Design reference index · 11/27
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Environmental Storytelling
Communicating events and context through arrangement, traces, objects, and lighting rather than direct explanation.
Ludonarrative Consistency
Consistency between the actions encouraged by gameplay rules and the meaning of the narrative.
Bark
A brief spoken line triggered by an action, discovery, or combat situation.
Cutscene
A non-playable or partly interactive sequence presenting events through directed staging.
Entity Component System
An architecture composing game objects by separating identifiers, component data, and processing systems.
Prefab / Packed Scene
Engine features for storing a configured object hierarchy and instantiating it in multiple places.
Game Loop
The recurring execution flow handling input, state updates, rendering, and related tasks.
Fixed Timestep
Updating physics or simulation state at consistent time intervals.
Delta Time
The elapsed time since the previous update, used for time-based movement and related calculations.
Playtest
Validation through observing actual play to assess experience, difficulty, and defects.
Telemetry
Instrumentation recording play events and state to analyze behavior, performance, and problems.
Level Design
Creating a play experience by arranging objectives, routes, obstacles, enemies, and rewards in space.
Blockout / Graybox
Early level construction using simple shapes to test scale, routes, and visibility.
Whitebox
A simplified level or process for validating gameplay structure; often used similarly to grayboxing.
Level Metrics
Reference dimensions such as character height, corridor width, jump distance, and cover height.
Critical Path
The spatial or logical route that must be followed to complete the main objective.
Golden Path
The representative play route intended by the designer; some teams use it similarly to critical path.
Optional Path
A route that is not required for completion but offers exploration or rewards.
Looping Path
A route returning to a previously visited point to support orientation and movement choices.
Shortcut
A connection that reduces travel cost after certain conditions are met.
Chokepoint
A narrow area concentrating movement, control, and confrontation.
Flanking Route
A route allowing an approach from the side or rear instead of the front.
Sightline
The relationship among viewing position, direction, distance, and visible objects.
Line of Sight
The condition in which two positions are visually connected without an obstruction.
Landmark
A distinctive object used to recognize and remember direction or location.
Vista
A viewpoint or space deliberately presenting a broad landscape or upcoming objective.
Reveal
Revealing a new scene after passing an obstruction, turn, or threshold.
Gating
Restricting access to routes or content through keys, abilities, or state conditions.
Soft Gate
A progression barrier, such as strong enemies or inadequate equipment, that may still be overcome indirectly.
Hard Gate
An explicit progression barrier that cannot be passed until its conditions are met.
Hub and Spoke
A connection structure branching from a central hub into areas that lead back to it.
Breadcrumbing
A sequence of lights, items, or visual cues suggesting a direction of travel.
Affordance in Level Design
Communicating possible actions, such as climbing or hiding, through spatial form and placement.
Cover Placement
Arranging cover height, spacing, and orientation to support protection and tactical movement.
Combat Arena
A space shaping combat choices through movement, enemy placement, visibility, and resources.
Safe Room
A low-threat space for saving, maintenance, recovery, or processing information.
Pacing
Controlling the intensity and sequence of tension, exploration, learning, and rest.
Traversal
Actions for moving through space, such as walking, jumping, climbing, and swimming.
Backtracking
Returning through previously visited spaces with a new objective, ability, or information.
One-way Drop
A spatial connection permitting descent but making immediate return along the same path difficult.
Softlock
A play state in which the program continues running but progress or escape becomes impossible.
Kill Volume
A spatial region applying death, reset, or a similar consequence to objects entering it.
Navigation Mesh
Pathfinding data representing traversable surfaces as polygonal regions.
Off-mesh Link
A special navigation connection between ordinary surfaces, such as a jump, ladder, or doorway.
Worldbuilding
Creating consistent geography, culture, history, and rules for a fictional world.
Biome
An environment region sharing climate, vegetation, terrain, colors, or species.
Heightmap
A terrain representation storing the height at each location in an image or grid.
Terrain Splatting
Blending terrain materials, such as dirt, rock, and grass, using weight maps.
Splat Map
Data storing the blending weights of multiple terrain materials in separate channels.
Terrain Erosion
Simulating processes such as water or thermal erosion to produce natural terrain forms.
Scatter
Distributing objects across an area using rules, masks, or probability.
Foliage
Vegetation such as trees, grass, and shrubs, together with systems for placing them.
Modular Kit
A set of compatible wall, floor, column, and other modules used to assemble spaces.
Grid Snapping
Aligning values such as position or size to a specified grid interval.
Socket
A point defining a reference position and orientation for attaching or aligning another object.
World Streaming
Dynamically loading and unloading data for the regions currently needed.
World Partition
Unreal Engine's system for organizing and streaming large worlds in cells.
Chunk
A spatial unit used to divide world or map data for processing, storage, and loading.
Floating Origin
A technique shifting the reference origin to limit precision problems at large coordinates.
Skybox
A distant surrounding background represented using cube textures or a similar arrangement.
Skydome
A sky background represented with a hemisphere or sphere.
Day–Night Cycle
A system changing lighting, sky, and activity states as time advances.
Weather System
A system representing and changing conditions such as rain, fog, and wind.
Water Plane
A water surface represented by a simple plane and shader.
Water Flow Map
Texture data storing the direction and speed of flow across a surface.
POI / Point of Interest
A place concentrating exploration, activity, or rewards and serving as a travel objective.
Set Dressing
Adding props, traces of life, and decoration to an established gameplay structure to create context.
Collision Proxy
A simplified shape used for collision calculations instead of the visible model.
Tile
A repeatable unit of image or data used to build a map.
Tileset
A resource collection containing compatible tile images and properties.
Tilemap
A map representation placing tiles and properties at grid coordinates.
Autotiling
Automatically choosing edge and corner images according to neighboring tiles.
Wang Tiles
A tiling system joining tiles according to matching edge or corner labels.
Terrain Rules
Rules automatically determining transitions between terrain types such as grass, water, and paths.
Object Layer
A layer placing objects with positions, shapes, and properties independently of the tile grid.
Collision Layer
A classification system determining which groups of objects collide or are tested against each other.
Hex Grid
A grid representing space through hexagonal cells and their neighbor relationships.
Isometric Grid
A tile grid arranged along angled axes suggesting parallel projection.
A* Search
A pathfinding algorithm combining traveled cost with an estimated cost to the destination.
Dijkstra Algorithm
An algorithm finding shortest paths in graphs with nonnegative edge costs.