Building Confidence: How Level Editors Helped Me Write
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Way back in 2006 I spent a long time on my own. I was twelve years old and not the most sociable kid. Sure, I had some friends but they mostly had their own lives to which I was an occasional visitor rather than a constant fixture. And I was alright with that because I had whole worlds to myself.
Practically every day for a year I was obsessed with the level editors for Age of Mythology and Stronghold II because they did one thing that nothing else I knew about did. I could create and play at the same time. Spawn a couple of dwarves and I could make them walk, gather resources, and even fight. I could make mountain ranges, forests, and cities and lay siege with armies comprised of Greek, Norse, and Egyptian soldiers and monsters. But what I didn’t realise at the time was that this was giving me a toolset and the confidence I needed to break out of the cocoon I’d created.
Now might be a good time to step back and explain. A level editor, or map creation software, whatever you want to call it, is a piece of software that some games included that allowed users to make their own levels. You would set the size of the map you wanted to work with then start painting terrain on, setting the weather or time of day, and generally designing it as you saw fit. They would also allow you to browse the catalog of units and buildings available and place them however you liked. A Greek town with Egyptian pyramids in the middle of it? Go for it! A small lake filled with a hundred sea serpents? Sounds cool kid! It rarely judged. The only time it ever complained was when I placed down ridiculous numbers of soldiers and even then it still tried its hardest (I didn’t know diddly about computers back then).
Personally I’ve always been a mythology buff and as far back as I can remember I’ve always loved the idea of being a writer even if I did go through many years of hating writing. So while I couldn’t put pen to paper for fear of the blank page and the worry that I wasn’t as creative as I thought I was, I could always create in the level editors. I couldn’t write for fear that it would be found by someone but I could tell a virtual story that disappeared when I was done: A digital mandala.
At first I would create stories about the heroes in the game. A mountain range that rings a small Norse town beset by trolls that Ajax and Arkantos would have to defend as Eitri worked the forge to create a mighty weapon for their new companion Reginleif. I’d carefully place the heroes and give them a few skalds or dwarves to even the odds then move the horde of trolls in to see what would happen. Sometimes I’d measure these fights well and the heroes would win a pyrrhic victory, other times they’d lose horribly.
Eventually I moved onto larger maps. I’d paint the terrain properly and give the scene the right weather. The stage was set for my warband; the sole survivors of the troll war and countless other possibly canon stories (sort of like the Marvel Universe). The rain blanketed the black stones of the mountain pass. Sheer cliffs and death drops hemmed them in on both sides. It was going to be a hard march, one made all the worse by the news from a passing skald about bandit camps, hydra lairs, and the valley of the lampades.
“The valley of the lampades?” Eitri asked, his normally gravelly voice cracking with fear.
“Aye.” The skald replied. “A woman they say she is but her power is unlike nay other. She can bewitch the mind, set brother against brother.” The two dwarves looked at each other.
“Is there another path?” Arkantos asked the skald.
“Not for many weeks.”
“Then we must brave this one.”
Not the best prose in the world but for me this represented an important step. The story I was creating was now getting written. After all, I spent three days making the map, I had to save it. The digital mandala had served its purpose and given me the confidence I needed to write.
Over the next year I wrote down all of my warband’s exploits. Their victories and their defeats. Sometimes they would “survive” with minor wounds that would be the lead up to the next story and sometimes they would die in suitably heroic ways. In one story the Greek hero Arkantos stayed behind to hold off a pack of anubites while the others fled through the forest and the remains of the coastal town of Karatos. Along the way they picked up fleeing villagers and retreating soldiers before reaching the docks and piling into the triremes. Back at the pass (I had a weird obsession with mountain passes) Arkantos fought valiantly but one hero is no match for a dozen anubites. Once the battle was finished, I typed the story up on my little CRT monitor and immediately set onto the next.
Eventually this all culminated in one big, life changing realisation: Someone had used these tools to make the campaign mode. It was someone’s job to create and write the story and I knew how to do that, I’d been doing it for the past year! I could actually write video-game stories!
As I got a bit older I was introduced to two more life changing things; The Hammer editor, the level design software that Half Life 2 was made in, and Dungeons & Dragons. And for the first time in my life I started making and writing and showing my work to people. And sure, it was clunky and amateurish but it was driven by the same pure excitement and with each D&D session I got better. As each Hammer map compiled I got better and I got more confident.
At first I was just working with the Hammer editor on its own, learning what it could do by reading the manual or just placing things and playing around. I didn’t even know how to measure the character to the world when I started except by placing the HEV suit model and eyeballing it from there. And sometimes that worked but usually buildings would get smaller or bigger as I eyeballed it wrong and because of this a lot of my early maps had a sort of Alice in Wonderland through a Fallout lens feel to them. But I kept pushing through and thankfully someone told me about Youtube tutorials which I, for some reason, hadn’t considered.
One of the most important things I learned from Hammer though was environmental storytelling. Crumbling walls here, graffiti there, bullet holes and a body holding an smg. It told the world that a battle had been fought here and most importantly, the little details stayed. One of my biggest gripes with Age of Mythology was that while I could place arrows and javelins, fires and collapsing buildings, they were temporary. You couldn’t have proof of a battle beyond long collapsed ruins and skeletons. Now I was getting into something more tangible.
Around that time Halo 3 came out and I got addicted to the Forge mode though more for level design than any form of storytelling. And even this marked an important step for me as the Forge mode, unlike anything else I had ever used, was collaborative. Me and my friend Alex would spend hours making obstacle courses in Sandbox’s sky map where falling off the course would kill you (and turn you into one of the infected, because mongoose racing obstacle sky course infection was the best thing anyone has ever made and boy do I miss it).
Little Big Planet played a small part in my interest as well but for some reason I’m not quite sure of, it never took hold. Even Minecraft’s creative mode failed to hold me in the same way that Age of Mythology, Hammer, and Forge ever did.
Eventually I got into college to study game design and I learned how to code C#, Javascript, and Flash. I learned Unreal engine 3.0 and game design theory. I went onto university and did more of the same until I graduated in 2016. I wrote constantly and continued to role-play constantly but like with those early editors, I always found something constraining me. The fixed view of AoM, the ugly nature of Hammer, and D&D’s heavy handed approach to fantasy. (Monks get to spawn a volcano from the ground at like level 5. Seriously?) So I did what any sensible person would do and made my own. A system that would work for any setting and give full control to the GM and it worked! I pitched to a business accelerator and Kickstarted it, I got a publisher and convinced retailers to stock it. I had made something big and shared it with the world.
I had finally transitioned from a frightened kid that couldn’t work up the courage to show his work to anyone to a confident freelancer who could move mountains to get her work out. And for a long time I forgot about the low-tech level editors and the meet-in-the-middle storytelling I had with them but without them I’m not sure where I’d be. Without having the ability to create and ease myself out of my blank page shell at my own pace, I’m not sure if I ever would have. And while some writers might tell you to fight through it and put pen to paper no matter what, I’m here to tell you it’s alright if you can’t do that straight away. Not everyone works the same and you have to find what works for you. It took me 3 years to show my writing to anyone and another 3 before I wrote publicly. But I read and I created and I thought which are all just as important.
No matter what it is you’re doing: If you’re making fan art comics in MS Paint, roleplaying in Minecraft, chronicling your Dwarf Fortress/Rimworld colony/RUST base/ARK faction just enjoy it. Enjoy it and remember that you’re expanding your toolkit. A writer isn’t just someone who can write letters on a page, a writer is someone who can create. Every book you read is teaching you how to construct sentences and plots, how to write characters and make worlds. Every game, film, and television show has something to teach you, even if it’s a “how not to”. Every roleplaying game you play in gives you a way to explore a character’s thought process without the burden of writing it down. And once you feel your toolkit is big enough, then start writing; even if you’re only writing for yourself at first then I’m proud of you. Because as soon as you put that first word down you will have started a journey. And it’ll be rough and when you look back at it in ten years time you might even laugh at it but you can’t get somewhere without moving.
Thanks for reading and good luck with your own journey and remember that a few good heroes and a couple of dwarves can take out a whole army of trolls, so don’t let their noise ever discourage you.
