Making Epic 3D Dungeons, Part Two
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Mix It Up and Make It Distinct: Locations should be visually distinctive. Unless you really are making a maze, the player shouldn't have to look to hard to get his or her bearings. Here's where it may be a good idea to take a page from the old text adventures: remember how (almost) every room had a unique title and text description? Try and think of every location in a 3D dungeon as if you writing a text-adventure description of the room as well (something I am considering taking somewhat more literally as I'm working on the game). Each location should (generally) have a purpose and something that makes it stand out.
Provide Contrast: Light to dark, narrow to wide, shallow to deep, cluttered to clean, dull to vivid anybody who has played Oblivion or Fallout 3 knows how impressive it is to contrast different kinds of areas. Having the player navigate between contrasting areas helps make exploration exciting.
Break Up the Big: A big, open area can be cool (especially provided as a contrast) , but having nothing between you and the horizon-line (or the far wall of a Big Room) is lame. Pillars, towers, terraces, whatever having (stuff) visually to break up the bigger spaces not only makes it interesting, but makes the bigger spaces seem even bigger.
