User:Deathkiller

Ian "Deathkiller" Boswell is an artist, animator, web designer, and software programmer with a Master' s degree in Psychology who believes strongly in designing software (including games/mods/maps) around the user's perspective while giving special attention to underlying subconscious factors and drives.

Currently he is working on a series of maps for Portal called "Hetzchase_Nailway".

He has been quoted as saying, "Hetzchase_Nailway is basically something like portal the way I would have personally imagined it based on that initial inspiration I got from the trailer. The puzzles are designed to take the player on a journey more than anything else. Rather than relying heavily on narration as a motivator I prefer using music to set moods and themes of the various puzzles."

Hetzchase_Nailway includes custom voice acting (Done by Ian) and various custom textures and atypical portal puzzle elements including scripted NPCs, Zombies, Weapons, and music with lyrics.

Developer History

It should be noted that Ian released an earlier map for portal called "Hammercake" which was his first attempt using hammer to create a map. Previously Ian has had experience using Bryce, Maya, Adobe Flash, and Forge (The Marathon Map Editor). Before learning of Portal he had no experience playing any Valve games and, due to growing up as a Mac user, he had been a long-time fan of Bungie's game series starting with Pathways Into Darkness. He stopped considering Bungie to be "true" game developers after he was highly offended by Halo 2. Giving up on gaming altogether he focused on studying the workings of the human mind. In 2008, though, he said, "Portal, Team Fortress 2, and the Half Life series have completely renewed my faith in the video game industry. I just wish I had learned of them sooner."

As a child, after creating his first custom physics engine using visual basic and hexadecimal he was quoted as saying, "I can play god!"