Posts by Izuno

  • HL2 Map Design Question: Brush or Mesh?

    lol.

    another way of thinking of this is that to make HL2 maps you need to know brushing, meshing and texture artistry. if you are making a super high quality map, which of course all mapcorians do, that requires a lot of work. i forsee that a good map designer-layout expert will design the base gameplay of a map (layout and brushes), work with a good modeller who can crank out required meshes relatively quickly, and work with a 2d artist to create textures and maybe skin the meshes too. of course you can do it all yourself, except it will just take more time.

    back on topic,

    For now don't worry about how much meshing you need to do and exactly what objcets you need to mesh and what you need to brush. best advice is to just experiment once you get the new engine and SDK and i'm sure you'll quickly get the feel for it. as always, best way to learn is to experiment and just "do" it and don't worry so much about planning your level 100% before you even get the new engine.

    oh...this is all speculation. I don't map in HL2 yet so i defer to Zaphod.

  • August YTD PC sales numbers

    keep in mind these are NPD's USA TRST market estimations for 2004 YTD.

    And yes these art NPD's estimations for total US sales. What does that mean? NPD gets scantron reports from most major US PC game retailers (EB, Gamestop, BestBuy, etc, but NOT Walmart). They estimated that their scantron data represents roughly 60 to 70% of the market. That estimation is not always correct and supposedly they modify their estimations now on a per title basis but they aren't required to publicize their formulae. Some titles that do much better or worse at Walmart have grossly skewed numbers in NPD's market estimation.

    For example, I reran that Jan-Aug 2004 PC games report except to not estimate total market and just give the raw scantron data reported by all the participating retailers. Doom3's number came out to 325,466 units, which is 84% of the estimated number of 387,460 (keep in mind, these numbers are for Jan 1 thru Aug 31 2004).

    So to come full circle on Wacko's post, yes, these numbers to not include any sales outside North America. They are are for the "USA" market only (which means USA and Canada).

  • August YTD PC sales numbers

    NPD just came out with their total US market estimation of Year-to-Date sales through the end of August.

    Here are the top PC game sales of 2004 so far. Keep in mind these are not life to date sales for product that shipped before Jan 2004:

    Doom 3 at 387,460 units (late July 04 launch)

    BF Vietnam at 362,976 units (March 04 launch)

    UT 2k4 at 249,062 units (March 04 launch)

    City of Heroes at 246,688 units (April 04 launch)

    Call of Duty at 230,362 units (Oct 03 launch)

    Far Cry at 213,252 units (March 04 launch)

    Age of Mythology at 199,327 units (Oct 02 launch...wow almost 2 yrs ago)

    Rise of Nations at 184,540 units (May 03)

  • Stage 2 STALKER MP beta coming...sign up here space limited

    Quote from Crackerjack

    Am I to late ??

    technically yes, you are too late. However, my UK product manager on stalker is assessing the total number of "pre-registration" slots and I may get a few more allocated that I can fill. If i can't get you in, then i'll try to let you guys know when the signup is for the public slots. there will probably be around 5000 of those, so if you act fast you'll get in.

  • Stage 2 STALKER MP beta coming...sign up here space limited

    ok the list was sent. thanks for everyone who responded. I should hear about whether those of you from Europe who responded will automatically get on the list, as I don't know if their pre-signups have closed yet or not.

    For anyone who doesn't get on the pre-signup list for whatever reason, there will be a window for the public to sign up which you should get a good shot at. Once I get wind of when that is I'll try to post it at Mapcore as soon as I can.

    As for when the actual stage 2 beta starts, right now it planned for "fall 2004" which is right around the corner. Keep your eyes open. I'll post public info here before anywhere else (urm unless we get some big uber deal with GameSpot or IGN or other major gaming sites)...erm...marketing...yeah...

  • Remake HL textures

    Quote from kleinluka

    doom 3 also uses like 3 original textures in the whole game.

    floor, wall, ceiling.

    Doom 3 seemed more about the lighting and animation. i liked the skinning on some of the monsters, but mostly cause of the bumpage/normalage...didn't really notice the highressnessage.

  • Remake HL textures

    Quote from Zaphod

    hl2 goes for texture resolution, where doom 3 goes for having every texture bump mapped.

    yes that was one of the first things i noticed about D3 textures...the bump mapping. The looked cool, but i started to realize the resulution was less than HL2 (from what i've seen) or Stalker.

    Um...so what about high res textures with bump mapping or normal mapping or whatever? (reminder...i consider myself a "texture engineer" rather than "texture artist"...ahem)

  • Stage 2 STALKER MP beta coming...sign up here space limited

    Quote from kleinluka

    so is this like some sort of playtest thing that we have to take part in or....?

    it's like any other beta test. You play...you report bugs as you want. Twould be similar to the CS:source beta right now. Play it, have fun...use the in game reporting tool to report bugs and stuff. Many games have these types of multiplayer tests. Stage 3 will be the same except the code will be much closer to final and it will be open to everyone.

    Quote from Mazy

    wut abut europe?

    btw, we're getting some ukranian guy from the stalker team on our team next week ~

    i can take names from people who live outside North America and pass it on to our international product managers in the UK. No promise that will get you in, but I will pass it on.

    who are you getting?

  • Stage 2 STALKER MP beta coming...sign up here space limited

    Everyone,

    THQ/GSC will be conducting stage 2 of the STALKER multiplayer beta "soon". It will be limited to under 10,000 total people worldwide (exact numbe TBD). I have some slots for "hardcore gamers in North America." If you want in, I can put you on the list but you have to respond soon.

    If interested, please reply to this thread with:

    First Name

    Last Name

    Company you work for if you work in the industry.

    Email address

    Street address

    First come first serve. I don't know how many spots I can fill but if you don't get in this way, and you still want to join, there will be an opportunity to sign up with the general public. News about that will come later and be at all the major gaming news sites.

  • Quake 4 Preview Coming Soon (edit: ....or not....)

    Quote from Taylor

    It's all come from a magazine cover not on the PC Gamer website, most people on the HI forums are claiming that it's fake.

    my gut tells me this is fake because our PR people have been talking with PC Gamer about the november issue and got no indication of anything big....however PR people aren't always the best judge of that.

    maybe someone should look closer at that image and determine if it's fake. looks fake to me because they don't design backgrounds that simple usually. however this could just be concept of an actual cover and not the final image.

    :/