Posts by Thrik

  • Crysis 3

    Holy ****ing **** mother ****er!!!!!

    That looks incredible. Once again, other engines show their wares then Crytek comes along and bums them in the gob. Just some wonderful technology here, which combined with fantastic art is mindblowing. I think Crytek is positioning itself very well to have a huge stake in the engine market for the next generation.

  • Insurgency

    To be more clear, I think this definitely has the potential to be a success for you guys Steppenwolf — there's an established fan base, an experienced team, and a very strong foundation to work with. The key is marketing it well, which is harder than ever in today's competitive market where anything short of BF or CoD has to go to great lengths to convince people they're worth a try.

    I think the main issue Pogo meant to highlight was the same one I did, which is that it doesn't look too different in the video. That isn't at all to say you guys haven't done a lot of great work, it's just that it needs to be shown a little more carefully and in a way that gets people drooling.

  • MapCore Job Census

    Oh that is really sad. Genuinely feel bad as hell about that, I was really hoping to enjoy that game in the end (Big pirate fan!). I guess funding development really is hard as you hear in the headlines, no?

    Hopefully a savvy company will see the potential and pick it up so your work can be completed (even if not with the original team), so all that hard work and particularly that beautiful art doesn't evaporate into memory. At the very least, lots of great portfolio material right?

  • Insurgency

    Quote from Steppenwolf

    Yea just like Black Mesa looks exactly like HL1, right? I mean obviously we didn't reinvent Insurgency but like 80% of the maps and art have been replaced by now with something a little more modern. Target is 100% for art and there are two old maps in the game which have been heavily altered and updated. There are limits to what can be done in Source engine and with a small team but it's not at all like we try to resell the old mod for cash. It's a new game properly where a lot of work and ressources went into.

    Gameplay wise it's a little faster and more focussed than the mod.

    Right now i'm a little torn between the many "meh fuck you guys. looks exactly the same" and "fuck you guys that isn't Insurgency anymore" comments

    I take it you get paid in vegetables by your employer? They are ripping you off dude because i bought like half a dozen of your companies games with real currency.

    I never really played Insurgency so I'm not sure exactly how similar this is, but I did notice there's not very much in the video that makes it clear what's changed, what new features are in place, and basically why people should be interested. From the perspective of someone who casually watched a few Insurgency trailers and am now watching this, it does actually look like the same game — genuinely not trying to be an ass when I say this.

    Obviously your existing fans are going to appreciate the differences as they know the game inside out, but for those of us who might actually pick this up you need to provide some reasons to want to give it a try rather than spin up another round of Battlefield 3 or Call of Duty. I'll probably give it a try anyway, just thinking of the broader audience really who may very well have no idea what Insurgency is or was and will just think 'looks a bit like CoD but not as pretty'.

    It does look good though, freshness concerns aside. I was quite surprised to see such a great-looking large environment a bit further into the video, considering the engine. Definitely getting a lot out of Source.

  • Black Mesa Source

    I agree Rick, I feel really bad for the team because an unnecessary amount of emphasis has been put on the issue. Due to it being the only sliver of gameplay that's been released after years of waiting people are going very OCD about it and almost reacting violently on YouTube and other forums. And as we all know the people who're happy often say nothing at all, so it really sucks for the BMS guys that they're just going to see this torrent of bitching.

    Most of it looks absolutely sublime, which is why this voice thing has been exaggerated somewhat — there's actually nothing else to criticise. The voice is a relatively minor complaint, and in my particular case I've just tried to explain why I think a fairly small change (re-implementing the radio distortion) would make a huge difference. In a way I'm trying to turn the retarded 'LOL THE VOICES FUCKIN SUCKKKKK' bullshit into some kind of meaningful constructive feedback. By no means will it ruin my experience if they don't change it, it's just something I'd like to see.

  • Black Mesa Source

    Quote from Evert

    Looks great! A bit dark and all, but impressive stuff anyways. I think the VO would be good enough with some mixing/distortion, the acting itself is not worse than your average shooter anyways.

    Yeah that might just be it, actually. Those old grunt sounds are pretty much iconic because of the almost scarily loud distortion, the lack of humanity to the voices is important to capturing the mood of a well-organised and brutal attack force IMO. If they got some of that back in there it'd improve things no end. I really hope this feedback makes its way to the sound guys because I've already seen huge volumes of complaints about it around the web so it's not just a few picky bastards. The voice acting is actually good and sounds like professional work to me, it's just not used quite right.

    One of the BMS guys made a post about the footage here:

    http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/s ... stcount=83

    I do feel bad for them, after all they've been working on this for a long time and this footage isn't necessarily the #1 thing you would show off to shock-and-awe people prior to the game's release. It looks good don't get me wrong, but HL1 obviously has some sexier moments that would be more ideal for hype purposes.

  • Black Mesa Source

    It's definitely worth bringing up criticisms though because if there're glaring issues I'm guessing the team would like to figure them out before this thing they've worked on for a crazy amount of time is released. It's easy to not see unpopular choices in an amateur project as the processes usually aren't there, and when a limited testing group is used they're often too polite to be honest about things that'll take a lot of work to fix.

    Seen it myself many times, and nothing's worse than that moment when your release is overshadowed by a multitude of relatively minor issues that the general public is all too willing to complain about (see the video's YouTube comments). If I were the dev team I'd be making damn sure the game is tested by quite a number of objective players and not friends/family, to make sure they get honest feedback where it's needed.

    It really does look mostly great though, fantastic work. I have no doubt this will be a superb re-imagining of HL1 and can't wait to get my hands on it. I'd like it if things like the above were fixed because it'll make the experience that much sweeter for me.

  • Black Mesa Source

    Yeah, not keen on those new voices. When I heard them they immediately stood out as the kind of thing that would sound great in a kid's action cartoon, but not a relatively serious universe like Half-Life — it's just too hammy. Not bad voice acting so much as inappropriate, the tone feels all wrong and this is why I'm guessing the team will be getting a lot of comments about them.

    If the originals aren't being used because of quality issues (a lot of HL1's sounds were admittedly quite heavily compressed and shit) then the replacements should definitely be faithful. I can't actually remember if this particular exchange was in HL1 but it doesn't blend in very well either way. HL1's sound design was one of its strongest assets and it's not something that should be tinkered with too much IMO.

  • MapCore Job Census

    Quote from e-freak

    isn't this directly opposite of the Crytek Office?

    Not anymore! I did live literally a minute or so away, but I moved to a swankier place towards the end of last year on the other side of the city centre (although it's only a 10-minute walk from where I was before as Nottingham's a relatively small city).

    I always meant to randomly just appear ominously with my face pressed up against the window, although I'd need some steps as you have annoying anti-snopping windows.

  • Planetside 2

    I'm still pumped as hell for this, but I'm going to wait for the final release. I went through more than a fair share of technical issues and balance problems way back with the original PlanetSide beta, and while the game ended up fairly terrific upon release it was a serious slog getting there.

    Not that I discourage anyone else from giving it a go, as the more you guys complain — make sure you report concerns because they did genuinely act on feedback with PS1 even if it meant relatively dramatic changes — the better the game will ultimately be.

  • Source 2 in the works?

    It's good to know that this is actually happening, although it should be no surprise that now we're eight years(!) past Source's debut an official next version is in the works.

    I suspect the thing most people will be excited about is the new development tools, which I believe were announced last year but are still in the works. It'd make sense to have a whole new version of the engine to go along with them, so hopefully we'll see some significant advances forward graphically and physics-wise because even though Source is very competent for the style Valve has used in its newer games, it's sometimes easy to forget that it was a cutting-edge and technologically stunning engine when it first came along — not just graphically, but in terms of materials and physics too.

    Of course the game has moved on big time, and Valve must sometimes wish they'd gotten themselves a bigger slice of the game engine pie considering they were once synonymous with amateur development. Source Filmmaker is an unexpected but useful glimpse of how their next generation of tools might look and feel though, blending power with accessibility, which is promising IMO.