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55-493: (Redirected from Backrooms ) Back room (also back rooms or backrooms ) may refer to: The Backrooms , a piece of internet fiction Backrooms (web series) , a YouTube series based on the fiction The Back Room (album) , a 2005 album by the British rock band Editors Dark room (sexuality) , a room at a nightclub or sex club Emo's , formerly known as The Back Room,

110-425: A loading screen while the game loaded level information from storage. With more advanced computing hardware with faster input/output data transfer rates, such as optical drives, hard disk drives (HDDs), solid-state drives (SSDs), and larger amounts of memory, game developers have been able to take advantage of continuously loading new level assets – models, textures, and audio – into

165-435: A video game . An individual involved with the development of game levels is a level designer or mapper. In some cases, the developer of a video game includes built-in level editing tools; for example, a track editor for a racing game. Other times they may release an official level editor for the game as a separate application. Sometimes players of the game develop fan-made level editors. Developing level editors will allow

220-403: A darkly lit level with long service tunnels, with the original version named Level 0. As new levels were devised in r/backrooms, a faction of fans who preferred the original Backrooms split off from the fandom. A Reddit user named Litbeep created another subreddit called r/TrueBackrooms focusing only on the original version. ABC News said that unlike fandoms surrounding existing properties,

275-415: A different environment. Level designers sometimes make hidden rooms and areas that usually require more effort for the player to reach or to notice. These usually give some additional rewards, such as ammo or powerups. They serve to induce players to explore. Sometimes, they serve as easter eggs , containing messages such as the level designers' names or pictures, or political or humorous messages. One of

330-404: A different level each time, until he finally confronts Kong. 1983's Lode Runner was one of the first titles to ship with a level editor. Its designer, Doug Smith , reputedly paid neighborhood children to design levels for the game. The same year, the multiplayer dungeon crawl Dandy was released, and it also shipped with a level editor which was documented in the manual. ZZT (1991)

385-505: A game than simply adding new levels, a software development kit (SDK) is sometimes needed. In the early years of video gaming, some games came with a utility called a "construction set". This was similar in many ways to a level editor. Some games used them to make extra levels, whereas others (like the Shoot-'Em-Up Construction Kit ) used them as a means to develop a game rather than be a game in itself. Maps' design can significantly impact

440-400: A larger world, such as Green Hill Zone . Games may also feature interconnected levels, representing locations. Although the challenge in a game is often to defeat some sort of character, levels are sometimes designed with a movement challenge, such as a jumping puzzle, a form of obstacle course . Players must judge the distance between platforms or ledges and safely jump between them to reach

495-407: A level. Sometimes, professional 3D editing software , such as 3D Studio Max , Blender , AutoCAD , Lightwave , Maya , Softimage XSI or Grome is used, usually customized with a special plugin developed for the specific game. A level editor (also known as a map , campaign or scenario editor ) is a game development tool used to design levels, maps, campaigns and virtual worlds for

550-541: A music and event venue located in Austin, Texas Topics referred to by the same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title Back room . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Back_room&oldid=1236316356 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description

605-421: A photograph of a large, carpeted room with fluorescent lights and dividing walls circulated on various message boards, and on May 12, 2019, an anonymous user started a thread on  /x/ , 4chan 's paranormal -themed board, asking users to "post disquieting images that just feel 'off, ' " accompanying the thread with the photograph. Another user replied to this post, giving the image its name and supplying

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660-456: A pre-rendered map of the level (or entire game world) for the player. Level design is necessary for two primary purposes: providing players with a goal and providing players with enjoyable play experience. Good level design strives to produce quality gameplay, provide an immersive experience, and sometimes, especially in story-based games, to advance the storyline. Levels are generally constructed with flow control in mind; that is, directing

715-540: A specific spot where they do not have to move to gain experience , because monsters are constantly spawned but can be easily and immediately killed. In multiplayer maps, a player may be able to reach areas of the map designed to be inaccessible; for example, reaching an advantageous rooftop position and camping other players. A player might be able to fall out-of-bounds of a map where other players cannot reach them. Invisible walls are cited to be level design bugs, and might be "left-over geometry" from an earlier version of

770-448: A starting base, but will have resource distribution and terrain features designed to draw players out of their base and engage each other. Teamplay maps can provide noticeable advantages to one team over another, when designed poorly. Commonly on older hardware, most games would load a single level and all of its assets at one time, and when the player completed the level, the next level would be loaded. The player would be presented with

825-458: A total high data throughput can eliminate the need for any loading tunnels in a seamless world game. A level designer is a game designer who makes environments and scenarios using a level editor and other tools. Level designers will usually work on a level from pre-production to completion – working with both incomplete and complete versions of the game. Video game programmers usually produce level editors and design tools for

880-503: Is a later game with user-accessible mapping and scripting. A game genre that required significant amounts of time to design areas were text-based games, such as MUDs . Often, promoted users were assigned to make new paths, new rooms, new equipment, and new actions, often using the game interface itself. 3D first-person shooters Doom (1993) and Doom II (1994) were two of the first games to attract focused game modding activity, and many WAD level files were made for them. One of

935-486: Is also credited with lifting the Backrooms from obscurity into the mainstream internet and causing a surge in Backrooms content, particularly on YouTube. For his shorts, Parsons received a Creator Honors at the 2022 Streamy Awards from The Game Theorists . On February 6, 2023, A24 announced that they are working on a film adaptation of the Backrooms based on Parsons' videos, with Parsons directing. Roberto Patino

990-478: Is commonly done using a level editor, a game development software designed for building levels; however, some games feature built-in level editing tools. In the early days of video games (1970s–2000s), a single programmer would develop the maps and layouts for a game, and a discipline or profession dedicated solely to level design did not exist. Early games often featured a level system of ascending difficulty as opposed to progression of storyline. An example of

1045-460: Is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages The Backrooms The Backrooms are a fictional location originating from a 2019 4chan thread. One of the best known examples of the liminal space aesthetic, the Backrooms are usually portrayed as an impossibly large extradimensional expanse of empty rooms, accessed by exiting (" no-clipping out of") reality. Internet users have expanded on

1100-407: Is now gone. Some sources believe the Backrooms to have been the origin of the internet aesthetic of liminal spaces , which depict usually busy locations as unnaturally empty. The #liminalspaces hashtag has amassed nearly 100 million views on TikTok. Paste 's Phoenix Simms wrote that the Backrooms and games such as the more absurdist The Stanley Parable is "tied to a long tradition of

1155-474: Is presented as a VHS tape recorded by a filmmaker who accidentally enters the Backrooms in the 1990s and is pursued by a monster. Parsons used the software Blender and Adobe After Effects to create the environment of the Backrooms, and it took him a month to complete it. He described the Backrooms as a manifestation of a poorly remembered recollection of the late 90s and early 2000s. The video has over 63 million views as of November 2024 . The short

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1210-420: Is set to write the screenplay, while James Wan , Michael Clear from Atomic Monster , Shawn Levy , Dan Cohen, and Dan Levine of 21 Laps are set to produce. An episode inspired by the Backrooms stories was included in the third season American Horror Stories , a direct spin-off to American Horror Story . The episode stars Michael Imperioli as a grief-stricken screenwriter that falls in and out of

1265-537: The Wayback Machine . The image was found to be taken during the renovation of "a former furniture store with plenty of partitions and fake inner walls" in Wisconsin. For much of the 20th century, Rohner's Home Furnishings occupied 807 and 811 Oregon Street, Oshkosh, Wisconsin . In 1994, 807 Oregon Street was acquired by a new tenant , an American hobby shop called HobbyTown . Sometime in 2002,

1320-454: The second story underwent renovations. On June 12, 2002, the progress was photographed with a Sony Cyber-shot camera, and on March 2, 2003, the various interior views were documented on the Oshkosh branch's renovation weblog . One photograph depicts a carpeted, open room with yellow wallpaper and fluorescent lighting on a Dutch angle . Uploaded with the file name "Dsc00161.jpg", it is

1375-514: The "Backrooms", mundane locations where he is confronted by a manifestation of his missing son. The episode was one in a group of five to be released as a "Huluween event". The Backrooms have been adapted into numerous video games, including on the platforms Steam and Roblox . An indie game was released by Pie on a Plate Productions two months after the original creepypasta, and was positively reviewed for its atmosphere but received criticism for its short length. Many others, such as Enter

1430-497: The "eerie feeling of familiarity" helped draw fans together, Kotaku said that the horror was in part derived from the subtle "wrongness" present in liminal spaces. A TikTok trend of videos that zoom in on Google Earth to reveal an entrance to the Backrooms have grown popular. In January 2022, a short horror film titled "The Backrooms (Found Footage)" was uploaded to YouTube . Created by then-16-year-old Kane Parsons of Northern California , known online as Kane Pixels , it

1485-544: The Backrooms , Noclipped and The Backrooms Project , were released in the following years. Co-op multiplayer Escape the Backrooms by Fancy Games was praised by Bloody Disgusting for its depiction of the extended lore, while The Backrooms 1998 (both 2022), a psychological survival horror game independently released by one-person developer Steelkrill Studio, was noted by reviewers for its found footage visuals and limited save system. Level (video games) In games with linear progression, levels are areas of

1540-426: The Backrooms as one of his many influences while working on the series. Until 2024, the source of the original Backrooms image was not widely known. In May 2024, a Twitter user announced in a now-viral post that their friend had discovered the image's origin. This was the result of a combined effort in a Backrooms-dedicated Discord community, which traced the image to an archived webpage from March 2003 using

1595-591: The Backrooms into an "emerging genre of collaborative online horror" which also includes the SCP Foundation . Kotaku said that this collaborative aspect, as well as the lack of overt horror or threat, made the Backrooms stand out from other creepypastas. Both Kotaku and Tama Leaver, professor of internet studies at Curtin University , felt that the Backrooms was scary "because [it invites] you to interpret what's not shown". While Leaver believed that

1650-444: The Backrooms, like the creepypasta Slender Man and its panned 2018 film adaptation , would eventually be adapted into a "slick but dismal 2-hour Hollywood movie." Expanding his videos into a series of sixteen shorts , Parsons introduced plot aspects such as Async, an organization which opened a portal into the Backrooms in the 1980s and conducted research within it. The series has collectively garnered over 100 million views. It

1705-518: The computer hardware sufficient time to load the assets for the next area. The player's speed may be reduced, while story cues are presented to draw the player's attention. The player may be required to enter areas in which their view of the world is plausibly restricted, sometimes referred to as "loading tunnels". With newer consoles, such as the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and Series S , special SSD arrays alongside software libraries that have

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1760-428: The computer or console's memory as the player approaches the edge of one level and the start of a new one. This can effectively make the transition from one level to another level appear to be seamless and avoid the use of loading screens. This is known as level streaming or in-game streaming, and is often used for open world games to give the perception of a fully-interconnected space. There are often tricks used to give

1815-460: The concept of the Backrooms, introducing concepts such as "levels" and hostile creatures that inhabit the space. In early 2022, American YouTuber Kane Parsons started a series of Backrooms short films on YouTube , which went viral . The videos have been credited with igniting a surge in Backrooms content and taking the concept into the mainstream. Parsons is slated to direct a film adaptation of his series produced by A24 . Between 2011 and 2018,

1870-440: The designers to use. This eliminates the need for designers to access or modify game code . As opposed to the level editing tools sometimes available to the community, level designers often work with placeholders and prototypes aiming for level consistency and clear layout before required artwork is produced by game artists. Many level designers have skills as both a visual artist and game designer , although in recent years

1925-626: The first description of the Backrooms: If you're not careful and you noclip out of reality in the wrong areas, you'll end up in the Backrooms, where it's nothing but the stink of old moist carpet, the madness of mono-yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum hum-buzz, and approximately six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby, because it sure as hell has heard you Days after

1980-483: The first games with a 3D engine to feature hidden features was Wolfenstein 3D , where certain walls could be pushed to reveal hidden passages. Sometimes, a whole level may be designed as a secret level. A bonus stage (also known as a bonus level or bonus round) is a special level within a video game designed to reward the player or players, and typically allows the player to collect extra points or power-ups . Bonus stage either have no enemies or hazards, or replace

2035-491: The former approach is the arcade shoot 'em up game Space Invaders (1978), where each level looks the same, repeating endlessly until the player loses all their lives . An example of the latter approach is the arcade platform game Donkey Kong (1981), which uses multiple distinct levels to progress a storyline; as Mario (originally called Jumpman) tries to rescue Pauline from Donkey Kong , each level ends with Kong fleeing with Pauline and then Mario having to complete

2090-415: The game because of their limited replay value. A minigame (also spelled mini-game or mini game, sometimes called a subgame or microgame) is a short video game often contained within another video game, and sometimes in application software or on a display of any form of hardware. A minigame contains different gameplay elements than the main game, may be optional, and is often smaller or more simplistic than

2145-407: The game creator to use the same load- and rendering routines as the game itself, and may make it easier and more pleasant to create levels. Developers of FOSS -games may argue that a game is not complete until other users easily can add new levels. One of the first 3D games which became popular partially due to level editors and fan-made maps, other game addons, and other works related to the game,

2200-428: The game in which it is contained. Minigames are sometimes also offered separately for free to promote the main game. Some minigames can also be bonus stages or secret levels. They are distinguishable from levels in that a level is an environment bound to a set of mechanics and rules that all defines all other normal levels in a game, whereas a minigame can use different rules and playstyles but may not necessarily be set in

2255-494: The game is usually designed to get players to explore the mechanics of the game, notably in World 1-1 of Super Mario Bros. Cut scenes may be triggered by events in a level, but require distinctly different skills, and may be produced by a different person or team. The level design process may be iterated several times before achieving the desired outcome. Level designers and concept artists may also be required to provide

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2310-597: The gameplay. For example, the gameplay may be shifted towards a platformer (by careful placement of platforms) or a puzzle game (by extensive use of buttons, keys, and doors). Some FPS maps may be designed to prevent sniping by not including any long hallways, while other maps may allow for a mix of sniping and closer combat. Gimmick maps are sometimes developed to explore selected features of gameplay, such as sniping or fist fighting. While they are briefly useful to level designers and interesting to experienced players, they are usually not included in final list of levels of

2365-465: The image that would go on to inspire the concept of the Backrooms. The image was captioned as an original view of "the East (Oval) room", and noted that no windows were visible. The blog entry described extensive water damage that required the area to be cleared. HobbyTown has since converted the facility into a radio-controlled car racing track called Revolution Racing, and the room's original layout

2420-438: The lack of a canonical Backrooms made "drawing a line between authentic storytelling and jokes" difficult. By March 2022, r/backrooms had over 157,000 members. The fandom steadily expanded onto other platforms with the upload of videos on Twitter and TikTok . Wikis hosted on Fandom and Wikidot dedicated to the Backrooms lore were established. Dan Erickson , creator of the television series Severance (2022), named

2475-425: The liminal in horror" and the color yellow as a symbol of caution, deterioration, and existential distress . The Backrooms' is "a fungal, sickly yellow", where both the person and the mind can lose themselves. PC Gamer compared the Backrooms' various levels to H. P. Lovecraft 's R'lyeh and The City in the manga Blame! , describing it as "an uncanny valley of place". ABC News and Le Monde grouped

2530-422: The next area. These puzzles can slow the momentum down for players of fast action games ; the first Half-Life 's penultimate chapter, "Interloper", featured multiple moving platforms high in the air with enemies firing at the player from all sides. Level design or environment design , is a discipline of game development involving the making of video game levels—locales, stages or missions. This

2585-534: The normal penalties for being struck by enemies or hazards with simply being thrown out of the bonus stage. Many bonus stages need to be activated or discovered in some manner, or certain conditions must be satisfied to access them. Otherwise, they appear after the player has completed a certain number of regular stages. There are many map bugs that level designers try to avoid, but sometimes go unnoticed for some time. A player might get stuck in map geometry with no way to escape or to die. A player might be able to find

2640-447: The original creepypasta , users began to share stories about the Backrooms on subreddits such as r/creepypasta and later r/backrooms. A fandom began to develop around the Backrooms and creators expanded upon the original iteration of the creepypasta by creating additional floors or " levels " and entities which populate them. Happy Mag noted in particular two other levels: Level 1, a level with industrial architecture, and Level 2,

2695-417: The placing of game specific entities (actors), usually with the aid of a level editor. A level editor may be distributed as a complete stand-alone package, at times, rivaling commercial 3D modelling software. There are various steps involved in laying out a map and these steps may vary dramatically across the many different game genres that exist as of the 2020s. General steps include: The first level of

2750-418: The player towards the correct path. Similarly, clearly marked choke-points can be introduced. Another method is strategic placement of obstacles and aesthetic environment props that direct the player's attention to "clear" paths instead. This is often used in closed, "stuffed" environments. Levels may be designed to force the players to explore the map and advance. Most Real-Time Strategy maps give each player

2805-469: The player towards the goal of the level and preventing confusion and idling. This can be accomplished by various means. Often the level layouts feature power-ups and items positioned so that collecting them inevitably makes the player move in the correct direction. This is one of the basic player direction techniques and is most often seen in platformers. Lighting and illumination, as well as distinctly-coloured objects, are often used to unambiguously guide

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2860-450: The reasons was a clear separation between the level files and game engine itself. Half-Life , Quake 3 , and many other games have notable mapping tools and communities focusing on user-generated content . Level design for each individual level in a modern game typically starts with concept art, sketches, renderings, and physical models. Once completed, these concepts transform into extensive documentation, environment modeling, and

2915-505: The responsibility for visual-, structural- and gameplay-related tasks has been increasingly divided among several specialists. A wide variety of tools may be used by someone designing and making a level. Although it is faster to design models and textures with general-purpose multimedia development tools, games usually require the data to be in a unique format suited for that game's engine . For this, specific compilers and converters of models, textures, and audio data may be required to lay out

2970-508: Was Doom . The development of various third-party editors led to the formation of an online community trading fan-made maps. A level editor is often limited to designing levels for only a certain game engine . Developing a level editor takes a lot of time; it is more time- and cost-efficient to release multiple games using the same engine instead of developing a new engine and level editor for each game. As level editors generally allow for limited game-development work, to make larger changes to

3025-470: Was praised by the fandom and received positive reviews from critics. WPST called it "the scariest video on the Internet". Otaku USA categorized it as analog horror , while Dread Central and Nerdist compared it favorably to the 2019 video game Control . Kotaku praised the series for exercising restraint in its horror and mystery. Boing Boing ' s Rob Beschizza predicted that

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