Posts by channie

I was given the opportunity to play it a bit. Very well done on the artistic side, but there are a few circulation problems you might wanna fix by deleting all the rotating doors (i'm not kidding here! they slow down the flow dramatically). Also, I noted several performance issues even on a high end computer (Quad core & GTX260).

Art direction is fantastic. But the gameplay needs a serious kick in the nuts to become interesting.

There is brand new footage of the game up in gametrailers.

The AR stuff looks cool.

You can switch me to DONTNOD Entertainment. I left Darkworks and Ubisoft last February. I work there as a game and level designer on a new IP.

Quote from Pericolos0

Well having to compile a level and then start up the game to play it is not a good workflow either imo. Working in unreal editor with max open next to it to work on the geometry of your meshes works pretty well i think, importing and exporting takes just a few clicks, and you'll be doing most of the actual leveldesign work in unrealed anyway, moving around modular meshes. I've felt alot more free and capable doing leveldesign once i stopped using brushes. And yes you'll be doing iterations on the geometry, but changing around geometry is way faster in a modelling program than changing around brushes, so the extra 5 seconds it takes for importing/exporting is no problem at all really, you can set up a really good workflow for this if your editor has good asset management. Like unreal's unit browser or cryengine which will export it straight from max into the editor basically.

How about creating collision hull for all of these modular pieces ? Does it consumes much time since the way Unreal handles collision through any modeling package is a real pain in the arse ? Or do you simply use the Collision Tool in the Static Mesh Editor ?

Quote from Pericolos0

you guys are still using bsp???? lmao

for whiteboxing purposes

there are some rumors Epic heavily updated the brush builder tool in one of the latest UE3 builds. We might have more info during the GDC.

he already told me about you

http://www.linkedin.com/in/channie

Back on the topic, i have completed Kane & Lynch PC last night. And i must say the game is very fun, whatever gaming sites are saying (french reviews sites gave far more lower scores, ranging from 4 to 5). Best levels so far : the night club (Find the baddies through the crowd - pure awesomeness) and the final level "Consequence" which is probably the best one : completely open, f**kin' impressive line of sight when you've reached the church...using the sniper rifle is definitely useful at this point, and exciting...too bad this kind of level have not been mandatory for the whole game.

[spoilerZ AHEAD]Too bad I couldn't prevent the chick from being shot...been trying everything to avoid this and i was disappointed the level script spawned an enemy at the pier just to shot her [/sPOILZ]

Havana levels were damn hard, even with a mouse which is supposed to help aiming. I died countless times when you first regroup with an entire army, and then again when you're assaulting the governement building.

But the game is fine imo, voice acting is topnotch, storyline is ok, and lynch is definitely my favorite character : "I can fucking believe we're going back there ! I can't fucking believe it!". FTW.

Quote from Furyo

Speaking of books made by Valve, I just ordered Phil Co's book on level design, which contains UnreadEd and not Hammer, but principles and lessons are what I'm after.

(Great book by the way).

I sincerely hope you've kept in mind all the critics that were made to your first book, to increase the quality of this one.

i had the chance to play an early version from a random game expo in france last month... It was great (especially the 'jump to cover' and 'cover to cover' gameplays are so sweet), excepts the aiming controls...damn hard to aim. It needs a bit assistance like the Halo autosnap or so.

'might be the game that'll force me to buy a ps3 tho :x

i guess this is a full time job.

the pdf states IOI is working on 5 internal projects (including K&L and probably Hitman 5).

It seems there are new LD positions to fill at IOI. The job PDF states proficiency with 3dsmax as well with Photoshop and knowledge in art.

My question is : does a LD at IOI is more like an environment artist or is he only responsible of designing interactions of the game (map objectives and so forth...) ?

Quote from Hourences

How would you have rather seen that part been described? A step by step walkthrough of building a lay out?

Yes, sincerely. Building a layout is not a piece of cake for many of us, and i think you're one of best placed person to teach us how to overcome all the troubles we'll meet once we get deep into it.

But layout is one thing. There are many other topics to be discussed again, such as difficulty peaks management, rhythm (how to keep the flow in single player), how to place a unique moment (wow effect) at the right time, and so on.

You may have added some cases study using popular FPS as examples, even if they're outdated. CTF is still a valid topic for instance.

You can also talk about level design rules in multiplayer and singleplayer, using for example the Call of Duty 2's HQ game type as a basis to extrapolate rules for upcoming FPS. I mean, as long as you have the method to divide a game into single logical level design pieces, it's rather easy to apply this method to other games.

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Might have been possible although you need to keep in mind that it needs to be pretty universal. A CS lay out is not a Quake lay out... It is very hard to write something down that is true for -all- action and fps games.

Yeah, this is why i thought having kinda "genre agnostic" approach ruins the whole thing. To me, you can use genre-specific examples to illustrate most of the points you teach. It's still interesting for a guy who does, let's say, puzzle games, because he still learns something.

So, months after the release, what are your thoughts you mapcorians?

My biggest complain is that the "design" part is not very instructive since all the advices are not going deep into the map design process. I mean, once i've read this part, i still don't know how to design my routes, where should i connect them, how do i balance my chokepoint, where may i place my items and other power ups, and so on...

On single player part i came up with the same conclusions : how do i balance the difficulty, how do i increase the intensity, ...

I quite disappointed because i expected the book to teach me some things that other books like "game level design" from ed byrne or "level design for games" from paul co didn't, but i was wrong.

Finally got the holy e-book

I've not read it thoroughly yet, but this sentence catched my attention :

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I've made so many Unreal Tournament levels that I don't need to go in-game anymore to find out how it plays.

Wow. I mean, I don't know how to come to this level of confidence since I made mistakes on every levels I made and I still do. Hopefully, playtesters are there to save the deal

I've get in touch with Lulu. They're sending me a new copy asap. I appreciate it a lot

Ordered on Dec 11, sent on Dec 14, and still nothing...I suspect the postman in this case.

I should have bought the pdf