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Doug Kavendek - Portfolio

Hl

Half-Life Maps
Title Half-Life maps
More Info Old Half-Life Deatmatch site
01.jpg
A cliff area and pipe in one of my completed maps

I never got into modding the Half-Life engine, but I did spend a lot of time creating maps for it. My initial focus was on multiplayer, and I made quite a few nonsensical deathmatch maps. I made a few conventional maps, and even tried creating Half-Life versions of things I had made for earlier games, such as Duke Nukem 3D or Doom.

However, I had the most fun creating strange, new elements in a map, taking advantage of the control offered by the Half-Life engine. This could sometimes yield really interesting results, as in one map where I created a virtual powerup that enabled players to have reduced gravity, and the map focused around keeping others from attaining it. Of course, sometimes my ideas failed fairly spectacularly, as in my entirely rotating map, which was amusing, but not terribly fun.

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A gravity powerup gives players an edge in this vertically-based map

I also tried to create several Counterstrike maps, but never was fully satisfied with the results - the flow required in such maps can be difficult to get right. I even did some work on a singleplayer episode, but it was around that time that I became much more enamored with other aspects of game design, namely programming, and I have not done much else in it since.

Luckily, I think that through working with such mapping concepts, I got a small glimpse into how the game actually worked, which may have been at least partially responsible for my change of interests. After seeing how things fit together, it made the whole concept seem a lot more intriguing.

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One end of a rail line

As usual, I have many plans for getting back into mapping, with Half-Life 2 and other newer games. I have created several test concept maps, but I haven't been able to devote enough time to it to have anything worthwhile to show.


03.jpg
A flooded room
04.jpg
Taking place inside a rotating cylinder, this map just didn't quite work