Monday, January 25, 1999, 5:41:26 PM

I had to dive into first person shooter level editing one day, and well, Half-Life had the look I always wanted in my own creations... I mean, who wouldn't want to create something even remotely as cool as Valve had?

In any event, the obsession started in my freshman dorm room at the University of Oregon. Lately I had set up camp in front of my roommate Luke's comp playing HLDM till all hours of the morning, when suddenly a friend burst in talking nonsense about how HL had a level editor on the disc! I was "skeptaple," like the kid in the cereal commercial, but after about an hour, there I was sitting in front of Worldcraft for the very first time. I thought to my self about all the possible levels I could make, when I finally decided to make a football field appropriately covered in snarks.

After searching through the hl wad, I settled on a sign texture for the field and went to work painstakingly creating the fabled trapezoid shape. When all was "just so," I hit F9 and watched in amazement as my first map began to load! But NO! The horror! It was all pink and black and you had to jump crouch to get out of the only spawn point embedded in the ground! But hey, I didn't care, I ran through the dorm raving about how I made a new map for Half-life, and me and the guys all feverishly had a crowbar-snark-football fest for the next hour!

...It would be weeks before I figured out how to set up the editor properly and actually see the textures I wanted.

Thursday, August 26, 1999, 10:18:46 PM

For the first month of summer my brother Dan and I dove into Worldcraft trying to learn all its ins and outs. The most trouble we had was trying to get the lighting to appear in-game rather than have full-bright maps. One day I was looking at the compile process and wondered what this "rad" thingy was, so I tried a compile with it enabled... success! I was like OMFG I have blue red and purple and orange light! Oh happy day!

The first map I ever successfully lit was this fine creation only ever named "gauss." Gauss featured nifty track lighting, a cool stairwell, a room with a side of bacon and a cleaver, a few vents and some great colored lights.

Some how I managed to get this far with out ever using vertex manipulation, skewing of brushes, or the clipping tool... Rotations and carving can be powerful when your an infant. =)

Sunday, April 28, 1996, 5:34:00 PM

It all started with a game called Loderunner. It was a basic puzzle game that had a built in level editor. And wouldn't you know it? The first level I ever created was multiplayer! That's right, good old Macintosh multiplayer with two people on one keyboard!

Loderunner was an interesting game, and it was even more exciting if you broke the game's brain so the game ran two times as quickly. This super fast play is where I got the name for my first ever level, TreasureNugletFast, the level where players compete to pick up nuglets of treasure really really fast!

This initial level had all the great first timer ideas like bunching massive groups of weapons together, and implementing items with little or no purpose. A true classic!

Thursday, May 27, 1996, 7:53:00 PM

I spent countless hours playing Sim City 2000, and the included terrain editor allowed me to make my first "natural" game environment.

Sim City's terrain editor had tons to of cool features like a bulldozer, tree-populator and even a flatten tool! Well, I guess it didn't have much, but it was enough to get me interested in making a game look the way I wanted it too. It was great being able to plan your city from the ground up, making space for future buildings and development projects. My curiosity for level design would lay dormant for a few years, but come back stronger than ever.

Wednesday, July 28, 1999, 6:48:06 PM

Worldcraft was still very new to me. But the most interesting feature at the time was the "carve" function. Carving seemed to be the solution to everything, and a small endeavor simply named "flat" used it heavily. I thought it would be neat to connect two rooms containing carved pools of water by an underground tunnel. I carved a nice smooth transition to the water with a 32-sided spike. Simply put, this was the first time I really realized that carve could be evil in the hands of an amateur level designer...

Thursday, September 30, 1999, 2:06:12 PM

Getting frustrated with a max_leaf error on Gauss, I decided that I should try a small arena map, and just finish something that would be playable. "Fight Nite" is the result. It is a circular arena with nothing but a Black Mesa suv and a bunch of spawns. The most significant thing about this map is the solid demonstration of my spelling ability. To this day I second guess all the text in my work because of "Fight nite."

Sunday, October 17, 1999, 1:27:48 PM

I had been back in school for a month or so, and decided to get down to work making a new attempt at a hldm map. In the early days of my Worldcraft mapping, I was prone towards intricate details involving lots of brushes. My new map junkyard would be no different. Junkyard started with is main attraction, a full size crane toting junk at "kojak's crushing." This map employed many features of Half-life I had not used up to date, such as env_glows, func_doors, func_ladders and light_environments. All of these features opened my mind up to the possibilities within the HL engine, and encouraged me to learn more and try harder.

Junkyard was the first map on which I ever used vertex manipulation, (to create a more natural looking dirt ramp), and was my first experiment with "curved walls" in the underground areas.

Junkyard was only tested a bit on LAN and was never released to the public, (probably partly due to the fact leaks kept me from VISing it). Eventually the map was abandoned, as many maps early on in the learning process are, and I moved on to newer and more advanced projects.

Wednesday, December 15, 1999, 9:57:04 AM

Meld, like its name snuggest, is a level that was created by meshing two different parts into one. Starting with an idea to build a "rocket under repair" from the original HL textures, and moving on to a snowy rocky mountain map, I figured nothing could be better than snow and rockets all in one map!

During the creation of meld, I had began to experiment heavily with the vertex manipulation tool. I quickly became aware that vertex-manip can be very powerful when going for a natural terrain look, as well as when creating the illusion of curves. Developed during this project was a method to create terrain rocks from a cube and five, four-sided pyramids. The result of this method is very successful in giving that natural but low-poly look, and I still use it in HL level design to this day.

As with all of my first maps, meld was never released, but I would revisit it in the future to frankenstein it out to a counter-strike map.

Thursday, November 18, 1999, 3:11:44 PM

Up until this point in time I had learned a lot about designing levels for HL, but this map shows that there was still a long way for me to go. I decided to make a cathedral style church, which I named "churchl." I somehow got it in my head to make some huge spiraling staircases and a 4000 unit tall stained glass depicting a roughly shaped demonic charater... The brushwork came out great, but the compile would crash after twelve hours due to a maximum face count. Apparently I still had to read up on faces and that whole business of polygons. Did I say polygons? What do they do? This map has 30x the normal amount in one view, is that good?

Friday, December 24, 1999, 7:18:50 AM

My brother Dan and I were really getting serious about HL mapping at this point. We decided to explore the possibilities in single-player, and even thought a bit about a space-based mission pack.

A nifty idea we had for the pack was a situation that took place by an airlock. In the level you surprise 2 grunts holding their post, and are able to activate the control that opens an airlock out into space. An alarm sounds, lights spin and the door creeps open. Suddenly the grunts are pulled out the airlock and gibbed, and the pressure breaks the window in front of you pulling you closer. If you're daring you can enter the room and collect ammo while fighting the air current. A simple idea, yet quite effective and exciting. Working on the airlock map really showed me the importance of entity interaction and placement, and would inspire me to create exciting game play in "Caged" years later.

Wednesday, March 15, 2000, 10:29:44 PM

A good friend Jake and I began to start a level for a new modification called Medieval Madness. The mod never came through, but it did push us to try some fun new things level design wise.

The map we decided to make for the mod was a castle-keep. This map landmarks the first texture I ever made, and prompted me to make many more. I eventually created almost every texture in the map, and soon grew to realize the freedom and benefits of custom textures.

Some of my first textures had notable names such as wood1, brick, grass4 and granite. Uber unique =).

Tuesday, June 20, 2000, 5:21:19 PM

My level editing for Half-life didn't often dive into the popular themes of the "lambda complex," or the generic lab scenarios; however, this small 1 room level is an example of an anomaly in my style. Particle Accelerator was basically started as a novelty to play with ideas surrounding experimental equipment and effects in the game engine. This map contained some of my first experiments in "dynamic" lighting styles as well as beam and laser effects, all tied together with managers.

Interesting to note, is that in the screen shot on the right, the pipes high on the wall actually run through special holes which were built to look like supports. Form this it is obvious that I had not yet learned the benefits of func_walls, as making the pipes into them would have allowed the pipes to go directly through the supports without having individual holes for each pipe... No wonder my poly counts were always higher that I would have hoped for.

Tuesday, July 25, 2000, 5:55:37 PM

Moving back to single player levels, I thought I would try my hand at a more organic, natural style of environment. Drawing architecture styles from some of the desert scenes in Half-life, I managed to come up with a reasonably natural looking environment. Obvious enough is that my grasp of good natural lighting was still rather weak.

Monday, July 10, 2000, 8:03:24 PM

The Counter-Strike bug had hit me. Countless hours of my studying time in college had been wasted honing my CS skills, and what better way to continue that path than by designing some levels for CS? Eventually named "Laidlaw," the map started off being called bankheist.

CS never really had a good bank robbery level, so this project started with some very clunky geometry blocking out a rough bank on an urban street. Making the outside of the bank was too big of a task, so I decided to import the bold bank architecture into a new map, Laidlaw. The bank was now acting as the facade for a prison. Laidlaw was the first map where I really felt I was getting the hang of making quality textures. I have often felt that the manila colored wall with bared windows in Laidlaw was one of my crowning texture achievements of the time.

Thursday, July 06, 2000, 5:21:38 PM

While frustrated with my inadequacies relating to making full playable maps, I decided to whip out a fully playable map for Counter-Strike. The result is a single room of horrible regret. Overuse of colored lighting, ugly geometry and general boring layout made this map find its way to the back of my map list. Perhaps I am being too harsh, I am still partial to its TMP vs. MAC10 only game play.

Tuesday, October 03, 2000, 11:35:10 AM

The best improvement to Counter-Strike of all time, was the addition of user controlled off-track vehicles. For the time, it was quite revolutionary in the HL engine for a player to be able to control a craft along any path he or she chose. I couldn't wait to try it out, and quickly produced the small test level "rigatta." Featuring jet-skis and a small boat called the Royal Sampler, my roommates and I had many fun water battles tearing up the lake.

Rigatta was the first level in which I discovered the difference between a func_water, and a plain water brush. Using plain water brushes in rigatta allowed me to make interesting under water architecture without sacrificing framerate.

Tuesday, August 08, 2000, 5:06:51 PM

My first released level! I worked very hard to make this tightly knit small diffusion map for Counter-Strike. All textures and lights are aligned perfect, and the action was fast and furious. At the time, I remember telling my brother that I thought that it "should be an official CS map, it's awesome!"

However, Looking back on de_generator, it is probably good it was not an "official map." Generator lacked all the basic CS mechanics, but it was a good design experience, and will always hold its own place in my heart. *sniff*

Friday, November 03, 2000, 2:37:42 PM

A lot of level design is trickery. Most levels involve a creative use of the game's tool set in a way which may not have been initially obvious.

This small test level creates the simple effect of a mirror in a room, by mirroring the brushwork on the opposite side of a transparent brush. Such "special effects" are commonplace to most level designers; however, at the time it was a quite new and novel idea to me. Once I got in the mode of looking at the game's entities from a generalized perspective, I was able to create more complex and engaging effects.

I eventually used the base of "bathroom" for a semi-easter egg in the map de_rapidtransit.

Sunday, December 10, 2000, 1:54:12 PM

What could be more fun than fraggin' inside a rackmount server? Well a lot of things actually, but that doesn't mean that "Xeon" wasn't fun to toy around with. I've always enjoyed the "rats" genre of levels; mixing in some computer tech and a bit of HAL from 2001 I made a nifty little level. It never got much farther than a LAN game in my apartment, but I did manage to salvage some of it for a sequence in a game I made my brother for his birthday 2 years later.

Tuesday, January 09, 2001, 2:12:00 PM

A new year of level design sparked interest in a new modification: Pirates, Vikings and Knights. The PVK mod had some zany wacked-out levels, so naturally that appealed to me very much.

I started building on the pirate start point first, where they would spawn in their "pirate airships." It never got much farther than that. (What the hell are pirates doing in balloons anyway???) In the screen shot, the balloon on the right was made at around 4:30 in the morning (looks a bit like pole-position eh?). After a good nights sleep, I made the balloon on the left... I guess sleep depravation and level design are a bad idea. But when is a level designer not sleep deprived?

Wednesday, February 28, 2001, 5:00:40 PM

A few months earlier I had made a small rusty texture set on my brother's computer. I finally got around to trying them all out together in "Junky." The title fits the level well, as it is very, well, ugly. It's interesting to see something like this crop up so long after I started into level design. I guess it makes sense though, seeing as about 1 in 30 of my levels actually get completed and released.

Saturday, March 03, 2001, 2:44:32 PM

The Day of Defeat modification was just getting underway when I started making vehicle props for a future DOD level. A cross between a World War One and a World War Two tank, the German monster could hold 4 players inside featuring gunports and all. Additionally, the small user controlled half-track was a zippy little transport.

My favorite texture at the time of "Tank" was the gray and silver gear texture used here. Photo-sourced tank textures are hard to come by, so I created my own. I began to learn that often you can use parts from several different images to create the texture you need.

Tuesday, July 03, 2001, 10:06:56 PM

Pinball is one of my favorite past times; nothing better than a mix of real physics with electronics... Ebay was beginning to be a great source for photo-realistic textures for me, helping a lot in getting each machine just right. A lot of the machines in the arcade would make their first public appearance two years later in the massive multiplayer project Urban Nights.

Note in the back left of the arcade is the original Counter-Strike pinball machine!

Sunday, July 15, 2001, 9:09:56 PM

Rapidtransit, a defusion level for Counter-Strike, is the main reason my previous year of mapping was filled with sporadic unfinished "idea" levels.

Started in the beginning of October 2000, Rapidtransit's subway theme style went through too many transformations to list. A quick check of the hard drive shows approximately 60 progressive versions of the level. The best thing about making the level was that I had a lot of concept help from my roommate, Jake Anderson. Jake and I poured over the intricacies of the level, working out the shooting lanes, rush times, clan-based tactics and so on. The result was a very tactic rich level that could be played from almost any style.

Arguably the best feature of the level is the moving train which crosses over one of the bomb sites. Not only does this feature introduce excitement, but also some very comedic gibbings.

Rapidtransit is deffinantly a favorite among players, though more of an "underground" level as it is not widely distributed. A beta review of the map at the Valve Editing Resource Center called it "Exceedingly well crafted... should be an official map." On the other hand, a player named "=CC=Dr. Ogenki" once said: "This map fucking blows." I guess it's your call.

Wednesday, October 17, 2001, 9:02:19 PM

"Hey Yesu, lets make DM maps real fast and play em on-line, like in 15 minutes!"

A bunch of the regulars on the Valve Editing Resource Center's IRC cannel would sometimes group together for 15mm sessions; making deathmatch levels very quickly in 15 to 60 minutes. Talk about the biggest frantic level design rush ever, your brain just about rolls off of your desk trying to make a playable level in that time frame.

After the inaugural session in which yesukai and I each made levels, the 15mm would continue on to make some classic crap-fests all the way into 2003. Not just a heart attack in level design, the 15mm was a great friendship builder and a great exercise in freeing up clogged computer gray-matter.

Wednesday, November 07, 2001, 4:57:04 PM

As a variation to the 15mm maps, a group of people decided to get together and make a "frankenstein" map. Each designer was given an area of space with which to fill in part of a multiplayer level. Themes between designers were not discussed ahead of time giving the resulting level some very strange changes of scenery. The player might walk from a mountain landscape through a door into a city, or even into mario-land.

Frankenstein_dm1 was created over a few days, with a second collaboration, frankenstein_dm2, created only about a week later. Frankenstein_dm2 featured a lot more vertical game play, and has been reviewed as one of the biggest Half-life deathmatch levels of all time.

The frankenstein levels were some of the most exciting and enjoyable design experiences I've ever had. Teamwork and collaboration are fantastic when it comes to games, it's too band frankenstein_dm3 fell through...

Saturday, January 12, 2002, 6:32:16 PM

"Someone has wasted weeks learning Worldcraft in order to make this huge, steaming heap of a turd of a map." - Snark Pit

While chatting with some level design friends one afternoon, I came across some level reviews at a website called Global Assault. I couldn't believe what I was seeing, the website was handing out good reviews to designers of "killbox" style maps (levels which were just a big room with a bunch of weapons). Irritated with reviews promoting ugly and poor level design, I decided to make them a horrendous puke-bag of a map while I was chatting with my friends.

I think in all, it took me about 6 minutes to make, and another minute to compile. The result was "Turdbox." I quickly sent the level into Global Assault, happy with myself at forcing them to actually play it.

The best part; however, is that Turdbox made its way to another website called the Snark Pit. There, Turdbox has gained the title of one of the "top 10 most horrendous things ever rendered by the Half-life Engine."

It's hard to feign terrible level design though. Looking closely at Turdbox, it runs very smooth at barely 90 polygons, with no real level design errors other than its horrible looks.

Tuesday, November 13, 2001, 2:02:46 PM

One afternoon I decided to make a fun little map with very little legwork involved. I did not want to spend days on a project, just something to free up my brain a little. Copyright infringement aside, the product of about 3 hours was this cute little map for Counter-Strike, "Monopoly."

"Little Big" level design has always caught my eye as a fun way to add a new dimension of play to a level. What better way to have fun than playing a first person shooter on the game board of my childhood memories?... Well probably a lot of things, but cs_monopoly is still a level which I adore.

In the design of this level I learned an important lesson about the Half-life engine which dealt with the properties of game-lighting on the edges of BSP brushwork. If the player stands on the edge of the monopoly board, he or she turns black, blending invisible with the "skybox." In any other map this would have been a very ugly error; however, in cs_monopoly it becomes on of the biggest game exploits ever. -Something I take full advantage of. =)

Sunday, March 24, 2002, 9:42:38 AM

Caged is at the top of my list of personal single-player favorites. Set in a semi-futuristic prison, the level challenges the player to escape from captivity and gain their freedom.

Caged is a level which was designed for Project: Quantum Leap, (PQL), a single-player mission pack. The idea for PQL was partially spawned from the 15mm. Its goal was to create an experience where the player went from one single-player map to the next, each by a different designer, without a consistent theme or storyline, (much like the television show Quantum Leap). No one on the design team for PQL discussed ahead of time wheat the themes for the levels were to be, so when the expansion was finally assembled the result was a very unique gaming experience.

Everyone on the PQL team was looking for no more than a good time while making a fun level-pack. Along with Caged, I also made an "intermission" for PQL. It was a short film consisting of a 1920's style nickelodeon about Gordon Freeman and his crazy antics, some of which involved a young portly lad who "brings ice cream." Looking back, I think that's why it was such a fun project. When everyone is working together for a common goal, in a relaxed environment, you are only pushed harder to make something that is truly wonderful. PQL was deffinantly a landmark in deciding to push myself for a career in level design.

Everything in Caged flows like butter. I will always be proud of it. From the game play to the nonlinear environments, the level has an exciting mix of action and puzzle. A number of websites gave Caged rave reviews and PC Zone magazine also put up an article on PQL in the Feb 03` issue, giving the pack as a whole a 61/100... meh. For me though, a map that comes together well is the true reward of level design. When you design something that people truly enjoy, you just know all the hard work was well worth while. Im still amazed to this day that I was able to pack it all into a single map...

Wednesday, November 20, 2002, 12:05:55 PM

When the Quake 1 themed mod Deathmatch Classic came out for Half-life, I instantly jumped on the opportunity to be one of the first people in the community to release a custom level for it. I figured "hey, I'll make something small and sweet and everyone will love me and shower me with candy." So more than a year later, I released the final build of Fireball to the public.

So maybe it wasn't the first user made level for DMC, or even the 50th, and no one threw candy at my feet, but Fireball turned out to be a fantastic level. The map has all of the themes of classic Quake design. It has buckets of lava, traps, teleporters and even secret areas. Most of all, though, Fireball features some of the tightest knit connectivity ever, making it an extremely fast playing map that is a blast to play.

I've always been proud of the stylized look of Fireball: simple geometry lending to pleasant angles and game play. The level is consistent throughout, something I have always had trouble keeping up in my projects. I only wish that more people had taken the time to enjoy it.

Wednesday, May 22, 2002, 9:22:16 PM

If you have ever seen the film No Escape starring Ray Liotta, you'll understand the basic theme of this map. Well, actually, you probably will not as there is no real resemblance to the film. None the less, as with the film the action in Absolom takes place on an island. The level features palm trees, cabanas, laundry huts and even a spiced rum shack! Woo hoo!... Erm... What the heck was I thinking???

Plot anomalies aside, Absolom was a fantastic start to a beautiful Half-life map. It was very unique in theme and ambiance, along with a very unique compile time of 29 hours 30 minutes... So in all reality, the last version of the level was really finished on the 21st of May 02` around noon or so.

Looking back at the map its shortcomings are obvious: hard edged polies, lack of ground cover... the list goes on. What worked for Absolom, however; was its use of rich vibrant colors in conjunction with the well suited sky-box I built for it. Nothing beats a clear sunset on the Pacific ocean, even if its in Half-life

Sunday, June 08, 2003, 11:53:16 AM

Milwaukee WI has some of the most texture rich industrial decay of any city I have ever been to. From the old decrepid Pabst brewery to the run down commercial districs along the river, it's a texture treasure trove. Having recently moved to Milwaukee, I decided I would try and recreate one of the fantastic scenes close to where I lived.

After scouting some locations I came across this aging wharehouse on Water st. The environment was full of many fantastic run down visuals and I decided that it presented a unique challenge. I decided to try and mimic as closely as possible a reference photo that I took of the building with a screenshot from within the Half-Life engine.

On two seperate days I went to the area and took source images for the textures in the scene. The main facades of the building had to be cut up into a number of 256x256 textures per the HL engine, on top of which I had to eliminate neumerous OpenGL blending seams; the most tedious part of a level design project ever.

The geometry in the scene was very low poly, (about 850); however the textures for the street and sidewalk proved to be particularly difficult to capture. The texture for the corner of the sidewalk was made from 16 different photos, each of whiched mapped a different section of the final texture. Pulling and tugging in Photoshop revealed an impressive result, a texture which I am very proud of... If only I had a ladder...

Sunday, January 05, 2003, 3:03:02 PM

Just a few days before leaving on a two month vacation to Europe with my sweetheart, I got down to business and fleshed out the introduction to an idea I had for quite some time. The working title for the project was Amnesia. The introduction was a black and white cinematic sequence depicting the loss of a doomsday device by the German army during a bombing raid in World War two.

Amnesia was a single player mission pack which set the player in the role of mankinds last hope for survival, preventing the use of the doomsday device in the not so distant future. One of the most thrilling ideas behind the project was an all classical and techno soundtrack. Depending on the era of gameplay, past or future, the style of music would change setting a unique mood to the game. Maybe someday the idea will develope into something more than an introduction. I would love to be able to use the stunning sequence in a full game.

Monday, June 30, 2003, 9:46:54 PM

I guess for the record it should probably be noted that I first blocked this map out on December 12th of 2001. That makes the total development time somewhere in the range of 19 months! Who knows, maybe its some sort of design record for the slowest level designer ever?

Initially I set out to make this map for a mod called the Real Deathmatch; however, like most mods it was never realized. After toying with the idea of gifting the map to a number of different community projects, I finally decided to release the map with a mod called The Specialists. The levels layout fit great with The Specialists as its game play was not far from Real Deathmatch. Set in a huge city, Urban Nights allowed the player to adapt his or her unique game play style to the level. From vertical game play where one might be taking fire from opponents 20 stories up, to connectivity giving seamless flow from one area to the next, the level offered the player a myriad of combat areas.

Urban Nights literally pushed the limits of the Half-Life engine. To start, the level spanned the entire eight thousand unit width of the Half-Life universe. Additionally, nearly every single hard coded compile limit was pressed using more than 99% of the maximum allowed planes, clipnodes and leaves. All of this was achieved keeping wpoly counts under 600, and texture memory under 5 MB. I would have loved to detail out the insides of more of the buildings, but it was just not possible in the engine.

Urban Nights is one of many maps I would love to one day revisit in a more robust and capable engine. I consider it one of my personal masterpieces, a map which was built to be played the way I love to play games. It was one of those maps where I started with a vision, a glimpse of the possibility of a great level, which in the end, turned into something far more beautiful and exciting than I could have ever initially thought of.

In any event, I had a blast making Urban Nights and would jump at the chance of making something else on the same scale. Not only is the level completely unique in the world of HL design, but it came together graphically, stylistically and most importantly in its game play. Few things come close to the 32 player deathmatch games I've had in Urban Nights.

Sunday, March 23, 2003, 6:26:32 PM

I spent some marathon days getting this single player mission ready. I whipped up over a hundred new textures, a new weapon and even a nifty new seagull creature to make the experience complete. And so, seven days after the first sketches were laid down, X-Treme Violence was finally finished.

It all started on a Monday evening when I received an e-mail from the gaming company The Collective, located in Los Angeles. They asked if I could make them a single player level as part of my interview process with them. They provided me with a story line and simple concept for the mission and told me they would like to see the finished result in a weeks time. I was thrilled at the opportunity, and instantly went down to the food jobber and stocked up on Gatorade.

The premise of the project was to put the player in the role of a special-ops counter-terrorist on a mission to infiltrate a terrorist hideout and thwart their evil plot. The game was to be called: X-Treme Violence. The level was also required to showcase the outside, as well as the inside of the terrorist base. The rest was up to me.

After brainstorming in the car as I drove home, I decided to set the location in the fictional seaside town of Poloviti Italy. The terrorist hide out, located inside the local butcher shop, held the production facility for their evil plot: packing telephone booths with C4 in an attempt to destroy London!

I had an awesome time creating the mission, mainly because I pushed myself to touch on all of my talents in a time limited situation. I allotted 2 days to lay out and tie up the town surrounding the butcher shop, one day to create the small cinematic introduction and to build the cargo ship at the pier, 2 more days for the inside of the terrorist base and a final day of tweaking, play testing and getting the result packaged up into a self contained modification.

Everything came together far better than I could have expected with the project. The level looked better than anything I had created to date, played wonderfully and most of all was fun. Oddly enough I did not get the job at The Collective. It was pretty disappointing because I put a lot of work into X-Treme Violence. They never even took the time to finish the mission all the way through.... What a burn.

Thursday, September 13, 2003, 10:24:33 AM

Exactly one year prior to the release of Big Lolly I gave a very special gift to my oldest brother Dan for his birthday. It was a level pack set in a small universe of carnival puzzles revolving around many of our inside jokes and brotherly culture. Dan was so thrilled with his present that when his next birthday was getting near, I decided I would take the time to develop a much more complete present. The result was a truly unique gift named Big Lolly.

The theme of Big Lolly was a candy universe in which the player battled various sweet-tooth theme creatures with a variety of crazy weapons, (one of which is a big lolly pop). The idea initially came from the thought of possibly making an entire Half-Life mod in one night a la the 15mm club. However, once I actually started in on the project I realized that it could be much more than a quick fly-by-night modification.

Big Lolly included a five level single player campaign as well as three deathmatch environments for lolly bashing excitement. Enemies included evil red gummi-bears, grumpy ginger bread men and zany sour patch kids. The sour patch kids were the most difficult to create of the three, being a replacement of the original Half-Life cockroach. I had to use a hex editor to hack the model so the sour patch kids would scurry around, (rather than spin in place like drunken hop-heads). Thinking back, I was kind of partial to the little drunkards.

The universe of Big Lolly was a complete one man project. All of the textures were hand drawn in Photoshop, the sounds were all voice acted by myself, (even the weapon sounds), and I modeled all of the new weapons and player pick-ups. I even learned some basic C++ with which I tweaked the single player and multiplayer code. The one main feature that was planned for the project which never made it into the game was the music for the single player campaign. Unfortunately only one of the songs was complete in time and so the soundtrack was not used. Upon reflection one sound was not created by myself; my soul-mate Jamie made the snow footstep sounds by ingeniously shaking a box of Total cereal. =)

When I came to visit on his birthday I presented my brother Dan with a CD marked Big Lolly. His initial comment was something like "Wtf? Big Lolly?," but when he played it he couldn't help but love its insanity. I am still happy to this day that I was able to create a fun an exciting gift for his 30th birthday.

An unexpected result from Big Lolly was me finally realizing my dream to work professionally as a level designer. During the development of Big Lolly I interviewed at 2015 inc. where I showed them a preview of the mod. I was subsequently hired by 2015 and would like to think that my crazy spark in Big Lolly had something to do with it. Tulsa OK here I come! =).