Posts by Hourences

The unreal engine job market in europe is downright disastruous compared to the us, thats why.

I spend an avg of 1000 euro a year on hardware, but really, if you are happy with regular stuff you can keep your pc going for just 200 euro or so a year. A console might be cheaper, but PC's can do so much more.

Dualcore will definitely be out of date by 2010...By the end of 2008 quad core would prolly start taking over dualcores entirely, let alone what happens after.

For people like us modding is what makes the difference between a PC and a console. I dont buy pcs so I can play games, I buy them so I can exercise my hobby and my profession.

If you ever want to map or mod again, get upgraded.

Else a console will do just fine...

http://www.gamedesign.be/Hourences/leip ... ipzig1.htm

http://www.gamedesign.be/Hourences/leip ... ipzig2.htm

http://www.gamedesign.be/Hourences/leip ... ipzig3.htm

1 and 3 feature my travel, so for those not interested in a lot of trains, skip to 2 straight away.

Couple of great games down there, although I do have to say that I expected a lot more of some games than what they turned out to be. What I also noted is that if you walk through the whole convention and you play game after game, you really notice how incredibly unoriginal like 90 percent of all those games are. It all looks alike, it all plays alike.

The whole convention was also much too german orientated imo and that really hurts the international character of the show. Its an international audience yet every single guy who starts a chat with you does so in German, some even refuse to talk on if you ask for English. All flyers, magazines and games that are given away are German, etc...

The only guy that started in English right away was a guy from Max/Autodesk.

Besides that the show was really cool though. Plenty of nice games and a good source for some inspiration

Thatll make all lights dynamic afaik tho..Could be rather heavy.

But hey, its a demo map anyway.

And you definitely needs some fog particles:)

I agree with Rick, too many colors. The very ugly yellowish greenish color of the floor and some walls isnt helping either. You should pick a number of texture and lighting colors that would fit the theme and stick to them.

Geometry is cool.

Its much better. It would help heaps if there was a sky and all so get started on that

I know that this is just a fun environment, but in a production you cant lightmap all your meshes and a considerable amount of them should be vtx lit.

Just for my own curiousity, how long does it take to rebuild this and whats the filesize?

I am working on an indepth water tutorial for UE3 but it wont be up until october or something. If you want I can give you all the pictures and source files already and you can try rebuilding it already.

http://users.pandora.be/Hourences/watermaterial.jpg

IRC for more stuff.

Review tool sounds nice, but apart from that nothing all too fancy.

Think it over for a longer time. You say that you run into trouble after just 5 minutes, then why dont you try to foresee those issues before you even start? Simulate the first five minutes of development solely in your brains, when traveling in the train or whatever, and see what you kind of issues you hit on.

Think the entire process through, on every possible aspect including optimization, if your skill can handle it, if you have examples to fall back on, if none of the things you want to put in would conflict with each other (you want close combat gameplay yet also a huge and impressive hallway, that conflicts) and so on.

Compare all things you want in, against both itself as the available time, the technology you will use for it and so on.

Why doesnt it translate well into the game? What kind of things should have been different to do fit it into a game well? If you figure that out, youre half way.

And start small, make tiny maps, 1-1. Make maps based on other levels so you have a clear example you can fall back on if youre totally stuck.

Also dont be too damn critical of yourself. Plenty of people never finish a level because they always lose faith in their own creation after a day or whatever. You are unlikely to ever create a perfect level. There are always going to be things that just arent really great. I have made a 150+ levels of which half are commercial and yet, up to today, every time I create a new level, at one point or another I start doubting my own design because I start to notice flaws. Either I can quit, remake the entire level, or just accept the problem and do my best to work around it. I always do the latter.

Stuff isnt perfect and it never will be.

A repetitive level is better than no level at all! You can fix those kinds of problems later, first work on getting the basics going and that is finishing a level.

mail me whenever you want

me hourences com

Looks good yeah. The candles dont seam to be really bright tho. You should do a multiply with a constant1 to get them to to bloom and look like they really cast light, instead of just looking yellow.

Bumping up the brightness of their light actors could also bring it more alive.

It still does sound like a naming issue though.

If it really bothers you you could always send me the files and Ill check.

UE doesnt really like weird characters, spaces in filenames and duplicate file names. Perhaps you have one of those.

UE cannot see file extensions, therefore level BigTree and asset package BigTree are one and the same for the engine.

Im going there for fun and on my own. One of the games Ive worked one is suppose to have a pretty big booth tho, so if you have the chance go by the frogster boot and play the chronicles of spellborn.

If all goes right Im going to be there on private wednesday. Hope to meet a few people from here as well.

Race cars are far too different from games.

It is not about pretty GUIs, it is about user friendlyness and workflow, and IMO those two words are exactly what should describe any modern tool.

The last 3ish years, gamedevelopment has become really complex and time consuming, game development needs a good workflow and good tools if it wants to remain financially profitable.

Mind you, that was the whole point, not which program has the coolest GUI.

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Is it really about what engine/community/whatever is better? You'll grow used to one or the other, and will believe that when learning a second one after that the other is still superior. I won't deny it, I'll take Unreal over Source any day, but that doesn't mean it actually is superior...

Sure, I never said it sucked or owned either. There are a 100 things that could have been done better in Unreal. But saying a program/engine that requires notepad for basic functionality and cant even preview lighting or other effects is modern and simpler is just sheer insanity. No matter how much you like Source, now matter how well it may do this or that, you cant possibly say of a program that it is modern if it cant even preview lighting.

Which was what I countered. Unreal IS better with things like previewing lighting/materials and all. Some other features Source prolly is better at.

As to Zajoman:

-6 Brushes for a room makes it overly complex for no reason. I believe you were the one who called source more simple? Strange logic you have there.

-CSG, youve stated that Source' BSP is more stable, therefore you implicate that Unreal is less stable than Source, BSP wise. I countered that by reusing your own argument of "if you use it right, there is no problem".

-Time, you just said it took time to master Source/HL1 BSP, then how can you expect to fully understand a different system in just 3 years time and only one and a half year pro? It takes time, youre just not used to it.

What kind of structures have you build with BSP in Unreal? Anything more than just cubes and basic stuff? For all I know youve never made extensive use of Unreal BSP yet (thousands of brushes in one level).

I understand your POV too, if I were to have to work with source, I would prolly kill my co worker within a month of frustration. If you switch an engine there is always going to be stuff that just sucks or is entirely different to what youre used, the latter does not neccy mean its complete crap or inferior, you do sound like that when talking about BSP for example.

Writing is creative, so youre still spending youre time in a creative way:P

Im still all for an Engine Benchmark, like those massive CPU comparison charts

It needs an inside.

We can hold a contest. Make a number of pre defined shapes in the smallest time possible and record a little video of it, any editor. Gives an overview benchmark of all. Quake is going to beat unreal with curves for example, HL2 might do so too.

Because you intersect like we say in Unreal? Eg merge multiple brushes to one? Or just keep extruding faces, the model program way?

Any drawbacks to doing so?

Quote from Zajoman

So youre saying that having to construct a single room of 6 seperate brushes is "much smarter and faster" ?> What are you talking about? Be more specific, please.

If you ask me, itd be far simple to just add a cube, and substract a smaller cube out of it. Done.

> Or just draw a box and press Ctrl+H.

I also heard of leaks in Quake/HL? BSP stuff not closing in well. Doesn't sound very user friendly to me...

> This is a human error, not CSG itself. You should make your maps right, not leaky.

The actual tools aside, the entire additive system is just slow if you ask me and overly complex for simple actions.

> UE3 have both approaches, subtractive and additive. Take a guess which one is preferred nowadays... Additive, you got it.

How long have you worked with Source/HL BSP ?

> 7 years.

And mind you, I have only encountered a BSP error just once in Unreal Engine 3, and that was because some other guy found it funny to substract 60 sided cylinders of bigger clinders and all off the grid.

> Working with UE3, I suppose you have the access to the UDN. So log in and look for CSG topics. You'll find that Epic discourages from using it at all.

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The 6 brushes argument: See what I just replied to hessi. Regardless of how many clicks it takes, having to end up with 6 different brushes for just a room is kind of stupid. Why not just 2 brushes?

Leaking: I can use the exact same argument for UT and therefore counter yours. If you make stuff correctly in UT there are no BSP errors either, yet you are complaing about those.

Moreover, stuff cant leak in UT, even if youd create messy BSP. Sure other stuff can go wrong, but it cant leak like in HL.

Additive: I am pointing to the HL approach of requiring multiple brushes for something simple. I know the naming is not entirely correct but from an historic pov it is easiest for me to classify both approaches like this.

7 Years of HL: So tell me this, the first three years of your HL experience, were those enough to fully, 100 percent, understand how BSP in HL works, how to work around problems and the dos and dont dos?

UDN: There is nothing wrong with BSP and epic does not discourage it. The situation is a tiny little bit more complex than just "dont use it". Also, there are plenty of things that are stated incorrectly on UDN. It is not because UDN says so that it is true. Simple example, open some GOW maps and see if there happens to be BSP around.

I have been working with Unreal looong before there ever was such thing like UDN. I know BSP and I know what it can do and what it cant.

Quote from hessi

carving a room is 1 click in unreal

making a house from the outside is (close to) 1 click in source

Regardless of how many clicks, will or will you not end up with 6 different brushes for the house in source? Because if you do, and if you will have to modify it later on, youll lose more time adjusting it in source than in Unreal.