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Isometric Level Art | RTS & MOBA Games

Landscapes which are iconic & beautiful, yet clean & uncluttered, fit for competitive games.

Iron Harvest | Unity

2019 – 2020

Responsibilities while working freelance for KingArt Games as a Multiplayer Level Designer & Level Artist included:

Grey boxing and map design of several levels from sketch to delivery.
Strongly interfaced with Lead Level Designer and other Level Designers and Artists, quickly iterating on our environments and aiming varied gameplay for each independent map.
Pathfinding, Clipping/Collision and other general optimization with in-house tools.
Created moodboards and other visual tools to showcase/pitch new environments, props and assets for 3D prop artists to create and leadership to discuss.
Level dressing/Level art of the game world using procedural tools and simple gameplay lighting, final lighting was implemented by Lead Artist Stefan Obst.

[Unity | Iron Harvest] OilSpill showcase shot.

mp4_02 Zeppelin Crash — [Unity | Iron Harvest] Zeppelin Crash

[Unity | Iron Harvest] Vista on Oil Spill map.

[Unity | Iron Harvest] Contaminated River on OilSpill map.

[Unity | Iron Harvest] Oilspill Town Center.

[Unity | Iron Harvest] Small puddles on Zepellin Crash map.

[Unity | Iron Harvest] Crashed Zeppelin on Zeppelin Crash Map.

[Unity | Iron Harvest] Fields on Zeppelin Crash map.

Immortal: Gates of Pyrus | Unreal Engine 4

2018 – 2019

Responsibilities while working for Sunspear Games as a Level Designer & Environmental Artist included:

Grey boxing and map design.
Gamemode protyping and iteration.
Close design talks with Lead Game Designer on core gameplay problems and finding solutions to those.
Working with 3D artists and developing up our main asset production pipeline.
Polishing, modifying, retopologizing and optimizing our in-house and commissioned 3D assets.
Interfaced with Lead Producer to improve the marketability of our environment, all the while keeping it Lore friendly.
Pathfinding, Clipping/Collision and other general optimization.
Creation of Shaders, Environmental Art 2D and 3D.
Level dressing and simple gameplay lighting.

Note, the assets showcased below aren’t all made by me, but in-house and 3rd party.

[Unreal Engine 4] Neo Arash RootWitch base

[Unreal Engine 4] Neo Arash RootWitch Lake

[Unreal Engine 4] Neo Arash Republic base

[Unreal Engine 4] Neo Arash 6 OClock base

[Unreal Engine 4] Neo Arash Destructible Rocks

Dawn Of War 3 | Essence Engine

As a community Mapmaker I developed two multiplayer maps for the Relic title Dawn Of War 3.

Maps were greatly appreciated by the community, and to this day they are used on the Dawn of War 3 Weekly Gamenights.

KTV Naxos | KTV Kapala Mire

[Essence Engine | DoW3] Kapala Mire Map’s Center

Vanguard Prototype | Galaxy Engine

Vanguard Prototype as the name implies was a prototype Real Time Strategy game developed within the StarCraft 2 game engine, with the goal of becoming a full fledged Real Time Strategy title. My responsibilities on this year long project included;

Game Designer specialized on the game’s economy and macro aspect of resource gathering systems.
Lead Multiplayer Level Designer.
Developed 11 different multiplayer maps from sketches to completion including environmental work, light scripting and QA.
Worked with other Game Designers and SC2 Pro-players on playtesting, balancing and map iteration.
General QA and maintenance of our levels and Tournament Map Pools

Note, Most of the assets used where those native to StarCraft 2 and its engine, though a considerable number of in-house assets and textures were made to add aesthetic flavor.

[Galaxy Engine | Vanguard] Hadestown 001

[Galaxy Engine | Vanguard] Hadestown 003

[Galaxy Engine | Vanguard] Arboretum 003

[Galaxy Engine | Vanguard] Summer Palace 002

StarCraft II | Galaxy Engine

A highly recognized and relied upon pillar of the SC2 Community Melee Mapmaking community, I have a long list of accomplishments and acknowledgments, having reached the apex of SC2 Mapmaking and having “won” a couple Blizzard sponsored Team Liquid Mapmaking Contests and having my work be showcased on the highest leagues of StarCraft 2, I have now moved into professional Multiplayer Level Design! Hoping to bring all of the knowledge gathered in 7+ years of work in the trenches of a great E-Sport title into the development of future games and E-Sport titles!

[Galaxy Engine | SC2] Echo, 1st Place TLMC#5, WCS Ladder Map

[Galaxy Engine | SC2] Foxtrot Labs, 2nd Place TLMC#4, WCS Ladder Map

[Galaxy Engine | SC2] Ganymede, 2nd place TLMC#5

More Level Art & Design work on: KTVMaps.wordpress.com

E-Sport worthy Level Design

Competitive levels which are interesting & balanced, while giving players great agency and fun are my specialty.

KTV Echo from the very beginning was designed in order to attain and create a stable baseline for Pro-Games to develop on, in order to achieve this, players were given stable and defensive third bases, which could be breached into by air harassment later into the game, therefore this way aiming to create early game stable situations, yet becoming more and more hectic as the game progresses.

KTV Kanzan was designer to bring back ideas of map terrain control and movement from Broodwar in to StarCraft II, to achieve that it relies on big and expansive open areas in order to allow for a war of positioning and maneuver, where fast armies can attack in multiple directions, meanwhile static armies rely in cost efficiency giving very asymmetric gameplay for E-Sport settings.

KTV Keres Passage it being a diagonally mirrored symmetry map posed some very interesting and complex design challenges, given that StarCraft II doesn’t allow itself for the design of Multiplayer balance stable maps of such kind, yet the aim of Keres is to provide that extra layer of map variety to players “grinding” Ladder, and it achieves this by creating heavy asymmetries in strategic choice, giving players great agency when it comes to which type of strategy to execute to gain advantages from the landscape

KTV Kipuka is a map created with a standard yet dynamic gameplay in mind. The map is designed to give vibes of Chess when it comes to the value gained from controlling the center of the map, yet all the while maintaining a stable backbone for standard games to take shape.

More about the background, thoughts and level design of other maps can be found on KTVMaps.wordpress.com

Discussions and Thoughts

Extensive Game & Level Design talk can be found on the blog of KTVMaps.wordpress.com.

If what is within my KTVMaps blog isn’t satiating enough, video streams and full SC2 Mapmaking feedback videos can be found on my Youtube Channel, every 6 months or so I’m invited to work as a Map Judge to the Blizzard sponsored TeamLiquid Map Contest, in order to judge community submissions and decide which ones are the maps that would better fit the official and highly competitive ladder map pool for StarCraft II, so there’s plenty of content, feedback videos and write ups to go around.

TeamLiquid Map Contest Feedback Threads

And of course, my channel!