This week I continued to research level design for video games. Instead of focusing on balancing and game play like last week I began to delve into visual design elements. I did this by watching video tutorials that gave me some tips. Important things I learned included scaling suggestions to add depth to your level. Things far off in the distance can be scaled down to make them look even further away than they truly are, and I found that to be useful. I saw some tutorials where people scale up their distant models for increased visibility, but I found it detracted from the depth and was a futile effort. I would rather have my game world feel like it is a real environment than show off some standard tree model a little more. Additionally, I learned the importance of adding motion in levels to make your game feel alive. Wind blowing trees, water, and anything else that would move in life. It draws your player into the world and creates a compelling scene for players. Furthermore, in creating large scenes if you are placing recurring models like grass it is important to vary it in patches correctly and be sure to layer them.  Add tall grass among short grass so that the grass is not boring to look at. My most informative piece of knowledge I found was the suggestion to focus on your set piece or main idea first and then build around that. Ground your design first and go from there. After you do that it becomes easier to add all the other intricacies later. Finally, a designer mentioned that after working on a level for a long time it may appear boring to you, the designer, but a fresh pair of eyes could still find it interesting.