How Do You Prototyping a Level?

"We're very like laid back about how we design things," he says. "I basically just start with researching if if the level itself is set in like a real world setting, I'll go to Google Maps and start looking at that driving around" He then prototypes different layouts using grid paper or Photoshop before running them past his manager for first couple iterations. And it pretty much is just iteration from there. Once we're really happy with the geo, it becomes placing the encounters and the AI and scripting them."