Posts by FrieChamp

  • 500 additional jobs for Ubisoft in Quebec

    Quote from seir

    Adrian Chmielarz (Bulletstorm guy) said that mobile is dead and somehow he's right. Mobile is dead for small punks, big players are in the business, there's more than 50 new games per day. Mobile is not a green island now but indie games are. To get attention on Steam Greenlight you need to make a really nice game, know how to do it. There's talent, idea and effort needed, just like on mobiles but the there's not so much active devs and the audience is bigger so the cash is better.


    That's my opinion, I dunno, maybe I'm wrong. I just hope that masterminds from giant corporations won't abandon AAA or will stay on PC/consoles...


    Steam has ~40 Million players. Between September 2012 and March 2013 1.4 Million Android smartphones have been activated daily. That isn't even counting iOS. According to Flurry 39% of time spent in smartphone apps is spent in games (67% on tablets!).There is definitely a discovery issue on mobile and I'm sure that the average gamer on Steam is willing to spend more money on a game than the average mobile user, but the audience is bigger on mobile (and growing). Ubi wants in on the action, too.

  • Your Game Design Workflow?

    Quote from Sentura

    My workflow is as following: write down, playtest, analyse. Rinse-repeat until PERFECT. Don't start new stuff until you have absolutely nailed what you were going for, or, alternatively, scrapped it. If you are looking to create a vertical slice type of thing where you don't want to spend time on mechanics such as jumping etc., put in a dummy version so you can see how it works in an entirety of a game. BUT remember that it is a dummy version and if it doesn't work in conjunction with other mechanics, reiterate on it until it does or scrap it.


    For level design, do blockouts and scripts instead of writing stuff down, repeat above. DON'T do any art at all until you know it's working. I generally like using metrics for this, but if none are available go for player feedback/crits, especially if your players are fellow designers.


    Not sure if I understood that first paragraph correctly, but that sounds to me more like a prototype/whitebox-type of scenario. A "vertical slice" is to me a slice of the game which sets the benchmark for the rest of the game and therefore doesn't use dummy assets (what seir said). If that's what you mean - forget what I just said. I just want to avoid that Tutorial Doctor gets confused.

  • Your Game Design Workflow?

    Quote from seir

    I see gigantic differences between programmers and artists. They have completely different workflows, ideas, plans etc. You're asking about game design, right? Not level design but GAME design? Here's my "workflow":


    Writing, writing and writing. All the ideas should land in game design document. This is the first phase where stupid ideas will go out. Writing about stuff you haven't planned forces you to thing about whole game, not the one feature you started with. It's a good idea to find >REAL< unique selling points. With that list you'll see that few ideas are not enough to make the game interesting. You need to write more - each mechanic, puzzle or plot stuff, do lots of sketches, test it "in brain" and when your GDD is ready you can try to make some prototypes in editor.


    Writing down forces you to think things through and to be more specific, but there's a risk: the danger of spending too much time designing and planning things on paper that turn out to be not-fun or not feasible in practice. The longer you spend time with your idea in your head or on paper the more likely you will fall in love with it and lose objectivity. The lean, iterative approach, where you test ideas and involve others early on in the process seems like the healthiest method to me. So yeah, writing down ideas = good but if you've got 76 pages in your GDD and zero action on your screen - you've gone too far

  • Breaking Bad

    Quote from Puddy

    Great ep once again. Having just seen the Dexter finale it is obvious that Breaking Bad is so far ahead of everything else that it is silly.


    Dexter really jumped the shark in the last season. I'm afraid to watch any more episodes because I'm afraid it will destroy my memories of what once was a great show


    But yeah...like everyone else said: bring on the BB finale!

  • Upgrading a computer for the esteemed purpose of experiencing fine games

    Quote from Thrik

    My current computer is a big, sweating mess that's been running on fumes for some time now. My hard drive is almost full, games like Anno 2070 (sweet-looking SimCity alternative by the way) bring it to a grinding halt, and it is essentially well and truly spent. Time to upgrade.

    I've done some research and shopping, and have found a wonderful selection of parts I believe will serve as excellent ingredients for the new hub of Thrik. But have I made the right decisions? Could I get far better performance by spending just a little more? Do I deserve a slap for my choices?

    It's always hard deciding what the cut-off point should be, where satisfactory performance is attained without breaking the bank. So without further ado, I present:

    I'm yet to choose a case but it'll just be a ~£50 one, and I already have a good power supply and DVD writer. No interest in overclocking, but I've gone for a single 8GB RAM stick so I can go up to 16GB easily at some point.Mainly just wondering if I've made wise decisions about the above, validate or crush me — it's all good.


    Hey Thrik, did you make any changes to your shopping list in the end? How satisfied are you with your new rig? I'm thinking about upgrading my PC, too. This one's from 2008

  • MapCore Job Census

    Work on one of the highest rated games in years - get laid off.


    That's some shitty news guys. One month ago 2K announced that the game passed the 4 Mil. sales mark, so that wasn't the problem either. These periodic layoffs are really uncool. If it wasn't for your splendid resumes I'd be really upset, but there is little doubt that a different studio is going to pick you up very soon! Hang in there!