is a shell of blockout right so when I say shell of blockout it basically means you can run around the space space, no gameplay clear orientation and kind of that other walk start start to finish sorry guys this is the annoying thing so l1 we kind of see that of added placeholder gameplay interact with space so interactive in the block out out, and we are able to enemy placement, puzzle Proto type, and can finish
the mission. l1 is now more than just a blockout right we now have different systems where you can go in and make it clear that this is the intent for it you're able to actually start and finish a mission you're able to see that of the simplicity of the systems in play whether that's just basic enemy spawning maybe it can be that of them on patrol paths elements like that we can interact with certain things like buttons doors open simple things L2 is definitely left no room for L3 so no block outs so art should now be in what is it can kill enemies clear direction so we know where the player needs
to go and what else can we do we roughly can beta systems so the systems should all be in beta whether that be AI or what have you and and first pass, right?
So, we're able to be like, okay, this is how challenging we roughly want it.
And then L3 is kind of almost shippable, right?
Where we have have all systems in, correct enemies.
So if you're introducing a certain type, they should be in there.
Loot pass, that's balanced within, difficulty pass, lighting in, lighting roughly roughly complete.
And what else with it?
It's basically shipable right?
The only thing is we're making small tweaks to that of the systems itself.
It's not actually big layout changes.
It's these kind of things that we have seen kind of come through time and time again and And I realised, okay, well, all the kit pieces are probably just L0, right?
That's all I'm able to take you up to when you're using these pieces.
Sorry, guys. I'll just try and grab some water.
what we're trying to do with these of these aspects in terms of blocking out showing it or using it for a test is we're actually trying to make it as good as possible right well we can show some of the systems as I mentioned it's not necessarily on that of the the designer to create the systems but it is definitely there for it's definitely there for us to go through and show the systems intent right so with all that feedback I thought God okay so L1 is is where I'm currently at.
What I really need to be providing for all the people who buy this kit is L1 quality, right?
So there's a big step here, right?
As some people may not be able to afford to get Jakob's kit, or there's other great kits recently, I'll put a link in the description, I did do that of a recommendation list of incredible kind of gameplay tools available for us as LDs to use, right?
and from that point I was thinking, right, I've said, right, too many times is what I'm thinking now, how do we do this, how do we take it to L1, and I looked at these assets that we have created here, right, I've looked at these and thought, okay, these are cool, but really, what's the difference again, like, they're just props, they are just static meshes, and that's when I decided to create the blueprints because I know some incredible LDs who are not that savvy with blueprints right who do struggle with some of the basics but they're not bad level designers at the end of the day they're not creating
in the AAA space they're not creating doors that open because that's not their role right it's really on others tech designers etc to make sure they have these doors now before anyone starts throwing insults it's much harder than you think right you have to get the animation points metrics to where the door handle is there's a lot more involved right like if we have an enemy walk past a transparent door we need to make sure the enemy can see the player elements like that doesn't have a sound and really being in charge to see those to the end is more than level design so that's when I thought right
well let's turn what we have for those assets into actual usable drag and drop pieces and the other thing I want to to share as well is if you remember where is it hold on here it is if you remember I've been working on that and sadly I haven't gone back to it in a while but I've made that of Spider -Man personal levels and that of a god of war level, right.
And for me, one of the things that I kind of really wanted to show with this is when you're creating pieces like this, you don't need to make, as levels are, you don't need to make these fully implemented systems, right.
It's again showing the intent.
So, if we look here here are the Blades of Chaos, right?
Sorry, that's just of the quality here.
Where in the end product they obviously have an Aim System, animations, VFX, all of those, right?
No, I don't have that, but what I'm able to do is create a kind of short little montage of things stabbing, in blade stab into this ice they explode for the fire it melts away clear path for the player right and that to me is something that i really kind of want to hammer home to all these all of you incredible designers working on portfolio pieces you don't need to have uh the end piece sorted right in this example of unlocking this chest you'd hit three three of these kind of icons right like they're purple you hit them with the axe it turns the one of the locks green same with this hit the second
one turns it green and then we go find the third one turns it green and we can now go and open the chest in order to get the loot simple but that's the kind of level that we're kind of expected same with this door you can have animations of it coming up and down elements like that is really important that people are aware of this, in my opinion, because it's not just about it's not just about good level design that we're looking for people are looking to see how do you replicate that because scripting is such an important part like again here I've got the the elements of Odin's crows, Ravens I
sorry i believe where they are flying in a really dodgy kind of pattern and the player can kind of choose to try aim their axe time to throw and then take them out right and again it's just a simple level sequence of this crow flying and you can aim multiple different points but it does also wait at a certain area and then we throw our axe at it so these are the kind of things that was really kind of looking forward to the show that it's not just the finished product that people looking for it's okay to have these kind of temp workarounds because again that's not level design to get all these
mechanics up to the final scratch so that's why I started to turn things into blueprints right when we have vaults we had different ropes ladders that you could climb as well as there's different doors, doors with locks as well.
We have the cool body disposal, which is like a video, where we're seeing a lot in stealth games now where once you take out an enemy, even in Metal Gear Solid 2, where when you take out an enemy, you've got to hide the body, otherwise people will be able to go find it.
So there's these sort of aspects.
specs see here it is so we've made the body appear and the lock appears from this so we approach it press e body comes in and then we lock this simple but really effective at showing what the trick is and that's why I started to create these and then stop thinking more okay well these great for kind of of the gameplay aspects but what else are tools that we can use to help from a developer side right and that's why i started to think of a few different things and this is where we had that of a simple enemy right we have placeholder enemies i'm not the first one to to use this but what i did by turning
into a blueprint is that you can actually shoot it it will say ouch you set the health you set the damage on when you interact with it and eventually it has a death cycle where it falls down simple things all like that but again it really helps the other things i then started to move on with helping with devs is we have these notepads but i wanted to be able to make it clear that you can write in what you want to happen so again if you're l0 before you start putting in gameplay it could be much clearer okay beat one this is what's happening anyways playing starts to be able to understand this and then
we created these kind of great door frames and window frames where we could signal to again the player and to others the importance of these routes so we have that for yellow of golden paths side routes are green and locked routes are red and again we can just select them and we can just select which one we want in order to to change the color much easier elements like that i know another one that people really enjoyed was oh yeah the rulers as well and this was something i learned from uh niles when i was contracting for the now called nine lives interactive uh making nine heroes where because the movement
was really dynamic the metrics needed to be really clear so we had this really cool rulers that he created where we could just place down and go, okay cover buffer squeeze through and you can instantly see from people being able to grab it okay this matches the metrics that we have and these are more generic metrics but something again to help developers as they come through and that's when I started to realize okay this is much better this is able to make it stand out as now people can take it from as we talked about l0 over to l1 in order to start showing their design intentions and i was thinking
of self god if i had this with making some of my elements as well for personal reasons and for tests it just would speed things up instantly and it was really important for me as well too because it's nothing i'm all of my blueprints are Not exactly complex But it's something where Again some people May still not have Incredible scripting abilities So they can open them up And see how it's done Even if it is The bare bones I thought that was Great Now We'll go on to Kind of That of the The money side And mistakes that were made Here Now none of this is On Kara It was me So as we're getting ready
to to launch. Sorry let me just bring it all up.
Okay, so as we're getting ready to launch, this is actually only taking me roughly me and Caro roughly a month.
I had gone through a sad issue where I had made 30 of these and then accidentally deleted them all with no backup so i had to go back and remake everything it was not not a fun evening they said somehow we started in october and we released early november okay which again was really impressive to make all of this and the cost for this at the time just to make now i'm not calculating my costs on the blueprints right for Kara to just make the assets it was a whopping I say whopping it's not in salt to her it is just showing you okay so it's gonna be in dollars even though I know I'm British it was 1600
to create for the time which which wasn't too bad in the grand schemes.
I thought, okay, not bad at all.
Again, it's expensive.
It's not something I want to spend every day.
Let's make that clear.
But for the purpose, I was like, oh, that's great.
Awesome. We're getting ready to launch, and we do launch. We'll talk about launch a little bit later.
I thought, okay, cool.
And I then got some more feedback from some other friends.
My mate Seb had told me, oh, this is really cool, Max, but it feels like it's just made for the cities and I can only make city environments I thought it was really interesting because we worked together on Cyberpunk and obviously have worked over Ninja Fur Hellblade 2 and also other organic spaces and the way that we had done had done that was literally taking that simply of a cube cube, and we would just scale it.
Nothing particularly amazing, we'd just stretch it out to make sure it matched what we were after.
So I was thinking, God, maybe the grid is making it feel that way.
So I started speaking to my mate Hugh and I thought, well, what can we do because i wanted to make organic spaces we just showed off that of the uh god of war level they created and i think just within just as we launched i went back to cars i've got some updates i'd love for you to do and this was kind of the more organic stuff right so we had these organic floor pieces that were no longer square that people could again scale how they wanted but it would also have its own kind of chips away in the floor itself then I thought well let's make that have a cave as well cave little pieces that people
can put together to make this again another more organic space we also added in different blueprints cave collapsing bridge drawbridge coming down and then stalactites falling down as well I think there's a couple others too but those are the kind of the big ones I thought great let's get this in elements there actually I've got the calculations wrong sorry it was 1000 I know what I've done wrong here it was one thousand six hundred pounds but in dollars it was two thousand one hundred and 35 right and I was thinking okay that is definitely a lot of money but I was so excited as I said to you
guys one of the goals was to really help stuff that I like blocking stuff out on and serve all of you you're all blocking out different elements and I thought to myself now this is going to make it better this is going to be cooler I get to add blueprints people get to see that it's constantly being being updated.
And that's when I asked the said car to make those, now that came in at a 275 dollars to create that update.
Which brings us to the total of 2410.
Now I don't regret this for a second in terms of creating these extra pieces, because it really helped to again, offer more diversity in what the kit can be used, and help me when I go and create stuff later.
As I said, it's not just for all of you, it's made for me.
And it was also something which scratched that itch of making sure we had close to our competitors in terms of numbers of unique assets we have well over 300 now 290 static meshes 48 blueprints 17 sound effects and all of that right so that was really important for me and it shouldn't have been I really shouldn't have been competing with this number but I would also be lying to you if I wasn't like great when I look at all these others incredible tools that I'm making at at least mine isn't super far off in terms of in terms of that of the quantity and that we can see made a big dent obviously
from a business point of view this would just be a no heck let's put But let's pick red.
Just a big no -no. The reason I say that isn't because, like I said, from a passionate point of view, making the best thing kind of point of view, it was great to add more.
The issue being is I think I sold maybe one to ten copies of the kit at the time.
And I've already got to try break even at 2 ,135, right?
so now to add an extra 300 just shy of 300 on top that's really putting more more pressure and i definitely could have gone on making more and more requesting more from caro building in my own because this calculation here none of this calculates my own time for creating that of the blueprints right it is just me it is just me calculating caro's time and again i'm not necessarily getting paid to make stuff it's something i wanted to do it's something where again i see it helping myself helping others and making it a much better product when having this but again from a business point of view there's
already two things we did wrong it's adding one adding more stuff at a cost when we haven't sold anything and then the other element was using that of 5 .3 when we should have been using 5 .0 because now we're lessening the amount of people that can use they can use this so with that all in mind obviously we go off we launch some of you amazing people have bought it which is incredible and I am super super gracious for this because I hope that as I said it really does help everyone right?
Let's get rid of some of these tabs and we went off and launched this.
Now this was a really interesting learning curve from that of actually launching a product right because it's similar to when you're launching a game.
When you press submit there's only actually a few people that are involved with that right and this is talking about releasing a video game you know xbox nintendo playstation they all review it and then they find little issues with that where it doesn't work on their system right and these issues they're checking are more back end it's not actually like oh the game doesn't work it did it it's more making sure it works with their sales system it works and compatibility frame rate all of that and it was similar when doing this right because you ship it off to fab slash epic I don't know if fab is owned
by epic or not and they go through a review and say hey here's a list of things that uh work don't work let me see if I can find one actually and it's really important to go through now I was getting very stressed at one point because Because the only thing from me now shipping the game is going through Fab's internal reviews.
And that was driving me a little bit batty.
it's always when you want to find something you cannot but yeah while I search for this the important thing is though was just to learn what it was that was found it oh yes the important thing was to learn how to use these systems right because it said on a day -to -day basis of actual seeing a game ship it's not something that I do or are involved with and so to be able to see it from a different perspective I thought was really important and see what it is that they checked to make sure it works with every system right because they don't want to release a faulty product or all that and they want
to make sure it works and I obviously want to make sure the same um I might have got rid of it but it was an interesting one because it has a checklist right where it says you know is in the right category does the naming conventions match that of that of unreal all these really interesting elements uh involved with it and I thought wow Wow, this is all fascinating.
And sadly, we were getting to a point where basically the issue was hold on, I'm trying to find see if there is a no. Basically it was getting to the issue of I had sent this off multiple times it wasn't cool, yeah, so they send you over something like this, right where we can see it says pass, pass, fail pass, pass, and you know talk about elements that may not be needed and give you a description on why it has failed which again really cool for me to see really great information all in all that's good to go as it there the stress came from the aspect of when when that of hey I went through this couple
times and I hadn't begin similar to this whereas to fails okay I'm able to go through and have a look oh guys I remember I submitted and for example it was something like if we just take examples from Tim's lovely face like I had passed on one of these had two fails and then somehow now failed on this and had another fail and same fails so it increased and one and it just didn't make sense to me so that was very frustrating at some moments because it seemed that I've the or made system all the rules they had created were different for different people and that was a real big challenge but they
were great fan but honestly amazing but was It was definitely just a stressful moment in the situation.
Now, it came to marketing.
I don't think I did a particularly great job, just to be honest. I think I should have pushed it a little bit more.
I should have shared what I was doing more.
But the turnaround was so quick, as I said, it came out in a month.
I hadn't really thought about it.
And luckily, we'll see in a second, the marketing still worked.
But it was still something I think could be improved on for next ones.
so yeah this is what we created we're seeing more reviews which is great to see and yeah it's released it's done it's done well and just let you know because this video is coming out in i think it's april uh all the information right now i've recorded in the 23rd of february i'm trying to keep on top of all of this but the next thing that we can talk about is obviously We showed how much cost, talked about the submission process, or what happens after.
Well, where we are currently on the 23rd of February is we have now sold 137 copies and sold over a value of 2 ,768 .63.
So we've made a profit, which is great.
It's obviously not a huge amount.
i'm not going to be retiring on any boat or any element there but it is still something that i'm very happy with because i did not think this was going to be profitable when i was making this and i hope it comes across in this i know i've been a little bit all over the place uh in terms of what to talk about but to me this was really important to make something i really cared about i think it's a great tool and to really help all of you you.
And with that, it's it's paid off in literally paid off.
Now. And that was really hard because I had to think about the price.
Now I have a price where if it's just for personal use, it's basically just under 20 bucks.
If it is for professional use, then it is just over 25 bucks.
And as you can see, most people buying this from this example screenshot are more of personal which is understandable because most professionals create their own kits as we said metrics is different for every studio but it is still something where we're seeing some professionals buying this as well I've seen it take off in schools as well a lot of people wrote to me about schools wanting to use it in there which is really cool and it's you know it's great that it's hit this hit this mark and become profitable as I said I really hope that it's come across that I did this because I love it I did
this because I love level design I want my own cool kit which I can use whenever update it whenever and give it to all of you so you can all use it and when you put in requests I'm seeing them and I'm keeping note of them As I said, it's not going to be every week we're releasing an update.
I do have to think about that in terms of business and also time.
I'm just a little bit busy at the moment as we're recording this video.
But we're going to be able to go through and see more and more of this, right?
And I want people to be wondering, well, how did you come up with those numbers?
I did some quick maths where I was going, well, if this is the amount that I have to make up for, this 2410.
What is a reasonable amount of number to get it back right and I was looking around about kind of 100 sales was really kind of what I was looking for.
Now it wasn't that with the 20 bucks it came over to I think it was like 120 sales I needed so I knew this number is not a a huge amount of number i mean obviously nothing is guaranteed i thought with 120 sales uh that it could definitely be something that's achievable um i said it's over close to 140 now and for me that was really important as i said that people enjoyed it that's the most important thing and when i thought about my books my books are roughly about 20 25 pounds so i wanted to in similar vein.
It's very hard to compete with others.
I know Sinti is an incredible studio that also makes sure that we have that put their great tool on sale.
I can't compete with that as well.
I didn't want to make it where it was a huge amount of money because I don't think it would sell.
Also, I need to think about what it is that we've delivered.
it but that is really what there i wanted to talk about with all of you amazing people right that hopefully you are seeing and found this really interesting in terms of what what goes in behind the scenes how it went about the cost of things and you find it very interesting because it was an interesting one to record it's definitely one of my longer episodes that i've released in a while um but yeah i hope you liked it i'll be description down below if you want to pick it up and you haven't yet and really interested in more help support the channel help support me and as i said i'm really happy
with it i hope the passion comes across about this because i really wanted to make it all right everyone say oh if you want to reach out to me you can via email love design lobby at gmail .com you can reach out to me over on twitter or blue sky which is just at max pairs and yeah all the best take care and i'll catch you all next time Thanks for watching!
