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The Lord
of the Rings: War in the North is a hack-and-slash action RPG with a
strong emphasis on cooperative play.
Working with a group of six other Level Designers, I developed,
scripted and polished a third of the major levels in the game,
including key sections of Fornost, all the Nordinbad levels, and the
gameplay of the two wave-based challenge missions Osgiliath and Lórien.
Two of these levels, the Fornost Citadel
and the Siege of Nordinbad, were featured at E3 and Gamescom in 2011.
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Nordinbad
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Other levels, such as Fornost Inner Wards, were inherited from fellow
Level Designers. Working closely with Environment Artists like Morgan
Woolverton, I found ways to retool the existing Inner Wards to create
tactical and exciting encounters with a focus on cooperative play and
minimal impact on art. I also worked closely with Tech Designers to effectively use complex tools to create unique
gameplay scenarios without impacting Tech Design.
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Osgiliath and Lórien
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As one of the last Level Designers to roll off the project, I was also
responsible for debugging and maintaining script consistency and enemy
placement across most of the other levels.
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Destroy
All Humans: Path of the Furon is a third-person sandbox title built
using Unreal Engine 3. It features the alien invader Crypto, this time
in the 1970s, on his never ending quest to destroy all humans.
My primary focus was the Shen Long map, a large city loosely based on
Hong Kong. I developed its original layout as well as all the missions
in it. I started with paper sketches of major structures and roads and
then, using the story beats laid out by the Creative Director, Jon Knoles, wrote a series of story missions and side activities. I created and
populated a graybox in UnrealEd using several basic skyscrapers and
structures made in Maya. From this graybox, I worked with Environment Artists like Greg Holt
to develop Shen Long while scripting the missions in Unreal Kismet.
Over time, I also worked on
story and side missions for Sunnywood and Belleville. In all, I
scripted and maintained over 20 missions, from
simple collection objectives to a menacing alien walker marching down
the street, destroying everything in its path.
This walker was also the focus of the Sunnywood boss encounter. When AI
for the walker became a major development hurdle, I stepped in
and scripted the entire boss encounter using Unreal Kismet, Matinee,
and existing animations.
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Evil
Dead: Regeneration is a third person hack-and-slash game featuring the
chainsaw-wielding Ash from the cult classic B-movie franchise, The Evil
Dead. This time, he is paired with a half-dead midget sidekick named
Sam. Together, the two fight to stop the evil psychologist Dr. Reinhard
who has unleashed an army of the undead!
I developed, scripted and maintained 3 of the 10 worlds in the game,
including the Sunny Meadows Graveyard, Forsaken Mines and the Swamp.
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Forsaken Mines
and the Swamp
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The Graveyard level was the focus of the game's E3 exhibition and was
also featured as a playable demo for the Official PlayStation Magazine
DVD!
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Sunny Meadows Graveyard
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When I came onto the project, many of the levels were already
grayboxed, but still needed extensive gameplay scripting, enemy encounters and collision hulls.
In some levels, such as the Swamp, I had to devise creative flow
control solutions when streaming became a factor once the finalized art
began to come in. Other levels, like the Sunny Meadows Asylum, had to
be rebuilt with an eye toward minimum impact on art. For the Asylum, I
developed a new graybox that leveraged existing art assets while
eliminating the repetitive gameplay of the original version.
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Sunny Meadows Asylum
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As the team rolled off this project, I remained behind with another
designer, Greg Heath, and we crushed countless bugs across all the levels in
the game.
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My
most recent modding work has been for Half-Life
2.
Sebastian involves Gordon Freeman and Barney Calhoun escaping
City 17 when their plans take an unexpected detour. It features two
single player levels, fully choreographed sequences with custom voice
work and a unique final encounter that leverages existing game
mechanics in an inventive way.
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Sebastian (2011) (Requires Episode One)
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Powerstation 17 is a large single player map that has Freeman
infiltrating and destroying a Combine energy reactor. Fighting through
a zombie-infested flooded basement, the player makes their way topside
and sabotages the reactor, ultimately culminating in an exciting
showdown with a Combine Gunship!
Both mods have received very high marks on review sites such as
PlanetPhillip.
Powerstation 17 was also featured in issues and DVDs of the German
magazines PCGamer and PCAction. They said it was "Sehr Gut!"
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After a long period of making maps for Descent and FreeSpace, I moved onto first person shooters with Unreal Tournament. When I saw the ominous Mars rising over DM-Phobos, I knew I had to make maps for this awesome series.
For Unreal Tournament 2004, I developed a trio of maps including the dreary, overgrown aviary CTF-Torinosu and the industrial DM-Axlegear.
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DM-Axlegear (2004) and CTF-Torinosu (2005)
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For the original Unreal Tournament, I created DM-Ame
which takes place high above a city drenched in perpetual rain. Like
the others, this fast-paced map is fully compatible with bots and also
features a secret area that can only be reached with high jump boots.
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DM-Ame (2004)
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I
made several missions for the sci-fi space shooter FreeSpace. My most
popular is likely Nekhbet. Stranded in deep space with a malfunctioning
reactor, the GVD Nekhbet is a sitting duck. As part of Alpha Wing, you
must defend the Nekhbet from a Shivan onslaught.
Naturally, not everything goes according to plan and a simple rescue
and repair mission soon turns into an epic confrontation against a
Shivan capitol ship.
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Nekhbet (1999)
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Nekhbet was one of over 20 user missions included in the special Sci-Fi Sim of the Year Edition of FreeSpace 2!
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Back in 1997, when most of the PC gaming world was focused on Doom, I got my start making maps for the Descent series. Descent
is an FPS where you pilot a highly-maneuverable space ship through
labyrinthine mines, exterminating legions of robots gone berserk. There
is no up.
I've made well over 25 maps across this series, so these are some of the highlights.
Reactor Gamma
is a single player map for Descent 3 featuring the classic gameplay
scenario of blowing up the reactor and escaping before meltdown.
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Reactor Gamma (2003)
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Halcyon
is a popular capture-the-flag map for Descent 3 which is still played
over 10 years later on some servers. Cover and sniping points are key
as you navigate the long hallway connecting the two bases.
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Halcyon (2001)
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For Descent 2, there is Project: Mandrill,
which is a 5-level single player campaign with 2 additional secret
levels. It features entirely new, custom robots I built and tuned. This
campaign was the Grand Prize Winner in Koolbear's Descent 2 Level
Design Contest in 1998!
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Project: Mandrill (1998)
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If you really want to go back, my first released work was Chasm
in 1997. I've improved quite a bit since then. Nevertheless, the second
level - Aqua Chasm - won an Interplay level design contest.
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Chasm (1997)
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