Quote from Sindwiller...outside on their own....
Holy shit. That is really dangerous. 
Yeah indeed. That single line just blew any credibility she might have had left for me. There is nothing damn wrong with playing outside on your own, it is actually because of the over concern in the last decade, with parents trying to protect their children at all times, that keeping your child indoors is kind of promoted, in turn actually promoting video games. I wonder if she figured that out already.
I think it is great, and I like the idea and would love to see it in UT3 as it would fit very well.
I also don't like the rail, it needs stoppers at the least, but I just find the rails a bit weird in general...
And I think that it is too monotome, the whole thing has the same color. A few colored elements might live it up.
Im not fond of the white lighting as white is so standard, maybe try giving it a subtle color.
If the lights are animated, remove the corona. You can animate the corona but it is difficult and even if you do, they still wont be synced to the light animation.
MAybe you should motivate the gameplay choices on your portfolio, why you designed the floorplan the way you did.
The level itself could really use improvements. The corona in the first screen floats I think. You can lower the brightness of the lightboxes so they dont stand out as much, use ScaleGlow I believe in properties Display, theres a red lamp somewhere that gives off very little light yet has a corona in front so raise its brightness or remove the corona, custom textures may really help making the map cooler as these super standard textures have become really really boring after 9 years.
I would also bump up brightness of some lamps, and be sure to play the game in OpenGL using the latest UT OpenGL Render dll's. D3D is really bad, in case you were using that.
Trying to run a frontpage with news and similar is madness, no one will keep that up for long enough. What I always liked about the original frontpage was:
-The featured levels
-The recent forum posts
Basically it acted as a nice summary tool, nothing more. It would be nice to have a frontpage that simply highlights a number of things, such as the current best work, the latests posts, the current job openings posted in the pro job forum, the current mod recruitment posts, and a place perhaps for this thread. A "Mapcore in the industry" page. That would also be good to make the site look more special/professional/serious/however you want to name it, as there are clearly so many professionals visiting these forums. Basically trying to not come across of random forum community #6789114 full of a million random noobs, but be something more than that.
My point is, the front page shouldnt distract from the forums, it should actually promote the forums by offering the most important and valuable information in an easier way.
Guerrilla Games
Environment Artist
September 2003 – September 2004
Khaeon Games
Senior Level Artist
October 2004 – August 2007
Ill refrain from posting freelance jobs to keep the list down:)
Starbreeze is looking for a Senior Texture Artist to work on this [email protected]
Oh yeah, good idea. Little flags would also help to preview the jobs on all other pages.
Ill see if I can get that going in the coming time.
If anyone has more suggestions..
Thats the idea, so I will certainly try so.
Country flags are cool, but I dont know how I would organize that for the USA, seeing as I would actually need to display the state flags then, pretty impossible.
Thats a big pile 
Bought Hitman Blood Money from steam, it was an enjoyable play and I liked the levels. Tho, the damn kill counter is broken
I shot every single living creature at mardi grass and I still only had 121 kills it said. Whats up with that IOI people ?
Also found a magazine that had Mazy as title.
I partially redid my job section and I am launching the improved version, and since it really deserves and needs more attention, lets pimp it here
What it is:
# Aims to lists "all" the available Level and Environment Art/Design related jobs in Europe and North America.
# Lists only those jobs related to Level Design and Environment Art, such as Texture Artists, Object Modelers, Gameplay Scripters, Lighting Artists, and so on.
# Jobs are listed for free.
# Jobs are categorized into following categories: Unreal Engine, Freelance, Featured, and three difficulty levels to mark those jobs suitable for modders and graduates.
# Jobs are automatically removed after around six months, or earlier on request.
# Featured jobs are given to befriended companies, and those who report the job themselves.
I found out that there isn't any website online that focuses on just Level Design (and related) jobs, so I am trying to fill up that hole. Feel free to report jobs.
In other news, I also released a fairly simple and quickly made texture package with around 50 tiling high res nature textures, nothing special, and a typical and oldskool Unreal UT3 skybox people can use in their levels, rereleased MP_TheSpire as the previous version appeared to crash for some, and I started up an Unreal Developers group at LinkedIn.
So anyone who is professionally working with Unreal tech, or who have been in the past, join!
http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/57319/644C763FABD4
Full newspost on http://www.hourences.com/book/authornews.htm
Quote from ZackerAll the screenshots have a funny/interesting look to them which I can't really decide if I like or not. There is something about the textures and shaders which makes things look kinda wierd. Some of the aliens seem to have metal skin. The engine also seems to be have a really effective smoothing technique as the models look really high poly and anti-aliased. But again, I am not really sure exactly what it is and I have always also had the same feeling about the looks of the BIA games.
I share that, I find it awesome, but I cant help noticing the entire absence of specular when looking at the screenshots. Sure there is spec around, but most of the environment almost seems like it is a clay render.
http://medialib.computerandvideogames.c ... 193847.jpg
The only thing that has specular are the glass tubes, and the facehugger. Everything else is shaded (and colored) exactly the same. It all looks a bit soft and gentile, while, given the theme, I would expect a very harsh, strongly contrasted look, with enough metal and shiny stuff around to make it all look even colder and more sci fi'ish.
Great besides that
I think the idea is briliant, it does look a bit like a rip off from TF though. I will most certainly try it out. I wish UT would go onto a path like this and the new Quake browser thing. A simpler, more classic approach, just about fun.
And sure it doesnt really portray WW2 in a very respectful way, but really, how many games out there are truly respectful?
I just bought TQ like last week and it is a great game, very polished and fun. Sucks that they went down...
They obviously messed it up with the copy protection, but none the less is the whole thing with idiotic reviewers and people tis rue. Any idiot can basically go write reviews. Hell, you can go write a review even if you have never ever ever touched a game before, and then score the game a 2/10 because you are too damn stupid to understand it. None the less that makes the developer lose at least a couple of thousand dollars on income because of one guys random thoughts... Cant do anything against it, but it is messed up...
Great, congrats:)
I think thats an entirely fitting job for you
Plan to one day venture into low budget games myself, just as a hoby, so it was an interesting read:)
We come from the same background and worked on the same mods and styles before, so the style similarities are understandable.
I like the map, it is cool. Nothing mindblowing as it is just a cave, but it looks good everywhere and the open areas with the sky and the trees look neat.
Quote from kleinlukaI can only say, if it wasn't for Valve and Half-Life I would be working at McDonald's right now.Thank you Valve!
I can say similar things, and it is of course wonderful that we got those opportunities that really helped us forth, but, that was years ago, and it all feels like it is declining right now (not just Valve). The modders from today dont have the chances anymore that we once had, you may have your job and career going now, but that doesnt really help the new generation of modders. They just need a good community, good tools, support, and so on.
Well Quake really is kind of dead, no? Mod wise.
An underground hardcore group of enthousiasts doesnt count, as every game has those, even the original Doom.
Unreal Editor runs very well, only the GOW version was messed up. Problem with Unreal isnt being that it crashes, it just isnt supported well. Months after release the official documents and tutorials are still not public (how hard can it be to change that user flag?), and in general the modders seem to be getting the new tools years after the pros got them. Long ago I remember how Epic invited the best modders to their office, and gave them presentations and all, they involved them in the whole thing, cared about it. I do not see that happening anymore, they distantiated themselves. The same is prolly true for iD and Valve. Its getting very closed off and ivor tower like, while you need the opposite if you want a lively scene of amateur enthousiasts.
Quote from Seldoon182actually they were faster than i would be be
Nice ! :wink:
By the way, even if some of the VALVe's team belong the Quake2 modding community, I don't mind that VALVe wants to give to Source engine modders the opportunity to make high quality games like them. They don't want to share with us their tools and their experience. I mean they're professional, they had to earn their life, to manage their studios... So yeah it's pretty lame to share toys there and there around fucking deep folders but what do you want to do ? If you feel that their support is bullshit, just switch. Moreover, both VALVe's engines are from Id Software's Id Tech 2 engines and they have worked so hard to develop their own tools, so they aren't oblige to share their knowledge for free. I think that the Source SDK is enough and if you want more, do it yourself. No pain, no gain.
I've emailed some developers who worked on HDR games (as Jess Cliff for DoD:s) about the splitskybox program and they had never replied me ! What can I do ?
- Nothing !
Educating your community in your tools, and making sure that they can work fine, without bugs or other crap, is really going to help your business. Unfortunally most companies seem to have forgotten that.... That includes Epic.
A community that is up to date with the technology, creates a great pool to hire people from for those companies who work with the technology. It also spawns many community tutorials and all, again also useful for commercial purposes, and high quality mod releases are great publicity for your game, community, and tech.
Valve would win more from releasing their own tools and giving away their secrets, than sticking to them so hard.
It would be a shame if the problem is not resolved, or pc modding itself might just die. Quake modding doesnt mean much anymore. Unreal may be really succesful as a commercial thing, no one mods the thing, no one plays either... And then all there is left is Source which now also seems to be getting to the end of their line...
