Level Design Portfolio and Tutorials

As eluded to in previous posts, continued work on the Project Phi mod has been indefinitely canceled.  Towards the end of 2009 we began to hit a wall, and production came to a stand still.  After an extended break, a brief effort was recently made to push the mod to a new engine, recruit new developers, and have a second go at it.  Unfortunately this was a little half cocked and momentum to do so never really occurred.  So after much deliberation it has been decided to indefinitely cancel further development on the mod.  Neither myself (the project lead), nor a number of our key developers has enough time these days to see this through.

That being said, the work that was completed should not be wasted and lost to time.  I still feel that strongly about what we were doing.  Therefor the MOD is going to made available, in it’s current alpha development stage, for other interested persons or teams to use in their own projects.  All files will be available in both their raw and half life 2 compiled formats.  We would love to see another team take over the Project Phi development entirely, however we would be as equally pleased to see individual Project Phi content used elsewhere.  We nearly created a whole world (on paper at least), with concept art, character and props models, soundtracks, environments, and much more.  Again, the ultimate goal is to see these works of art used one way or another, even if it is not in the Project Phi world.  Details to follow…

And on a related note, I’m not sure how much new content will be coming to this website, at least any time soon.  It started as – and will likely end as – a Return to Castle Wolfenstein mappers resource.  There is still work to be done in the unfinished tutorials section, and I will likely return to RtCW mapping as a hobby anyways.  So who knows, maybe there will remain a need for this site (if only for my own reference).  I guess only time will tell. 

Not that I have a legion of followers or anything, but in case the casual browser of my site is curious, I am changing my online handle from shLep to stormy (hence, it’s now stormy’s haus of mapping).

So to reiterate, maps, tutorials, etc that are made by shLep now belong to stormy.

In other news, I haven’t had much time to devote to learning UDK, but it is still weighs heavily on my mind – just need more time to get to it. That and continue to fill in my tutorials section with sample maps and further readings.

Hopefully more to come soon!

The Unreal Development Kit is a vastly updated version of the UT3 Editor.  Initially I had concerns that it didn’t come with enough stock content to lend itself to modding or ambitious single map releases.  But it does, and this is a beautiful suite of tools.  And yes, this is old news for those who have been keeping up with Unreal for years.

There is a great assortment of Video Tutorials by 3D Buzz here.  This is where I am starting at least, and I’m already starting to visualize my first UDK map. 

It’s a very small step, but its progress. Mapping in Unreal is dramatically different than mapping with the source or id tech engines. I have a long road ahead of me.

As eluded to in previous posts, I have setup a Gaming server for Return to Castle Wolfenstein!  The server is currently featuring over 30 custom maps created by numerous wolf mappers, including yours truly.  Rather than requiring 30+ individual map downloads, just to play on it, I have condensed everything in to one map pack (236mb).  In other words, you MUST INSTALL THE MAPPACK to play on this server.

Also, to ensure these maps are played as they were intended to be played, this custom maps server is setup to only run the maps on High Quality user graphics settings.  This is achieved through following the lead of many clan/league models:  via punkbuster, force users to set an array of commands (cvars) to prevent common map exploitations, and/or ensure that the map is at least displayed as it was intended.  To simplify this, a configuration file has also been included in this mappack.  Simply execute the file upon connecting to this server.  And voilà, you’re good to go.

Haus of Mapping Custom Maps RTCW Server

1. Download the Mappack here.
2. Extract the .zip file into your RTCW\Main directory.
3. Download the Shrubmod Soundpack Here, and extract into your RTCW\Main directory.
4. Launch Return to Castle Wolfenstein
5. Bring down console (“~” key), and type “/exec hom.cfg“
6. After your game screen restarts, type “/connect 208.43.15.207“