Set on the stage of game show BashTV, two players must exterminate the show's escaped population of mutants! Players work backwards through the set facing all new challanges such as malfucntioning spikes, mutant nests, and much more.

Working within a relatively short time frame, the singleplayer version of BashTV was taken and morphed quickly into Extermination. I was tasked with redesigning the level with the intention of creating a new experience from a reused space. The primary goal was to take a single player level and make it not only work with two players but make them intuitive and fun. To do this I had to redesign the enemy encounters, lighting, objectives, VO, available items, and player gating. Such changes required that I tweak the art and geo to reflect said gameplay changes, such as enemy entrances and the mutant nest. New mechanics in the arenas were also devised, such as the altered spike pit, broken jackpot room, and malfunctioning elevator.

Set in the level Wasted Garage, two players must break in to the bandit hideout and steal a collection of their auto parts before the getaway van leaves!

Rusty's Resupply was derived from the singleplayer level Wasted Garage, where the player is sent to collect autoparts for his/her buggy. Keeping in theme with that concept, Rusty's Resupply was redesigned into a collectible challenge to be experienced with a friend. To provide a new experience for two players within a reused space, much of the level was tweaked and each floor's layout significantly altered to ensure smooth gunplay and movement. In doing so the eneny encounters were redesigned as was lighting, objectives, VO, available items, and player gating. Whole sections of the map were added or moved to make it easier for two players to move and fight in the tight areas found in singleplayer.

Last man standing, Marcus must navigate through the ruins of Ephyra and fight through pockets of Drones and hordes of Wretches to survive the devastated city in order to reach a outlying park.

- As the player flees the city, buildings collapse, cars explode, helicopters crash, and monuments fall!
- Navigate through four distinct yet rich areas of the city: apartment complex, alleyways, courtyards, and a campus quad. All filled with their own danger!
- Multiple routes, 16 in total, allow Marcus to choose where to go on his own terms!

Flight From Ephyra was built with two very different goals. Primarily, it had to provide the play space for my Master’s Thesis so that I could investigate whether handedness influences player pathing. Secondly, it had to meet the visual and gameplay bar set by Gears of War.

The requirements of my thesis called for nine unbiased pathing choices. I was unable to use traditional methods of guiding the player (lighting, movement, enemies, sounds, and static placement). To do so would skew the results of my thesis and render the investigation into the influence of handedness moot. Essentially, in Flight From Ephyra, every path is correct and no path is wrong. However, with choices come consequences. Players often like to investigate part of a path in the hopes of discovering whether to commit to it or disregard it. In order to compensate for this reality and get the most honest results I made players commit to their first pathing choice by blocking the path they had come from. After the first few instances of this occurring, players actually remarked that they welcomed the closing of the path behind them. One player explained that it freed him from regret and from acting fickle over which path to take.

The desire to match the visual and gameplay quality of Gears of War was a demand I didn’t take lightly. I felt for my thesis to be accurate I would have to treat this “test bed” as a real level in a real game. I couldn’t settle for the whitebox quality many Guildhall thesis settle for. One of the more difficult aspects was making the combat easy, so that test subjects didn’t die often during the research, while maintaining interest. I feel that I’ve hit both these goals and player feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.

As sole survivor of a helicopter crash, Marcus must fight through the Locust to reach the top of an ancient bell tower for extraction via helicopter.

- Gripping intro cinematic puts the player right in the action!
- Filled with plenty of enemy locusts, beautiful gardens, and intense firefights!
- Contains speeding cable cars, towering archipelago islands, and hounding turrets!

With Hard Landing, I wanted to expand Gears of War beyond the normal stomping grounds of destroyed cities, blown up houses, and underground caverns. With that goal in mind, I set out making a big and bright level that played and felt like traditional Gears of War but looked distinctly different. The result was a large soaring archipelago chain filled with ruined buildings, bell towers, and gardens that create a grandiose vista that not only looks good but also plays tight and fast.

Survive a harrowing chase with a Combine gunship, discover an automated barrel factory, and discover a modified Crossbow that allows the player to shoot and create staircases and bridges in order to solve puzzles and dispatch Combine!

- Evade a relentless Combine gunship and escape across the sea upon a commandeered fishing boat!
- Fight your way free of the deadly industrial complex, filled with exploding barrels and assembly lines.
- Use the new Crossbow mechanic to solve an array of puzzles and eradicate Combine soldiers!

The goal for Crossbow Platformer was to push the boundaries of Half-Life 2"s scripting possibilities. With that in mind, I set out to create a new gameplay mechanic within Half-Life 2 completely without coding, where the player could jump on and use the Crossbow"s bolts to interact with the environment. A coastal barrel factory set the perfect environment for the mechanic, where the player can scale walls and implode machinery to progress further and further.

Discover a secret entrance near Vault 101 that leads to the neighborhood of Oxford Ponds. Follow the winding road and dispatch those in your path. Learn of a neighborhood feud and take who's side you like!

- Fight through raiders as you travel on a winding road that passes through mountain trenches and beautiful gorges!
- Encounter an encampment of Raiders trying to seize the lone mansion of Oxford Ponds.
- Become the final arbiter in the neighborly feud between Oxford Ponds residents and the nearby patrons of The Dueling Cave.

With Oxford Ponds I wanted to make a Fallout 3-quality modification, providing the player with engaging combat and interesting characters. However, half the fun of Fallout 3 is exploring, so I also wanted to make a large open world that was worth investigating. Oxford Ponds in total is comprised of four different quests, dozens of characters, long mountain gorges, serene neighborhood lawns, a lone mansion, a dried up lake, and a dangerous cave bar.

DM17 Reimagined is a remake of the classic Quake 3 DM17 map "The Longest Yard". No longer is it a cold sterile void but now a fiery hot metal foundry. Players do battle above a sea of molten metal where they rocket across via jump pads and trigger a number of interactive environments.

Completed over a period of four months while attending The Guildhall at SMU, this thesis project investigates one aspect of player decision making within level design. Its purpose was to discover the influence of laterality, player preference for left or right, in relation to their handedness. To do this the project utilized the above level, Flight from Ephyra, and its unique design to prod players to make distinct but sometimes camouflaged pathing choices. In total, there were a number of 27 participants in the survey, not a large enough sample to prove but significant enough to provide trending data. From the beginning, the thesis' hypothesis was that players would path the direction of their dominant hand, due to their comfort, ability, and experience. However, the opposite was overwhelmingly the case, with right-handers choosing the left direction consistently. There were only four left-handed participants and not much was deduced from such a small sample, their pathing decisions were mostly an even balance between left and right.