Hi guys
So i'm primarily a level designer and at Codemasters there are two separate teams - us and the games designers. This means I don't get to look into the actual design of the games I work on very much so I was looking to read up on it. Are there any books/online resources anyone would particularly recommend? I'm looking for something that covers the specifics of writing games design documents, game mechanics and everything else that game design entails, basically.
Cheers!
Quote from PuddyVoluntarily?
It wasn't that bad 
...i can say that as i had nothing to do with making it (and i got it for free). It probably justifies a quick weekend rental anyway, has some easy achievements and can be forgotten about straight afterwards.
I'm currently playing Resistance 3, i love the series and this one is no exception. It does a great job of making you feel like you are in the middle of a battle and i like the post apocalyptic 'The Road' kind of vibe with this one.
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Also just upgrade to the EMP augment so the electric doesn't bother you, this also makes the last boss ridiculously easy
Quote from CampaignjunkieI liked how during the
I just
sat underneath the stairs, there's a little tunnel and they can't find you. Then when it arrived i cloaked up and popped out and into the lift.
I finished my second play though with all achievements today, i didn't get pacifist at the end at first but i read online that smashing through walls actually kills the guard on the other side. I'd done this once on the bonus mission at the noodle factory, thought i'd just knocked the guy out but must've killed him, so i had to reload to hengsha and do the last part of the game again. Also found out by doing the final boss battle about 5 times that the pacifist achievement lies to you, it says that boss battles don't count, however
in the final boss battle 2 sets of 3 bad guys come at you, if you kill these you fail the achievement
Also apparently its possible to kill people with the tranq gun, especially if you shoot them in the head. Check all bodies afterwards, 'zzz' means they are knocked out but the little skulls mean they have died...bit bad that the non lethal weapons can still be dangerous
If by the 3rd boss you mean the guy in the room full of cadavers, do you have the grenade launcher from the augmented edition? As soon as the fight starts shoot him 3 times (on easy mode, 5 on hard), fight will be over in 5 seconds
I know, that's why i said this:
could just title them in such a way as for them not to spoil anything story-wise.
Hidden achievements are quite annoying, as its hard to get them all first time around without knowing what they are, i do wish games wouldn't do it...they could just title them in such a way as for them not to spoil anything story-wise. I ended my first run with about 31 out of 49 and now i have 41 on my second, going for the full set. This is a good guide to follow by the way for second run throughs/e-book collection:
http://www.msxbox-world.com/xbox360/gui ... index.html
Be warned though they have e-books 22 and 23 (in the Picus area) backwards. I didn't realise this until i collected the first and travelled down the furnicular, only to be stuck at the bottom with no recent saves. I had to load a save that was an hour and a half old and re-play the Medical lab levels for the third time.
Quote from e-freakReally nice: The easy mode is called Tell me a story, so it's less embarrassing for a casual-noob like me who doesn't want to fight his ass of.I'm now at the point where I could go to
but I'm not sure if I should stay in
Detroit
and finish all the side-quests first 
Damn too much choice 
Are you sure you have access to all the side quests? First time through i wasn't offered the
undercover hitman quest (Cloak and Dagger i think it was called) but on the 2nd time through i was given it after exiting the police station. Maybe its the way i approached the police station mission (stealthy rather than gaining permission to go to the morgue)?
Quite glad really as there's a few of these quests i missed that make the second playthrough different to play.
Am in Shanghai on my second playthrough and i never play anything twice really so i must've really enjoyed this. One thing i would say was that
on hard the last two bosses were really simple, shot the first one a few times with my augmented edition grenade launcher and finished him off in 5 seconds or so, the last boss i just ran underneath the turrets so they couldnt see me, flicked the switches and killed the women in the pods then waited for the main woman to appear so i could shoot her too. I had the EMP upgrade on so the electric shocks didnt affect me, seemed like i did this the wrong way but she died so oh well
. Minor concerns though, am enjoying the second run through as i missed one or two side missions the first time and i'm trying to do the 'foxiest of the hounds' and 'pacifist' achievements
My 360 copy came yesterday morning surprisingly, this game is awesome...only minor gripes i have are at the start was the object highlighting wasn't enabled by default and i almost missed it being there in the options menu, seems strange for such an important feature. Also hard mode is not too hard, but that's probably a good thing. And i don't get the e-book thing, there is an achievement for reading all 29 however i've collected way more than that already, there must be some that are more important than others but they all look the same
Games ace though, perfect blend of fallout and splinter cell.
Pretty cool, aside from the obvious visual flaws. The only thing that bugged me a little about it was
the overlong voice-over sections when you are forced to just stand and listen with nothing else to do. If i wanted that i would have downloaded an audio book
. Decent though, well worth a go.
I liked it, quite short though! I did have an issue with
the second of the two puzzles though, this one:
http://img594.imageshack.us/img594/7540/whoopsc.jpg
After entering the cloning machine i stood on the first pad for a few seconds, then moved to the second one. When my movements were replayed the first pad opened up the door behind the wall, and the second one activated the switch which opened the door at the end of the main room. This door then stayed open, which made me wonder what the point of the area behind the wall was as all i had to do was walk out of the room without going into that area...or did i break something?
There is a hardcore mode online in Pro Tour which disables all assists, removes the HUD and forces the in car view, give it a shot you might like it. Also in Jam sessions the server host can choose whether to enable assists or not
It is an interesting job, one that i didn't necessarily set out to get into, i was more looking for FPS design work but i am enjoying this. We don't do the art for the levels no, but we do go out on the research trips to help us plan where the key features of the track are which we then add into our 3D white boxes. So whilst we don't create the final art assets we do specify where the main ones will be. Part of our job is to split the track up visually so it's interesting to play and players can remember certain corners by certain features, as opposed to many Km of repetitive endless tree lined dirt tracks. The road surface and the few meters either side is what we mainly create, the art team can't alter that mesh they can only pretty it up. Also all the tracks i've worked on for Dirt 2 and 3 so far have been entirely fictional, so the real life track tweaking doesn't come into it, though i'm pretty sure we do have license to do that as many real world routes wouldn't translate directly to game without some alterations.
Our general workflow is to carry out research for the areas (where possible), plan out 2D maps of the tracks and have those reviewed/signed off, create the 3D version of the track and get that through the production reviews, then send it off to the art guys. A few months later we get a pretty version of the track and then it's our job to add final AI, replay cameras, barriers, reset lines etc to the routes, anything game play specific basically. Performance and optimisation wise, that's mainly under Art control, i think that because a road travels from A to B the optimisation process is a bit easier for them than having to deal with a large open area such as those in FPS games.
You're sort of right, there was at least one 8 minute stage, as they recreated the full length of Pikes Peak (i didn't work on Dirt 1), i can't remember that stage time extending to all tracks though. As Rick pointed out though the development process means that we can only budget for a certain number of KM per track and to get the amount of locations and routes we currently have in Dirt 3 we settled on the 3 minute mark. We did manage to add an extra 2 to 3 km of variation to routes this time around though so that you weren't always running the same sections of track over and over, which helped
The rally's get longer as you get into the later seasons and world tours, there's none longer than about 3 minutes though, it was decided a while ago that 3 minute stages are about right in terms of length for the average player who doesn't want to sit through 10 minute races
I'm actually kind of enjoying it, though i may be the only one...i find myself thinking back to 15 years ago and imagining playing it then, i reckon it would have one of the games of that year. Compared to modern shooters though, it doesn't stand a chance. It's the sort of game they literally don't make any more, massive boss fights where you just have to strafe to avoid their fire, simplistic fighting with only two weapons at once, long load times every time you die (!) etc but it's kinda nice to play something so retro. I also like the immature humour throughout, though that just appeals to me naturally
Most of all i just find the game very interesting to play, having heard about it for the past however many years and it being the games development legend that it is. Worth picking up if you are at all curious, just don't expect a game of the year.
Cheers guys, and HP all that backchat has been cut out of Dirt 3, the whole tone is more professional Also, we don't have the micro machines license anymore, not sure who does actually but it was sold a long time ago
Time for a bit of self promotion, the new game i've been working on for the last couple of years hit stores on Tuesday, it's getting great reviews all round (including a 9 on Eurogamer and Edge magazine!), so if racing games are your bag, please check it out (and if they're not, give it a go anyway )
Cheers, here's a trailer:
