So I’m going to admit it straight out. The whole reason I’ve started this site was so I could have somewhere to host my portfolio while I apply to internships for the summer. Specifically, the Blizzard internship.
However, then something interesting happened. I was looking at the requirements for interns and realized I needed to learn a lot. A whole lot. So I thought to myself, “Why not post it online as you learn?” Then I could have a record of my progress and hopefully help out some other people along the way.
With that in mind, here’s the first post (detailing events from about two weeks ago), about building my first custom level in a 3D Game Engine (Source, the engine that powers the Half-Life 2 series of games):
So, I warmed up by completing the Your First Map tutorial on the Valve Developer wiki. I’d completed it a time or two before, but it’s been awhile and I needed to get a refresher course. After that, I started about setting up the apartment which was to make up the opening area of the game. It needed to have two bedrooms, one for the protagonist of the level (the player), and one for his roommate. Jury’s still out on whether the roommate’s alive or dead at the start, mostly because I need to figure out how to load AI scripts into characters in Hammer. And how to allow the player to be able to run. . . Anyway! Here are some screenshots of the creation process:
Building the apartment in Hammer:
The first room, as its walls were being added. You can see the open space on the right that's going to be the living room later on.
The first room and the open space that will make up the living room and the second bedroom.
Placing doors in Hammer is a tricky business. There are no pre-built door jams, so you have to build the walls *around* the door. Makes aligning textures a pain.
Both the bedrooms completed, including doors out into the living room.
I guess they should have ceilings. Everyone likes carpeted ceilings, right?
The player start model. Currently facing a wall, but that got fixed later.
Sam's model. Currently no AI, and stuck in a rather uncomfortable pose in his room. He currently does not respond to the player, or even get out of that pose.
And here's Sam's terrifying visage. May it haunt your dreams. 🙂
Hope to post more progress soon! And thanks for reading.