I see skdr already wrote what I thought when I saw the picture. Is there anything which you can't do?
I do not know a lot about matte painting, but I can see that yours there look pretty cool. The sky seems to be a blend of every possible weather though, maybe stick to either sunshine or black clouds?
You are probably running out of physical memory during vis and then your compile slows down big time due to the swapping.
4.5k portals for such a small map is quite much, you need to reduce the workload for vis by e.g. turning all non-vis blocking into func_detail.
env_lightglow created quite a lot of trouble last time I messed with it. So far I am sticking to a light entity and a glow sprite until they make the lightglow one work properly.
In particular it flashed in an annoying way regardless of what values I chosed.
Congrats Insta, sounds like a great job to get:)
Haven't checked it lately, but at least in the first versions you could not really feel any difference at all from HL2 to HL2 with substance activated.
Try working with e.g. Max&Virtools and you will see that exact workflow. A number of options is needed, but that could be handled within the aforemented workflow.
As they say, changing a skybox does not affect anything in regards to compile time.
Post your entire compile log and I am sure we will see something.
I am currently trying to compile get a model from max into Source which so far has been a nightmare. Even with a 3rd party helper tool like SteamShovel I still got no luck on getting a .mdl out of it.
What someone really should make is a plugin to max so that I can just select "Export->Source mdl" and let that be it. Instead I am forced through a myriad of smd files, qc files, guimdl compilers, etc.
So please get that video tutorial up again!
Compiling models from max to Source is such a pain in the ass, so thanks for the tutorial vid:)
And yeah, it does not work atm.
Looks good, you should dim the light in the cellar or increase the falloff range though, there are currently a total lack of shadows which is not what I usually connect with a cellar.
Looks much better with those changes and when rendered!
And yes Tom, I also think the roof tiles look a tad stretched.
Windows look kinda wierd, should be darker I think and less blue. In addition you should also remove the shinyness from the upper trim and let the spec map handle that.
I somehow doubt he made the model for engineering purposes:)
In addition the current detail spries is a huge demand for the engine. I tried adding just a bit of grass to my rally map which resulted in a 30% fps drop just for a few sprites.
Yeah was about time that you got to do texturing at work Blaz!
Or you could improve the quality and lower the size at the same time by saving it as png instead of jpg;)
Skdr, I have a feeling that what I showed in my portfolio was only one of many reasons combined. As far as I could understand it was more the combination of a decent portfolio, good school grades, lots of mod work, tutorial writing, design document writing, coding skills, project leading experience, etc. which all together made me a viable candidate.
I am quite happy about this as the only current gen map in my portfolio is a quickly thrown together test map to test SoW2 on. Thankfully the interviewer had a very good overall understand of how game development work. He was personally the same type with a mix of design, coding and graphics experience.
Thanks guys for the nice words:)
No not really hired yet, but yesterday I was in Copenhagen for a talk with IO Interactive regarding a possible position as level designer there. Was pretty damn awesome as those guys rock and a job there would be SO frikkin great.
I was extremely nervous when arriving there and waiting for the interviewer to come around. Thankfully it turned out that he was a total cool and relaxed guy called Mads Prahm. He told a lot about the history of IO and the way they worked today while giving a tour around the building.
It was very little like I had imagined it to be. I had expected there be usual job interview questions like "what are you strengths and weaknesses" or technical questions about level design.
Instead we just sat and talked about all kind of game design related stuff where he managed to somehow get all the information he wanted without it felt like a test.
The tilde master
We did visit Mazy on our way around the building, but I did not realize who it was before afterwards. When I mentioned it to Mads we went to see him again, but then he was just gone:/ But ohh well, we got a look at the more or less crazy drawings he got hanging around with planet mazy.
So?
At first there did not seem to be big chances of a job there as they aren't really recruiting more people atm. After having talked for a while it looked better though as we seemed to be very much on the same wavelength regarding game design.
So I got no signed contract yet, but we are going to have another meeting where the HR manager and other level designers are going to be asking me questions. If I don't fuck that up, I should have a good chance of a position there.
Benjamin and Guppyworks
After visiting IO I went over to have a beer with Benjamin(Nimajneb here from the SoW team) and see Guppyworks where he works.
Coming from IO this looked a lot different as they are just 15 people there compared to 150 at IO.
They were all real nice here too and it was pleasant to see yet another SoW crew member irl.
Hey don't diss TI-83 programming! I have made a fully fledged adventure game for the TI-83+ calculator written in the TI-Basic language. Includes 7 different classes, 24 unique encounters, 60+ levels, lots of different skills, a save/load feature and more.
This was all written directly on the calculator.
