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Assorted Personal Work

These are personal projects created over the years, mostly with the Source engine due to its ease of integration into an existing content pipeline.

Rooftop Combat Space

Designed as a combat space with a rolling boss fight against two flying gunships



Process:

• Originally designed to mimic a boss encounter in Half Life 2s base game, this was designed to be a short 10 minute combat sequence featuring chaotic destruction of the environment as the player moves through it. Heavily inspired by the Harrier jet scene in True Lies, I wanted the player to make combat choices of engaging with the gunships with the rocket launcher, or to use the rockets against combine enemies to progress easier through the interior of the final building.

• The starting area was inspired by some Mirrors Edge game screenshots, as rooftop areas were not utilized very often in Half Life 2, giving it a unique feel. The starting area allows the player to survey most of the level.

• Some major problems to address were that players panicked at being thrown into combat immediately upon level start and wanted some calmer spaces to survey the level. In addition players were getting lost in the destroyed interior of the last building. A bit of the interior space was opened up to give clearer lines towards goals while still having a lot of pockets and side paths for the player to explore and cover for protection against the gunship harassing them.

• Decided to end development on this and bid farewell to the Source engine.



The Light at the End

Ride in a boat, meet the local insurgency, and assault a combine garrison. The Light at the End was created for the Coastville competition run by Run Think Shoot Live. It was created over a period of 3 weeks.



Process:

• The intended overall structure was relatively simple; enter town and be told where to meet locals, receive mission to allow locals to fight enemy base, execute mission, exit.

• Several parts of that structure fell apart due to time constraints and implimenting custom audio which was originally going to dictate what the players objective actually is. Due to this, there's a lack of intentionality for the player and they generally just move further forward because its the only space open to progress.

• Lack of being able to adequately debug combat issues caused the core gameplay to suffer as I was left to iterate on combat purely by speculation about any given issue.

• Entry originally lacked the strider fight at the end, but late playtesting brought up the point that the strider is seen exiting the scene in the beginning and they were expecting it to show up again. This resulted in adding the strider and drove the design of the rpg round economy setup that was involved for the finale combat space.

Download mod here. Requires Half Life 2: Episode 2
Post mortem video


Station 8

You are a lookout on the outskirts of a rebel station which is currently being attacked. Cross a bridge and see if there are any survivors. Station 8 was created for the Bridgeville competition run by Run Think Shoot Live. It was created over a period of 3 weeks.



Process:

• The flow of the entry was very simple; receive a radio broadcast about a station being attacked, set out across a bridge towards the station to check for survivors. It had 3 very small combat encounters that I wanted to make as impactful as possible.

• The intended aesthetic was of a rundown abandoned bridge crowded with vehicles using The Last of Us as a comparison. This mark was largely missed due to the lack of stock vegetation assets available for Half Life 2.

• Original design was of a flat bridge but ended up feeling boring, so it was turned into a double deck bridge to include some vertical elements as well as the very simple puzzle of using the tanker truck to bridge a gap.

Download mod here. Requires Half Life 2: Episode 2
Post mortem video


Asylum

Asylum was a survival map for Left 4 Dead to relearn Source workflow as it had been years since I had created anything with it. This was created in about 30 days.



Process:

• This was a very simple asylum map based on an asylum level from Batman Arkham Asylum, as I was currently working at Crystal Dynamics doing QA on that title at the time.

• Gameplay is relatively straight forward, zombies endlessly enter the area and path towards the player characters. Supplies such as ammo and health kits are spaced out in the environment. Basic weighing of risk vs reward determined their positions.



Download map here. Requires Left 4 Dead


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