Operation Eisenfaust: Origins Level 11

Level 11 was the first specifically snow based level that I started working on. I can't really pin down any particular timeframe of when I started working on this except that I know it took a fair while, like the other levels, and was revisited a number of times to be updated. I really like the weather in this mod, the snow falling looks quite real and I even feel colder when playing the level!
I do recall that I distinctly wanted to include an outside forest type area in a level and also a mine field, both or which made it into this level. I'm happy with the use of fences and walls in this level and like how this gives a look of an older part of the compound where walls are outside and some rooms have no ceilings.

I liked the usage of the forest areas as they gave really great coverage for the enemies and made things just that little bit harder. Although the level looks a bit random, and there is a couple of ways to play the level, there is a set path to follow that will take you to everything. This is a level that it is a huge advantage to find the secrets as they contain a lot of ammo, health and weapons that make the level much easier to complete. There's a locked area that you do need to travel back to a bit to which a lot of people forget but it's worth it as there is quite an amount of goodies in there.

In this level I also tried really hard to make the camp look bigger than it was as well as looking like it was either an older part of the level that was crumbling down or even perhaps one that had seen some previous warfare or attacks and that was why some roofs were missing and some walls were cracked, broken or falling down. I tried to make the level look larger to feel more part of a whole camp by trying to have areas and walls that could be connected to areas that you can only see or can't access. It always seemed strange to me in a mod if you only had the walls and area that the player goes into, like the rest of the camp doesn't exist... until the next level!

I'll try to include some other little things that you may not of seen each level I review also, so here's the original 'Difficulty Select' screen from Sonder;

Trivia;
- My favourite elements of the mod are the weapons (especially the sniper rifle), the differing weather elements (especially the lightning and thunder), the different footstep sounds and DoomJedi's amazing directional sprites. These all add fantastic elements to the mod that I haven't seen replicated anywhere else.
- The Shotgun was originally designed to be a weapon used throughout the mod but was changed due to it's unrealistic nature in the camp. It was therefore decided to be only a weapon found in Secret and Bonus maps with NO additional ammo, which was also originally in the mod but later removed.
-The night time rain theme with thunder was my favourite in the mod.
- I have one 3/4 finished snow 'challenge' level that was going to be for the Xmas 2012 release that I didn't get finished in time that I hope will still be released at some stage.
- I left the project for a while due to some personal issues but returned as we were mapping the final 5 finale levels. I had seen what Ron had done with one of them and just knew that things would work much better if I left them to Ron to do to tell a story over those 5 levels. He did an amazing job!

You can download Operation Eisenfaust: Origins HERE.

You can watch Balames87 play through of Level 11 below;