Who hasn't heard of Wolfenstein? Working on such an iconic license was a blast and it was a pleasure to contribute to the game with a few levels.
I joined MachineGames at the beginning of the pre-production in 2011 and started by helping figuring out idtech 5 and working on the vertical slice. I then moved on to building whiteboxes for a few levels, setting up the layout, getting them ready for gameplay, mocap, story, etc... And then building the final art.
Note: I left the project a couple of months before release and I'm saddened to say I couldn't finish every level and bug fix as I probably should have.
My responsibilities usually spanned:
- Whiteboxing (after walkthrough analysis)
- Level design
- Art assets (modeling (high-poly and low-poly), texturing, optimizing, etc...)
- First pass of lighting (for gameplay)
- First tech pass (AI nav mesh, player collisions, sound
volumes, texlod, etc...)
- Bug fixing and polishing for press/corporate presentations
I was mostly involved on the following chapters:
- Chapter 3: A new World - LD and final art, Grandma's house, the checkpoint, the train scene.
- Chapter 4: Eisenwald Prison - original vertical slice. I was mostly involved on part 1 but I also did some work on part 2 LD and art.
- Chapter 5-7-9: A New Home - only worked on it for a month or so, mostly focused on gameplay beats, some art, polish and LD on the sewers (Chapt 7 and 9) and all secrets (including the Wolfenstein 3D easter egg).
- Chapter 8: Camp Belica - LD and art. The level got streamlined after I left MG.
- Chapter 11: U-Boat - Part 1: Submarine: the layout got tweaked and the level shortened after I left but a lot of the art assets are still there. Part 2: Underwater stash: layout, functionality and 1st art pass.
I was asked to do an interview for Mapcore regarding level design, Wolfenstein and the dev
process, you can find it here! |