D3ads Portfolio

[D3ads]

Again I will warn you, this page will take quite awhile to load, I'm not going to make thumbnails for everything since that means double the workload when it comes to posting all this!

Right, the time has come for me to reveal my game creations past and present. I mentioned awhile ago that I had a load of work that has never been seen by anyone other than me and that I would sort it all out sometime, but alas I forgot and it kinda didn't happen. Thanks to the recent 'Post old maps/mods etc...' thread, it's sparked me into taking action finally, so I've been looking through shitloads of backup CDs to collect almost everything I've done upto this point (sadly there is a chunk missing since I lost 8GB of maps and other files during the imfamous HD crash of 2001. I've opted to create my own thread since there's over 200 images and it would kinda dominate the old work thread by a fair bit (I don't mean by quality, since I have nothing on most of you guys on here!). I'd also like to point out on that note that most of this stuff is by no means a representation of proffesional quality work, since I don't really have any interest in working in the industry anymore, I'd rather carry it on as a hobby as I have always done thus far...

I'm sure there's a load of you who sit here and think to yourself.. 'This D3ads.. he hangs around here telling people what's what, but what's he actually done?' Well now you're going to find out. I'm going to go through all my projects in date order as best I can and show you as much of it as I can, which mostly consists of maps since I'm primarily an advanced level designer. Everything was done for Goldsource, with the exception of the Quake 2 stuff I did.

Before I even got into HL mapping, I did mess about with Quake II mapping for awhile but to be honest I sucked complete ass and I deleted the stuff I did since it was rubbish! I owned a pirated copy of Half-Life for about a year before I accidentally installed a retail patch over it and fucked it up, thus I went out and bought the thing and have never looked back since.

Want to know more? Read on...

Project Phalanx

It's a miracle I even have any of this stuff still around, I happened to come across these images when I was looking through old floppy disc backups from school and I remember that I used the Internet there to upload data since I didn't have a home connection at the time. The actual project itself was the first thing I ever worked on, I was a n00b at the time and I came across a help wanted post on the old RUST forums from a certain Sarah Lovelace (who was actually female and hot btw) who needed help on a zombie mod for Half-Life. I thought to myself 'yay zombies!' without really caring about wether it would survive or not, suffice to say it did all fall apart in the end, since there was only me and two others on the project There was a lot more stuff I had done but I lost it in the aforementioned HD crash, so this is your lot I'm afraid:

A couple of reskins I did to models made by one of the other members, the zombie looks a lot like the They Hunger one but this was before USS Darkstar had been released, let alone TH!

A subway map (I have a certain fetish for Subways as you will notice as you look at other work). The textures were a horrid abominal attempt at copying the SOF1 detail-textures format, I think the base for the tiling was cardboard and boy does it show Last shot is the overview, there was a lot more of this done of course but I failed to back it up!

From here on I've mostly only worked on things alone...

Escalation

Everything I did for this was lost in the HD crash, so there's nothing for you to see unless Deraj has backups of the Mapfinger profiles (anyone remember that?) but I very much doubt it. It was basically just an SP mod where you played Barney and consisted of fighting blackops instead of grunts (this was before Opposing Force so I had the idea first.. ). If I can find any stuff from it, I'll be sure to add it in.

Hostage Down

Escalation eventually died due to lack of interest coupled with the fact that after playing SOF I immediately got all excited about the prospect of making something similar for HL-SP, so Hostage Down was born. Because of the premise of counter-Strike, it was a little bit like CZ:DS (though this is years before CZ was even announced), nowhere near as high-quality but it played kinda the same just with reskinned default HL stuff. Some locations included were Brazil, Egypt, France and London. I built a rather awesome London Subway (D3ads's Subway Fetish Trivia, this one's #2 folks) but again along with everything else it was lost, so once again nothing to show you

[D3ads]

cs_renegade

Now we have the first map I actually released, which I worked on in between Hostage Down. I tried to create something of a small CS map that was somewhat a hybrid of Inferno and Italy, it didn't turn out how I'd imagined it but it was still a decent effort for a first release. Visuals and originality wise, there wasn't really much to the map and the 'village' was very unrealistic in geometry and setup. Still the map will remain memorable to me for it's fun gameplay and Twiz's infamous duck models

de_savage

For my second map, I wanted to create a dust-like map but use new textures and add more detail. It ended up being a lot smaller than it should have been, but it recieved a fair bit of praise despite easily being my weakest of the two releases. There was also a rather awesome Easter Egg in it that spawned a static alien grunt if the player hit hidden triggers in the right order, that was rather fun to setup. The map was never properly finished because I lost all the files in the HD crash along with cs_renegade's source data.

Operation Rogue Fox

After the HD crash I got a new computer and realised that I would be wise to backup all my work from now on. I decided to carry on with the previous mod project afresh with a new name. I opted to change the location of the subway to LA instead of London because didn't want to recreate all the masses of textures I'd done for the capital's digital insertion (Subway fetish trivia numero #3). I was quite influenced by Blood 2 having replayed it again at the time and I copied the idea of the moving subway train with somewhat hit and miss execution, the latter being because the r_speeds ended up rediculously high I worked on a jungle map for the Brazil section, it was rather impressive at the time (around 2001) but is laugh-worthy compared to my recent efforts at creating a jungle!

Character models, the terrorist being a reskin using a model taken from the classic HL-Weapons workshop and the latter soldiers reskins of Gearbox HD pack defaults:

I added the location Alaska to the mix somewhere along the line, it kinda looks just like the SOF Siberia sections though to be honest, probably due to using a few of the same textures for placeholding sake!

A hotel, obviously inspired by Max Payne:

The Brazillian jungle (it was state of the art for the engine at the time.. honest!)

Lastly, the Los Angeles Subway:

I wasn't happy with the way it was going and I had another idea so ORF died a death.

[D3ads]

Necrodome

Me and Olpainless from RUST were both massive fans of System Shock 2 and we both came up with the idea of making a HL-SP MOD inspired by the game. Of course given the ambition of such a project and the fact that it was far far too much like SS2 it eventually died. Anyone who's played the game will see the obvious cloning of certain textures and environments in Necrodome, as well as visual styles and storyline simularities. I very briefly came back to the project in 2004 because I hated some of the textures and redid a lot of them, they were always made to look kinda cartoony to fit the style of SS2 which used a similar look so the textures aren't the best and all mostly handmade. Just like SS2, the player ventures onto an intergalactic research vessel with several different decks and finds that everything has gone wrong. What's the necrodome? No idea actually, it just sounded good

Deck 1 - Maintenance (where the ship's reactor core, engines and cargo bays lay):

Deck 2 - Research & Development (where new robotics and power sources were worked on:

Uses the old textureset as I never implemented the new ones onto this deck for some reason. I think this is easily the largest and most complex map I've made to date...

Deck 3 - Biological Technology (a place to study alien artifacts and organisms):

Only made one little room as a test because I wanted to work on the Maintenance & R&D decks first!

Deck 4 - Systems (the brain of the ship, where all the computers were kept):

Again, just a test.

Deck 5 - Control (home to the ship's bridge, C.E.O. Personal quarters and the escape pods):

Some kind of Elevator hallway, the water looked pretty good for the time.

The USS Frontier itself, quite possibly one of the best prefabs I've created!

A closer look at some of the textures, including some animated screens that were a bitch to setup correctly at times. Appologies for jpg compression, I only noticed how blurred some of them look once I'd uploaded the damn images :roll:

A very early model for the dead crewmembers, basically a model hack someone did on the CS hostage model so that they were always dead. Took me awhile to get the horrified face to look right, I think it turned out ok in the end!

And finally, I handpainted a new HUD/inventory heavily based on the SS2 one and photoshopped it onto a couple of screenshots, if only it was real!

[D3ads]

IA_subway

I'd been part of the Immediate Action IRC channel for awhile and Ratking was always badgering me into making a map, so eventually after I saw the progress made on one of the early alphas, I gave in and decided to make another subway map (Subway fetish trivia mark #4). Since AI was sort of a CS clone it was a case of setting it up as a hostage rescue map influenced (yet again) by SOF1. The map wasn't anything really special and there were some problems with the layout since there was only one path to one of the locations, so not really that playable compared to some maps. Still at least I finished this one (but never released since it was meant to come with IA's first beta) It features a rather cool brush based police car which was annoying to produce, I would gladly have used a model if there were any decent ones about at the time!

Worked on it from 2002-2003 I think, there was actually a released ia_subway_beta which had the old textures and was missing a load of details/areas (it's beta.. duhhh). Final textures were edited SOF/Kingpin bases and my own creations. If I went back and did it again, it'd look so much better.. of course.

IA_crypt

Inspired by RTCW's crypt levels (and using the same textures with a lower resolution), crypt was one of two more maps I worked on for the Immediate Action Mod. The gameplay was a little different from the usual, because it had the good guys trying to bomb the crypt and the bad guys had to prevent them from doing so so they can attempt to create an undead army! The original plan was to have AI zombies roam the catacombs as well and I used a zombie similar to the one used in Rift (see below). I modified a couple of models from vanilla HL and CS to make CT bodyparts for added 'fear' factor as well. The map was scrapped due to problems with the layout and gameplay issues.

de_scarred

Originally began as the other IA map I was working on but later became a straight CS map, eventually gave up on it due to problems with the layout and lack of originality (scarred..? torn..?), a shame really since I'd worked quite hard on making this one the best MP creations, but redesigning bits over and over just bored me too much to care about working on it anymore.

[D3ads]

Payback

01

Payback has had three different incarnations over the years, this is the first one. It was basically attempting to create GTA-like gameplay on the HL engine. To get over the whole gridspace limitation thing, I took a page out of the book of HL-Rally and scaled everything down to half the size and used lower-resolution textures to lower the r_speeds. I created three test maps and a rather nice suspension bridge as well as shitloads of low-res textures and tested the maps using HL-Rally.

The first test map, for comedy value (yes that's the car from HL-Rally's first developer release )

The second test map, getting a lot bigger but little real detail.

The third test map, actually paid attention to how things in GTA3 were laid out this time, which is why it looks very similar to a couple of areas from Portland.

I had meant to add much more to this but I never got round to it.

The suspension Bridge:

A closer look at the posters, I wanted to copy the comedy of GTA without being too obvious

02

Problems with the project on the Half-Life engine obviously reared their ugly head (What can I say? I was naive enough to think I could pull it off!) so I stopped working on it for a short period. HL2 was announced soon afterwards so I decided the best thing would be to try and develop it for source since the gridspace was much larger and vehicle code was already implemented. Apart from a load of textures the only thing I did map wise, was this tunnel test map:

Soon after the project was canned because a lot of work would be required and there were so many GTA clones coming out that did pretty much the same thing, I realised it was pointless.

Before Payback incarnation 3 was born, I worked on a few other projects...

[D3ads]

Rift

I'd recently finished the original Quake for about the 10th time and got all nostalgic as a result and came up with the idea for an old-school fps in the Quake mould- Ironic really, working on a Quake-like game for an engine that is a good 70-80% Quake based Just like Quake, there were four chapters; Deadworld, Outlands, Realm Of Dark Magic and The Netherworld. Unlike Quake which mostly recycled the same kind of environments throughout the game, each chapter had a different look to it as you'll see. I created a few test maps and I had a start map too but I forgot to back it up and lost it Nevertheless there's still quite a fair bit to see here, the most fun I had with this project was thinking up ways to implement secret areas, one of the things I miss about FPS's these days

A couple of environment tests for Realm Of Dark Magic and The Netherworld:

The only map that got close to finished, C1M5, the second largest map I've ever created, obviously inspired from environments used in Quake's first episode.

There was only about 15% more of the map to be done, it's a pity I never finished it, perhaps I could actually finish it and release it as a single map if there was enough interest...

Monster models used, reskinned by myself from several mods/mission packs and Vanilla HL.

Textures per chapter, heavily inspired by Quake but different enough to avoid being a cheap copy.

Eventually work ceased since once again I'd bitten off more than I could chew and the project ended up being 36 maps in planning! Even when I cut it down and asked for help from various parties, there wasn't much interest and I too lost the will to work on it anymore and thus it was put to rest.

[D3ads]

Quake II - The Dawn Of Resurrection

I'd finished Quake II again and thought about doing some stuff for a single-player project since I knew plenty of people who still work on that sort of stuff. I wasn't about to start mapping for Quake II again but I made a few enemy skins, created a couple of skyboxes and made some modified texture bases. Not much more than that really, I think I'll give the stuff to some of the SP hounds over at RUST, I'm sure they'll put it all to good use

Model skin edits, some simpler than others.

My unit skyboxes, pretty gash to be honest.

Texture edits.

Just wanted to include some Q2 stuff since that way not all my work is soley HL based

Genesis

After watching the rather fantastic film 'Brazil', I came up with an idea for a mod inspired by it. I never actually got much done other than models, the maps were supposed to be hub based with objectives similar to Quake 2. The game, much like the film told the story of how an employee snaps and goes on a rampage against his former employers, the Triad corperation owned by the ruthless James Harmen. The environment itself was primarily a large skyscraper with several different floors that was constantly being attacked by terrorists, which you later ended up joining up with to fight stormtroopers and assault droids- It was probably the most original thing I'd come up with.

The models I reskinned, the droid is a hilarious Gargantua replacement!

I eventually lost interest in it again after coming up with yet another idea...

[D3ads]

Payback

03

The third incarnation of Payback was quite far removed from the original ones I'd worked on, this was also my strongest project to date (as in the most work I'd done and the longest I'd kept to a single project.). The story was that you were a man who'd been left for a dead in a city that had been mostly abandoned due to it's high crime-rate, you were then hunted down by highly trained hit-squads and ruthless gangs ran by the local kingpin. Obvious inspirations were Max Payne, Manhunt, Kingpin, Hitman and others, I created around 50mb of texture data (which is still being used for other things) as well as skins, sound files, sprites and the like coming upto about 300mb total. The problem was that it got way too big, too ambitious and the workload was too much, I tried to keep it down but found that the more I shortened it the less effective it was and therefore it ended up being pretty dull.

An apartment block (was supposed to have several floors of varying design)

A street test map, the last thing I ever did for the project.

The subway (Subway fetish trivia entry #5).

Kingpin's mansion (based on designs from Max Payne, I had actually thought out changing it to a white/gold design but never got round to it.)

Some of you will recall the last two maps.

That's as much as I have to show you and to be honest, it's a lot! It's taken me ages to write all this out/gather all the material so I hope you all appreciate my efforts! I'm not going to be working on any of this anymore (unless I get enough requests...) so constructive comments aren't necessary but feel free to do so anyway and if you think it looks shit then well, that's probably because it is I should probably get this all up on a site or something, but everytime I've attempted to make any kind of webpage it always looks like dogshit (remember D3adlode's Crypt anyone?).

As for what the future holds, well you already know I'm working on a jungle map, I was going to produce a few maps but I've decided to just do the one for now since I am also working on something else, something that is pretty much top secret at the moment, but I will have something to show you eventually, so stay tuned folks.

In the meantime, enjoy what you see!

[D3ads]

I haven't broken the forums have I?

Seems not...

For some reason photobucket has increased the size of some of the model shots, I haven't a clue why

[edit] If there's any problems with the number of images, let me know...

[⌐■_■]

holy shit

now thats what i call a read..

anyhow, good post, nice to read! its nice to know what you where up too all those years! i think those screens looks totally dope.

Edited January 22, 2014 by killertomato

[insta]

Holy fuck d3, you'd be the talk of the town if you just released some stuff every now and then. Really nice stuff, I especially like the quake-inspired map/mod. Sign me up as "interested in seeing it done"

[e-freak]

i really love the Subway station near the end of your article/portfolio and that mansion!

[dux]

wtf d3 has maps!

I loooooove that ss2 styled stuff you had going man, seriously nostalgia trip when I looked at those. Might have to go find my ss2 cd now.

[Ginger Lord]

Maybe its me, but I got a massive sense of deja vu when scrolling through it all briefly.

It all seemed to be the same

Any newer stuff than HL1?

[Rick_D]

That'll be the subways ;D