HPL3/SOMA/Level Design/Advice for Level Designers

Start with a working map-editing loop, then check how your layout, lights and effects affect rendering. This guide brings together SOMA’s existing editing and performance guidance so you can apply it while building a level.

Prove that your edits load

1. Work on the map inside your mod and check the editor title bar for (Working on mod).
2. Move one existing object an obvious distance, save the map, then close and reopen it.
3. Launch the mod and confirm the same change appears in-game.
4. Continue with one small map or script change at a time. In development mode, use F5 to restart the map and F1 to inspect Show Error List or Show HPL Log when a change fails.

Keep the map’s .hpm file and its .hpm_* tracks together. If an old version appears, the Getting Started guide recommends closing the game and relaunching the mod to rule out cached state.

Plan indoor rooms around what can be seen

Occlusion culling determines which objects are visible from a position in the level. The indoor performance guide recommends separating rooms and their object bounds, using doors or other occluders, and avoiding uninterrupted sightlines between rooms. A diagonal or zigzag corridor is one of its examples.

For a troublesome doorway, check these items:

1. Inspect whether the door or blockade is an occluder. SOMA’s entity definition exposes IsOccluder, and the performance guide identifies doors and blockades as useful dynamic occluders.
2. In the debug menu, select Render Only Occluders under In Depth to inspect the geometry used for culling.
3. Look for small gaps around the door, walls and floor. The guide’s doorway example shows how geometry leaks can undermine culling.

The same guide cautions that adding many dynamic occluders increases draw calls and queries; the advice is to identify useful blockers rather than enable every entity indiscriminately.

Check the bounds of shadow-casting lights

The indoor performance guide recommends adjusting a spotlight’s radius and field of view so it does not unnecessarily cover objects or neighboring rooms. It also recommends light masks where a light must be kept within a room.

If a light does not need dynamic shadows for gameplay, the guide recommends disabling Shadow affects dynamic. It also suggests reducing unnecessary shadow-casting lights and using a gobo where that can replace the required shadow pattern. Test flashlight-dependent rooms with the flashlight on, as the guide explicitly requires that when evaluating performance.

Check the cost of the effect you add

• For reflective water, the indoor guide recommends reducing the objects visible in the reflection. It also describes disabling reflections or lowering the material’s ReflectionFadeEnd when the scene needs both water and detail.
• For outdoor terrain, the outdoor guide recommends using terrain for most of the silhouette and meshes for important landmarks and details.
• For distant objects, that guide recommends distance culling for suitable details while keeping gameplay objects, landmarks and important objects such as lamps from being culled.
• For fog culling, the outdoor guide says fully fogged objects beyond Fog End can be culled when silhouettes are not needed. The map helper’s abCulling argument likewise specifies whether fog-hidden objects are rendered.

Reuse groups deliberately

For repeated arrangements, combos store a compound for placement in the editor. For static geometry, the static-object guide describes automatic combining of nearby objects with matching materials and settings. It advises sharing materials among pieces often used together, while avoiding textures that group unrelated surfaces and raise memory requirements. These are different uses of grouping.

Still to expand

The verified advice here covers map iteration and rendering. A broader guide to gameplay pacing, player guidance, puzzle layout and evaluating playtests still needs topic-specific source material.

Continue by task

• Make and verify a visible map edit
• Use the development loop
• Investigate indoor performance
• Investigate outdoor performance