EVIL (Independent Level
Design for Half Life)
PC
The “Evil” levels (Eviltown and
EvilCathedral) represent my earliest attempt at 3D professional level design
for the FPS genre. I created these levels
in response to a job interview I had with Irrational Games in the Summer of
1999, just before they shipped System Shock 2.
They suggested that I should teach myself some level design tools to
build some levels, then maybe they’d consider giving me a job. I spent that summer in an muggy,
non-air-conditioned apartment, burning the midnight oil, learning the
Worldcraft/Hammer tools for Half-Life. My goal was to come up with a strong
enough gameplay example that would not only demonstrate my game and level
design ability, but more importantly, my persistence. Ultimately, it paid off as I received a
contract to work as a level builder for Irrational by October 1999.
The first level, EvilTown, is more of a
presentational space than anything else has very little gameplay. EvilCathedral is larger in scope than
I’ve included the source map and bsp
files for the two levels, called “Etownopt” and “ECathOpt2” in the zipfile at
the link below. If you are interested
you can download them and open them up in Hammer/Worldcraft or run them in
Half-Life (I’ve included some instructions in a readme).