Posts by KungFuSquirrel

  • Unknown Worlds: Environment Artist for Natural Selection 2

    Unknown Worlds is currently looking for an environment artist to do level props and textures for Natural Selection 2, a standalone sequel to the RTS/FPS hybrid Half-Life mod released in 2002. We recently released a short teaser and opened pre-orders to great internet response, and need an extra hand to help populate our levels.

    If interested, send your portfolios to [email protected].

    Our teaser (in our proprietary engine):

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    For more info on the project, check out:

    http://www.naturalselection2.com/

    http://www.unknownworlds/com/ns2/

  • Left4Dead 2

    Quote from Defrag

    - Ironically, I think the length of the campaigns has been part of L4D's downfall. More isn't better. Committing to an hour+ long game isn't easy, especially when one team is getting comprehensively beaten. The really long game times are great when you're having an evenly matched game, but when it's a mismatch, it drags on for the losing team. I think most folk are used to 15-20 minute round times. Dip in, dip out. 5 maps and 1 hour+ is too much of a stretch. IMO they'd be better off structuring it around a 3 or 4 map stretch.

    I actually agree with this more than anything. I love playing the game but it's such a time investment to do a full round, especially in VS. I've considered dabbling in a campaign off and on and the number one thing I've decided if I do is it'll be 3 maps instead of 5, and probably shorter ones at that.

  • [HP] ~ 3D Sketchbook Thread

    I think it'd be worth your effort to bump up the polycount for a stronger silhouette. I mean, yeah, it's a crate, but tris are made to be devoured by video cards in new engines; I don't think you're going to bottleneck anything over it. If this were a gameplay object, there's decent odds it could be used for cover, so it's not like there'd be no chance of people getting up close to it.

    For this prop, I think it'd be worth it to carve out the seam where the lid meets the body, as well as the area around the handles on the side. Adding the groove for the split also could help make the latches and hinges stand out more. The normal maps you have are great but those are a couple stronger details that I think could pull off a lot better in 3D.

  • Assassin's Creed 2

    Great teaser, looking forward to the gameplay demo.

    Now that the subtitling complaint has been addressed, I must move on to another nitpick, however... this new guy has all his fingers I thought that was one of the best touches of Altair in AC1, and hoped it'd carry over! You have all failed me

  • SPLIT: L4D Tools Discussion

    Quote from JoshuaC

    I'd like to be able to see the previous version of lighting in the editor so I could made adjustments to it. The lighting preview is nice but it's far from an accurate representation of what it looks like ingame.

    The problem is the second you adjust it, it would have to either re-compile, or totally break everything. Unless they go fully dynamic (which they probably won't anytime soon), the best they can do is give an approximation. The same is true in UnrealEd. Your previous baked lighting is there, but the second you move a light or rebuild an object it's all tossed out and replaced with a dynamic approximation. The important thing is you can actually get the foundation of your lighting where you want it without having to waste time on compile after compile.

    Also I think I'm going to break this subthread out into its own discussion...

  • SPLIT: L4D Tools Discussion

    The last ) is part of the link, which is why it's not showing up.

    The sketchup tool is just a plugin for exporting basic blockins to Hammer. The worst part about using sketchup for quick layout work is you have to re-do it after, so this spares you that. It's not a required tool to make anything.

    Hammer appeared to freeze at first but then ran fine after. The lighting preview mode actually works fairly well now, though it's still not as strong as D3's render mode or UEd's game mode.

  • Assassin's Creed 2

    Awesome news. Thanks for looking into that, and sorry for briefly derailing the thread

    I'm actually surprised I either didn't see that headline when it was announced or saw it and forgot about it. I'm glad they recognized it. There's always a handful of games that don't bother (Perfect Dark Zero had even worse sound balance + no subtitles), but Ubi seemed to be the only major publisher that consistently didn't implement them.

    I still need to go back and finish the first game... my wife and son are heading out of town for a week or so to visit her family later this month; maybe I can crank up the volume a bit then

  • Assassin's Creed 2

    Furyo, while you're addressing cons, how about the total lack of subtitles combined with typical horrid audio mixes in first-party Ubisoft titles?

    I have imperfect hearing thanks to a history of surgery on my left ear (the entire inner workings are artificial, bionic ear!)... the hearing level itself is mostly back to normal, but I still have difficulty isolating sounds. I have to play most games at night after my son is in bed and in the presence of a cable box whose fan spins louder than the 360 DVD drive - Without significantly adjusting VO balance, I need subtitles, since I can't turn it up without waking up the boy.

    Ubi constantly fails to deliver them, or even adequate sound balance options that'll let me max out VO and pull back sound fx and music, which gives me room to turn up the TV enough to hear and understand the VO.

    I have no idea what happened in Rainbow Six: Vegas because I couldn't hear any of it. GRAW? Little easier to follow, but otherwise still difficult. For Assassin's Creed I had to get up off the couch and press my ear up to the TV to hope to hear a word of dialogue in the cinematics, and even that was sketchy. This isn't some stupid fall-asleep-to-the-TV late night volume setting either, this is at somewhat normal TV watching volume.

    Like I said, generally speaking my hearing is close to normal. I can only imagine how infuriating those with more severe hearing disabilities feel trying to play these games.

    I'm only addressing this to you because you work there, btw; I'm looking forward to the game and all but if the sound options are as poor as the first game it'll notably reduce my enjoyment of the game if not my will to purchase it. Yell at people until there are subtitles!

  • Dead Rising 2

    Watch, and be amazed:

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  • OB SDK models emitting light

    Another thought... I don't know how this would look in Source (or your specific scenery), but have you considered baking some lighting into an emissive on the model, and then using just a baseline level of lights for actual lighting (characters, etc.)? If you've got a situation where there's little spotlights on the wall every X units, this might be the best way to go... in theory, you'd get lightmap-quality highlights down the line, but need far fewer lights to illuminate the floors and characters moving through. If you're heavily modeled, this might look better than just letting the vertex lighting handle it.

  • contest rebirth: rise of the mapwars

    Bumping this for mention of NW textures; I have what I think is the last .wad version before the HL2 split. Adam Foster made almost all of them, so I say it's up to him if they're released or not. I'm for it, personally (and I imagine he would be too). Probably something that should have happened a couple years ago.