Well, okay, so I haven't been writing daily, but I have stuck to my gaming fast. It has proven to be successful in getting me to find inspiration from other sources. I've been listening to podcasts, reading more about design, reading a lot of TV Tropes. That's all general stuff. I also watched an interesting documentary about Nazis and the occult, mainly as research for a game I'd been designing.
Today I ran across a magazine regarding upscale garden design. The photographs grabbed me immediately, but I had time to actually read it cover to cover. The articles explained the planning that went into the layout of the garden, the selection of what would be planted, the statues and stones placed for decoration. The synergistic interplay of all the elements got me thinking of parallels in level design. Many of the same principles could be used. Additionally, I've been doing a lot of research into horror lately. The juxtaposition of a beautiful, peaceful garden environment and something sinister struck me as interesting and worth looking into.
I realized too that magazines are a spectacular source for inspiration, especially ones with the high quality photos that this one had. As I mentioned, I've been doing a lot of reading lately, but the images in the magazine sparked my creativity much more than simply text. I'll have to start looking for more images and magazines to help with this process. Until then, I believe I'll start poking around in UDK or Source SDK and see what I can learn. I've always been very interested in level design specifically, as I think it offers the ability to make a lot of very subtle choices to influence the player's experience.
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