Posts by Steppenwolf

  • IGDA Discussion Over "Crunch Time" Development

    I'm glad that i don't have to do much crunch time at Grin and if so it's usualy compensated in a appropriate way.

    I don't mind working the one or other crunch week near the end of a important milestone/project when its necessary as long as its explained to me why its necessary and i get compensated for it. This happens in every company in a lot of industries. It would bother me however if the crunch was already planned before a project starts or if it was expected from me to work overtime without compensation. That is a really bad way of treatening your employees with a lack of respect.

    If the Epic guy thinks crunch time is the way to go then he is just wrong imo. It will bite him and his company in the ass earlier or later. You can only overwork your employees for so long. If they are tough guys they will only burnout after a couple of years but they will eventualy.

    We have still a rather young industry with young emloyees who maybe have the energy and passion to do crunch to some degree. But things will change. 10-20 years from now the average age of the employees will be higher, more people will have families and health issues will be of bigger concern. Does Epic still want to treat its then veteran employees like work slaves then, risking their health and spoil their family lifes? And do the veteran devs themselfes actualy want to stay in a company like this for decades? I can't imagine that this work philosophy will work out for them in the long run.

    Having passion for game development is one thing. A employer exploiting this passion for cheap labor is another thing. A job should be treathend as a job no matter what industry. Just because we have colorful pictures on the wall and enjoy what we do doesn't mean we have to accept exploitation.

  • Game industry questionmarks

    You can try to study one of the game related courses at Skövde University. A couple guys from my company went there and some mapcore members.

    It's true that a lot of people want to become level designers and only a part of them ultimately get a job. But this shouldnt demotivate you. You have great control over your own chances. Just work really hard on your portfolio. If you study in that direction dont only do course stuff but also spent your freetime on additional stuff like custom maps or mods. This extra work and the experience that you get from it makes the difference between you and the other students who rather like to party. Also learn how to do singleplayer maps. mp maps are nice and can give you an job but if you have some nice sp maps/mods in your portfolio your chances will be even bigger.

    You canalso try to do an internship. The dense of studios in and around stockholm is quite good.

    Payment is not horrible for swedish standarts. Its somewhere in the middle or slightly above what people earn in this country in average. Of course you will not get rich as a level designer.

  • What have you purchased recently?

    Yea Fallout 3 was great fun. having low expectations sure helps to enjoy the game. I've spent like 100 hours in that game and i will continue as soon as the third DLC arrives. For console rpgs its on top there with Mass Effect. Not as polished but way better sidequests/missons.

  • PC racing wheels

    Just yesterday i was thinking about getting a racing wheel for my PC/xbox because i'm so fucking bored of most games these days. I always loved racing sims but they are no fun with a joypad or keyboard. Any recommendations?

  • CE2 - Visualisation

    I think it looks great. Two crits:

    The houses look a bit uncanny. Some (faked) ambient occlusion or dirt would make them look more realistic.

    Something about the colors seems off. Everything looks a kinda gray and death, the greens are maybe too dark. This contradicts the "sunny atmosphere" that you are aiming for. I think some fresher green colors and less desaturation wouldn't harm.

    on a side note: It's Level Designer not Leveldesigner (common trap for german speaker to write stuff together)

  • RAGE

    This looks like a lot of fun to mess with. Wonder if their level designers are allowed to paint landscapes or if they have dedicated artists only for that. I sure would be pissed if i had this tech on my hand and would only be allowed to place large objects and script gameplay.

  • First they came.

    They also came for the people who spoke out. Like in my town there were a couple of pupils who made pamphlets against nazism and showed them around in their school. They all got murdered in a concentration camp. I really hate poems like that because they suggest that everybody who shut up during nazi time was a coward. But during war its smartness that keeps you alive, this includes to know when to shut up and not trying to be a one man army, except you want a street or a school named after you. If anything you could do something against a nazi regime in the underground resistance.

  • Unreal Engine 3 updates

    Chris, as i already wrote for Diesel we use a set of lego like models for the rough layout. That is way faster then brushing because we will just overlap and wildly angle stuff to get the shapes that we want. It doesnt matter at this stage because it will be replaced anyway. And there is no fear that something could break the map or hurt performance like this would be the case for bad brushwork.

    Quote from 2d-chris

    Just when you consider the game engine and pipeline to be so important, take a look at Valve ... the ability to change a layout drastically AFTER an art pass is done undoubtably helps them create some of the best games in the industry.

    This is a really bad example because this is exactly where i feel that source is way behind. You have to fix so many tiny things afterwards alone to make the map compilable again. I did some serious layout changes for bionic commando within a couple of hours. When i was on Insurgency stuff like this always took 1-2 days to fix and was a real pain in the ass to do.

  • Unreal Engine 3 updates

    What you discuss now is really more of concern for the artists. In Diesel engine i don't necessarely have to switch around modeling program and level editor as a level designer. We have like a set of legos (different sized and shaped models) that we use for doing the map layouts. This works _a lot_ faster then doing the map layouts with brushes.

    And i would estimate that if all art assets are provided i can create a whole map in like 10-20% of the time that a similarly detailed map would take me in Source or Radiant.

  • Unreal Engine 3 updates

    Quote from 2d-chris

    yeah for prototyping! BSP is where the party is at

    Why do you think so? I really see no advantage that bsp has these days. Maybe a bit more control and freedom for the level designer but thats something that gets lost anyway with the job becoming more and more specialized. Visualy it doesn't make a difference on what your engine is based as long as the renderer, art assets and everything is top notch. The main difference is in the workflow and in that regard bsp is just a painfull thing from the past.