MY FIRST STEP ON BECOMING A LEVEL DESIGNER
Pirates Vikings and Knights II
I have been creating CS:GO maps for about 2 years before I decided to apply and join a mod team in 2018 for the position of being a Level Designer. I have applied on joining the Pirates Vikings and Knights II (PVKII) development team and they assigned me to revamp their classic map Desertruin. PVKII is an FPS multiplayer source mod where three teams fight against each other.
The game support different game modes and Desertruin was built for the game mode Trinket War. It is a team-deathmatch game mode where each team has to protect their team member holding the Trinket. When a team kills the enemy holding the Trinket, their tickets will lower with -1 and when a team reaches 0 tickets they will win the game. The player holding the Trinket will generate +health for him and his teammates close by. So it is not just simply killing each other, but also having an objective on whom to kill and whom to protect.
The map is originally created by yeehaw and after that Latteh did a start on revamping the map. It never got finished so I decided to rework the entire map based on the original layout. I have created a more clean look that provides better optimization, better visibility for smoother gameplay and overall easier navigation. I had the chance to work together with Phonebooth who made most of the textures, model skins, and some models. It was great to work with other developers and test the map together and refine it.
Besides Desertruin I have supported my teammate Hurtcules on his map Glacier by setting the mood with new light settings, extra detailing and ambient sounds and I attended playtests and meetings with the dev team.
EVOLUTION OF DESERTRUIN
I didn't have a lot of freedom on the gameplay part but really enjoyed thinking about how I could improve the existing layout in sense of visibility, path flow, optimization, chokepoints, and sightlines. I feel like all these things came pretty natural to me and I haven't taken a long time on finishing this map. It was very nice to collaborate in a team, to have a hard-working partner to work with and to use existing assets/ideas and make a whole new creation out of it. After creating this map I feel I am not only confident in doing Level Design, but also being worthy of working on the environment art of a map and polish it into something beautiful.