Painkiller is a classic FPS from 2004 that had a huge influence on both my gaming and game design career. It was technically advanced for its time, and taught me the basics of scripting, in line with the design on Doom3 I delved into around the same time.
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The difference between the two aforementioned games, is that Painkiller lacks any built in tools for advanced structure editing, so the fanbase had a common practice of reusing already existing structure from the campaign, multiplayer and from the game's sequels/successors.
Working with preexistent structure (while it ties the creator's hands), can still produce creative attempts worth playing, as it was proven by my job offer on Painkiller Redemption by its lead developer in my second year of modding.
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Fallen Empire is what remained of my initial few years of creativity on Painkiller and its PainEngine. A planned custom campaign called "Light Bearer" was in the works for the first game in the franchise between 2010-11. It was planned to be developed by Marek ’HV’ Uzdowski and myself, with a few friends taking part in playtesting such as Andrea ’AndySYS’ Bali. Following the commercial failure of Painkiller Redemption and its sequels, the team fell apart, Light Bearer as we know it was cancelled, alongside a few other levels planned for Redemption. The work of my solo development that was planned to be the part of this project was released under the name in the title.
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Most of the work that was done was not lost however, but was released (2011-13) and preserved by me in the years to follow.
With my Redemption Revival (https://www.artstation.com/artwork/zx5EN6) project announced, I have returned again to provide some touchups and technical fixes for this old campaign as well, planning to take full form again after 13 years.
The community also favored and frequently reused these early level attempts in various larger campaigns (Rise of Evil, Duty Eternal, etc.).
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I have come a long way since, both as a programmer - having worked on countless projects across several engines - and learning the basic skillset of softwares such as Autodesk Maya or Blender. Additional help came from my friends XDavidXtreme - who kindly supplied my efforts with plugins - and i6t, who we've been co-designing with while encouraging each other, finally opening up the frontier of properly reworking these old "fevre" dreams.
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The archived old versions and progress on the updates can be seen in detail on these 2 pages:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/fallen-empire-mappack
https://www.moddb.com/mods/light-bearer2
Other small projects with HV:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/resurrection-hell-gates
https://www.moddb.com/mods/painkiller-treasure-hunt-mod
Eclipsed Castle v2 walkthrough