Atlas

Prior to being hired by Valve in 2022, Chuck Wilson, the company's current level designer, recreated Ravenholm in Source 2 as a personal exploration project. "The opening to Ravenholm seemed like it would be an appropriately scaled project to tackle. I started by loading up Ravenholm and taking tons of pictures of the opening area, and reacquainting myself with the look, feel, and scale of the space. From the ref I was able to deduce the scale and re-block it out with Hammer 2's modeling tools. After I got the whole space blocked in, I decided to make some compositional changes to the space to better guide players to the zombie and to the eerily lit sawblade shack. Once the composition was adjusted, I switched to detailing and diving into some of the new features Hammer 2 had to offer. I walked away being blown away at how powerful these tools are for Level Designers, and even more so if you are a Level Designer with some environment art background. These are easily my favorite tools I have worked with to date."