Eric Kesterson - Portfolio

The Battle of Philadelphia

Single Player Half-Life 2 Modification, Currently in Beta

We decided from the moment we set out to make this mod that our focus would be on story telling. Our level designs needed to reflect that, from the layout of the fictional city blocks of Philadelphia, to the impact of the situation on those blocks. Care was taken to differentiate our city from the eastern European style of Half - Life 2, as well as to show what has happened in the game world's fictional past. I serve as the programmer, level designer and texture artist for this project. Visit the mod website for more info.

I've made several gameplay changes to give the mod a unique feel,
as well as added new features and modified existing ones in the code.

Customizable Bullet Penetration: each weapon has a penetration 'strength' and each material has a penetration 'resistance'. The values are adjustable in a configuration files.
Customizable View Bob: The view of the player moves in a realistic fashion according to thier movement.
Weapon Swapping / Weapon Slots: The player is allowed only one weapon per weapon slot (this code was already present, but turned off). In order to give the player feedback that they are able to swap weapons a new HUD icon and server to client message was added.
Modified Hit Indicator: The visual hit indicator was changed to give a natural look like blood vessels clouding the view.
New Creatures: Some new adversaries were added to the mod. So as not to spoil a future update containing these, you'll have to wait to see!
New Weapons: The SLAM weapon from Half-Life 2: Deathmatch was added to our mod, as well as smoke grenades.
Dynamic Light Muzzle Flash: The weapon muzzle flash was changed to cast a dynamic light, lighting up the world nearby when weapons are fired.
Added Projected Lights: The Orange Box updated the code to include projected lights from the flash light. The mod code was changed to make versions of these lights placeable in the levels.

The Battle of Philadelphia

various work