Posts by Hourences

Having to use a text editor to make a visual thing is like modelling a cube using notepad, how would you feel about that? It is not a valid option. Its completely prehistoric and it is far from userfriendly. You need to see stuff change instantly, not after a recompile, restart or whatever else but real time in a viewport.

Oh I forgot a good one, Lighting preview in Source. It doesnt has it yet it is the most modern and simple editor out there ?

Unreal has fully realtime previewing since 1998. Source still hasnt managed to catch up and youre calling it modern?...

4000: There are a 100 studios using Unreal for their games or other projects. I took the average of 40 developers per studio = ....

Since you are working with the engine, you have access to UDN. On the main UDN page click on Recent changes and then All changes. Now go count how many different studios you see in that list. It may not be a 100 but it prolly isnt far off either.

Source relies on its community to keep the whole thing running. It relies on its huge playerbase to provide user made tools and tutorials. Unreal relies on other stuff to keep itself running, it doesnt neccy requires its community to provide tutorials and all, although its of course never a bad thing if they help out.

So youre saying that having to construct a single room of 6 seperate brushes is "much smarter and faster" ?

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

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

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

How long have you worked with Source/HL BSP ?

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.

As simple as it gets? Typing stuff in notepad to make materials is regard "simple" and "modern" ?

We've discussed that before anyhow. As far as the numbers, sure, but of all those players only a few actually mod. Do you have any exact numbers on how many? Or on how many HL1 and HL2 maps there have ever been released?

Source may have a huge community, it may very well be larger than Unreal, but the Unreal community is generally at a different level. For us it is not the community tutorial efforts that makes or breaks the modding. For source I believe it is.

-Unreal has huge contests with a milion dollar in prices, that attracts people.

-Unreal is used by a huge amount of schools now, that also expands the community.

-Unreal has had a number of thick books written for it, again expands the community and speeds up peoples progress.

-Unreal has over 4000 professionals who are working with the engine every single day. Those 4000 are suppose to have a high level understanding of the engine. That group of people who fully understand everything that happens (or hopefully they do) is far larger than Source, which only has a handful of professionals working with the engine. Their skills flows on to the community, one way or another and in a way they in turn attract people.

Source relies on its community, Unreal primarily relies on other things and only then the community. Kind of.

Your correct on most things but:

-BSP: If used to the BSP system in UE it is by far faster than anything else. This is purely subjective and you are clearly not used to it. Others are.

-Accessibility: People can get Roboblitz. UT3 and GOW will be released in just months time. This is an unfair comparison. The public didnt had access to HL2 and source when it was still in development either right? Oh wait, it got leaked:P

-Source support and community: Again, you cant compare. Source' community is years old. UE3 community doesnt even exist yet because the games havent been released yet. If you want to compare these two at all, you should compare them in 3 years time.

And UE had a system similar to Source' entities at first, but was later replaced with Kismet because entities are nice, but you will seriously lose the overview, just as much as Kismet. Both approaches can result in an utter mess, only Kismet handles it a little better.

Would make the walls pretty blurry although it depends what its meant for. If its FPS I wouldnt use a single texture for it since you can get so close by. If its something like top down or perhaps even 3rd person, yeah might work.

I dont have unwrap tutorials but there are a bilion of those out there. The car looks pretty ok unwrap wise, I think you have more trouble with the actual photoshopping than the unwrapping.

http://www.game-artist.net/forums/vbart ... ticleid=44

http://www.game-artist.net/forums/vbart ... ticleid=36

http://www.game-artist.net/forums/spotl ... nting.html

Especially the last one. Its not a car, but if you can do those kind of things youll be well on your way with things like a car too.

The car needs a skin.

The building, tiling textures for all large surfaces such as the walls, all other elements on a single big texture sheet. Windows, doors, deco elements all in 1 texture.

The car will be much harder than the building, if you are this new to texturing you might just want to forget about the car for the time being and learn regular texturing first.

Its all getting hyped up a little too much. The article is generally positive and whether or not some have problems still doesnt prove anything. Whether you create your own engine or license something, theres always going to be stuff that doesnt run well, doesnt work all too wel and just isnt finished yet. The obstacles are part of the game.

Any developer who licensed an engine and thought none of that could happen to them is far off.

I am not going to sue Autodesk either because my 3DsMax crashes 3 times a day. A frigging 8000 or something dollar expensive program and it occasionally corrupts my files, how messed up is that!

Secondly I honestly believe a lot of developers just have not enough experience with the technology to know how to deal with it. Most developers are just into their very first project using the technology.

I do contract work, I go by studios, I hear things, I see things, and the number of errors being made is sometimes enormous. This goes from wrong settings, wrong way of handling a problem, wrong use of the lighting features and so on. From what I hear of experienced Unreal programmers, the problem is just as bad with code. Messy code, badly optimized, wrong way of handling things and so on. Of all people complaining, I believe half of those created their own problems because of their inexperience.

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And I don't follow the logic that just because they were the only ones to make a major complaint and they are a small company that they don't have a case.'Nobody else complained' doesn't mean that SK didn't still get fucked over.

Sure, the small studio may still have a case if they were to sue for something that only happened to them, but they arent. They are saying the engine isnt supported enough by Epic, no stable builds are out etc. Thats stuff that doesnt just affect them, but all other licensees as well. At best it is strange they are the only ones to actually complain about something so global?

At the same time they have a development cycle close to Duke Nukem, sounds to me like they just cant handle their stuff and are looking for a scapegoat.

And yes smaller studios are hit easier, but that brings us back to the original point: there are plenty of small studios who licensed the engine, yet none of them complains either.

Sure, but theres a difference between complaining, 'could-be-better' and outright sueing.

Even if those three would hate it, thats still just 3 percent of their customers who are not satisfied. Not a whole lot.

If you have over a hundred clients, theres always someone who complains. The bigger you get, the more attention youll draw in. That includes negative stuff like this.

Epic licensed the engine to a hundred developers, including some really big and powerful studios. If there really was a problem with the engine, Im sure those big studios wouldn't just keep their mouth shut. Yet, none of them complain except for a relatively little and pretty uknown studio who have been working on the same game for the past 8 years and just cant it out of the done...

That isnt exactly great for credibility...

Yeah clothes arent the problem. Ill dress nicely but casual, its about me, not my clothes:)

The problem is that Im not exactly fond of flying, so I want to minimize the time spend in an aircraft as much as possible. Flying to the same region twice isnt exactly what I understand under minimizing:)

Your idea of having them only pay one flight and stick around in a hotel is good Kungfusquirrel. Saves them money so I can prolly sell that idea

Plenty of time to explore the area like that too.

Thanks for the comments.

My turn to ask a gamesindustry question

I have no experience with job interviews on the other end of the planet. All interviews I did always were in the vicinity of a couple of hours driving from my home so Im looking for some info on this subject.

1. Whats most common, the studio arranging everything for you? Or you having to buy a ticket and all yourself first, and theyll just refund it later on?

2. They usually pick you up at the airport or you just have to figure it out yourself how you get to their front door?

3. Most important question: Is it considered rude to try and combine two interviews that are in the same area in the same day? This might give the studio too little time (3 hours max) to do the interview and since they refund the costs, this can get a little hairy? Id have to ask them to split the costs, is that considered not-done?

4. Anything else that might be important?

Anyone who has experience with this, or how does your studio handle this?

Sure if its not essential you cant really loose you trying.

Liquid entertainment or something is/was known for outsourcing stuff. Perhaps worth a look.

You also need to understand there are two kinds of remote work, youve got the factory work which is basically what all the chinese are doing. Low paid repetitive and usually simply boring. This type of remote work is based on money, the studio behinds it wants to save money so outsources it to cheap studios or individuals.

The other type is the specalized work, think concept artists or music composers. This kind of work is usually only done by a single guy and is well paid and complex work. Youre in control of a lot. Studios outsource this kind of work because they are looking for quality, the price theyll pay for it is kind of irrelevant.

The latter is obviously most fun and best paid but really difficult to get because of the high skill level required. The first one is easier to get hold off but dont underestimate the competition of countries like china.

Dont say Hi in every newspost you make

For the most pro portfolio I wouldnt include any news at all, or in a very minimalistic way. Stick to the point, news is kind of irrelevant.

I dont know what kind of position you will be applying for, but if you intend to be a level design intern Id give your levels much more attention. You dont come across like a level designer to me right now because the levels are dumped at the bottom of the page in between all kinds of other stuff. It doesnt really feel important.

Sure, thats never a bad practice but thats something related to your skill. I would be most worried about the available work, there just isnt a whole lot.

Google around, see how many remote jobs you can find that you think you might enjoy and are skilled enough for.

You wont find a whole lot, or itll be garage games like projects.

The biggest problem is the amount of available work. Forget your skill, personality and expectations. They are all useless if there isnt any work available in the first place.

This is not the easiest career move you can pick.

Being onsite does make your more of the slave of the team though, junior whatever. You might be able to decide on a little bit more but not all too much either, you are still controlled by others and they can demand you to start at x am in the morning and dress like this or that.

Onsite work usually also is quite "boring" as in repetitive. Youll be stuck to a project for at least a year where as remote work often has shorter contracts and its more varied.

Its not all that bad, remote work is working out perfectly fine for me and at times, I actually enjoy it more than onsite work. I can just work on and do my thing, without having meetings and without hearing of 20 completely different opinions on where everyone thinks I should take this or that. That slows you down.

All in all, I think the threadstarter should be more concerned whether or not he can actually pull this off than whether or not he will like it. This is just really hard to pull off, except if you get into tiny tiny projects, so I dont give you a huge chance on succeeding anyhow...

I got a big piece on this in my new book. Im doing remote work NEXT to my existing work, there are reasons for that. Dont be fooled, this is not easy to pull off at all.

-Level Design is a core position, very few studios outsource core tasks like levels, thus theres not a huge amount of work out there, hard to keep up full time.

-This is a specialized position, you need to be damn good and be able to work completely on your own with very little supervision and a very good grip on your time, thats not all too easy.

-99 percent of all remote jobs are never ever advertised, you cant get hold of it without knowing the right people or simply be known by the right people. Catch attention, Im doing my best to do so

-You need to be a really fast worker, time is money.

-Etc.

The thing is, remote work is a great way to be a gamedev in the comfort of your own house and to get your portfolio filled up in no time at all. It also offers varied work and youre the boss, kind off.

BUT its hard to pull off, its highly insecure, theres little work available and you indeed do gain less experience of it. You will always be the guy who gets a task and have to complete it. You can never become the lead and be the one whos in control. That can be frustrating.

Cool BSP work and the map looks solid too, but Im not entirely convinced by the lighting and any extras yet. It looks pretty ambient and white lighting like and perhaps some extra particles/effects/eyecatches/little details could have lived it up on some spots.

Looks awesome, but the buildings are indeed a bit clean.

As far as I can see you're using a fire orange color for the streetlamps? It might be cool if you have 2 light colors for the light sources, a white blueish for the lamps, the orange you already have for fires

or whatever.

You can also have some car headlights still on for lighting source variation.

And I would also add light to a couple of windows, or way or another.

I don't know of any books, I doubt there are any on this subject.

A huge marketing budget and well known brands make a game succesful...

Who needs gameplay or graphics when you've got "The Matrix" on your box...The mass doesnt really care what kind of quality a game is, hell, half the time they don't even notice a game is complete crap. All they care about is a nice box and a fancy name.

Hardcore gamers <> the average games, and the latter happens to be the biggest group of customers..