Short Autobiography

A Short Autobiography

I started learning how to create custom content for the Quake game engine using the then editor, Worldcraft however due to being young, the maps created were simple in scope and overly ambitious for the limited skills I had. However I was enthusiastic and kept dabbling with the tool until Valve Softwares Half-Life was released.

As the game was based on the Quake engines and used an updated version of Worldcraft (renamed Hammer before the release of Half-Life 2), I spent more time in learning how to create maps. Now however as I was older, I was able to develop my skills in a sensible way and quickly learnt how to build maps for the multiplayer game type. Eventually I created a number of levels, that have since been lost to the sands of time, however with my growing passion I moved onto making custom maps for Team Fortress Classic (TFC).

During my time playing the game TFC, I became a regular player in the UK Team Fortress Classic League (UKTFCL) as part of a gaming clan. My enthusiasm for the game and the clan lead me to create training maps and eventually full Capture the Flag maps. This experience helped me learn and understand how to design a level through various iterations on paper before going to work with the editor and then to create levels in logical process.

At the time I started to create levels by first drawing out the blueprints on paper, amending them where I felt the gameplay needed to be improved, to aid flow through any given environment, a then moving to work within Valve Hammer. Once working within the editor I then learnt to create the whitebox before moving onto adding detail once the gameplay and texture set was decided.

Sadly due to a loss of a backup CD, I have only a number of maps remaining from my time mapping with the Hammer editorm however two are fully fledged CTF maps for TFC.

The last few maps I created for the Half-Life engine are very special to me. I gained my first professional contract, where I recieved payment for my skills, to create two maps at the request of a paying client. Although the maps are simple, they help show my early skills with the editor and the understanding of how to place interactive entities in logical positions.

The final map I created was a race course for the mod HLRally, although the mod is now defunct, I enjoyed creating the map simply due to the different challenges a race course provided compared to a standard FPS deathmatch arena.

By this time, Half-Life 2 was on the horizon but after using the tools before the official game release, I felt that they did not progress much further onwards from the past game. I decided to learn how to create maps for the newly released Doom 3 due to the new challenge of learning both a new editor, d3edit (an inbuilt version of GTKRadiant) and how to work with the new per-pixel lighting system.

After getting to grips with the basic D3Edit functions, I looked for a mod to work on and after looking at the countless “ductape” style mods I found a new startup called “Classic Doom 3″, founded in September 2005. Initially I was to recreate the map E1M4 from the original game within the Doom 3 engine. Everyone used the project as a way of learning how to create custom content, myself included, which gave the initial mod team a huge buzz for working on a new mod on a brand new game engine. Over time, the project founder, Kazahana, decided that he did not have enough time or motivation to continue working on Classic Doom 3, at which time I was nominated by the then team members to take over the role of project lead.

During my time as project lead I managed the development of Classic Doom 3 from a small, 3 level map pack into its current format which includes all 9 levels from the shareware release of Doom, a fully re-recorded soundtrack by Sonic Clang, custom coding to make Doom 3 function closer to the original, a brand new menu and a large number of other alterations.

Eventually I recreated E1M4, E1M8 and E1M9, along with promoting the mod to various magazines and news websites, hiring of staff, the day-to-day maintainence of the project webpage and the appointment of tasks and deadlines to team members.

Off the back of this mod and my other past experiences, I was hired to work for Climax UK, as a games designer, on an unreleased Playstation Portable Game. While there I learnt a whole host of new skills, development methods and gained a years experience working on a complex first person RPG.