Level Design: SARA Draft

So I'm going to use this blog to keep a record of what I do in teaching myself level design.  I made myself a pledge to spend at least 15 minutes per day just doing something related to level design, such as pre-production, research, practicing with my tools, or actually designing the level.  I'm currently using the Source SDK (Hammer) to teach myself the basics of level design.

My current project is to replicate to the best of my ability SARA, which is an animal sanctuary where I volunteered during ASB.  So presently I am going on to Google Maps and taking extremely rough measurements on approximate locations of fences, dirt roads, and buildings.  

Here is a rough, incomplete sketch of the area:

Fig. 1: Incomplete sketch.  Approximate measurements from Google Maps

 Here is what I have so far:

Fig. 2: X/Y Window

Fig. 3: Y/Z Window

Fig. 4: Camera Window

I have only managed to complete just a couple fences and nothing else, so note how there is nothing much on the Z-axis, heh.


I know that I'm going to have to put in displacements (terrain) somewhere, so I'm going to have fun figuring how displacements fit together in a map overall and how to seal the map if part of the floor is made up of displacements!  I'm probably going to prefab the buildings so it will be easier to fix separately.  I should also complete a full pre-production sketch prior to actually messing around in Hammer.  It would suck to have little mistakes that can't be corrected without an overhaul of the map.

I'm still not sure on how often I should update.  I'll figure that out soon.

By the way, studying for the MCAT sucks.