Sunday, February 22, 2009

trouble in paradise, part 1

I've made a comic to spread some interest in my current project, the villa. It follows the misadventures of two friends as they seek refuge from the combine. Enjoy!



Read More...

Saturday, February 14, 2009

vacation time is over... sort of

Since the completion of the second beta release of my map, I decided that I needed a break. Well, now I need a break from my break, but I want to work on something other than my map until I can get some feedback on it. I don't know what I'm going to work on in the meantime, but whatever it is, I will be posting pictures of it soon. God knows you can never have too many pictures!

Read More...

Wednesday, February 04, 2009

the second beta is HERE

The second beta version of the map is ready for download!

You can find it right here.


To install, simply download the .rar and unpack it wherever. I've included a readme with instructions inside.

If you have any questions or comments you can email me at klyemar@gmail.com or you can leave a comment here. 

Thanks for reading, and happy playing.

Read More...

i think i might have finished the second beta

I feel like I have spent far too much time working on this second version of the level. The work involved with adding the extra content has been fine, and for the most part it's been fun. I'm talking about the process of wrapping up loose ends that comes after the addition of said content. I must have spent hours just adjusting the lighting to make sure the shadows were cast right, or fixing two hours worth of mistakes with three hours of work... and I am still loving this. That's something else.


Here's the latest batch of updates for your hungry, hungry eyeballs.

picture with full hdr lighting and proper light mapping



i've added (or subtracted) the bricks from this new bathroom

the bathroom from above through a hole in the floor


you can enter here through the basement cave


the cave takes you into a small room above one of the hallways

the ladder takes you up to the bathroom




Read More...

Friday, January 30, 2009

video update

I've finally made a video demo of the villa. I'm going to try to make a higher quality video later when I have a chance to play test the newest edition. Enjoy!


Read More...

what i do when i'm not at my computer



I thought I would post some pics of what else I've been working on. In my spare time I like to paint plastic figures for one of my games that's sitting in my closet. I've been working on them with the ever-so-lovely RachelKiah, and we've already finished four of them in just a couple of weeks.






Read More...

Thursday, January 29, 2009

cave pictures

The results of an all-night, all-day, all-night session. I need to get faster at this...


The scenic villa...

A trap door...

No point in wasting time, let's bash it apart!


Probably should've looked before leaping...




A whole new area to explore...






I added the cliffs because I was bored...



I can't say why, but I just love this look...

Read More...

only one more update to go

I have some new pics of the progress I've made. I made one big change and one small change. I'm trying to fix the scenery around my map, so I added surrounding cliffs to make the villa really feel nestled in the mountainside. I added some hills behind the town in the distance to make it look less flat (I'm from western Washington, so I'm used to seeing hills on every side of me).

The change I'm most excited about is the addition of a larger room with a lake in the basement caves. I'm hoping that with the addition of a few more tunnels, this will be a centralized hub below the map. The sweeten the deal, I threw an RPG in the lake. The reason that I added it here was to give the player a feeling of danger, since no place is more vulnerable than the water, especially deeper water. I threw a trap door in the living room to allow the player to jump from the upper level to the lower level very quickly.

I just finished playing with my roommate, and I'm already noticing areas where I wish a passageway existed. I only need to add a couple passages to the basement and I think I will finally be able to upload the second beta version of the map.

Read More...

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

lofty goals

There was a little interest in a downloadable version of my second beta so my hope for my two days off will be to have a fully playable and somewhat decent looking version up and running; I'm hoping it'll be ready by Thursday night.

*fingers crossed*

Read More...

Monday, January 26, 2009

now the sky is purple and the lighting is orange... what will i think of next?

I've really worked on the ambient lighting on the level for the last few days and I'm playing around to see what time of day I like the look of most. So far, all of my pictures have been noontime pictures, with really bright lighting and an unappealing sky texture. I'm playing around now to see how I like other combinations of sky and lighting. The thing that is so fun about using the Hammer editor is that you can pick individual sky textures (say, one with orange and blue clouds at sunset or one with a bright blue sky) and you can set the lighting's color, angle, and brightness independently for some pretty interesting results. My latest experiment follows:









Read More...