Posts by Steppenwolf

I would assume it really depends on the kind of game. Something like Civilization certainly needs a higher percentage of programmers while your typical first person/third person shooter would need a higher percentage of artists.

Not surprising at all. Surprising was that they could go on with their obviously flawed development scheme for so long.

And tbh the latest bunch of screenshots didn't looked very hot (at least not for what you would expect from a game that is so long in development). My guess is that they after 12 years still failed to deliver and then someone finaly pulled the plug.

Here is an update for my rFactor track:

Managed to get a shitload of stuff done. Remember i started with that over the easter weekend and most things you see are custom.

Things left on my to do list:

- half a dozen props and half a dozen textures

- get some decent lighting and shadows in

(actualy the current lighting is nice but its borrowed from another track)

- performance optimizations

- smoothen some of the geometry (pit lane is quite bumpy)

- get the AI and rules in

- cameras

- debugging

Actualy you are right about the spanish flu. However last thing i have read about the swine flu is that the symptoms are that of a typical or mild influenza. The actual death toll is also way lower then news papers reported at the beginning of the outbreak.

Quote from robert.briscoe

if they only supplied a steady stream of high quality hookers i'd be satisfied, but instead what do i get? overtime food!!

mat på jobbet

I think the panic is way over the top at least for the western world. From what i know so far its not more deadly then the normal flu that we get every year and this one never made us freak out in panic even before yearly vaccines became common. Sure its possibly deadly under unfortunate circumstances and having the flu fucking sucks but it would be nothing that i haven't experienced a couple of times already in my life. I think at least in the west we are also better prepared medicaly and physically then lets say 1918. Remember WW1 was still going and the "healthy young" people who died like flies actualy were a bit underfed and had often no access to a healthy diet. The second and third world however, yea they are much more fucked in a pandemic due to bad hygienic situations, lack of healthcare, underfeeding etc.

The survey is not very helpfull as long as its not broken up into different regions and countries.

The numbers are way too high to give any indication for average salaries in europe.

The average for QA in this for example is higher then the overall average income in sweden.

Funny that you mention it because i just recently asked myself what happend to these guys.

I don't think there is time travel in the movie. As i said it plays way earlier before these events and technologies. I'm not even sure if there are plasma rifles already. We don't have them in our game and i havent seen them in any of the movie references. But they might show up in one of the later movies i guess together with the other stuff (it's planned as a new trilogy afaik).

Always keep in mind that the Terminators in the new movie and in the game are technically far less advanced then the ones that you know from the first 3 movies. The new movie is about pretty early in the resistance movement. Kyle Reese, the guy who got send back to safe John Connor in T1 is still a freakin kid in this movie! Also keep that in mind when critizicing that there are plants and shit. How would mankind be able to survive the next 20 years if the planet was a complete wasteland already?

WIP video of my track for rFactor! Sorry no sound for whatever reason

Most custom models are still missing, foliage is far from finished. The ugly red and white buildings are placeholders for the stands and other big structures. Not many details in the backdrop either yet. The geometry of the track itself is pretty much done however and i'm very happy with it! Only the curbs need to be redone and polished with better models. Most textures are custom except for the sky and the metal fence. Will be replaced later hopefully.

Thats terrible.

Didn't knew him personaly but i knew him as a user of this forum.

My condoleces to his family and friends

I hope they gonna make it. In my book one of the very few decent developers in germany. Would suck to see them bite the dust. Lots of nostalgia from me too. The Patrician and On The Ball were two of my all time favourite games on the Amiga.

Here is the website for it: http://%7boption%7d

There are pictures and videos on it.

Yes i use Bob's track builder. For my track i created a path of it in google.earth and then imported it into the track builder as the base for it. I also took a screenshot in google earth and placed it under the track as reference to get all scales, walls etc right. The lenght is almost perfect (only around 35 m shorter then the real thing, thats less then 1% difference).

A little something i started to work on 4 days ago. A race track for rFactor!

It's the Sachsenring in germany, only 30 km away from my hometown. I have been there to a lot of MotoGP and Touring car races. A lot of fun to work on this for me. The track editor that i use is also a very nice little program with lots of neat features. It feels like a mix between traditional level design and 3D modeling.

Close up shots in the future when its a little more detailed and polished.

[Blocked Image: http://i43.tinypic.com/29m3o7k.jpg]

FrieChamp:

The problem is that Epic is one of the leaders in the industry and as such other studios look at them and their methods. But their methods are an anachronism that should not be an example for others. It goes against everything that has been achieved for QoL of workers in the last 150 years in general and in the last couple of years within the gaming industry (since the EA spouse incident).

With working on triple A titles this has nothing to do at all. You can make kickass games without ruining the health of your employees, especialy a studio like Epic that sells so many units and outsources a big part of their content production anyway to cheaper companys. And why should the games industry be a different case from any other industry. Where is the difference if i produce a kickass game in a studio or a kickass car in a factory? It has nothing to do with the kind of product you work on.

I also get a bit emotional over that because i have a very good friend in my age who already suffered from burnout three times and his life is pretty much ruined after the last time. So for me who wants to stay in this industry for a long time its important that we can have work conditions that fit for human beings.

Personaly i think that even the 40 hour week might be sub-optimal for a creative job, at least in the traditional 8/5 shape, because you really have to focus and do something new every day. It's no job where you can turn off the brain and function on a pure mechanical level.

And for me its also impossible to do quality creative work when i feel tired. So i don't see how a 50-60-70 hour week can do anything good for a creative team. It's complete nonsense.

yea its kinda sick. not only do they have more crunch time in generel they also have a diffferent understanding of what crunch time is. For me it would be to go home at 9 pm instead of 6 pm or to work through the night the day before a milestone, then sleep at the company and go home early the next day.

wow, just wow, something from a producer at Epic:

Quote

Crunch“I am a believer that if you’re going to make a great game, and there is that caveat, I believe that crunch is necessary,” Fergusson says. “I believe it’s important because it means your ambition is greater than what you scheduled out. Going in with that idea that crunch is necessary means you can plan for it. It shouldn’t be a surprise. Crunch should be driven by the ambition of the team, and not the inaccuracy of the schedule.”

But he cautions that crunch should be managed by milestones, or some other regular method. “It’s a marathon, not a sprint,” he says, though realistically “It’s a marathon for a really long time, then at the end it is a sprint.”

He also believes in empathetic crunches. “If we’re going to crunch early for something, we made them teamwide. Everything can benefit from getting more done. If the artists were on schedule, then they crunched and they got ahead.” This sometimes led to more being added to the game, or simply more human resources later on. At the end of the project though, they keep crunches as small as possible, because having fewer hands on the project later helps polish.

He cautions though, that people have limits. “Working later than 2 am is a net loss. The productivity of the person who’s doing that to themselves ultimately ends us costing them at the end of that week,” he says. Epic has put a “go home law” in the company handbook as a result.

“Every crunch is different for every team,” he says. “If you’re not doing it because of mistakes in the schedule, but through planning, it’s much easier to go to your team and ask them how they want to crunch.” If they have that light at the end of the tunnel, in terms of a fixed launch date, crunch becomes much more manageable.

http://%7boption%7d

The company culture at Epic really seems to be a bit fucked up at this point. They are actualy planning crunches and think its something to be proud of.

With this attitude by management not a company i would want to work for no matter how good games they make.