Posts by Mr. Happy

  • WIP in WIP, post your level screenshots!

    marnamai I can see how the right side of the first image with the posts having nothing behind them might happen on a foggy night but it's leaving me feeling like the design falls off the image/incomplete. Remember the old design maxim that a composition should extend beyond the art-board's border so that it feels anchored. So I think you should add a really rough and simple grey shape behind that in the fog. I.E. the impression of a roofline in 3dskybox.

  • What are you playing now?

    besides bulletstorm and deadspace 2 I'm finishing up...

    TALES OF MONKEY ISLAND

    I feel like such an asshole for not playing the episodes as they were released, I started playing it late last year and god damn it's a worthy successor to a series that I have a TON of childhood nostalgia for.

  • Bulletstorm

    I am absolutely loving bulletstorm. I'm on Act 4, Ch. 1 of single player. This game never stops, and the first minute is one of the most rediculous (as in hilariously awesome) intros to a game I've ever seen. But the game so far as not stopped, just one rediculous setpiece after the other. It would be nice if there was some slowdown in pacing occassionally because after three hours I wanted to keep playing but was simply exhausted! The multiplayer is better than I expected, I've only seen the enemy waves gamemode (are there others?) Unfortunately the average player does NOT understand the team skill kill things and ruins them so it's best played in private matches. Like serenius said there is a lot of creativity! It's pretty awesome! And the teamwork is quite fluid, with friends that is, there are suprising moments were everyone instinctively falls into place taking turns slowly executing the needed sequence of moves to do something AWESOME.

    Unfortunately, they put absolutely ZERO effort into the PC version. ZERO. It looks and runs beautiful but it clearly has a massive console-cock up its butt. The menus are horrible, for no reason whatsoever Game for winows live injects its bullshit into the steam version making everything overly complicated, the mouse smoothing/acceleration feels janky, the FOV is locked down, there are no dedicated servers, there is NO IN GAME CHAT (WTF is people/epic/ea not having a brain? or regular stupid? or perhaps their programmers/ui designers don't actually play games and put effort into their work but rather rely on sort of randomly hitting the keyboard until code comes out), no editor. Occassionally you hear someone's voice, tinny squeaky and quiet come out of nowhere with no indication who is talking but no one knows why.

    Oh, btw, the ini files are encrypted. However there is an ini decrypter/editor: http://games.softpedia.com/get/Tools/Bu ... itor.shtml

  • THE CUBE CHALLENGE: Rules and discussion

    I think the fun and formality of organized playtests far outweighs freedom considerations. I think it is more fair to the entry's themselves to play them then to let them all be different species and just sit there on hard drive. Everyone getting together to play the finished products is muuuuuuuuch more appealing than looking through screenshots of maps on games with widely different art styles, gameplay and power. I don't know how I would even judge some!

    But then again I want to see what COD and TF2 in 1024 is like 1024 is plenty plenty big enough for arena with some creative twists and rises mino, but you may want to fit the level on a diagonal cause SG's range is 1100

    Quote from SNDXR

    any tuts on this?

    This worked for me:

    http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/s ... st17200091

    If you don't have any mod configuration you are worried about losing simply using the "reset game configurations" button should do it.

    Quote from Schmung

    I'd be tempted by this. Fine with source, though I'm using 2007 at the mo. Any firm rules on custom content?

    There are no MP source games on 2007. But don't worry, 2009 is better except that they confusingly changed some shortcuts.

  • Say NO to low FOV Petition - (Idea)

    Not seeing what's around you isn't fun, in any game, for any reason. At least for me. The way I see it, perfomance isn't an excuse. To me it looks worse than if the world was less detailed, FOV like fps speaks to composition and presentation, which are the first basic determinants of the visual quality of a scene. I'm looking at a place not the brushstrokes in a painting, show me the place, not the gravel! Gameplay isn't an excuse even in horror games, it just makes me feel like my character is incompetent and isn't paying attentio. If I was claustrophobic or trapper somewhere with aliens eating my brains my eyes would be darting all over the place, every little thing in my peripheral vision would cause me to have a quick glance. The way the brain works your "informative" FOV is greater than your "color vision/focus" FOV. As it is I just annoyed at how far I have to move the stick which in turns kills the feel of the controls AND the emotion, there's nothing adrenaline pumping about "oh no I head a noise, I guess I'll turn around as slowly as possible and only look straight ahead into the distance so I can't focus on the enemy and have to keep twiddling the controls back and forth and now I can't aim and this sucks". Distance from TV's for console games isn't an excuse, maybe it makes sense since you want compatibility for a wide variety of people, but I think you are assuming people like straining their eye by sitting to far away from the TV. I find my TV, fills MY field of view by the same hoirzontal amount as my monitor.

    I just hope as the years pass developers don't find more excuses to lower their fov standards even farther like has been done with fps. Uninspired Cinematic Gameplay Game 6, now with ultra-cinematic 1 fov and 2 fps!

  • Source engine rendering in... UDK ?

    Wait, all UDK levels are desaturated by default? Can anyone confirm that? Can it be fixed in a script file or do you have to account for it on a per map basis?

    Quote from e-freak

    Now, especially with Unreal's Lightmass it gets easier to achieve lighting similar to Half-Life 2, as it does Radiosity and Prebaked Lighting in the same way the Valve Rad tools do.

    That's awesome! My reasons for standing my source are slowly slipping away

  • Source engine rendering in... UDK ?

    The key is understanding that the approach of the Epic artists is to make you think "OMFG HOW GRAPHICS IN GAMES WHUUU" while the approach of the Valve's artists is to make you think "oh I am now in a forest, oh I am now in a sewer." Like said by others the most obvious difference is more subtle specular and normal maps. However, that's not all! Textures tend to be lower resolution with details only where needed. This isn't just because of engine power, but also because having alot of detail is, in the end, UNrealistic because your eye filters most details out and having them on the screen just overwhelms your brain and (for me at least) makes your eyeballs itch. Another reason staring at screenshots is not a good way to judge the look of a scene

    Unfortuantely I don't think you'll be able to get the look at all in Unreal simply because Unreal's lighting model is, well, shitty. Tons of complex shaders, but the actual basic function of LIGHT just isn't implemented as well. At least, that's how it used to be, I don't know anything about this new lightmass business, but IIRC in the past unreal didn't support radiosity, GI, or final gathering, all of which the source engine uses while it's "being old and slow and outdated compiling lighting." So that brings up another point, don't use dynamic lights or heavy post process. Post process should generally be confined to levels and mild HSV used only to FIX oversaturation in particular color ranges