Matthias Worch

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Matthias Worch is a level designer. He has also gone by the alias Langsuyar.

Born in Essen-Burgaltendorf, Germany in 1976. When he was eight, he started using a Commodore 64, though he was limited to brief periods of time as it was intended primarily for bookkeeping. His solution to this was switching over to the television any time he heard his mother approaching. To ensure he could continue after being caught due to flashing red and green lights, he disconnected the LEDs.

His father had enrolled into a BASIC course, which in turn meant Worch taught himself programming from his father's notes. This in turn resulted in him starting to learn English; specifically the words "if", "then", and "print".

By 1988, he had met a local neighbor kid that was a bit older than him. Through this kid, he learned about "Maschinensprache für Einsteiger", a book that allows the user to program the Commodore 64 in 6502 assembly. While he didn't fully register everything, nor did he gain a massive understanding, he was able to create basic programs.

As he aged, he went from the Commodore 64 to the Amiga 500. Worch stopped focusing on programming around this point, instead putting effort into level design. Using the Virtual Reality Studio, Worch started creating 3d spaces. When Wolfenstein 3D came out, Worch ignored it in favor of the more complex RPGs of the era such as Ultima Underworld.

By 1993, Worch was stuck with a broken DX2 he had previously obtained from his father through the computer company he worked for. Due to a computer virus, Worch heard about Doom through friends, but was slow to start playing it himself. However, once he started playing he was hooked into the Deathmatch community. Doom II was highly disappointing in comparison to Worch, he felt the level design was so inferior that he never completed the campaign. Worch instead created his first map for an id Software game, little more than a test level, for Heretic.

Worch soon took to the task of trying to capture the quality of the original Doom in Doom II, holding a great amount of self-confidence along with high standards. He was one of the level designers of Memento Mori II (and created the custom status bar) and for Doom II. He also created The Troopers Playground for said aforementioned game. All three have become notable PWADs in the Doom community. Worch also hosted his own national Deathmatch league, as well as numerous LAN parties. According to Worch, what drew him in was the wide array of Monsters found in the game, the balance between them is unmatched. Worch ended his Doom level designing with Requiem, yet another PWAD that gained mass notoriety.

In 1995, Worch graduated from high school. While it was mandatory to join the military, he was deemed unfit due to a broken knee. Instead, Worch enrolled into the University of Essen to become an English or Biology teacher, his best classes in high school. However, Worch soon realized that while he enjoyed the subjects, he did not feel comfortable teaching or working with children.

Compared to Doom, Worch felt Quake was rather weak on the gameplay side. There was less variety between Monsters, falling short of what made Doom great in his eyes, while the Weapons were highly inconsistent. The main reason he stuck around was due to the 3d environments and the online Deathmatch capabilities. He felt the jump to 3d was relatively intuitive due to experience with six degrees of freedom with the Virtual Reality Studio. Using Quest, he had to modify the levels afterwards in a text editor to fix textures.

Hanging on the IRC chat rooms in 1996 and 1997, Worch witnessed many individuals being offered jobs during the birth of a fledgling industry of 3d level design. He soon got offered a job with Ritual Entertainment, a company formerly known as Hipnotic Software, a recent company that had gotten big by creating Quake Mission Pack 1: Scourge of Armagon. His interview was attending QuakeCon '97.

Another opportunity Worch had was with Legend Entertainment. Using an early version of the Unreal Engine, the team consisted of level designers working together over the internet to create The Wheel of Time. However, while highly experienced with Quake editors, Worch found that Unreal's editors were too difficult to use. Not only were a lot of tools missing due to the early age of the engine, but Unreal was his first exposure to subtractive level design. His experience with Quake was additive, levels were built in a void, while Unreal created levels by carving out air brushes from a solid vacuum. This resulted in him abandoning the project.

Worch moved to Dallas, Texas in 1998 to join Ritual Entertainment. This was quite difficult due to having a job that was too new to be understood by the immigration authorities. Ritual had little experience on the matter, resulting in the CEO attempting to get Worch a student visa. This fell through, but Ritual found a immigration lawyer used by a lot of European migrants to get into the United States to join game companies. Using an O-1 Visa, Worch relied upon the testimonies of other employees and numerous fans of his past levels to get into America. Due to being hired by Ritual, Worch never really got involved with Quake II editing, though he felt the game was better than the original Quake.

Worch became one of the main designers of SiN. He was responsible for all the cutscenes in the game, the first in-game cinematics found in a major FPS game. Outside of the intro, Worch felt most of his work during this era wasn't his best, though it was a learning experience. This game was criticized heavily due to long loading times, plus was buried under the popularity of the much better received Half-Life.

After creating SiN, Worch left Ritual Entertainment. He had lost his best friend to another company, the game Ritual was planning to work on didn't sound promising (Heavy Metal FAKK2), and he also felt burned out. Worch went to Legend Entertainment in Virginia to work on Unreal II. However, due to the game being slow to production and having the need to get acquainted with the engine he struggled with in the past, Worch worked on the Unreal Mission Pack: Return to Na Pali. A quick project, Return to Na Pali was intended to reuse a lot of the content from the original Unreal. He was responsible for the maps Approaching UMS Prometheus, Glathriel Village Part 1, Glathriel Village Part 2, Inside UMS Prometheus, and UMS Prometheus. Worch feels his maps fell short of the original game in terms of grandiosity, primarily due to his focus on realism at the time. Unlike most others, he did not enjoy Bluff Eversmoking due to a lack of realism in the environment.

After Return to Na Pali, Worch worked on Wheel of Time once more, creating several levels for that game before tackling Unreal II.

Quake Levels

 * Armageddon 1
 * Armageddon 2

Links

 * Website