{"id":84,"date":"2009-09-21T07:21:23","date_gmt":"2009-09-21T13:21:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/handyvandal.com\/?p=84"},"modified":"2010-02-23T22:19:52","modified_gmt":"2010-02-24T04:19:52","slug":"firmitas-utilitas-venustas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/handyvandal.com\/wphv\/2009\/09\/firmitas-utilitas-venustas\/","title":{"rendered":"Firmitas, Utilitas, Venustas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/handyvandal.com\/wphv\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/09\/firmitas-utilitas-venustas-500px.png\" alt=\"Firmitas, Utilitas, Venustas\" title=\"Firmitas, Utilitas, Venustas\" width=\"500\" height=\"124\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-86\" srcset=\"https:\/\/handyvandal.com\/wphv\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/09\/firmitas-utilitas-venustas-500px.png 500w, https:\/\/handyvandal.com\/wphv\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/09\/firmitas-utilitas-venustas-500px-300x74.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><br \/>\nMartin Nerurkar has posted some interesting thoughts about level design and architectural principles:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8230; Before I get into level design, I\u2019ll first have to talk a bit about architecture. Thousands of years ago, the roman architect <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Vitruvius\">Vitruvius<\/a> identified what he called the three \u201cqualities of architecture\u201d. They are as follows:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Firmitas<\/strong>, stability. The building stands stable on it\u2019s own<\/li>\n<li><strong>Utilitas<\/strong>, usability. The spaces created by the building are suited for their intended use<\/li>\n<li><strong>Venustas<\/strong>, beauty. This building has a beautiful aesthetic<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>They do make sense, right? Admittedly categorizing things is often arbitrary and can be argued for or against but I kinda liked that setup, where each layer is building on one another. If your building isn\u2019t standing safely, it doesn\u2019t matter much if your kitches is perfectly laid out. And if your doors are too small for people to get in properly, then it doesn\u2019t help that the aesthetics are wonderful \u2013 the building itself is still a failure.<\/p>\n<p>Now I tried transporting this divide over to level design, and this is what I got:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Firmitas<\/strong>, stability. The level runs well without any technical or performance issues<\/li>\n<li><strong>Utilitas<\/strong>, usability. The space does a good job at leveraging the game mechanics<\/li>\n<li><strong>Venustas<\/strong>, beauty. The environment creates an atmosphere and provides <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Affordance\">affordances<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I\u2019ll elaborate a bit on these three qualities and how I think they relate to level design as a discipline &#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gamearch.com\/2009\/09\/13\/the-three-qualities-of-level-design\/\">Martin Nerurkar<\/a>: &#8220;The three Qualities of Level Design&#8221; @ Game Architecture\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/blogs\/MartinNerurkar\/20090913\/3016\/The_Three_Qualities_of_Level_Design.php\">Gamasutra<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Martin Nerurkar has posted some interesting thoughts about level design and architectural principles: &#8230; Before I get into level design, I\u2019ll first have to talk a bit about architecture. Thousands of years ago, the roman architect Vitruvius identified what he called the three \u201cqualities of architecture\u201d. They are as follows: Firmitas, stability. The building stands [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-level-design"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/handyvandal.com\/wphv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/handyvandal.com\/wphv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/handyvandal.com\/wphv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/handyvandal.com\/wphv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/handyvandal.com\/wphv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/handyvandal.com\/wphv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":698,"href":"https:\/\/handyvandal.com\/wphv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84\/revisions\/698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/handyvandal.com\/wphv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/handyvandal.com\/wphv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/handyvandal.com\/wphv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}