Posts by Alf-Life

  • Jerryn Goodwin - Level Designer

    Really nice site, I love it!

    I would be tempted to remove "home" and make "Level Design" your 'home' page (unless you plan to add a blog or news style feed). I used to have a single image you had to click on to enter my site for way too long and the best advice is to let the user get right to the good stuff. If the site is a portfolio page primarily, that would be the Level Design section.

    I'd also be tempted to remove the "Good Game" from the title, OR make it like "Good Game: Level Design by Jerryn Goodwin". I like it as a flourish and pun on your name, but on first glance it's kind of confusing. Either that or make the whole thing clickable. Seems like silly feedback and nitpicky, but that was my first impression.

  • Harry Edwards - Game and Level Design

    Very nice and clean, I love it. Best work right there at the very top.

    I didn't realise the links at the top weren't separate pages and took me down the page - it's cool that the header bar stays but did I miss a 'home'/top button? I had to scroll all the way to the top again so not sure why your name was clickable?

    I liked the descriptions and list of responsibilities, again very clear. I would make my own video for the F1 game though highlighting your work - in the distant future it will be a great reminder to you of what you did, and if it's on your own channel you won't be reliant on Codemasters in case they take their then-"old" Trailer down. If you did that, I'd be tempted to make that the main large thing - a YouTube link in place of the images.

    One last thing would be to highlight the "View CV" tab - it doesn't stand out enough amongst all the projects and could easily be missed. Even if it was just a yellow font colour.

  • Jeffy Zachariah - Level Designer

    Agree with everyone else about the background, it's cool but very distracting.

    I love that you have the reel video as the first thing you see on your page, it's right there for me in one click. One thing about the reel is, first video... looks amazing. "Cavern of the Damned." OK. "Role: Level Design, Lighter" OK. ....so, which game/project was that for? Which engine? (Maybe what year?).

    I found the Portfolio sections hard to navigate. The rotating images made it hard for me to tell if I'd seen that one before, and the "more" and "back" buttons when I'd clicked the image felt clunky... I'd much rather prefer a more "boring" list/tiles of images, and then the info on each one rather than going 3 layers deep. The Days After page also didn't have a Back button, and I noticed if I clicked on a screenshot for a larger version and then closed it, if I tried to use the Browser Back button to get back to "Personal Work" I would cycle through the image again.

    Great content, by the way, navigation just needs to be nice and simple! :)

  • Fallout 4

    Questionnaire already completed. :)

    Koblenz is beautiful by the way! You're lucky to live there! :)


    I've sunk about 100 hours into Fallout 4 now... started to whittle away all the Side Quests and am back to the Main Story, which is kinda boring somehow! Anyone else play like me? Explore and just do everything BUT what you're supposed to? :)

  • New Gears Of War

    Did you play at GamesCom, Sprony?

    I'm hoping people will be pleasantly surprised by the game. Watching videos of someone play it's easy to be "yep, looks like Gears" but I'm hoping when people get their hands on it they remember just how fluid and fun Gears core gameplay is. Epic did a really amazing job and I think it's still best-in-class even now when I play other more contemporary 3rd Person Shooters.

  • Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

    Quote from (HP)

    On 8/24/2016 at 2:36 PM, (HP) said: I saw that actually, but decided to completely ignore it. You actually get a lot of free stuff if you pre ordered the game, stuff that I definitely don't want because I know it'll fuck up with the balancing of the game. They give you weapons, a lot of money, and praxis kits. I'll just continue ignoring it, and never use it.

    Haha, that's so funny, me too. I did the same with Human Revolution, completely ignored the pre-order bonus stuff so I wouldn't mess up the balance.

  • Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

    Unlocked for me last night, gave it a couple of hours!

    Huge fan of HR so I love the little tweaks so far. Graphics (on 'Bone) are a little disappointing but they do have a lot going on. Trying to avoid being spoilery but just in case, quick hits from the first couple of hours:

    Spoiler

    • the ending of the first mission and then the ending of the "walk n talk" in the railway station seemed like identical beats, plot-wise, both ending in a weird explosion that at first seemed mysterious but I think was just confusingly-implemented. Feels like maybe the Dubai mission was added late on?
    • not a fan of the hologram tutorials. Better than watching the videos in HR but the Stealth one just fell flat and I feel like it was bugged maybe?
    • on XboxOne at least, the tagged enemy icons and mini-map icons seem to be at noticeably-lower framerate.
    • Went for Non-Lethal Long-range, and something about the animation or recoil feels off compared to HR. Was HR Unreal and this is their own engine?
    • Wish they'd updated their Battery design. Feels like I'll cheese this one like HR by just relying on the single recharging 'battery'.
    • Hacking is still fucking cool and best in class! :) Only looks way better now. :)
    • Not sure about the "Division"-style cover yet. Maybe the VATS of Cover for non-twitchy players?
    • Apartment looks gorgeous and it was truly a Valve-moment when Jensen said "Blinds" and they opened as I was looking at the right place, etc.
    • ...Followed by another Valve moment when the Apt AI said you have voicemail from Sarif and both Jensen and I IRL let out a sigh, lol!
    • Love how they wrapped up the Sarif/Megan/Pritchard stuff with the TV (though think I found a bug because I first activated the TV itself, and then when I hit "Turn Off" on the remote it actually started playing the News).
    • Prague looks good!
    • Ghost so far baby! :)

  • Days Gone

    I think I was demo'd out when I saw this during the Sony Conference because it was "bam! Game. Bam! New game! Bam, trailer! Bam game!" so I thought this looked a bit too similar to TLOU... and it's zombies on top of all the other zombie games I'd seen...

    ...HOWEVER... watching it again, holy shit the zombie flow which reminds me of like World War Z seems to be its USP! The AI/animation/flow system looks insaneeeee, and it reminds me of the first time I saw the horde of zombies in Left 4 Dead but amped up and more next-gen!

    Can't wait!

  • Overwatch

    OK, that's it... I'm getting this. I have far too much to play (and have a new baby to look after, but heck there's always 1am - 5am) ...Uncharted 4, Doom now this... At first I was put off by how close some of the weapons/classes and env style seemed to be to my all-time-love TF2 (engineer sentry, demo pipebomb, etc) but it looks like they've taken it in a different direction and I just looooooove the look of the environments every time I see a new level.

  • Tom Hanrahan - Game / Level Designer

    Yeah, what Uber said It reminds me of an early version of my website which I was trying to make work on all resolutions... thing is, most of your audience will be viewing it on a massive monitor at high resolution so as long as you don't go overboard the bigger the better.

    Other than that, awesome work and it's all very clearly laid out. I would have the screenshots open as pop-ups as I think sometimes people don't 'middle-click to open in new tab'.

  • Vinay Dhill - Level Designer

    Nice. One small thing is that if I click "Personal Projects" a screenshot of "Establish" comes up, but nothing is clickable. I have to then go back into the menu, and click on the Establish sub-menu. As a flow thing, since there's only one personal project I would have it go right to the map, or at least make the Establish screenshot/title text clickable.

    Also, have you considered a YouTube trailer/quick fly-through of your work before the screenshots?

    Finally, would be cool to see just one [introductory] blog post in the Blog section.

  • Player Gating in Level Design

    I haven't heard the term hard/soft gating, but I would assume it refers to stopping a player form going somewhere -- in that sense, a hard gate would be, literally, a gate I couldn't get past whereas a soft gate might be allowing the player to go somewhere physically (like San Francisco in GTA San Andreas or a high-level area in The Division) but not giving them much chance to stay alive while there (an instant 5-star Wanted rating or high-level one-shot-killer Dudes).


    At least on linear, single-player action games I've worked on, we typically front-gate players to stop them from skipping an encounter by Running Past All the Dudes, and back-gate players from going back in a level so we can drop previous sections from memory and start loading the next area.