Posts by Campaignjunkie

  • Alien Swarm - New non-FPS Valve game out Monday!

    I dunno... a game design is nothing without a great execution. It's about the particulars. The small ideas Valve has added (that aren't in similar games): the active reload from GoW, how you lock-on to enemies when they're in light, the semi free-roaming aspect with a draw-on map, the XP system to earn perks -- these things are what raises the game above everything else.

  • TF2 Maps/VALVE Art Pass Contest

    Everyone keeps saying that. What's wrong with huge sightlines? There are a bunch on Gold Rush that are utterly crucial.

    Same with the semi-building off the grid -- that's what avoids the cookie-cutter syndrome of a lot of maps. You can definitely tell when everything's in increments of 64 and 128. It looks boring.

  • Pirates of New Horizons

    Haha, I kinda have to agree, the name sounds awkward in English. (and I've spoken English my entire life / studied English literature for 4 years at one of the top English lit schools in the US...) but unlike Rick I'll try to explain why I think so:

    a good example: "Sins of a Solar Empire" is fantastic because you get the "S" of Sins and Solar together, the "aa" in "a" and "sol-A-r", and the "RR" in "Sola-R" and "Empi-R-e" -- in literature we call this effect "sibilance" (sss), "assonance" (vowels), and "consonance" (consonants). It rolls off the tongue nicely, at least to fluent American English speakers, and it's also suggests undertones of the 4X genre taken as an dark imperialist / religious allegory so it's kind of smart-sounding too.

    Rhythmically, Sins of a Solar Empire has a lot of strong syllables, specifically positioned at the beginning of the 3 most important words in the title. In literature we call this "meter," commonly used when studying poetry, and we'd render that like this:

    Code
    \      x     x     \  x    \  \    x


SINS   of    a    SOL ar   EM PI  re

    Meanwhile..."Pirates of New Horizons" doesn't have the same sounds or the smartness, it just sounds really bland / awkward to my ears to be honest. "New horizons" sounds like a rehab center or an adult school or something, or a header in a promotional pamphlet, or the name of a chapter in some heavily biased nationalistic history textbook. It doesn't fit with my idea of a pirate, a rebel / enemy / parasite of society.Rhythmically:

    Code
    \    x       x     x      x   \   x


PI rates    of    new    hor  I  zons

    You have a lot of weak syllables (the "x" syllables) which makes it sound like I'm mumbling or something when I say the name of your game out loud

    There's also no article in your title and both nouns are plural. e.g. "Sins of Solar Empires" doesn't sound nearly as good. "Pirates of a New Horizon" sounds better but still awkward for the reasons detailed above.

    So, in conclusion: your game title sound awkward in terms of sound, rhythm, syntax, diction and cultural connotations. Hope the explanation helped. You still have time to change your game name!

  • Designing for single player

    Writing up documents and charts and spreadsheets might be the most professional way, but it's certainly the least fun.

    If you're making this for yourself, just draw a loose sketch and start building off that.

    I mean, I was watching thisvideo about how Sid Meier made a game in 48 hours -- he doesn't mess with these spreadsheets and design documents and stuff. Rather, he prototyped an interaction (say, shooting zombies) and started exploring variations on that to make it more interesting.

  • WIP in WIP, post your level screenshots!

    Haha, I'm using this for my Radiator mod, actually -- is it unethical to re-purpose something for another mod, or is that smart asset re-use? I mean, don't worry, I'll make the PQL4 hospital more detailed / more interesting / better in every way, I just wanted to mirror a hospital scene I did in a previous episode of Radiator, and I'm running out of time to finish this thing that I've been plugging away at for a year...

    But I'm convinced, I'll up the brightness. People with awesome monitors will just have to deal with a slightly over-bright scene I guess. I really want people to be able to make out the text on the cards, roughly.

    KFS: PQL4 seems pretty dead right now, but I'm going to pick it up at the end of June and try to rally everyone together again, hopefully I'll be done with Radiator by then

    Kaz: architecture seems kind of cookie-cutterish, try to do some more slanted surfaces / build off the grid. I'd look at some of the shapes in the old geocomp2 / sparth's Q3 maps, it's something I've been doing lately and they're still really inspiring in terms of form and how it all works together:

    http://lvlworld.com/#i=1251

    http://lvlworld.com/#i=878

    ... and I wish I could find screenshots of bengal's Minima, because that was really one of the most beautiful / sculptural video game levels I've ever seen, shame PlanetQuake demolished sparth's old page

  • [EP2] Mission Improbable Part 2

    OhSnap: did you play from the first map into the second, or start from the second via the "New Game" menu? Because I feel like with the new game menu, all the health and ammo you have is pretty generous for the first fight -- lots of 357 / AR2 / shotgun ammo, if I remember correctly. If all else fails, you can camp near the bottom of the stairs and they'll all line up pretty easily for the slaughter. (I actually thought the first encounter was too easy because of that, heh.)

    The last fight -- okay maybe too much. The original version was only 3 hunters and it was kind of boring; I thought the manhacks were a really nice touch to discourage you from just circle-strafing / shotgunning them to death.

    I dunno, I didn't find it too difficult, and I think of myself as a pretty average HL2 player. Shrug.

  • The Mod Community Today

    Modding isn't in decline, it's just changing -- it's not the "total conversion" model of modding anymore. People are still doing "map packs" and people are still doing the smaller mods like UI changes / difficulty mods, etc. There are certainly fewer "big" mods out there now, which isn't necessarily bad.

    Mods are still here... you're just in the game industry now and you're looking for what you remember, but it's not here anymore. It's turned into something different.