My last seven months or so have been spent developing content for Orion, an ambitious total conversion for HL2's Orange Box Engine. The mod itself is a fast-paced multiplayer game set on the fictional world of Orion, which is a fertile world that is reminiscent of an infant-earth. The multiple maps in the soon-to-be-released 1.2 patch will feature a number of locations across the planet; all of them a scene of the great conflict between the humans looking to Orion as a chance to escape their used-up, wasted planet earth, and the alien Altair who are similarly trying to escape a ruined home world.
The map I spent my time working on is called Catchment, and it takes place inside a water purification plant for one of the larger colonies on Orion. The Altair know that if they can disrupt or destroy this facility, they can effectively make refugees of dozens of thousands of humans and offset the human military's strategy in a major way.
The team spawns and flags are located at 3 and 9 o clock, and 12 and 6 o clock respectively. Each team has two routes out of their spawn: one main exit and one shortcut to their own flag which can be shut down via a clever keypad hack. Each flag room is accessible through two side entrances, or a shorter entrance that is only available to the assault class. A few pipes are placed higher up to let the assault class get a height advantage. There are choke points for support class defenders and more defensible positions for snipers to do their thing.
I hope you guys like it!
Saturday, February 20, 2010
a look at catchment
Thursday, January 14, 2010
tooling around with the unreal development kit
For fun I thought I'd try my hand at the Unreal Development Kit, a FAR, far superior editor to the Source SDK (sorry Valve, but it's true). The UDK comes loaded with a few textures and static meshes (models essentially) and a light version of Unreal Tournament 3 to test your creations with.
This was just a couple of days of effort last week and I have to say that I was blown away by what the editor was capable of doing:
Saturday, December 26, 2009
orion mod podcast 17 interview
Maybe three or four days ago, Podcast17 interviewed some of the members of the Orion mod team to discuss our feelings about the game postpartum. Praz (lead designer), Ezzy (lead level designer), and I (a guy they found passed out in the gutter) talked about upcoming changes to the mod with our Monday patch, various challenges with level design and design of the project as a whole, and our feelings about how things have been and where they might go.
The interview itself is roughly 45 minutes long, so listen in if you have either a lot of time or a lot of love for our project:
Sunday, December 13, 2009
orion beta 1 is going live in less than 7 hours
The project that I've spent the last six months mapping for is releasing in just 1/3 of a day from now and I have a feeling it's going to be a pretty good show. Progress has been steady and I have to say that I'm proud to be part of a team that's able to get so much done in such a short period of time.
I'll be posting more on the game and my map after it's released tomorrow. In the meantime, here is some media from moddb:
If you're interested, you can visit our website www.orion-project.net.
Sunday, November 01, 2009
happy l4d halloween
This is by far the best duo costume I've seen yet. I say yet because if someone were to post a good boomer costume they would be the winner hands down.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
orion mod is drawing attention
I didn't want to say too much initially about the mod team I had joined, mostly because I didn't know right off the bat what kind of contribution I would be making and I didn't want to overstep my bounds as a new member. Now that I am making steady progress on my map and have been a part of the team for some months now I am confident and happy to say that I am a level designer for Orion Mod, which is a pretty slick sci-fi multiplayer mod if I do say so myself.
This mod looks like it's getting lots of really positive attention from the community and I am really looking forward to its impending release.
Friday, September 11, 2009
of cosplay and swine flu
Four days now since PAX and I'm happy to say that I'm swine flu free. I wasn't exactly thrilled to hear that nearly 100 people got the disease while I was there, seeing as how I caught a cold the day I got back. I think my associates managed one synchronized eye-roll when I became that "I think I might have swine flu" guy for a day. I at least like to think I was acting cool and collected about it.
So, I mentioned the games that I played this last weekend but a nerd-con isn't anything without the army of costumed minions playing out their various characters. I didn't get as many pictures as I had hoped since my camera decided that it was actually a piece of crap. These are the pictures I happened to take while I was at PAX this year:
Tuesday, September 08, 2009
pax 09 aftermath
Wow. This was without a doubt the greatest gaming venture I have ever participated in.
There's too much for me to talk about in one post without rambling, so I thought I would write about the experience in a few short bursts. This is easier for me since I have to get to work in an hour anyway.
I wanted to write about the games I played through first. I'll start with the bigger ones first:
Starcraft 2... Beautiful looking game! If Blizzard is good at one thing I'd say it's their ability to design a varied and fun RTS experience. I'm actually not as excited for this game because from what I saw and played, it was not really different from Starcraft in any significant way. That doesn't change the fact that it is a fun game that I will be buying the second it comes out.
Diablo 3... Again, same as with Starcraft. The one real change was in graphics (which I might add do not look like WoW graphics at all, if anyone was concerned about that). The graphics were PRETTY, and the gameplay was smooth and solid. I will grab this one when it comes out just because I know what a solid experience I will get from it.
Scribblenauts... Buy this game! It's a puzzle platformer for the DS where you must generate objects to overcome certain obstacles throughout the level. There are more than 10,000 objects available for the player to create, and almost all of them act intuitively with their surroundings. Just to explain how awesome this game is, I had a bear fighting a minotaur in shark infested waters. Yea.
Brink... The best looking shooter there in my opinion. It wasn't playable but we had a chance to watch a live demo and it was looking sharp! It gave you the option of playing one of two sides through the game, giving you two distinct views of the story. The gunplay was spot-on, considering it was made by the Enimy Territory team. They had implimented a novel feature that allows you to mitigate obstacles in your path in real time based on where you are looking as you are running. Say you want to jump over an obstacle, you just run at it while looking above it. I have high hopes.
Splinter Cell 2... Seeing as it's the fifth game in the series, you'd expect maybe a little stagnation. Not so. This game looks more intense than any other in the series and it seems that all of my complaints with the previous games have been taken care of. Again, this was only a viewable demo.
Avatar... I didn't have high hopes for it just because it is a movie game, and I'm sad to say it lived up to those expectations.
Borderlands... I didn't get a smooth play-through mostly because I had to jump in to a co-op game without getting a chance to learn the controls or the play mechanics. Once that was taken care of I got a pretty decent play through. I thought it was fun, but I'm hoping that it sweeps me off of my feet when I get a chance to sit down and play it in my own house.
God there are so many more games to talk about, not to mention the event itself. Check back soon for my next update!
Thursday, September 03, 2009
heading to seattle tonight... pax tomorrow!
As I type this I am gathering up every last thing I'll need for PAX tomorrow and the two days after. This is harder work than I realized, what with all the hyping of this event that the internet and my brain are doing to me right now. At first I thought, "Okay, I've got clothes and a toothbrush. I'm set!"
Oh yea and I need my Magic cards too.
And my DS...
And the Gameboy Color just for the hell of it.
And food! The most important part. After all, I've got money for merch or food and frankly the merch is more important to me right now. So I threw all the food I could find into a bag. I think I have more Redbull than any one item. Sacrifices must be made since the damned thing is going from 10am til 3am the first two days. No time to worry about sleep now!
To top things off I decided to see if I could find any badass articles of clothing, since I'm going to be around thousands of my gaming brothers and sisters. First thing I found:
WIN!
I'll try to update throughout the weekend with pictures made of pure joy!
Sunday, August 30, 2009
pax 2009 anticipations
This year I'm heading to PAX. If you're unfamiliar, PAX is a weekend long gaming expo that takes place in Seattle every year. They cover consoles, PCs, board games, card games, the list goes on. It's my first year driving down to Seattle to participate and I'm utterly blown away by how much is going to be going on down there. A few snippets from the various panels they'll be showcasing (at least the ones I'm going to try to hit up):
Hey Ash, Whatcha Filmin: How to make a moderately successful viral video series that confuses the hell out of people.
Game Design 101
Working with Fans to Create Better Video Games
How can we make online gaming communities suck less?
LIVE ON-STAGE DEMO – Assassins Creed®II and Splinter Cell Conviction
Penny Arcade Makes a Strip!
Star Wars: The Old Republic live demonstration
...the list goes on. And on. I mean, really, they are packing as much gaming into one convention center as I think physically possible. More than anything I want to go see those game demos. I've never had a chance to actually see something like that in person. The event map promises a slew of A-list game companies setting up shop in the convention center as well. I am completely amiss as to how I'm going to even come close to seeing and doing everything I want to there. I mean you might as well take a six year old and put them in a candy store the size of Walmart with a ten minute time limit.
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