Becoming a Level Designer and Env. Artist Part 1

by World of Level Design

How do you become an environment artist and level designer? Where do you start? What do you learn first? Should you purchase a 3d package? What about Photoshop? Drawing? Painting?

There are a lot of decisions to make and too many choices. As a matter of fact, there are so many choices that we don't make any decision at all.

It is paralysis by analysis.

Before I begin, there is a difference between an environment artist and level designer.

Environment artist is someone who builds the assets that go into the environment. They model, often texture and sometimes light their environments.

Level designers are responsible for taking the assets that environment artist have created and assemble them into an environment that we can all play in. They design gameplay elements, create scripted events and test gameplay.

Depending which studio you work for or what mod team you are apart of, you may do one or both of the title descriptions. Read more ...

Day of Defeat: Source Update Released

Updates to Day of Defeat: Source have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The specific changes include:

Day of Defeat: Source

• Minor update to address several exploits that allowed users to fire guns without any recoil

• http://store.steampowered.com/news/2464/

Interview with Level Designer Chris Kay

by World of Level Design

Chris Kay is a professional level designer who comes from a strong background in multiplayer first person shooters.
Chris started his level design journey with Unreal on his dad's PC, but the core of his experience came from Counter-Strike. After getting completely addicted to the game Chris started his first level using Worldcraft.
Following the success few years later Half-life 2 was released and Chris joined modification teams, Insurgency.
Insurgency is a modern infantry combat game set around the period of the Iraqi Liberation appealed to him and after 3 years of development it released a public beta which remains one of the top modifications for Half-Life 2, it won Modification of the year award over at the popular web site Moddb and has had extensive media coverage. Magazines, television shows, radio interviews and features at IGN, Gamespot and AMD Game. Insurgency continues to expand with patches and updates planned well into the future.
Chris Kay is currently employed by Crytek as a level designer. Read more ...

Tutorial - Mörser Mortar

by Kenny2005 @MapScene.de

Wie man einen Mörser für Day of Defeat Source macht. Read more ...

TF2 and Day of Defeat: Source Update Released

Updates to Team Fortress 2 and Day of Defeat: Source have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The specific changes include:

Team Fortress 2 and Day of Defeat: Source

• Fixed screenshots being black when Multicore Rendering is enabled.
• Fixed sprays not showing up on some surfaces.
• Fixed decal crash during changelevel.
• Fixed crash caused by setting the decal limit too high on some machines.
• Fixed crash caused by decals in the world render loop.
• Fixed crash caused by convars changing while rendering is queued.

• http://store.steampowered.com/news/2369/

Interview with Design Visualization - Shane Petterson

by World of Level Design

Shane Peterson is a 3D artist who up until recently was working for PB's Design Visualization Technical Resource Center (formerly Company39) in Seattle, Washington. He has over 5 years professional experience as a 3D artist and design visualization.

I had a chance to contact and interview Shane. We talked about what he is working on, what inspires him as an artist and some fantastic advice on art, design visualization, lighting and modeling.
Read more ...

Orange Box Engine Update Released

Updates to the Orange Box Engine have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The specific changes include:

Orange Box Engine

• Updated the engine to report SteamIDs using the Steam_0 format instead of Steam_1
• Fixed problems in Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Portal, and Source mods running the current Orange Box engine
• Reverted the change that capped rate at 30000

• http://store.steampowered.com/news/2252/

TF2 and Day of Defeat: Source Update Released

Updates to Team Fortress 2 and Day of Defeat: Source have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The specific changes include:

Team Fortress 2 and Day of Defeat: Source

• Protected several more commands from client exploitation

• http://store.steampowered.com/news/2246/

TF2 and Day of Defeat: Source Update Released

Updates to Team Fortress 2 and Day of Defeat: Source have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The specific changes include:

Team Fortress 2 and Day of Defeat: Source

• Fixed clients using reloadresponsesystems, sv_soundemitter_flush, sv_soundemitter_filecheck, sv_findsoundname, and sv_soundscape_printdebuginfo to lag/crash servers

Source Engine

• Fixed client "timeout on mapchange" problem
• Fixed setinfo exploit
• Marked the r_aspectratio ConVar as a cheat

Server Browser

• Renamed "Quick List" to "Map List"
• Removed minimum ping filter from Map List

• http://store.steampowered.com/news/2203/

Day of Defeat: Source Update Released

Updates to Day of Defeat: Source have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The specific changes include:

Day of Defeat: Source

• Fixed Linux servers not allowing clients to connect

• http://store.steampowered.com/news/2150/

TF2 and Day of Defeat: Source Update Released

Updates to Team Fortress 2 and Day of Defeat: Source have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The specific changes include:

Additions

• Added a Quick List view to the serverbrowser

• http://store.steampowered.com/news/2148/

Happy New Year 2009

Merry Christmas 2008