Posts by Algor

Christ. I was going to make a post saying you guys were overreacting, then I played the last ~90 minutes of the game.

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If I was to rate each of the 4 hours of the game from 1 (garbage) to 5 (amazing), it would go 3,4,3,2. At least some of the redeeming qualities were the greatly improved environment art over the first one. Unfortunately much of that gave way when you spent most of the game going through sewers and other nonsensical level designs. The story and voice acting wasn't as simple or well done as Amnesia, even at times the voice acting and writing felt very Dear Esther-y. I died three times, each time felt very cheap (two of which before I even knew I was in danger I was pinned in a dead end). The motion blur + slowed movement whenever lengthy dialog was happening became so god damn annoying. The puzzles mostly came down to you flipping or twisting a bunch of shit that didn't make any sense, then later you found out what you had to do, rather than the other way around. I got lost a bunch of times which kills any immersion or suspense that the game is trying so hard to build. WTF was that electrified pig?

I loved Amnesia but did not love this. 3/5 I am disappoint

Just got past the area shown in the loading screen. Pretty great environment art and atmosphere so far. It definitely seems to be simplified, but not in a negative way. These horror games take so long because I had to calibrate my screen a bunch of times before I could even start

Played a little for the first time in about two weeks. Now people are literally flying all over the maps, wtf is going on with this game?

You've got the window open with rain pouring in fucking the place up, but you should/could push that further. Have some height into the floor by adding a bump to the carpet, pull one/more of the curtains loose and have them pushing into the hallway from the wind (also obscuring the sightline down the hallway for more tension), other curtains could be closed so there are darker sections, etc. You could also have light spilling out of a room on the side to create interest. Tons of reference;

http://flickrhivemind.net/flickr_hvmnd.c…doned%20hallway

Edit: possibly more relevant reference;

http://flickrhivemind.net/flickr_hvmnd.c…mit=Search+Tags

I also have collected at least 2-3 masks from the post-game card thing, but when I go to buy a new mask slot, it says "Your stash is out of masks" ? Also can you only customize a mask one time?

Also why do I get "Failed to join game" so often in the lobby? Is this the game doing a poor job telling me it is restricted to invite only or something?

As much as I think the game's UI is pretty great at telling other players what is going on, it could still use a few more upgrades. When there's a bunch of bags on the ground and your team is picking them all up, it would be great if the bag would visually change when someone is picking up a particular bag. There are many cases where there are two bags on the ground and two players end up trying to pick up the same bag. It turns out to waste the time of one of them. Also the circle progress bar next to the player names at the bottom are great, but it would be even more useful if inside or near the circle it said "reloading" or "reviving" or whatever they were doing.

What is the offshore money about? Also why does Bain have to have verbal diarrhea every time in the lobby? That should just play the first time you play a particular mission. I have my Music at like 10% and SFX at 25% and I can still barely hear anyone on the mic.When people aren't trying to exploit the hell out of the game and make as much XP/Cash as fast as they can, it's very hard to actually plan because no one can hear each other.

Also you can join a match that is 99% complete and get your full share of the reward for doing nothing. Pretty sweet if you are the one who just joined, but a big exploit

What maps did you and tailgunner work on? Been loving this, great investment and player abilities this time. Lots of hard and interesting choices on where to invest points and money. The UI is really nice too and has lots of rich information so people don't double up on reviving or other actions. A few annoyances;

• Crime.net - This is a cool concept but plays out like one of the worst server browsers ever. It has filters but there are two and they are worthless. It would be great to have more filters by difficulty, map, game type, etc. Often when finding a game I want to join, the browser refreshes and everything vanishes and then shuffles around.. very frustrating.
• Lobby - This often boils down to people dicking around in their inventory or skills (usually the host) and delaying the game. Then people get fed up of waiting and end up leaving for another server. Just wait until half of the players are ready and then do a countdown that forces the game to start.
• Voice - I can rarely understand what anyone is saying on the mic because all the other audio is so loud in comparison. It would be great if it just turned down the other audio while someone was speaking. Obviously this can be trolled but we can always mute those players.

Not to mention even if you did find a cure, wouldn't you be shot on sight as you approached most remaining survivors?

iooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo9poooooo;

(my cat wrote the last part)

There's actually 4 types of infected (runners, stalkers, clickers, bloaters). To be honest I couldn't tell you the difference between runners and stalkers, and apparently the latter are pretty rare as it is.

I thought the motivations in Winter and beyond were great as you swapped characters. You really had a clear goal and a strong reason to fight. Some of the environmental storytelling is among the best I've seen.

One thing I might like to see improved is the silhouette difference in the infected in their posture and animation. Sneaking up on one type versus the other can mean life or death, and at times they just read as being too similar (even more so when they became alerted)

Welcome!

1) If it helps you organize things and do your job better, sure. You're not likely to get a management position right away though.

2) No, you need to have a vision that you followed though to the end. One of the most important parts of any project is the very end. Without getting there, you lack a major part of the experience.

3) No

4) I wouldn't imagine so. Might be worthwhile to bring up briefly if they ask about yourself and your hobbies, otherwise I wouldn't bother.

Had a little girl wood watching that, amirite guys?!

Quote from knj

http://www.gameinformer.com/games/halo_spa…an-assault.aspx

Well not a big HALO fun, but i was hoping that 343 inds. are making BIG AAA game not somth like this (and the TV series) or this is just a distraction !

It's being made by Vanguard. 343 are making Halo 5.. and 6.. and so on. That is the main focus of the studio

It has been around for a while. TF2 and other Valve games use this. There used to be easy ways to view it on the official CS:S and TF2 sites but I don't know if they are still maintaining that. Jump to 1:00 mark from Unreal Engine GDC 2009 video;

http://blog.counter-strike.net/science/maps.html

Pretty cool stuff! Two comments I might add are the desaturation of the inmate's suits in combination with the lighting makes it hard to tell who is who in a few of the shots. In many of the shots they all appear blue, but in shots with orange lighting from fire, they all appear orange. Also I don't understand the shot of the inmate holding the guard over the edge.. did he lift him over the railing? On closer inspection he seems to be clipping through it.. In any case I don't think these issues detract from what seems like a cool and fun project. I'll talk to Madison about it next time I see him

Quote from JeanPaul

All the black mesa stuff is remakes of the original, so I didnt really plan the level out in a traditional sense? What would top down views of single player levels help accomplish? I mean I guess im confused on what I should say here on my work.

I would also read this as an environment artist portfolio. Sure Black Mesa a remake, but I know you didn't remake it exactly as it was. Did you change the environment significantly? Why? Did you change the gameplay or pacing? Why? Did you have difficulties with players understanding what to do or where to go? How did you solve that? Level design is very much about constantly identifying and solving problems. Simply showing a bunch of screenshots is not communicating any of that.

Some pages still take a while to load (like The Void). A simple bit of text like "Please wait for the images to load" would do the trick.

Started this last night and played a little more today (steam says 118 minutes). Seriously stunning stuff so far. Some amazing art and it's refreshing that I am not drowning in detail. I have the settings cranked to Ultra and it is doing pretty well most of the time. Is there a way to enlarge the text somehow? Playing 1920x1080 on my TV and the text is so damn tiny! From a distance most of the items that say (+)Health (-)Salts read more like (*)Health (*)Salts

I don't doubt it could look this good on current gen,.. I just want it to run better than ~20 FPS that GTA4 did. If that means I wait a while for a PC/next gen version I can deal.

So ah... will this be PC or next gen?

Congrats on the release, you guys! I may have to break my Steam queue to play this soon.