Posts by 2d-chris

  • What's going on with your life?

    That's some heavy stuff matey, and I'm no shrink, but the one constant is you must be happy with yourself before you can make others happy around you. Theirs no point kidding yourself, making others happy at the cost of your sanity is ok at the start, but it eventually catches up and makes things even worse. Although I'm not in a complicated situation like you, with a family, I decided to change my life in a big way, very soon - because I was doing my job to make others happy, not myself. I got depressed and was bitter, then I remembered I used to be a much nicer person - so I made the jump and I've felt better ever since.


    I sometimes think of people who have it MUCH worse off, and it gives me a moment of reflection, but to be fair it's not enough in the long run, if there's anything you can do to make yourself happier you should do it.


    Parents that I've spoken with, say that their job is vitally important in their family, not just financially, but as an escape, everyone needs time to themselves away from the responsibilities of being a parent and a husband. Have a night dedicated every week for "friends", go out bowling or to the cinema with friends, without the wife and kids. Balance is the key in any successful relationship.

  • Mapcore's UE4 Whitebox Challenge

    Hehe, I'm not making a metrics map and only measured a few, as with all this stuff, it's more about feel - if you can make a jump somebody else can, if you think it's too tight because you miss a leap then it probably is, unless your intention is a skill jump. If this was a cover shooter, or had complex ai behaviors and animations then you'd need more concrete metrics - but right now in UT I will just experiment.

  • Mapcore's UE4 Whitebox Challenge

    well, even in crysis we use meters, cm's etc, the actual metrics for gameplay are quite lose really you don't have to be cm accurate.


    What really matters is the grid, for alignment, just change it to what works for you like it did in hammer. Textures are obviously still powers of 2, but as a designer you don't need to worry about tiling textures as much as you did in the past.


    I'm whipping a map together for UT, first thing I did was take a look at the game and work out some general rules, how far you can jump, how high you can jump, how how does a ceiling have to be above the player before you hit your head. These are the metrics that matter. Just remember, that they might be changed as this UT is still WIP, hence why doing a white box challenge at this point is a good call.

  • CryEngine

    I have no idea if we even support vehicle navigation with the Navmesh, this is something we didn't use in Crysis 3 or Ryse as far as I know, so I would be surprised if it was supported in the SDK.


    I think this would be a question for crydev forums.

  • Learning UE4

    Really good, always loved good lighting combined with simple geometry, this isn't about looking "real" as far as i'm concerned, but rather well directed in terms of artistic lighting. Real life lighting is usually very boring - hence why we have cinematographers and photographers who specifically look for the "right" kind of light for the scene they are working on, often or not if it can't be done naturally it's added in artificially. Very cool and a step forward.

  • 1080p discussion

    The problem is when eye candy does hurt game play, which happens more than you'd imagine.


    These days, I see games like classics. Chess, Football, Monopoly ... they are very interesting from a game mechanics perspective - they have art in them to compliment the design.


    There are also "experience" based games, which are far more about telling a story, cinematic, world exploration, discovery and wonder. These have a much deeper connection with artistic work, and of course are just as valid as an experience. At this point though, it's definitely easier to give in to pretty visuals at the harm of the experience, because these days we're finding it very hard to come up with unique game play. So, just as the movie industry struggles to make something fresh and new, they complement it with over the top effects. Thank goodness the industries and trends shift about every decade or so.


    My issue is when developers (or mangers) assume you can make the best looking, best story, best mechanical depth and best performance all at the same time, this to me suggests a lack of focus in development - this has nothing to do with developers doing the best they can, it's about understanding what your making and why - it's naive to think that pushing deeply in one direction will have little consequence elsewhere.

  • 1080p discussion

    gameplay ... so a solid consistent frame rate, obviously the frame rate itself depends on the game in question, but tbh you can't go wrong with at least 60 fps in any game. Alternatively an option to switch to 30fps and increase resolution/fidelity might be something to consider, again depending on the game in question.

  • Humans need not apply

    Oh it'll happen, but what I think many people don't understand is, things change, but very slowly ... and with time comes acceptance and solutions. Sure if all this happened in 10 years we'd be screwed, but it won't. If we can think it up, and it makes our life easier, it'll happen. It's not IF but when.