My Design Goal: To Be Refrigerator Worthy

Turns out, I found a fair degree of success as a result of walking away. I doodled up a layout while at work yesterday and banged out a legible copy on graph paper this evening. I'm very pleased with how it flows with the intel room I designed earlier this week. Just a few more ingredients to be added to the pie, sniper roost and underground intel route, and we should be able to pre-heat the oven and really get this map cooking. I've never fully respected how much time should truly be given to proper level design. To be more precise: I've been a fucking MORON where it applies to proper level design. Thank the Maker I was able to find someone to slap some sense into me before I attempted to teach my ghastly level design process to some innocent misbegotten soul no more intelligent than I.

Speaking of unintelligent game design: I installed Blacksite: Area 51 today. Having an idea of what I was getting myself into, my expectations were suitably low. I was in the mood for a mindless shooter and I wasn't disappointed. This game makes me feel like a parent. A parent whose son has just manufactured a hideous creation of art he wants to display on the refrigerator. I say, "nice work son" and tack it to the fridge. Why bother doing anything else, right? Down that road lies only a headache. I'll enjoy it for what it is and leave it at that.

Valve recently announced some of the content coming for Left 4 Dead. Among this content is a new Survival game mode. The basic premise is that a team of 4 survivors has to see how long they can make it against wave after wave of infected. I waved it off as lame at first glance, but after some thought I find I have a lot to look forward to. This mode will serve as a good survivor training exercise for our TWL team, giving us multiple crisis situations to deal with at any given time. Hopefully over time we will be able to better adapt on the fly to changing situations in our versus matches as a result. I'm also excited about the idea of designing levels for this mode. The maps are very small and will be good training in getting some of the basics of L4D design down before tackling a larger campaign.

V out.