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!
Sunday, February 22, 2009
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!
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.
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.

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!
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.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
cave pictures
The results of an all-night, all-day, all-night session. I need to get faster at this...

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.
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*
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:






























