Level Design Portfolio and Tutorials

Yay! After many weeks of painfull HTML converting, my Mod Tool curriculum is finally available and published to the format of this site. Check it out here.

The next challenge will be to update the content, as it was originally written a number of years ago, and definitely could use some refining.

Also, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that parts of the curriculum are taken directly from the publicly available Noesis tutorials. These guys have the real content, be sure to check them out too.

Just a quick update:

I hammered out 2 more pages of the MOD Tool Curriculum (Modules 12-13). The “Creating a Dynamite Prop” portion of the curriculum is nearly finished, with only touching up the final prop details remaining.

See the Entire Curriculum here.

Woo!

So far I have converted more than 50% of my Softimage MOD Tool Curriculum to the format of this site. This is a 5 Day course that was originally designed to be instructor-led, in a classroom environment. That being said, I will also be adjusting the presentation (as I go) to be meaningful outside of a classroom (i.e. online tutorial). More to come…

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. 

Here it is:  My MOD (Project Phi) has been on hold for nearly a year.  We were simply sinking beneath the weight of an endless task list without enough bodies to finish anything significant.  And after 2 years of development this was an especially hard lesson to learn, but invaluable nonetheless.

Biting off more than you can chew is arguably the #1 reason most MOD teams do fail.  As a start-up group of developers, its an easy circumstance to find yourself in.  Why think small, right?  I’ll tell you why:  You Will Fail.  Like so many others before me have advised, please take these lessons to heart (you have been warned):

• Keep it simple, stupid.
• Focus on making your game fun, first.
• Refine your early game-play key elements, and often at that.
• Get the bulk of your programming finished ASAP.
• Gradually increase custom content as you move through beta tests, but remember, always start with stock content and focus your energy on what makes your game fun (and hopefully unique).
• Aesthetics and polish should always be at the end of your list. Creating a unique game should never rest on the visuals your world offers.  What good is a nice looking game that is a bore to play?
• Accept as much feedback, both internally and externally, as possible.  While most ideas might not be used, without this overflow of creativity, you will likely end up with something bland and tasteless.

So, with all of that said, I am taking in my own lessons and will be methodically re-sculpting and re-scaling the Project Phi MOD into something that CAN be completed.  Instead of an Intricate Single Player Episodic Saga, we will create a Multi-Player Demo of one map (for starters).  This will drastically cut down the asset list, and also draw a larger interest from the online gaming community.  Secondly, and on the same note, we will be moving from the Source engine to Unreal Engine 3.  This should provide a clean slate to rebuild from, bump up the tech, and entice more gamers and developers alike into checking out something made on an engine that isn’t over 5 years old (at its core).

That is the plan.  I plan on documenting my progress using the Unreal 3 platform, and its differences to the Source engine.  Wish me luck!