Played some Delta Green today as a new character styled after Johnny Utah in Point Break. Fun to play a high-charisma, athletic bro who lives for the next thrill.

The level geo toolbox: add more space, reduce space, flip it, create architectural rhythm, spike trap, break a sightline, frame a thing better with the composition, lava pit, break architectural rhythm, add a hole up or down, ramps, ask for help, crusher.

That's it. Now you, too, can design a level

A vex column rises from sandy and rocky terrain, with several lasers connecting to a laser grid tucked under a curving rock overhang. The Timekeeper, for Destiny: House of Wolves. Released in 2015.

A brutalist concrete structure made of disasssembling floating cubes, floating in a blue partly cloudy sky. You'll Shoot Your Eye Out for Quake 3, built with Matthew Breit. Released in 2012.

Sweeping canyon terrain with rock cliffs and a large spherical blue tank with white checkers frames a ringed planet hovering in the sky. Narrows, for Starhawk. 2012.

A dark corridor with vertical columns and a deep red light casting down from overhead skylights. Eclipse, for Natural Selection. Released in 2002.

Here's some levels I'm particularly fond of:

Been having feature-length horror films for dreams this week.

Exactly one year ago today:

Andrew Weldon Andrew Weldon: Game Design Portfolio

Leave it to me to be a couple/few days late for #PortfolioDay, but hey! Here's my brand new portfolio site, my biggest overhaul in probably a decade or more.

Need a senior/principal/lead level, technical, or general game designer? Hire me!

Let's make games together. ♥️

oh hey new portfolio site just dropped (I'll post more properly again in the morning)

Tonight's D&D sesion was wild. The PCs were part of a caravan through neverwinter woods when they were attacked by owlbears. The player characters were legitimately going to flee and let all their travel companions die, but one of the NPCs finished off a wounded owlbear and turned the odds 😅

a coworker mentioned, but I haven't checked if there's tickets still.

The Prodigy - Out Of Space (Official Video) YouTube video by The Prodigy

Energy I want to bring into this spring youtu.be/a4eav7dFvc8

There's a speedmapping event on this weekend, and I'm tempted to join for some practice.

But I think the skills I need practice in are the slow-and-steady kind, not what gets practiced by speedmapping 😅

Got some new players joining in the Delta Green group for a oneshot where we're bringing back one of my old characters. I tried to catch them up and, uh, my old character--Dr Bill Palmer, professor of anthropology--is a very broken man after what he has been through and done 😬

Snake Plissken saying “Get a new president”

Went to the pub, ran into a coworker, and then an open mic spoken word poetry event started. And then I performed some poetry I wrote back when I lived in canada.

It's more like those early disneyland darkrides that are morality plays, or the "pleasure island" of Pinocchio.

Guys, I'm not so sure Bioshock is actually interested in unfettered capitalism.

Continuing in my Bioshock playthrough, and made it most of the way through Fort Frolic. Got a lot of messy thoughts that I need to process, but I do like the hub-spoke structure of this level.

Crazy run. Went in with maybe 2k of gear, got the two green keys, took out a thief trying to ambush me, made it into pinwheel, took out a destroyer who had a ton of gear (I think they fumbled their ult, I was at 0 shields but still won), got into command wing but out of time. Exfil'd from pinwheel.

They were fairly conservative runs, buuut I now have a key for a locked room in the Dire Marsh greenhouse. Will bring that next time we play so we can get the good loot.

Pretty nice easter so far. Slept in, had 5 successful solo exfils in a row in Marathon, and now off to play a Delta Green oneshot!

I'd read a whole book in the style of Marathon's lore entries

"Arcadia" is also nice. The central hub is a bit confusing for orienting, but it's elaborate enough for exploration to feel meaningful.

I like the look of "Neptune's Bounty", a kind of fishery/warf look, as if a fishing village had been made air tight and submerged as a whole. There's sheet metal walls, wood plank floors, massive mooring bollards, and everywhere are smugglers crates with bibles.

Another is the sound. The frequency of combat, enemy barks, vending machine jingles, the game doesn't leave much breathing room. It's hard to play out a full audio log before something else jumps in. A real carnival vibe, which is kinda fitting.

Most of what's stood out so far is on game system side. You've got a dedicated heal button, but this is no estus flask--it's instant, no anim, and you can trigger it in the middle of any other action without interrupt. It's more about resource attrition and attention.

I am replaying Bioshock 1 because I wanted to think about how it does nonlinear level design, but turns out 19 years (😱) is a long time.

Also the remastered version of the game won't let my xbox take screenshots.

I'm really tempted to do some modding to test out some of these ideas in a singleplayer context.

I know roguelike (hello Spelunky!) have arrived at some similar conclusions independently, but maybe more singleplayer games need to put you on a timer and restrict saves, so that the rare glimpses of mystery feel meaningful.

Part of what makes the mystery here so good is that I can't just go here. I need the two green keys, which means searching, fighting, surviving, while on a timer. And to even have a hope of pulling that off, I need decent gear before I even load into this map. This is like 1-in-10 runs for a glimpse

The high point of yesterday's runs was a solo run where I finally made it inside the pinwheel on Outpost, and then rushed to explore this unfamiliar space before running out of time. I got the last chance exfil with 1 second left on the clock.

Can't remember when a level was last so mysterious.