Pros and cons of loading game directly into level, versus separate levels for main menu

Development World Creation
1

Hi everybody,

I’m looking for some second opinions on how to construct my game project.

The game has only one level. All gameplay happens within this single level - new “missions” are just a matter of teleporting the player around and resetting variables, etc.

It makes sense to me that when booting up the game, we just load that level immediately. It doesn’t take long - not more than 15 seconds to boot the game and be playing. And from then on, there is never a loading screen.

The main benefits of my method that I like is overall simplicity. The less passing around of references, the less brain drain in general. I have to manage the entire project so being able to easily see who is going where a week later when I got to fix a bug is a big bonus. And, like I mentioned, there is one initial load which is not long, and after that there is nothing to disrupt gameplay.

But most games are using separate levels to go back and forth between menus as I understand it. Do you know any potential pitfalls to my idea?

2

If your game only has one game mode, sounds like a single player game, then what you’re doing can work fine.

When you have the option of setting up multiplayer games, and when you need to support loading/saving different games and game modes, having a menu level at the top managing all that ends up helping keeping things separate.

1 Like
3

yes single player only.

in the future there may be more levels but i think so long as i handle my save/load game in the game instance that shouldn’t be a problem.

thanks for the insights