Posts by -HP-

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Don't get me wrong, I respect the heritage of FF7, I beat it back in the day. It's just turn based games..... eeeeh. lmao

What they briefly show of the combat in the remake looks really good tho man, hope this will be good.

I mean, it's ok to talk about it, I trust Mapcore to keep it civil and respectful, it's the reason I'm here, to discuss the industry and the games at large. It's just, it's ALL people fucking talk about nowadays, go on nearly any online games publication, forum, fb or twitter thread, someone's getting outraged at what someone else said or did, I think we're above that here and can discourse about things with a certain level of detachment and be rational about things.

Anyway, it's disappointing and It's why I pretty much stopped following any games media coverage, their bias is palpable at this point. I still sporadically check the games Easy Allies review as I know and trust the editorial staff over there, they never did clickbait and their podcast is always on topic, and I also take a peak at my YT recommended page, although even that is usually a mess.

Dude, some people spend more hours of their day discussing and bitching about games and the industry, than they do actually playing games. Wtf?

Industry drama became a video game, a very dangerous for your sanity video game that bounders on politics and insanity. Fuck all of that shit, people need to go back to get laid and worry less about what others "tweet" and "outrage" about. Lmao

I never got into FF. Even back in the day when everyone was raving about FF7 I always found the turn based combat really monotonous and boring af, really.

But the cinematics and art style overall are some of the best shit out there.

Lol, every game brings on a new drama.

Not enough pink graffiti 7/10

That Rage 1 ending joke tho.

Quote from Radu

On 5/8/2019 at 12:13 AM, Radu said: You know what'd make for a great open world game though? Predator. It would actually play into that fantasy pretty well having a large jungle area to go about hunting and using your gadgets.

Too many, lol.

I love me a good open world, I can't wait for Death Stranding, but I'm looking forward for coop and SP games to make a big comeback, I think you're slowly starting to see them coming back, actually. Gimme a 4 to 8 hour long video game with good graphics, good gameplay, good story, good music, etc. Just a nice round package that I can pay 50 bucks for and doesn't try to make me pay for slices of the game that should be in the full package.

The industry needs to loose this silly notion that bigger is better.

Havana is now on live

We're nearing the end of the gen, I wanna see games boio!

Quote from PogoP

1 hour ago, PogoP said: Can anyone explain how this is different to Chivalry? If you showed me that trailer and said it was Chivalry, I wouldn't know any different.

Apparently it's pretty much exactly the same game, only more polished.

Digging it so far, most have put around 3 or 4 hours into it.

Holding a button down to perform an action in video games should be banned. Hate this trend Input lag feels a bit bad too, even on the pro. Could be just me, cos i know the game does run at a stable 30frames.

Enemies feel pointlessly bullet sponges, specially human enemies, i see what they try to do, it makes the world feel more dangerous, but they could have increased the damage enemies deal instead.

That said I am having fun and the game does offer a wide array of interesting things and missions dont feel artificially stretched so far.

When you see the hordes of zombies, it's impossible not to be impressed.

Best way to define Days Gone is like an unpolished open world Last of Us game.

I was expecting a score around 75 tbh, but seems like it's a bit bellow that overall? Still playing this.

Quote from Castle

1 hour ago, Castle said: I have been going through a phase where I have had a stronger desire to work in the indie space vs working for larger companies.

 Breaking into the industry has become a different beast. It's rather about breaking into solvency, if you can make enough money to survive its equivalent to getting a job. When you do get a gig where you work for someone in the indie space its a very different as well. You are encouraged to talk about your development. Live stream and use social media regularly. After working in the industry for almost 20 years I have found myself wanting this style of environment a lot more. Maybe just because its different.

I have also made the observation that too many people are over valuing getting that super awesome gig working for X big company... My experience with every larger company has always been both internally and externally.

•  Have super long meeting about X new project and make no real decisions (Super exciting!)
• (busy work) for (a) (Weeks-Months-Years) as people finally decide some basic rudimentary things.
• Everything that was already done has to be scrapped because of new choices.
• Have super long meeting and make no real decisions. - Everyone spews the "We really need to focus on making the game fun!" platitudes and usually derails into some conversation about World of Warcraft or anything but the actual topic.
• (busy work) for (a) (Weeks-Months-Years) as people finally decide some basic rudimentary things.
• Is deadline looming within the next 12 months? If yes continue - If no begin line 2 and repeat until looming deadline.
•  realize we need to get the game done in 9 months. - (9 years into Duke Forever this finally happened.)
•  Have super long meeting and make no real decisions
• Management still has no real idea what is going on so everyone in the company makes their own choices based on confirmation bias and astrological constellations, whatever feels right.
• People begin to argue over various decisions because none of it lines up.
• (We really need to have a meeting to lock down the design because we only have 6 months left! email may occur here.)
• Have super long meeting and make no real decisions. - I have literally seen grown men REFUSE to actually commit to a single shred of actual design choice at this stage. Its like Peter Pan syndrome. The reason this happens is because nobody wants to stick their necks out. You have maybe 5 "leads" and they are all def willing to do cocktail parties but all of them have different ideas on what the game is supposed to be and all of them fear each other so nobody is willing to over speak the others.
• Things continue until some kind of breaking point. Usually employees begin bickering with each other on some internal chat forum or email.
• (Almost literal firing squad of indignation towards management may occur here) --- This is the turning point I have found for projects, if this part fails the project can die, usually with layoffs or people leaving. If the project doesn't die then you push back deadline for the release of the game and start back at the top.
• Finally lock down some design choices!
• (We only have 3 months left but I finally got a chance to actually play the game! email may occur here.) (Usually the E3 Demo or some vertical slice that was hamfisted together).
• After the demo goes live there is no bullshit "oh yeah! So this is what the game is supposed to be like!" moments for more than half the company. No bullshit this is really a thing! It extremely common for people to have worked on a game for multiple years and never even played it until the final weeks/months. They have no idea what the game even is half the time. The rest of the world now knows about as much as the fucking devs!
• (It looks like we may have to crunch to get the game done at this point email may occur here.)
• (That company wide email about how badass we all are and that this is the home stretch and its time to really finally shine email may occur here. The "everyone is a rockstar" fallacy.)
• (Company wide email where some super awkward choice is made at the last moment like how high the player can jump or what content is being cut which causes a huge redesign of large chunks of the game may occur here. Same deadline but like 5 times as much work. Bonus points if the cut happens for paid DLC or micro transactions.)
• This is usually the point where you get those amazing emails where people totally lose their minds. "May the bridges I burn light my way" kind of shit. Its glorious to just see people completely jettison sanity. High amounts of stress often just causes people to pop. (This is the death march hell phase...)
• Game finally comes out... (Everyone in the company is worried about their jobs and what the new project will be. Nobody is excited unless its at the release party. Most people are kind of silent and worried. I find there is almost a feeling of relief mixed with a memorial service kind of vibe.)

I have been through this process probably 10ish times with varying results. Its literally like maybe one day we should have learned by now how to alleviate the issues. But its very rare that anything ever actually can be done. But I mean this is usually exactly what happens every time. I am not kidding around! If you don't believe me then either you have a unicorn company or you will learn for yourself eventually. Whatever you do, try not to be that guy who burns bridges to light his way. I have also observed that if you try to change the above list you will become very discouraged very quickly and fall in line eventually. The above happens for many many reasons and its almost impossible to do anything about it. Its like staring into the abyss. If you end up trying to be a lead then you will invariably become that lead who misses the good old days when you were in the trenches, swig a bottle of gin and pat level designers on the back with a tear in your eye. Strip clubs and wads of money probably help a lot with this..

With indie dev its something else entirely but seems to share some similarities. The main difference is that from what I can tell is that the game stays in this unfinished phase for the entirety of the project where its like in limbo but not in limbo permanently. Everyone in the company tends to work like its just a mod community to some extent and leadership usually falls on one person who can be either passive or fucking nuts. Either way it kind of goes on forever. I am really certain that after awhile the patterns become just as predictable as the above but so far it has been less annoying because there is a human element to it. Mainly your humanity lol, because you are making like zero money and very few people even know who are ect... But I have found that recognition is not super horrible if you can get involved with more well known indie projects. At the moment my only true experience was with Subnautica. Overall I am kind of surprised this method works at all because its so organic. People come and go fairly often. Usually some mid 20s dude who's super good at promotion and has a wad of cash calling shots or something like that seems to be kind of common. To me that's where its really at honestly. Fuck man that is the true ideal and I kind of wish I had envisioned that much sooner in life. Definitely more interesting than being a robot on the assembly line that has not even played the game until the last couple of weeks of production. at the same time there is a kind of grass is greener yerning for the day you can be scooped up by Blizzard for a chance to work on that next big project .... That stays in preproduction for a decade. Then after you go through that a few times you can think about indie game development again and be too expensive for them to pay your rates. Staring

• The mid 20s dude with the money.
• His best friend/wife with a lot of influence over the project.
• Pajama pants. Pajama pants everywhere!!! Normal cloths are for outdoors people!!
• That Kickstarter campaign, indiegogo, crowdfund or all of the above!
• That one guy who barely speaks English but fucking kicks ass.
• Always at least one Australian guy!
• A person you never talked to but is literally ghosting the company while still on payroll.
• Its totally going to be done by December guys!
• Weekly meetings ... maybe maybe we will do it tomorrow.
• That one super talented artist who apparently is working for 10 dollars an hour and nobody brings it up.
• I merely exist on the dev team as QA!
• The discord server where players ask for impossible stuff!
• We will add multiplayer down the road! (HAHAHAHA!! This one is my favorite).
• The holy shit what is this new thing that was added to the game I had no clue this was even being worked on!
• Some random controversy because someone said or did something weird, usually on twitter.
• An impending feeling that everything can crash down at any moment!

This is my life... But after seeing all of the layoffs in the game industry maybes its a good idea to long pajama pants company stock... Sorry about the long post but I kind of needed this for catharsis I think..

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Holy sweet wall of text, ahah.

A lot of those problems can be solved with something very simple yet it's extremly rare in the games industry (or any other industry for that matter) good leadership and vision. Someone who makes sure the team stays true to the vision and is not afraid to call the shots, confidence from leadership trickles down very well, leaders that assert themselves more and compromise less. People love working for confident leaders that know how to say "no" and that have the ability of knowing when the team starts to get off track. Such leaders, ironically also let you be more proactive, and let you own your work. Such leaders know that when it's yours, it's yours to loose. You are more motivated, more creative, more alive.

Look, here's the reality that no one talks about, 20% of people do 80% of the work, specially in todays bloated games industry, there's a lot of people that take cover behind blahblahblah, meetings and other superfluous shit. Just make sure you're inside the 20%, look inward. I've learned that It's not the number of hours you put into it, but the intensity and consistent effort you bring to your project, regardless if you're doing it alone or in a AAA team.

Quote from grapen

On 2/5/2019 at 12:48 AM, grapen said: To anyone reading this two years later. The switch was 110% worth it.

More details plz! How's it going?

Loved the original, back in the day I found the art style really fresh! Will be keeping an eye on this.

My time is becoming very limited to be playing open world games like this, but I have friends who worked on this and it legit looks interesting to me, both the tech and gameplay.

Gonna get this day 1, it's showing a lot of potential.

http://nextleveldesign.proboards.com/thread/394/act…-level-design-1

http://nextleveldesign.proboards.com/thread/403/act…-level-design-2

Cool read.