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Team: CelTech
Duration: 5 months
Engine: Source (Half-Life 2)
Team: 17 students (3 programmers, 6 artists, 8 level designers)
My Responsibilities: Game Co-Designer, Associate Producer, Level Designer
Eclipse was the final team project I worked on while I was at the Guildhall. I was selected by the school faculty to serve as Associate Producer at the beginning of the project, and I did so for half of the duration of the project.
The story, written by fellow level designer Ray Dahlia, created a setting in which the heroine, Violet, traveled through the world of her ancestors on a quest to discover what happened to her father. I was responsible for one of the three levels in the game, which consisted of two areas: The Barrow and The Standing Stones. The Barrow had to look somber and antiquated, creating an atmosphere in which Violet's ancestors were buried and their ultimate weapon, the Hellstorm spell, was kept waiting for a member of the lineage (i.e., Violet) to discover.
To keep the spell an unlockable secret, a puzzle was needed. The puzzle had to be simple enough to be solved within two minutes. In the end, I constructed a puzzle in which four glowing cubes sit atop pedestals, and four matching symbols are carved on a large structure. The player must use Violet's telekinesis ability to "launch" the four cubes onto the matching symbols. Once all cubes are in place, the spell will appear atop the structure, and, upon obtaining the spell, the player can use it to blast apart the exit wall (now glowing) and continue on the quest.
I designed the area and created the structure with the Hammer editor, and a team of artists created the objects and textures for the area, which I then placed in the area. In addition, thanks to a rather intricate system of object interactions that I set up, I was able to make the puzzle work properly.
As for the Standing Stones, I designed the area to be a climactic battle in which the player activates a "teleporter" and then must hold off an army of enemies for two minutes. I designed the area and constructed it with Hammer, and a team of artists created objects and textures for the level, which I then placed. However, team decisions called for the nature of the level to be changed to a series of cinematics to conclude the game. This would mean that there was little opportunity in the entire game to show off how intense the combat could become. In order to bring that level of intensity back to the game, I created a copy of the Standing Stones area I called the "survival area." Basically, the player would pick up the Hellstorm spell, then fight off ever-increasing waves of enemies for as long as possible. The level structure remained the same, but to differentiate it from the rest of the game, I replaced the grass texture on the ground with gray dirt and added four different patterns of thunder and lightning to the level to help "unnerve" the player. The level was so popular that it was adopted into the entire game design, and thanks to skillful programming, "Survival Mode" was created.
In addition, I created the original logo for this game, which you can view here.
For more information or to download Eclipse, visit the official site at www.eclipsegame.com (please note that, although Eclipse is free, you need a copy of Half-Life 2 to play it).
Note: In addition to all of the user feedback we have received on our Web site, Halflife2.net now has a review of Eclipse! The review can be found here.
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