David Mershawn
Level Design
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Tropical Map Pack for Team Fortress 2
The Tropical Map Pack is a set of two
I greatly enjoyed working on multiplayer
game Team Fortress 2, including a
Spectra, the TGP2 game I worked on at
maps for the popular First-Person Shooter
“Capture the Flag” map and a “King of the
Hill” map. The goal of the project was to
bring two multiplayer maps from concept
to early aesthetics, with a focus on level
flow and balanced gameplay.
The project ran from January to April
SMU Guildhall. This Directed Focus Study
was an opportunity to explore this design
space further. By choosing Team Fortress
2 specifically, I was able to learn how to
make multiplayer maps for class/loadoutbased shooters.
2016 for a total of 12 weeks. The main
Additionally, this DFS project gave me a
and tweaking. It was difficult to find
the Hammer editor, which will likely come
challenge on this project was playtesting
enough players to playtest the maps as
frequently as was necessary; as such,
playtesting and gameplay tweaking
continued to take place past the gameplay
milestone, continuing throughout the
development of the map pack.
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level design during my time working on
LEVEL DESIGN
chance to become more proficient with
in handy when Valve’s Source 2 Engine is
released to the public in the near future.