Sea Station Takedown is a first-person shooter level built for Counter Strike 2. Sea Station Takedown pits an infiltration task force (terrorists) against an emergency defense task force (counter-terrorists). The terrorists have boarded an American sea station and have been given direct orders to sabotage one of the station's key components in order to neutralize it. The counter-terrorists have been given direct orders from the commander of the sea station to find all hostile targets and eliminate them. The fate of the sea station depends on this encounter!
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Engine
Hammer Editor
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Timeline
August 2024 - December 2024
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Solo project​
Level Designer: Liam Dunphy
Level Reel
Intent
When creating Sea Station Takedown, the intention was to create a Counter Strike II competitive level that followed the level design philosophy of the currently existing levels. To frame the experience with a small amount of narrative, as to contextualize the events of the gameplay. Using the narrative, lighting, and environment to create a specific mood within the player. My primary intent, when creating Sea Station Takedown, was to create an interesting/unique player experience within the confines and rules of a pre-existing game.
Level Design Process
Since Sea Station Takedown was a level constructed around a pre-existing game, with a set of previously defined rules, the design/iteration process taken to reach the final product was quite different from levels I had worked on previously. Said process can be broken down into six steps:​
1. Research Counter Strike II's competitive mode and analyze the layouts utilized in its levels
2. Define consistent structural points between these levels to get a sense of the developer's level design philosophy
3. Draft a sketch of the level layout, hitting the structural points defined and following the developer's level design philosophy
4. Create a graybox, using Hammer Editor's modeling toolkit, based on the drafted sketch
5. Test the level to see if it works well within the confines of Counter Strike II's competitive mode
6. Implement modular asset kit to replace place holder assets, adjusting design as needed​
Post Mortem
Working on Sea Station Takedown has given me a great deal of insight into the level design process. Working with Source 2's Hammer Editor and the Sea Station modular asset kit I found created a lot of restrictions in my design potential. The limits of my tools/assets taught me how to modify my design to fit within these confines, but also still accomplish the same intent I had with the project. Given this, learning how to adapt to new tools, work around the restrictions of modular asset kits, and how to create levels within a pre-existing game were my biggest takeaways.
