Dave Riller

For other uses, see Riller (disambiguation).

	This article is a stub. Maybe you can help by expanding it.

Dave Riller
Biographical information
Title(s)	Level Designer Game Designer
Time period	March 1997 – Present
Nickname(s)	DRiller

 

Dave Riller is a game designer at Valve.

Biography

Riller used to write small Dungeons & Dragons-like text adventures (in BASIC) on the Timex-Sinclair ZX-81 back in elementary school. When Doom and Quake came out, he tried his hand some level and game design, which ended up at catching the attention of some people that referred him to Valve.

"Dave started working on games in his spare time back in the days of Doom and Quake. His work caught our eye and we lured him here from the East Coast to work on Half-Life. Now that he’s added code writing to his bag of tricks, Dave works tirelessly to improve the experience of every single diehard Team Fortress 2 fan. That’s right, you know who you are. It’s all for you."

―Source (September 29, 2014)

Work

For Half-Life, he built the underground train system and worked with John Guthrie and Dario Casali on level design.

• Multiplayer maps
  • Datacore
  • Lambda Bunker
  • Rust Mill

Selected gameography

• Half-Life (1998)
• Half-Life: Opposing Force (1999)
• Half-Life: Blue Shift (2001)
• Half-Life 2 (2004)
• Half-Life 2: Episode One (2006)
• Half-Life 2: Episode Two (2007)
• Portal (2007)
• Portal 2 (2011)
• Half-Life: Alyx (2020)

Trivia

Riller's name in the Materials Transport, more visible after throwing explosives at it, as well as image over brightening.

His name appears in Half-Life as an Easter egg on a Sector C locker, as well as hidden in the Materials Transport, under a HECU outpost in the map c2a2c. The latter is removed in the PlayStation 2 port.

Gallery

• 

  Materials Transport.

• 

  Datacore.

• 

  Lambda Bunker.

• 

  Rust Mill.

External links

• Interview with Dave Riller on Planet Half-Life (archived)