Week 2:
Hi there, I'm Bill Vandervoort, the lead level designer on Blood 2. I'm just going to talk a little about some of the things I do in a typical day at Monolith, and then show off one of the cool toys we get to work with using LithTech.
Often I start my morning with a latte. I hardly ever drank coffee before moving to Seattle, but once you're out here there isn't much you can do to avoid the stuff unless you just don't like it. Hot caffeine is a good jump-start, though. After browsing a few news sites and reviewing the e-mail that's already started to pile up, it's time to get down to work.
Most of my time these days is spent polishing levels that are already in progress. I'm not really designing the levels anymore, I'm in the execution phase… that is, doing all the grunt work that goes into detailing the levels, finishing sections that aren't done, working with the artists and engineers to get the right effects and textures, and so forth. So, I spend a few hours every morning working on that and figuring out what I need to do during the rest of the day. The only schedule I keep is a loose one… right now the big deadline is E3, and my agenda is to finish as much as possible by then!
Lunch is, of course, a great excuse to get out of the office and think about things away from the computer. One of the best places to go in Kirkland (where the Lith offices are) is a little Mexican restaurant called Tres Hermanos… which is "Three Brothers." Usually it makes all the carnivores and vegetarians come together peacefully. It isn't long before someone's pager goes off though, and then it's back to the sci-fi lookin' bunkers that make up Monolith.
The late afternoon is when I get a good solid four or five hours of uninterrupted work time. I pop in a good techno disc, like Orbital or Underworld (not that stuff Spen listens to, NBL bro), and get busy with the LithTech editor again. Sometimes I'll check out all the latest build stuff from MS Visual SourceSafe, which is what Lith uses to manage the content of its projects. It's always fun to see what new models, textures and code the rest of the team have dumped in there in the past day. To a level designer, new stuff to use is like Christmas. You could put fifty door textures under my tree and I'd be as happy as if you'd bought me a full line of original Micronauts.
