I love level design as a creative outlet. Having a blank canvas to come up with a full world that feels like it is living and breathing, adding all the little details and then being able to explore it is amazing. The source engine has been my go-to for years now and I’ve worked on and improved my skills during that time.

I started working with the Source Engine in 2007 after finding the available maps didn’t have the features I and some friends needed, as we were into creating automated vehicles at the time. I created a map based around this theme of automation, allowing for cars and trains to be built that could navigate the map with no human intervention. It contained a rail network with numbered stations that could be programmatically read into the vehicle to identify the location, and buttons on the floor allowed them to change rail direction. It also contained high walled test tracks for automated cars so we could build and test them easily. The map had very little in the way of visual appeal, as it was created entirely for function over form, and was initially only meant for our small friend group.

Eventually I decided to release it to the community, as I thought someone else may also find it interesting. The map quickly became popular for its versatility and features, so work was started on an improved version integrating suggestions from the community.

Rebuilding the map 3 times improved my skills enough to make a relatively visually pleasing environment, while still retaining the same features the original version had.

To further improve my skills I created some maps of various scopes and sizes to see what I could do with different concepts, environments and atmospheres. I could try out different effects, textures and lighting to change the feel of a level and experiment with new ideas that hadn’t been attempted in the Source engine.

After the release of the Source 2 engine I attempted another practise map in the Half-Life: Alyx universe, using real examples of environments which closely matched what I wanted to build. The result was a much more highly detailed and realistic level than I have previously produced.