Posts by Campaignjunkie

alright doods I'm here... getting to gdce around noon, then going to the crytek party for a bit maybe. I'll visit gamescom on wednesday for an hour or so but I'll mostly be hanging with indies at gdce and going to the Nordic Party, then leaving Thursday morning... whoever's brave enough to organize a mapcore meetup, just tweet at me / or PM me here

freelancing from home is sad

but if you gotta do it remotely, I'd hang out with your local game dev friends or something, maybe get an office-share

You're welcome! I was reading the interview with PlanetPhillip (the transcription is pretty silly) and the part where you're like "yeah I wish we got more attention" and I was like "huh I thought everyone posted about them" but it turns out they missed it. Good luck / congrats

Don't make detailed plans too far ahead, because you'll just end up changing those plans when it comes time. Write a list of tasks, think about how long it'll take you to do it / how important it is, and throw it away if it's not feasible. Also, try the pomodoro method for productivity: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique

I really hope they keep BSP in some form, that's what was fun / awesome about making Source levels

Is this news, really? I blogged about a GDC presentation by a Valve dev and in the comments he casually mentioned their next-gen engine work. So now we know that Source 2 will have... dialog, in addition to graphics.

Dan Pinchbeck: "We've sold 250,000 copies now."

Congrats! No more packaged ramen for you ever again -- treat yourself to some fancy ramen at a sit down place!

Oh, whoops, I never read off-topic... yeah, let's hang out.

Hey, I'm giving a talk (http://schedule.gdceurope.com/session/1 ... _Designers) so I'll actually be at GDC Europe this year!

I was hoping to do some kind of Mapcore meetup thing? Anyone else going? Maybe we could do a lunch thing. I'll be in Cologne from Sunday night to Thursday morning.

Hopefully those who couldn't relocate can go indie / Kickstarter / something

I'm sure AAA devs are very creative, etc. unfortunately you guys often aren't allowed to express it in your games. There are countless stories of bold new AAA stuff getting crushed by conservative publishers or skittish investors (e.g. The Crossing, LMNO) and I think that scares me shitless, the idea that I'd work for years on something then watch it get swept under the rug without even a whimper. Depression and anxiety are normal responses because it's a crappy situation.

Also, I think that IGS soapbox rant was totally missing the point.

People rarely hate people; rather, people hate self-destructive institutions that hurt other people.

So when you get an industry that says you're a failure if your Metacritic is under 85 and you sell "only" a few million copies for $60 each and management decides to close your studio, that seems crazy. That seems like a horribly dysfunctional system that encourages conservative design choices and thinks of devs as resources to be optimized or discarded. (Soylent green is made out of people!)

Let me be clear: I think most indies like AAA devs, AAA techniques, and AAA studios -- but they hate the AAA industry that exploits the cultural capital of games, and they hate the idea that some random CEO gets to fire you AND determine how society perceives what all of us do.

Sure, you can be cynical and say "that's the nature of all industries" or "well I work at ___ and I have job security"... but I think that's a really unproductive attitude.

Reminds me of Hera. It looks well constructed and well done, but conceptually I've always been more a fan of ns_machina's organic sci-fi forms, almost Giger-ish, and I hope those find a place in the map cycle too. Anyway, congrats / nice color choices.

I know!

For some reason I really like that rock mesh on top of the tunnel, also a fan of the more autumn colors, reminds me a lot of Briscoe's de_forest map... good work!

[Blocked Image: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/19887116/carrier/nozano4.jpg]

Experimenting with graphic design-ish treatments, using screen space patterns.

This has me thinking about other hybrid game modes, e.g. "Capture The Payload" -- one team has to deliver the payload, the other team has to bring their flag to it and capture the payload or something.

I hope this game is only 1 or 2 hours so I'll actually be able to finish it

Quote from dux

I tried my best, didn't get past the phone interview a few months back.

Man they are tough. The thing is, if I ever got a phone interview or on site interview with valve I'd just shake myself to death with nerves.

I did a GDC interview with Robin Walker once... I was pretty nervous but he was incredibly classy / charming / awesome the whole time. At the end he said he liked my stuff, but that it was too weird, and that I wouldn't fit anywhere like on the Half-Life 3 team or something. I guess he's right. Anyway -- if you get the chance, don't be scared, they're among the nicest people ever.

Anyone in the beta play the new de_dust? How does it play? Better now?

Yeah, go improbable!

I think this will be great for blocking out a Portal 2 puzzle -- you do a "puzzle editor" graybox pass, then a "hammer" art pass.