And in 30 years in Belgium. 25 GB a month traffic cap \o\
They did manage to convince all those publishers so maybe they do something right, and the pros of doing this are obviously really big, but really. I don't see this technically possible right now.
If it is, then this will be the last generation of real consoles.
I am also with Thrik, it is too early. Also I would like to see this in action first rather than all the marketing talk.
I think that depends largely on the type of mod, audience, timing, etc. really. We are doing "small" releases every few months too, and it works out really well for us. The thing is, we got a story, and it is much like the HL episodes really. People come back and continue playing because they want to see how it goes on. I think that is the big thing. If you do release a mod like this, make sure there are reasons for people to come back other than just polish. I think that it would indeed be quite difficult to get this type of release model going for MP, but for SP it is most certainly a very valid way of working imo.
I do like their 2d engine though, I havent made anything with it yet but it feels very accessible unlike the 3d one.
Look at the Unity engine too while you are at it, seems better. Same price range.
Personally looking into heading into the indie stuff too, gently, step by step, as soon as The Ball is finished. Never really legally owning all the customs levels I make kind of bothers me.
Quote from 2d-chrisLets also not forget 3d max per license isnt exactly cheap, where as a UED lisence can be shared for anyone on the project.
You dont neccy need Max though if you are only going to do some simple floorplans. Plenty of other and much cheaper programs can also do that. Silo for example.
So Peris, exactly how would you build a large open landscape with a large surrounding mountain ring a la demon army camp in SB with using just modular pieces and lets say you had no actual unreal terrain available to make the floor with? Sure it is doable, but would it be that much easier/nicer in that specific situation? I dont think so really.
Thats where modeling the entire thing comes in, even when it is only just a mock up. Now the details on top would be modular of course.
The same thing can be extrapolated to small indoor levels. And that is what Unreal does, and has been doing for 6 years now. Unique shells, with modular details. Instead of all modular.
If you go all modular, you get a game like Oblivion or Fallout, and it is cool, but it does look less defined sometimes.
The bottom line is that it is not just black and white. This sucks, that rules. This depends on the specific game, the specific needs, the skills of the artists and designers, the budget, the time, etc. A game like Fallout benefits from it as they need this approach to save time since the game is so huge. A game like Spellborn benefits from it because it is lower budget and a small team, thus you need to speed it up as much as possible. A big budget title however does not neccy require this. They can take the time to get a higher level of quality going, and that is good. Killzone for example was built like this, even its mockups. And I am not saying that is the best game ever, or that they had a very speedy production, but if you have the budget and money for it is not neccy a bad thing.
Using modular content is not modeling. Well it was made through modeling of course, but if you say "model a mock up" that for me means doing what you would have done with brushes, but in a modeling package. Using existing modular meshes is more like a third way of building a mock up/real level. Could work as well of course.
I dont see why modeling an entire floorplan is such a bad idea. Plenty of studios do this. It would basically work the same as using BSP in combination with some meshes. There are certainly some cons to this approach, just like there are also some cons to using just modular bits and pieces everywhere. Kind of depends on the situation really. Indoor basement level vs large open landscape for example.
Modeling a mock up IS easier, but as said, export importing etc is indeed not exactly very fun. I rather rebuild/compile BSP than exporting importing meshes all the time really.
So for me the way to go would be an engine that can read for example .max files, and auto reload that file as soon as it is modified. That way you can just do ctrl s in Max, and your changed floorplan shows up in the game. Unity does this I believe, and I believe this is the next big thing for tools to do really. It is a shame Unreal, however simple its importing process is, doesn't allow you to speed up that process even more.
Also I dont think BSP is a bad thing to have. I think UE3 does it pretty well really. You dont HAVE TO use BSP in UE3, it is just one of the options available, and I like that really. Options are good. Tools shouldnt force a choice on you, or at least as little as possible.
Kinda, but it creates a huge amount of very messed up cuts into the BSP around it. And without smoothing groups it looks total crap. You are prolly just building low poly gameplay levels though I asume?
You use cylinders?
Also if you hold ctrl shift, and click a BSP wall, you select the brush it belongs to btw for those who want to quickly duplicate brushes.
You take an existing brush, and you just duplicate it (ctrl w). Then you just vertex/face/edge edit it a la hammer, and you drag it around.
Also if you do wish to use the red builder brush, you don't have to drag the crap all over the level all the time. Select a brush on one end of the level, do CTRL P, or alternatively right click - Poly - To Brush, and that will move the red builder brush over to that position, and take over the shape of the selected brush.
Quote from KungFuSquirrelI'll agree with everything you said except for this.
Unreal is by far the superior editor out of the batch when looking at the "traditional" Radiant/Hammer/Unreal trifecta (and I'm saying this as a life-long Hammer/Radiant user), but its BSP construction is archaic by comparison (which, considering the age of Hammer and Radiant's interfaces, is depressing).
The ironic thing is Unreal's BSP tools are by far the most powerful - extrusion, concave shapes, clean intersection/de-intersection, additive/subtractive... No other editors have that strong a geometry creation tool. But factor in still having to rebuild geometry to even preview what you're doing, switching of tools and modes in a clunky interface (the geometry mode windows are just awful), poor/slow texturing, the decreased emphasis on BSP in the engine, and its awful in-game performance, and it's all wasted.
I've done some crazy things in Unreal BSP I'd never be able to do in Hammer or Radiant (even with patches), like mocking up radially-snapping circular static mesh templates, but it was such a chore I'd have been better off doing it in another program. Now, if someone ever takes Radiant's speed of construction - you can't get much faster measured brush creation than a single drag on the grid - and merges that with the power of Unreal's BSP tools, we'll have a glorious tool indeed.
I agree with you there. The texturing tools are not too good and yes the rebuilding is definitly annoying. I work in wireframe all the time and I never use the builder brush, but yes that is not exactly the most userfriendly way. I agree that just being able to fly around and quickly make a cube here or there, a la hammer and other editors, would certainly be a whole lot better. My guess is that they would probably implement that in UE4, as it is one of the oldest and weirdest (go explain to a first timer what this weird red brush is) features left in the engine.
Another big problem for Unreals BSP is the lack of smoothing. Without that, a whole lot of things are suddenly impossible to make really.
Still, considering everything I still prefer Unreals BSP. Also for example the ability to just model something in Max, and just export/import it as BSP, in just 3 seconds, is awesome. Not that there is any need for that nowadays but whatever 
Unreal BSP system is like 5 times faster than Source BSP system. Really. I worked quite a bit with both systems, Unreal easily beats Source/Quake like BSP in terms of speed, and complexity. The only thing that is slower is making a cube and modifying existing geometry (because of the rebuilding). For anything that is more advanced than just a cube Unreal is faster and more flexible.
UE3 is licensed by at least 6 to 7 times more developers than Source if that wikipedia list is correct. Most of those developers are also smaller devs, where as Unreal usually targets the large studios. That also goes for the community. Epic seems to mainly focus on large studios and big opportunities where as valve seems to pay more attention to their community and small studios, initatives, etc. Which is a shame for the Unreal community really but understandable from a business perspective. Other reasons are the non consistent UT games (every game is different - doesn't make your audience stick to you), no one playing UT3, more complex tools, and some other reasons.
I hate the "all UE3 games look alike" argument because is it not the engine, as ME demonstrates, it are the developers. Some things in UE3 require quite a different approach. Most developers had no or very little prior experience in UE when they started out with their games, so they ended up taking a look at the GOW or UT3 examples provided, and they directly copied the material setups, post processing, and the style in general because of their inexperience with the tech.
The upgrades are nice, but it would be nice if this too would be released to the community. And that won't happen.
We now also won ModDB 2008 Editors Choice Best Singleplay mod.
http://www.moddb.com/events/2008-mod-of ... player-mod
See end of the video - where they announce the winner.
We almost got city 2 standing visually except one big bridge, and the gorilla is now almost finished model and texture wise. Animation and implementation are left. New pics around mid to late March I think.
I didn't wanted to do that as that would give away the solution to one our more serious puzzles, so I usually stick to basic ones in the video. What we need however is a nicer video with several parts and all that stuff. I suck at that myself though, will look into getting help for that in 2 months or so.
Phase 2 results announced. The Ball won 3rd Place Best Mod and 1st Place Best Use of Physics.
http://www.beyondunreal.com/view_story.php?id=12515
Combined with the results of phase 1 we are now a tripple First Place winner.
Neat work, makes me want to do some high poly modeling again
Neat man!
I really enjoyed the game, couple of annoying things but overall it was very fun.
I had just ordered a copy elsewhere. I will finally be joining all of you in the L4D stuff, looking forward to it
We have announced part 3 some time ago: Teotl.
We have also taken in a whole lot more people, we currently have 13 people working on the mod, and we have gotten ourselves a website and a domain name, as well as a team name: Toltec Studios - http://theball.toltecstudios.com/
Part 3 will introduce enemies such as mummies (think zombies) you can kill by running over them with the ball (rain of gibs is the result - should be good fun), and we will also introduce a large gorilla boss monster. Also we are introducing a complete background story based on actual myths, and we have finally managed to replace the impact gun with our own unique weapon. Furthermore we are redoing half of the Pehua level, and a good bit of the Oztoc 1 level to further bump up the quality of the mod, make it more accesable, and introduce our features earlier on in the mod.
All of this is planned for release around may 8. We are already about 60-70 percent far in creating and implementing all of this.
Here are new screenshots:
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[Blocked Image: http://www.nijnka.com/hourences/theball/media/theballteotl11.jpg]
