Posts by FrieChamp

Quote from capone_adam

I'm doing a report at university which explores the difference between a trailer for a game and a trailer for a movie. If anyone could answer the following questions it would be of great help, thanks.1. What is more likley to make you want to buy a game, a trailer featuring mostly shots of actual gameplay or a trailer with mostly cinematic shots?

2. Do you bother downloading game trailers or are they something you only watch on TV/Cinema?

3. How important is it that the trailer shows any ingame graphics at all?

4. In order of importance, 1 being most and 5 being least...which of these aspects of a game trailer are most important.

Humour

Action

Emotion

Visuals

Story

5. A popular tactic in movie trailers is to end on a cliff hanger, where you are wanting to find out what happens next. Does this work with games?, would you buy a game to find out what happens next?

Thats it, thanks again and look forward to hearing your thoughts. Also if you have any info on trailers for games feel free to share!

Display More

1. Cinematic shots, but no pre-rendered stuff please.

2. I download them. What I would REALLY love to see are more game trailers in the cinema.

3. Very. Many games have awesome rendered sequences but the gameplay itself sucks, that's why these kind of trailers for games don't tell me anything at all about the game (= I don't trust them).

4. Emotion, Action, Visuals, Story, Humour (almost like KFS ;O )

5. Sure why not?

What about clocks, knives, banks and neutrality?

It's an alternative intro for FarCry and a "tech demo", so you shouldn't expect an oscar winning storyline (last time I checked the plots of the 3dmark benchmarks weren't that amazing either).

The story for FarCry was indeed rather weak though.

Oh fuck yeah, that's looking nice man! Finally someone's getting the lighting right!

Looks like you can handle the tools, now you gotta come up with good gameplay. I agree that nice z-axis action is critical for a fun hl deathmatch map and I don't see any really interesting spots for good gameplay yet. Because I think we've had enough of running around in flat, open, prop filled areas with the gravity gun.

Oh and I forgot to mention that one of the major requirements for a succesful collaborative work on a game is, that the designers shouldn't be goddamn morons

Quote from Zaphod

that just sounds like bad planning to me. If you channel everything through a concept artist and designer, then those problems don't happen.

This pretty much sums it up what I was aboutto reply to Hourences' post.

I don't know where you have got these bad experiences from, a real games company or a mod team? Either way, if there is no planning the project will run into chaos.

Before I started at Crytek, I knew that game companies need to plan and write down a few more things than MOD developers need to do before starting a MOD project, but when I saw what goes down to paper before anyone touches an editor, I was quite stunned.

Usually you can expect from a professional company with qualified leads, that all assets which will be needed for levels get written down and scheduled so there is no big hassle during the production phase.

KFS: Yeah he was the lead artist on FarCry, but I've never met him. He left before I started here.

The "level"-designers here have lots of influence on the "game"-design, that's why there is no seperated game-design department which is a cool thing imo.

The designers layout the map and build it. This includes the terrain outdoors, the interiors, object placement, lighting, AI and general scripting. From what I heard of the other designers, the levels in FarCry often turned into collaborative projects at some point. For example an AI programmer adjusts the AI or helps with the script, a different designer polishes the indoor areas etc.

The designers only make temporary models and textures sometimes to test stuff. I think it would be nice to throw in self made objects in the levels at some point of time (and actually nobody prevents you from doing it) but considering the amount of work you already have with the maps in the current system I'm kinda glad how it is.

Quote

We do model terrain manually, which I feel gives much stronger control than any heightmap terrain does, but it can be a little tedious at first.

I think it really depends on the scale of the terrain. It probably works out for Doom3 and Quake4 but if you got huge terrain masses you would have to spend years making the terrain.

Due to the steady increase of detail in levels, also the role of the level-designer is changing and handled differently in each company. The level-designers at Crytek for example focus on general game-design and the design of the missions, but are not involved in the creation of objects, textures etc. It's a cooperation between the design- and art department.

I know Valve did it this way during the development of Half-Life 2 as well, on the other hand Troika (concluding from what I have seen from Zaphod) let level-designers make their own content for the levels (the interesting aspect here is that both games use the same engine, but the development process is handled quite differently).

What about Gearbox, IO, Raven and other companies? What would aspiring level-designers here would like to do when they start to work in a professional company? Which way is the best?

Getting on the mapcore frontpage is a little harder than being pimped on "CRUST" or "Fartpit" (no offense )

The map seems to be on a good way though, one of the best custom source maps I have seen so far, keep it up!

Since you are apparently in need for support in every position merging the two projects might be a good idea unless they are n00bz and/or assholes.

Spellbinder: I think he refered to Nexus (the topic starter)

Nexus your retarded reviews start to be annoying...

gj on the map zyndrome, haven't tested it yet, but will do soon!

Ironicilicious indeed!

Quote from Urban

posers... how many of you remember playing the bf42 wake demo when it first came out?..

Me too

The entire purpose of this contest is to supply the HL2 DM players with new high quality maps. Maps Valve didn't have time or the ressources to design. The fact that the gamemode came in a patch and not in the HL2 box speaks for itself. So this is an easy way for Valve to get HL2 deathmatch finished AND to get the community involved! Very smart move.

As RD indicated Valve wouldn't like to see new graphical content because the maps should look like they shipped with the game.

I think a map set in Ravenholm would be great, but that is probably something many people will go for.

I bet you could even convert parts of the official SP map Ravenholm as they are into a deathmatch map.

Yea saw them on Saturday (MAZY SI NOT UP~TO~DAET!?!?!1), I really look forward to that one.

You will be better off by developing that MOD for source, you're turning in the right way. Still the development of the MOD won't be a picnic in the park, so I wish you guys good luck.

If you want to have this thread deleted, contact one of the administrators and they might gonna lock it at least.