Posts by Rick_D

I know it's probably something that has been mentioned before but it would be worth loading up CoD4 and checking out their levels. One of the things that makes them stand out is the sheer volume of debris that is scattered around, along with a healthy dose of greenery in the forms of weeds, grasses, potted plants, trees etc.

Are you building your own content or are you working with existing INS stuff? I don't recall there beign that much good debris in the original, so perhaps it'll be worth building some generic models and a decent texture to use with displacements.

I'm also seeing a lot of sharp edges where buildings meet, try to either disguise these or make them less obvious with extras added on the actual walls or corners, things like pipes, wires, posters, windows etc.

Try and make every building seems as if it could be entered regardless of wether it can or not. Again the guys at IW did a great job with making their environments feel middle eastern even if they weren't exactly accurate, they present what you imagine the place to look like.

I noticed a few bits of damage on walls, and it just ends - like someone came along and cleaned up all the mess, where did all the bricks go? Where is all the dust?

The best thing you can do when dealing with such a huge amount of stuff to detail is go and look up some reference (google middle eastern village names, "dirty streets" "bombed houses" etc), pick out parts that look good or have something interesting about them, and build that detail into a specific area; rinse and repeat until everythign is up to a consistently good level.

[email protected] please.

thanks!

Yeah BJA's stuff is shit hot.

Makes me wonder how I got a job lol.

Yeah my main problem is that the horizontal scrollbar is so alien that it feels like you are being forced to exit your comfort zone in order to look at work which is supposed to be enticing you in.

So either you get someone who loves the novelty, or you get someone who hates the effort. Instead of a vertical system where people would just be looking at your work because they feel comfortable within the vertical browsing method.

Incorporating widescreen is a nice touch but I think it's possible to show landscape images perfectly well vertically, after all left-right or up-down, you will still have a moment where an image is clipped, and a landscape will fit on a widescreen vertical layout just as well as it would on a horizontal layout.

Also, it can't be that hard to line up image sizes can it?

Of course I think this is all irrelevant because you have made up your mind and won't change the design, but for my money you would get better reception from potential employers with a traditional layout that they are used to browsing.

And the point that is interesting to me is that instead of talking about your work we are talking about your layout, which is nice to get people talking, but defies the point of a portfolio.

Quote from 2d-chris

sucks their work was pretty awesome

They had some pretty bad people and some fucking amazing people. I'm sure all the guys will get jobs elsewhere, Guerilla anyone?

The demo is indeed shit. I really don't know why they bothered with such a half-assed effort.

The full game, for some unknown reason, feels totally different to them demo.

Quote from Jetsetlemming

I agree with barrakid. Piracy or no piracy, they're shooting for a small, oversaturated market as a tiny little studio, their business model is fundamentally flawed. Innovation is not what sells copies in casual games focused on babies and small children. Walmart posters and commercials on TV are. Look at those Ubisoft Imagine games. You can't get less innovative than that, but I just saw a Walmart commercial for the "Imagine Series" last week while watching Fox. They're selling crazy.

not sure if i get your meaning 100%, but they are saying that they have to do the shitty kids games to keep the revenue going while they work on their own innovative games, which then get pirated and cause them to fall back on the shitty kids games because no publisher will take a chance when the game, although heavily played, didn't sell many copies.

i think in part it is the console manufacturers fault that they don't do enough to prevent piracy on their machines. a console is a very closed system and should be much easier to control.

scribblenauts was shit. great premise, terribly executed.

the last good game i bought for ds was legend of 'zelda: phantom hourglass'. maybe hotel dusk. i buy all my ds games and agree that the price tag is a little hefty considering that less money and manhours are spent compared to a 'next gen' game.

the thing that gets me, is that piracy is often thought of as being as pc-exclusive problem. i went did a search for assassins creed 2 and there are already about a dozen rips up for xbox. and getting a flashed ds is the simplest thing in the world (legitimate companies are out there selling the gear in special metal boxed special editions...).

Quote from Sentura

swearing is such mature way of showing what you think of your audience.

I laid out my points without so much as a single cussowrd, in wonderfully presented type. However you just ignored that as well because you are not actually mature enough to alter an opinion once you've stated it.

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you are clearly very ignorant, very unintelligent, or you simply haven't played the game.

derp derp

Quote from Taylor

Ah okay. I just wondered if there was some trick to get out. So if it happens in an online game people don't make fun of me for failing Thanks.

Yeah it's a shitty bug and needs to be fixed, it has only happened 3 times in the 20+ hours I have played so I guess it is hard to track down

I think he makes a lot of very good pointa. One thing that irked me was that there was no infiltration of the organisation at all, I fully expected some james Bond or Jack Bauer style shit to go down, but no, straight into killing people and I had no reason or explanation given to me. So I killed everyone because fuck it, who cares.

Insightful commentary - cheers for the read ;O

hahah

Quote from Ugoff

Ever heard of X-box Live?

there's probably 5 people on this forum who actually play games anymore.

so no, he hasn't

Quote from Taylor

Is there some command for nudging myself out of geometry? A charger has planted me inside it twice now.

yeah shit sucks, there is some bug where you can get stuck in in the same position if the charger gets killed at a certain time, i have seen it a couple of times. i don't think it's actually pushing you into a wall - but if you open up your console (enable it in options -> keyboard) and type:

sv_cheats 1

noclip

and move yourself, then just type noclip to turn it off and you should be good.

well you know, fucking pointless trying to lay out any actual arguments to help someone make a better judgement, when you just get "waaaah opinions opinions waah". it's 2009 and i thought internet forums might have moved on in the last 10 years but not so much.

poow widdle fwiechamp.

anyway, i win.

Quote from Lord Ned

'Official' story (AKA Only word we heard) was from Chet was that they were "testing the rc" and if it "encounters no issues it will ship today". This of course was the day after L4D2 released and... I still don't see it.

Using something internally and releasing it to the public are very different though. The SDk, when released, for L4D was pretty damn good, it just worked and had loads of stuff to make it easier to ship custom campaigns. I'm sure this won't be different. Surely people should be enjoying the game rather than instantly building new maps you could build in L4D SDk if you really nedded, to, the shit will be compatible.

How didn't I counter them Sentura?

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In logic, an argument is a set of one or more meaningful declarative sentences (or "propositions") known as the premises along with another meaningful declarative sentence (or "proposition") known as the conclusion.

You put forward the opinion that because L4D2 doesn't have (and I quote) "major changes in story, atmosphere, gameplay, technology [along with] correct timing", it cannot be a true sequel, in your opinion.

I put forward a list of evidence taken from the game itself that countered each point of your proposition, showing that L4D2 does in fact meet all your requirements for a sequel.

So essentiaqlly you are saying: "Yeah but what I said was an opinion and an opinion is not a fact therefore you cannot prove it wrong because it was never true in the first place".

In which case I accept your defeat, albeit somewhat ungracefully, and would ask you to consider not being such a faggot in future. Of course that is just my opinion.

Like how when Valve updated TF2 constantly with free content?

Nah fuck those bitches man, Valve have provided so much free stuff to their customers that you would have thought people would be willing to give them some leeway, or at least trust them. Oh no, kids act like Valve employees personally chain-raped their 80 year old grandmother and took a shit in her mouth, leaving a bloodied old pile of bones with a 3 foot pile of human feaces over her face.

I had a shitload of fun with L4D; it never felt unfinished to me, and I never really bought that argument. It didn't have copious updates aside from the VS additions (which require more than just flipping a switch and adding infected) and the 2-map update recently, but just because Valve have done it in the past doesn't mean they are in some way obliged to always give away free content for all their games. The fact that they are doing it for TF2 doesn't make the lack of it for L4D a negative thing, it makes the content and updates for TF2 a positive thing.

I paid for the first game, and got a lot of playtime out of it, much more so than I did out of even MW1 (SP and MP), and miles more than MW2. Getting L4D2 wasn't a big issue for me, and after recently finishing the Hard Rain campaign I would say those 5 maps alone are worth the purchase.

Like I said previously, Valve have always been a great developer and surely we can give them some leeway with this? The whole argument put forward by those who want more free updates for L4D strikes me as a bit ridiculous. People saying they didn't get enough playtime, or that they only bought the game because Valve said they would provide more campaigns. Bullshit.