Development Time: 12 weeks (since redesign)
Engine: Unreal 3 (Gears of War)
Penumbra is my Gears of War thesis project map. It's definitely the most ambitious and polished level I've developed, and I'm extremely pleased with the results. In this map, I explore techniques to convey mood to the player through environmental design (especially lighting). Working with Gears taught me a lot about Unreal 3's new features--particularly Kismet, Matinee, and the material editor.
Click on the image to view the gallery and videos of Penumbra in action.
(Updated 5-27-09)
Development Time: 5 weeks
Engine: Half-Life 2
In this map, the player takes control of Gordon Freeman as he flees from impending Combine forces. The chase takes Gordon into a dank section of City-17’s canals. In this level, I focused on creating high-quality visuals that breathed life into these frigid waterways. I initially had only 3 weeks to contruct this map, which made its development especially challenging.
Click on the image to view the gallery.
(Updated 3-3-09)
Development Time: 8 weeks
Engine: Doom 3
In Gothos Tower, I wanted to try creating a Doom 3 level using a sci-fi gothic architectural theme. Of course, as I began using Radiant it became clear why all of Doom 3’s rooms are so blocky. Creating Gothos Tower's arched windows, doorways, and ceilings required some meticulous use of BSP and patches.
Click on the image to view the gallery.
Being a huge fan of the Arkham Horror board game, it’s only natural that I would create several custom investigators of my own. Many of these new characters have risky abilities with a high payoff, giving players more interesting decisions to make throughout the game.
These investigators were made using the Strange Eons program. The portraits are random pictures I found online and then touched-up in Photoshop.
Click on the game box to view the gallery, or click here to download them all.
(Added 3-30-09)
I'm a longtime roleplayer and DM, and when I start new D&D campaigns I like to write up house rules to better push the game's themes. For my latest game, I wanted to make combat a little grittier than the cinematic style of vanilla 4th edition D&D. I did this by creating an alternate critical hit and long-term injury system, which heigtens the danger of combat without slowing its pace.
Click here to download the Critical Hits and Injuries document, or click on the giant d20 to see a few slides explaining it.
(Added 3-30-09)
In addition to my level design work at The Guildhall, I've also done a substantial amount of gaming-related writing.
I've written two d20 System e-books for Louis Porter Jr. Designs.
- Power of the Mind (.pdf link) introduces 40 new feats for psionic characters. I only had about a week to write it, so designing that much content in a short amount of time was quite a challenge. However, I'm extremely proud of the results--the book even earned a 4-star review at RPG now.
- Classes of NeoExodus: The Imperial Apothecary is a prestige class for the NeoExodus campaign setting. While the class's description makes reference to that campaign world, the Imperial Apothecary is designed to fit in nearly any D&D setting. Because this class fit the role of a nonmagical healer, it required some ingenuity to design. Like Power of the Mind, I wrote this in about one week.
I've also written a number of D&D product reviews for d20 Magazine Rack. A sampling of my reviews include . . .
- The Book of Unusual Feats
- The Elements of Magic: Revised Edition
- The Iconic Beastiary: Classics of Fantasy
- Classes of Legend: The Fiendblade
- Curse of the Moon
I designed an original class, The Dungeoneer, which I posted on the site.
In my spare time, I enjoy designing new classes and game systems for my homebrew D&D games. A few years ago I ran a gritty, Call of Cthulhu-inspired investigative game. Becaues the heroic, high-powered characters of standard D&D wouldn't fit this game, I redesigned to fulfill my campaign's needs. Additionally, I made a bunch of new feats because, hey, you can never have enough feats. Here's the class collection . . .