Posts by Thrik

Quote from blackdog

No i only tried the very first one on PC, way after I got used to Splinter Cell and haven't been able to get to the elevator at the beginning of the game, even though I had done all the training rooms :$

I know that MGS has all these little bits like the box/barrel… but still I find incomprehensible this balloon mechanic: what does it do, what's the purpose? Score?

I can understand and appreciate the lol factor of catapulting some guy down a cliff with the decoy-mine, but you cannot justify that guards standing like 20m away don't react to that.

Unless I'm missing something the most obvious use of the balloon is that it allows you to get rid of enemy bodies, which is always one of the main priorities in an MGS game considering that one being spotted results in serious trouble. I'm assuming that it's somehow limited in terms of uses to prevent the game becoming too easy, though.

I think the original MGS has aged pretty badly because the camera makes it incredibly difficult to play properly (the GameCube-only remake of MGS1 is far better because it allows first-person aiming like the later games), but I would say that upon release every MGS game has had absolutely excellent gameplay mechanics and indeed that is one of the main reasons why the series is consistently so popular. Splinter Cell and Hitman might be good but I've always found them significantly behind MGS in terms of fun stealth that makes you feel empowered yet vulnerable.

I don't know how MGS5 will pan out, but I've personally always loved the UI in the previous MGS games. I didn't find MGS4's UI cluttered at all, all you had on screen were your health/stamina, a mini-map if you had that tool enabled, and icons showing which gadget/weapon you had equipped (nothing would appear otherwise). MGS always shows you the basics in a really elegant way IMO.

Went and checked out the iPhone 6 today, I have to say the iPhone 6 Plus is definitely too big unless you have huge hands. I literally couldn't get my thumb within a couple of centimetres of the top of the screen, it's pretty much a dealbreaker for one-hand users.

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There's a cutscene here:

And gameplay:

I have to say, this is looking god damn spectacular. I agree with HP that it's perhaps not hitting Battlefield 4 and Far Cry 4 levels of visual richness, but the scale and stealth-orientated gameplay that's being put together looks amazing. I'm also loving the fact that we're going back to the jungle like in MGS3, which remains my favourite in the series.

Gameplay has always been the real star of Metal Gear Solid despite its insane stories and cutscenes getting most of the attention, with every single one having impeccable mechanics IMO and genuinely pushing things forward. It's looking like MGS5 is going to be a seriously immersive experience and I just can't wait to be let loose with these environments and gameplay options.

I'm actually really excited about the fact that this is going to run at 1080p and 60 FPS on the new-gen consoles. Considering that there are still relatively few games actually doing this — and that MGS itself hasn't done this since MGS2 — I think it's going to make a much bigger difference than how astonishing it looks in screenshots. Also, is it me or do these characters look excellent? I'm borderline attracted to that woman in the first video. And Snake and Ocelot just look hardcore.

Was given some sponge cakes at work and asked to use my imagination for cake Wednesday.

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For this interview I got together with Paul 'PaulH' Haynes. A seasoned Senior Level Designer who worked on games like Crysis 3 and the DiRT franchise. He's currently busy with Homefront 2: The Revolution. From the asphalt of Codemasters to the newly formed Dambuster Studios. Read about his journey and enjoy a breakdown of his Crysis 3 multiplayer map 'Airport'.

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Haha yeah I'm sure we talked about this, but it does still look great and I can't wait to watch it. Holy shit that trailer though, skip to 2:32 of this...

I've been chasing down the cause of this and it looks like it's due to DNS connectivity issues with the datacentre the domain is on. The forum itself has been fine, but some haven't been able to access it because of that. I'm pretty pissed off about it because this should basically never happen with DNS, so I'm moving our DNS hosting to a more redundant service.

Quote from 2d-chris

really really WIP - spent a few hours in it so far, maps called DM-Helium - tis a helium harvesting facility in low orbit connected with a space elevator shizzle me dizzle

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Dat lighting.

BTW if anyone does open another thread for their WIP stuff rather than posting it here can you at least reply here when you've updated it? Makes it much easier to follow if everything is in one place. I'd just post it here though unless you're doing like daily updates...

So I got this for the PS4 the other day, and I have to say that thus far I haven't really experienced any technical issues whatsoever. I know there have been multiple patches to sort shit out on the PS4 so I'm guessing they did the trick.

As for the game itself, I think I like it more than Battlefield 3. The maps just seem a bit more my thing, very open and epic unlike BF3's multitude of corridor levels. The weapons, vehicles, gameplay really are just typical Battlefield and not very different from every single other one I've played — but it works, so why change it?

This is the first time I've experienced Battlefield in my living room and I'm liking it. Having my sound system blasting out the unsurprisingly excellent audio and everything up on the big screen is great, and although I was seriously struggling with the stick aiming I've now had somewhat of an epiphany and realised that I've been pretty much using analogue sticks wrong my whole life, lol... I'm now getting pretty good with them.

Everything else (crouching, eagle sights, firing, movement, vehicles) actually feels better on a PS4 pad, and it's a big plus over a keyboard that you can adjust the exact speed that you move with the stick. For example, making your tank crawl along really slowly to avoid detection doesn't require that you have a finger spasm on the movement key, you just move the stick a tiny bit. The same applies to crawling and proning, so you can move along really slowly to avoid being spotted.

Basically I'm surprised but pleased that playing it on a PS4 feels much the same as when I started playing BF3, BF2142, BF2, and BF1942 on PC for the first time. They've nailed the feel, in fact I suspect that due to decisions they've made with the UI it feels even better on console now. I'm sure this has infuriated a lot of PC players but that's how it goes I guess.

Overall it's good, if what you want is another Battlefield game that plays like all the rest. Also I am as excellent with jets as ever:

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I can't wait to see what everyone comes up with! Maybe I can do a UE4 version of my classic Day of Defeat map.

Thiago 'Minos' Klafke — MapCore’s top poster and one of its longest-serving members — recently surprised us with his excellent scene release for Unreal Engine 4. A perfect opportunity for us to pick his brain and get an insight into his amazing talent, a talent that landed him a job at Blizzard all those years ago. Prepare for a lot of big, beautiful images and enjoy!

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After seeing the widespread disappointment with Godus, my hopes of anything resembling a worthy sequel to the magnificent Black & White 2 were dashed. While seeing if any other god games are on the horizon I came across The Universim, which I have to say has one sensational trailer:

It's not just the trailer though, the game really does sound splendid after reading through its official site. I'm delighted that the funding was a runaway success, now I can only hope the actual game comes close to living up to its potential.

Seriously, just give me a god damn god/simulation game that isn't a massive let-down for a change.

I think 1080p should be an absolute requirement, and if developers want to get better graphics in without sacrificing frame rates then they should figure out how to accomplish that or forgo the extras. I don't even consider this being about graphics, I think of it as hitting a minimum deployment requirement.

1080p is simply the best resolution for cross-device quality without being a massive burden on hardware. While some say there's not that much difference between sub-1080p and 1080p, bear in mind that it's completely relative. Just like nobody in their right mind should want 640x480 on a 21-inch monitor, nobody in their right mind should want 720p on a 50-inch screen — the difference is noticeable, and it becomes dramatically more so as the screen size increases. Viewing distance is a factor too.

What happened to the days when programmers could ingeniously exploit the hardware and architecture of platforms to get visuals way beyond what people considered possible out of them? I might be wrong but it feels like there's more of a temptation to just say 'ah fuck it we'll drop the resolution or the frame rate' rather than figure out the performance bottlenecks and create magic.

In my opinion 720p is downright blurry on my 42-inch TV that I sit relatively close to. The clarity and aesthetic improvement of 1080p is immediately apparent and it makes me feel much more immersed because it looks closer to what I perceive as real (i.e. not blurry and full of jagged lines). There isn't a single style of game that wouldn't benefit from the clarity of 1080p.

The gameplay and graphics should be worked on however the developers see fit while maintaining this baseline resolution at the target frame rate.

Agreed. Stfu lad.

Considering that this is a Remedy game I can't say that I was expecting anything other than a shooter (cover is more like a standard feature of shooters nowadays IMO rather than a genre in its own right). While the gameplay doesn't look massively out there, the same could probably be said about virtually any segment of Max Payne or Alan Wake if you were to take a similarly sized piece. And I loved those games mostly because of their atmosphere, characters, presentation, and story — not the gameplay.

The key will be how the time mechanics are used, because that's always been Remedy's thing and this is a variation that I don't believe I've seen in another game. Both Max Payne and Alan Wake extensively featured bullet time, but these time jitters and freezes have the potential to open up some seriously sweet-ass gameplay. The whole bit where he goes onto the bridge was cool.

Of course, why they wouldn't show such stuff in the first real gameplay footage I'm not sure. Maybe it's simple caution, not wanting to demonstrate something that looks too weird in an era when people are still big into shooters. Whatever the case, if Remedy delivers on what it's traditionally been good at then this should still be worth watching out for.

For fucks sake.

Seems like a great opportunity for programmers at least. Maybe with time they'll expand, who knows. Nice to see anything at all like this happening in the UK though...

Jesus Christ the last episode of Hannibal. What an absolutely sublime series with some of the most fucked up sound design and visuals I've ever seen.

While Lenz 'penE' Monath is still studying at university, he's already made his mark on the games industry with his work on Batman: Arkham Origins and Dreadnought. This interview offers some great insights into getting started in the industry as an intern, not to mention a useful prop tutorial supported by downloadable source files.

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