Level Design Legacy

I first became interested in designing levels for video games when I was about 14 years old with the release of Half-Life and the bundled ‘Worldcraft’ level editor. Not long after, Quake III Arena was released and I began spending quite a lot of time mapping. During this time, I made several Quake III Arena maps and a few Half-Life maps of varying quality. Later, I turned my focus more towards the GoldSrc engine with Counter-Strike 1.6. I produced several maps, including a couple of Bomb/Defuse maps and a number of aim maps. I also briefly tried my hand at mapping for Doom 3.

None of my early maps were ever widely distributed. My Quake III Arena and Half-Life maps were played at various small house LAN parties and my Counter-Strike 1.6 maps saw some usage at a large, monthly LAN party called ‘Organised Chaos’.

Here is a small selection of screenshots from a few of these old maps.

Quake III Arena

  • Thin Air  (2001, revisited in December 2002)
  • Dirty Mouse Ball  (2001, revisited in December 2002)
  • Pewter Playground  (2001)
  • Arena of Antagonism  (February 2003)

Half-Life

  • Crete  (October 2002)
  • An unfinished map  (July 2002)

Counter-Strike 1.6

  • Scout Camp  (April 2004)
  • Dahshur City: Enhanced Edition  (May 2004)  —  A mapping practice project remaking LAzor’s popular map de_dahsur3, which I later remade again in CS: Source.
  • Low Gravity Knife War  (July 2004)  —  I wish I could say that the Linkin Park poster in the office shed was placed there ironically.
  • Wild Dust  (January 2005)  —  My Counter-Strike: Source remake of this map is called Dustforce.
  • Dusty Street  (January 2005)

Doom 3

Martian Wonder  (October 2004)  —  Based on a map created by one of my college friends.

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