“Dawn’s Early Light is a single-player map pack for Half-Life 2, spanning three continuous maps. My map is the first, and involves a member of the human resistance assaulting a Combine facility, only to be part of an event that releases hordes of zombies into the Combine-controlled city. We stuck with the Half-Life 2 visual style and universe for this map pack in order to fully utilize the game assets already available to us.

A major part of this project is working with other Level Designers in order to maintain consistent visuals, especially when it comes to accomplishing seamless level transitions. Even seemingly smaller details, such as the time of day that the events take place in, affect the decisions that we make while creating our maps.

The main thing that I learned from working on this map pack was how to properly populate a 3D game space with fun, scripted enemy encounters. I learned that something as simple as where an enemy attacks from can mean the difference between a player being frustrated or excited about the gameplay experience. Also, along with the Nitrate mod that I worked on, I became very proficient with the Hammer editor and learned how it differs from a subtractive editor like UnrealEd.

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About Inspired by the Hero’s Journey, The Heist puts the player in the shoes of a Resistance commando on a mission to steal a weapon prototype from the Combine. Gameplay features include sneaking past enemy guards and hurling cars at an enemy strider. Reader Recommendations Avoid It! Think Twice Maybe Play It Later Play It… Read More

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Author’s Note “The project name was assigned by the module lecturer, the prerequisites were, to use the source engine, create interesting game content, including level(s), world assets, models and to sustaining gameplay as well as game flow. I created the level based on ideas set down by the whole team, after some research i found… Read More

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