Posts by Sentura

  • What are you playing now?

    Finished the new Deus Ex, was enjoyable despite the camera issue. Gameplay felt great in the main areas and the side missions. Wasn't too much of a fan of some of the main missions, but those were in the minority. I didn't feel the whole story was comprehensive, and the ending was a bit meh since there were so many loose ends that weren't tied up. Also in some places I didn't feel the level design was the best because guards were able to see me despite me being far past their patrol areas. Oh and the loading times between levels was way above what it should be. Anyway. nothing gamebreaking. Overall a nice experience that took me back to the original game and even had some of the original thief influence in the design.

    Playing the new Doom now. So far I'm liking it, combat doesn't seem to cause too much fatigue because you can do the glory kills and it's refreshing not having to sit behind cover waiting your turn since every demon is a health kit smuggler. My one negative is that it seems to require a LOT of processing power in some areas. Some places drops me down to 5-10 fps while it seems for the remainder I'm hovering around 45 (which is entirely manageable). Oh and I kinda wish the story wouldn't take itself so seriously.

  • what was your favourite / most inspiring map

    HL1: Blast Pit, Questionable Ethics, Surface Tension all had amazing maps, Crossfire from the multiplayer.

    CS: Italy

    HL2: Ravenholm

    Thief series: Shalebridge Cradle, Life of the Party, Casing the Joint, Constatine's Mansion, Sabotage at Soulforge

    STALKER series: Lab X16, Wild Territory, Yantar, Lab X18, Zaton, Pripyat's Kindergarten, Yanov's Jupiter Factory and underground

    Fallout: New Vegas's Dead Money DLC - especially the village part.

    Dark Souls 1's Blighttown (part 2) and Dark Souls 3's Untended Graves

    EDIT: Completely forgot Bioshock 1's Arcadia and Fort Frolic. Also Bioshock 2's Pauper's Drop (don't hate) and Bioshock Infinite's Burial at Sea DLC (part 2).

  • What are you playing now?

    since it's holidays and I finally got some time to play games I'm going through some big releases this year.

    I finished Inside, but it didn't do that much for me. It felt like it borrowed heavily from Half Life 2, borrowed some things from Half Life 1 then turned into Katamari Damacy for the last 30 mins of the game. I still don't know what they wanted to say with that last part, it was just weird. A lot of the parts felt very scripted and that made the world lose its authenticity, which I feel should never happen in a game that relies so hard on said authenticity to tell a story. I felt the same loss of authenticity with the 2D sidescrolling part - if I can just conveniently remove an oncoming threat by going right (or left) then the threat just doesn't feel real after a few attempts (hi dogs).

    There's also quite a few places where I felt lost because the level design didn't describe the problems/puzzles well enough, so I just went around in circles trying everything until I found the solution. On the plus side I liked the minimalist presentation and the fact they made some of the environments have real depth even with simple colors and lighting. And also the shockwave area was pretty fun (even though I have no idea what it was about).


    I started playing the new Deus Ex, took me a while to get back to the controls and the settings. Maybe it's because I got older, but I feel like certain elements of the game are more grating now. Like the switch between first and third person constantly just becomes tedious. I would much rather keep it third person all the time because I would feel like I have the better overview of what's going on... and because some 6 hours in I still haven't fired or plan to fire a single weapon. I really want to play this game on a controller, but because the camera shifting like it does and the game's constant complex mechanics, it feels like the game just doesn't want to let me.

    Also, you know you're getting old when you stop to admire the kitchen in Jensen's apartment


    Here's hoping I can make this and the new Doom before the year is over.

  • Black Mesa Source

    Quote from JeanPaul

    35 minutes ago, JeanPaul said: This pic is actually of a completely original location - we are saving the really organic and juicy strange shit for later :D

    Also dont worry we arent throwing the original completely out, there will be loads of visually recognizable parts.

    idk is it?! :P

    any eta for release? I'm about to hit that magical limit where I have to replay HL1 again. Or I guess in this case Black Mesa

  • POTUS 2016

    Quote from Vorontsov

    On 12/17/2016 at 8:31 PM, Vorontsov said: The opinion of a celebrity is going to sway anyone with self-respect?

    I think you underestimate how many people have no self respect

  • DOTA 2

    Rarely play nowadays unfortunately. I've mostly migrated my entire online multiplayer time to Street Fighter 5. I'll probably check play some matches here and there since my girlfriend is huge into dota tho

  • What's your 2016 GOTY?

    I dunno, I felt there were only 3-4 releases that got something out of me this year, but then I haven't played CIV 6 or Planet Coaster

    Anyway, my choices are Street Fighter 5, the new Hitman and Dark Souls 3... and DS3 really only because it felt like there weren't better contenders.

  • Prey

    gotta admit this looks really awesome in terms of gameplay. Not sure I am a fan of letting the player turn into objects, but the rest seems pretty cool. Here's hoping the abilities aren't too overpowered, or at least overpowered at the cost of valuable resources.

  • Game/Level Design books

    Quote from (HP)

    19 hours ago, (HP) said: That link is dead @Sentura, can you attach it to your post instead? I'd be curious to check it out.

    Hard to find mirrors for articles like these, but you can try downloading it as a PDF from here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/22…world_designers

    Quote from Squad

    12 hours ago, Squad said: Link works for me. If it still doesn't work, I uploaded it on dropbox, maybe that works better.

    Couldn't get your dropbox to work. Maybe permissions are wrong?

  • Game/Level Design books

    The first problem with design is that it is mostly tacit knowledge, and therefore difficult to pass down to others on paper. It would be the same as trying to write down a manual for riding a bike. You can highlight the instruments and what they do, but beyond that how are you going to communicate the part where they have to balance while starting and stopping, while riding straight, or attempting a turn?

    The second problem with design is that it is contextual. Making a level in a horror game isn't the same as making level in a multiplayer FPS, which again isn't the same as making levels for an open world game - although they may all share similar processes. For whichever type of design you want to get into, reading through post mortems/presentations as well as analyses of past projects are a good resource for getting more knowledgeable on the field, but in the end you may find that little of it applies to what you do. The best course of action is to just make games or levels or whatever it is you want to be good at.

    Just in case you're looking for more reading material, I got some old Hitman analyses made by a guy I worked for while at Uni: ftp://ftp.repec.org/opt/ReDIF/RePE…SOM-WI09-A1.pdf

    Be aware that the language is academic, so it may be hard to read or understand or full of filler stuff, but between all of that there is some interesting thoughts to be had.

  • What movie is this?

    Quote from Minos

    On 11/27/2016 at 5:27 AM, Minos said: Looks like I killed the thread too XD

    The movie is El Topo:

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    Next!

    I figured it was jodorowsky in some shape or form, would have been way funnier if it was dune tho

    Also, this (skip 1 min in for the best parts)

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