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years ago right after playing psychonauts thomas "hessi" hess and i decided that we have to make a 3d jump and run game because we love the genre and hardly any of them were being made anymore ! hessi wanted to make a game about pirates just like monkey island while i insisted that i dont want to be bound by any rules of reality so id much rather make a sci fi themed game where anything goes quickly we realized these elements dont have to be mutually exclusive. planning and concepting started but didnt really go anywhere because we didnt have and engine or tools we didnt want to make this as a mod because we wanted to own it if i remember correctly. years went by with no real progress until my co worker michael "zacker" schmidt at io-interactive pointed me to a danish developed game engine named unity which was supposedly super easy to use and cheap that he had used for a while and found to be most exellent ... only catch was it was a mac exclusive development tool. so more time passed with me just buildings random models and painting random textures without any real sense of purpose evaluating one obscure cheap 3d engine after the other. until one day unity announced they were porting their editor to windows. the day came and i was immediately in love here is the 3d game engine i always wished for piratically 100% freedom on how to structure/partition your scenes and artists/designers could do a lot of really powerful stuff without the help of any programmers i felt empowered like never before(thomas hess had lost all interest in the project at this point so i was pretty much on my own now ). after my time at io came to an end i was joined in my game dev efforts by a couple of other "mapcorians" skjalg sturlasson maehre as a programmer ( of pirates vikings and knights 2 fame) and friedrich bode a level-designer who worked at crytek and nintendo and wanted to head into more of a producer/manager/business direction which seamed like a perfect fit because that was exactly what i was not interested in doing at all ! the plan was to release the game as a prototype to the masses for free to gauge publics interest in the game (after all there might be a reason why no more 3d jump and run games get made ... maybe people just dont like them anymore). now the real work began sometimes i worked 22 hours a day and even changed to a poly-phasic sleep cycle of 6x20 minutes of sleep instead of 1x8 hours a day. several blood and sweat filled month later during which i honed almost all game-development disciplines there are except for music composition and programming (although i was heavily involved in the debugging of the code) we got some much needed reinforcement by michale schmidt who originally hooked us on unity with his help we crunched until the prototype was finally done and released to the public on october 6th 2010. included in the free prototype was as a link to a survey where we quizzed people about what they liked/disliked in the game and how much they would spend on the full version and most importantly if the think we should make this game or not ! the feedback to the prototype was overwhelmingly positive (totally beyond expectations) and all the criticism and suggestions about the core gameplay and direction was detailed,constructive,helpful and friendly... it was just one of those rare moments where the internet showed itself from the best side ! just today as i am writing this we received the 1000th submitted survey and a whopping 98% of the people think we should definitely make this game ! this story is far from over so stay tuned ! read commentary

my fragile alliance maps for kane and lynch 1 where not on the disc but "down-loadable-content" which put me in a weird spot if i should give myself another "shipped" credit or not for that game. but this time my multiplayer maps definitely are in the game and on the disc with real credit and everything. we (the fa level-designers) pitched a lot of ideas for cool settings and spectacular heist scenarios in the pre production of kane and lynch 2 but as soon as it became clear that all our levels would have to take place in shanghai (where the entire campaign was gonna be based around) 99% of the cool ideas went out of the window. i am still shedding some tears over that bank in downtown tokyo heist that never was or breaking into the louvre in paris to steal famous paintings. another idea that got canned was robbing a drug cartel at the mexican border and escaping to the united states with the stolen cocaine. 2 ideas that did stay where a die hard 3 style robbery into a banks basement by breaking through a subway wall and a money train heist on the train tracks of a large bridge mostly because they where none city specific and could easily be moved to shanghai. the subway/basement level ideas was assigned to another level designer michael "zacker" schmidt while i got to make the money train bridge level. every level-designer had to do 2 levels though so i had to come up with another scenario. i pitched another idea based on the opening scene from our beloved studio favorite movie "heat" where deniro and his screw knock a money transporter van on its side. the idea got excepted but i was pretty much told that this must take place in a harbor/warehouse area to be able to reuse assets from the campaign ... i find these kind of locations rather boring and cliche but i told myself if containers and crates is what they want than containers and crates they shall get ! ironically enough the warehouse/crates map turned out to be the favorite amongst the play-testers/qa team. maybe we level-designers are just snobs about crates and the general public doesnt discriminate them at all. i mocked up the layouts and pathed the entire level for the ais and scripted all the water cooler moments while a chinese outsourcing company made the majority of the models and textures which were to be shared with the campaign. all the lighting and atmosphere was setup and tweaked by inhouse artists at io (i always found that the multiplayer maps were too dark and all the other level-designers vocally agreed that dark multiplayer maps are generally unpopular but our director insisted that it went along with the art style and theme of the campaigns ... so there you go) they also filled the gabs and polished of anything that the outsourcing people send in. every time the out sourcing people or the in house artists had a pass on the levels we lds had to go back in and make sure that still all the path-finding and all the covers would still work. that is actually what we level-designers spend the majority of our time with. because of some human resource shortage in the art departments both in denmark and in china i volunteered to help out with some 3d art i mostly worked on michaels subway level as an artist but i also took the opportunity to massively frame-rate optimize all the multiplayer maps in the shipped version of the games all the maps run a steady 60 fps which is something i am very proud of just for comparison kl1 only runs at 20 fps. all the reviews for the game pretty much pointed the multiplayer out to be the strongest part of the kane and lynch package and praised it for its original design but unfortunately review score seam to be entirely based on the campaigns these days. against all expectations kl2 actually reviewed slightly worse than the first one which is crazy to me just the fact that it runs 60 fps alone and that the core mechanic gun play feels much more powerful and satisfying lifts this game over the first one. i left io after my work on fa was completed but before got to leave i was assigned a massive task that i would consider the biggest challenge of my career so far: i was tasked with implementing a new game-mode where you could play fragile alliance offline with 7 bots instead of human players on your side to learn the level layouts and gamerules before facing of against the tough online crowd. there were no bots in the game until this point and it was not clear if i would get any programmer support to help me with this so it was just me and the aid-tool (io-interactives equivalent to unreals kismet). basically what i did was i scripted every possible route one could take through the levels to the money and to the escape vehicle cover by cover with a random choice at each corner and prop if the ai would go left around it or right and of course i had to consider conditional stuff too if a door had been kicked down already or if some money got picked up already once this existed for one bots spawnpoint it was time to do this 6 more times for the other spawnpoints and than the entire procedure again for the other 7 levels. the aid tool ended up looking like a giant circuit board i wished i had printed out all the choice networks for all the bots for all the levels i could have probably plastered this over all the walls and floors and ceilings in my apartment. impressed with my progress i got assigned the help of some programmers who helped out with more tricky unpredictable tasks for the bots like finding the way to the exact spot where the escape vehicle would stop so that they could enter it or picking up left over money. this game mode was than dubbed the "arcade mode" and is proudly displayed in the main menu next to the campaign and the multiplayer ! 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the map is based on the phenomenal concept art by marc simoneti that won him the the blizzard art contest i tried to contact him and ask for permission to do a 3d interpretation of his painting but i couldn't get a hold of him which is kind of worrying considering that he does freelance work and getting a hold of him needs to be "realy" easy. i hope he or one of his mates will see this and tell him to get in touch with me. what else can i say ... its a 100% custom map. for the first time ever i want to do an extended beta release phase for my custom maps before i release a final and get as much user input into the map as possible. and i learned some lessons from it you better show a damn well near complete map when you post your beta otherwise the graphical reception is going to be lukewarm and it has to be followed by the final version straight after other wise the hype will quickly be gone. as so often i made the textures from raw photos taken by thomas hessi hess he also provided me with the basic exterior model for the large cathedral that we also used in dod_kolsch. i got some unreal engine 3 support from sjoerd "hourences" de jong. read commentary

this map is for "fragile alliance" the "kane and lynch" multiplayer mode. its included in the free map pack called the "dope bag" it can be downloaded via xbox live and the playstation network for 360 and ps3 (so no direct download link).unfortunately there is no pc version of the dope bag. its the first map i made at io-interactive with 3d studio max and their internal glacier engine ... that was quiet a new experience to use/learn both a new 3d app and and a new engine/editor all at once that i had never used before. its my first ever console release so i am mighty proud but all the credit for the graphics goes to the artists at ioi. i only did the layout ai pathing and scripting on this one. ioi is very particular about separating the design and art disciplines. a philosophy i dont agree with in my experience the best levels are always build by people who are good at both art and design ... you know the kind of people who know first hand what kind of repercussions every art change has on gameplay and how each design choice effects the aesthetics of an environment. read commentary

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this map was made right when unreal tournament 3 hit the stores. i couldn't wait to get my hands on the new unreal engine tools and see what has changed since ue2. i figured it would be best to create a map completely form stock content within a week or so. just to learn my way around again before doing a full custom content map like i usually do. this map and 4 other community maps got cooked for the playstation3 by epic shortly before the ps3 tools where made available to the public. it that was the first time ever that community made custom maps where playable on a console in all of video game history... quite an honor if dare say so :) read commentary

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i made these models for a long time contributor to the unreal community miles "mr.evil" asvachin whom i am a big fan of. i contacted him and volunteer to do graphics for what ever his next code project might be. he responded that he wasn't in need for any graphics but would contact me when something would arise. sure enough at the worst possible time stuck between 4 projects and multiple tight deadlines he calls in this favor. i consider these kind of a rush job and also a horrible learning experience into what the new unreal engine does texture compression wise but all in all i think the final product turned out all right even though the normal maps and shading still looks much better in maya than in-game. as of me writing this this mutator just won the first place in the make something unreal contest in the best mutator category to be precise. the download is of the final version. read commentary

this game went through many different iterations at first it was supposed to be a over the shoulder resident evil 4 style survival horror shooter for next gen consoles than exclusive for wii after the success of the re4 "wii-make". when no funding came through for a project of that scale/ambition it got scaled back to be an arcade top down twin stick shooter for xbla and psn with randomized drop loot and rpg elements imagine geometry wars meets diablo based on unreal engine 3 (this was before the udk was out but we got pretty much the same licensing deal). the theme/plot to the game changed quit a bit in this transition too the main character changed form y young woman to a middle-eastern special forces guy in a radiation suit i dont remember anymore what the rational behind that was. my official title on this game was art director but really i did what i have been doing on every game so far i made levels models and textures and if needed some particle-fx. special credit for the trailer goes to johanes tripolt for the editing of the video and valentin stelz for the animations and the character model pretty much everything else was done by me ... the placeholder music we stole from the aliens soundtrack. the splash screen image and the maya screenshots above are from the wii iteration i figured out a none expansive way to get staircase-less shadows into the maya viewport a method i have been very proud of and i used on many occasions since. unfortunately the game never got finished because of the bankruptcy of snapdragon games. all in all i think i worked 2 month on this full time with the help of 3 other guys (one animator, one game-designer and one programmer). read commentary

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what a project ... this map took over a year to finish. it all started when i visited thomas "hessi" hess in cologne and we went around in town checking out his new fancy digital camera and took random texture photos everywhere and than of course you are going to have to use all those pretty high res photos for something right ? the map is all custom content we drew the basic layout in an online open canvas session. than i went on to make the basic layout with brushes while hessi turned the photos into usable hl2 materials than he brushed most of the buildings while i started making 3d models in maya we continuously switched who's responsibility it was to do the editor work and the work in maya. i discovered a method how you can use pre-baked light-maps from maya on half-life2 models (which don't support 2 uv sets) and insisted on using that extensively everywhere. a decision i really regret because the light-maps kinda wash out a lot of the models defuse textures also the method is very time consuming and i really hurt my hands preparing the models for light mapping and i went through several logitech mice as well. i consider this 3 quarters hessi map and one quarter mine he did so much for it ... he even went on german tv prompting it on multiple occasions. in the end i think this map turned out really well i just wished more people would play it. there is a strong dislike in the community for custom maps that are large in download size. just being able to keep playing immediately when the sever changes maps is way more important to players than to play something new and fresh every now and than. also check out that cool little fan made machinima short movie that i found on youtube ! totally awesome :D read commentary