Posts by slowdevelopment

Awesome idea!

Cool stuff Vivi

This map = awesome

Catching up on some stuff, playing Valkyria Chronicles, Fallout: New Vegas, and Halo Reach

Tutorial challenge sounds cool

Just thought I'd update this - working at Treyarch now!

Potkinrot Love those screenshots, especially the first two! What are your goals for the mod?

Done!

YES Game Art Student Bullfrog is amazing.

If you're looking for schools that are focused on getting into the industry, here are a few of the top ones:

The Guildhall at SMU - http://guildhall.smu.edu/

Digipen - https://www.digipen.edu/

Full Sail - http://www.fullsail.edu/about

I personally went to the Guildhall and can confirm it works. It's focused on practical knowledge and projects that develop your skills, the curriculum is designed and taught by people from the industry and you learn a lot.

For personal projects I usually do a little sketching on paper ahead of time to brainstorm, figure out some key gameplay ideas, etc. When I get some sketches that feel like they could be a good start, I go to the editor and whitebox. The whitebox always goes through a lot of iterations; I'll load it up in-game and run around in it whenever I add anything new or make a change, trying to put myself in the mindset of a player. At some point in iterating the whitebox I'll branch off a copy and start adding textures, props, decals, etc. to demo visuals and make sure they fit with the shape and dimensions of the map. Eventually the whitebox stabilizes and then I'll spend a few weeks on visual passes, lighting, vfx, etc.

For professional work it very much depends on the individual project. People can be assigned to work on levels at any point in development and you may have to do any combination of sketching, level building, scripting, and prototyping what you need art assets / lighting / vfx / sound etc. to do in the level to help communicate with respective disciplines. The job includes maintaining the level's vision on its own and within the context of the game, solving design problems with a cross-disciplinary team, as well as things like scripting, building and fixing bugs.

Hey,

This is my first Payload Race map. It's to the point now that I'd like to start getting people to try it out on servers. Would appreciate any feedback!

DOWNLOAD LINK: http://%7boption%7d

[attachment=2]tf2_dmz_overview.png[/attachment]

The tracks run parallel through a central rocky area, then the invading cart has to be pushed up a fallback ramp and along the top of a wall (which the defending cart goes through), before getting to the target point which is in an open area in front of the enemy base.

[attachment=0]tf2_dmz_process_2.jpg[/attachment]

Early whitebox shot overlooking the central area. When I started making this map I was planning it to be a tug-o-war with the cart on a single track, but then decided that Payload Race would be more dynamic.

I began with an overall idea of the height variations of the terrain and the path the cart would take - after establishing basic dimensions in whitebox I started adding cover in the central arena. My goals were to ensure a good range of engagement distances, set up local situations where various classes could get advantages against different ranges, and also set things up such that you need people reporting from at least two positions to have full info on where the opposing team is advancing.

[attachment=1]tf2_dmz_process_4.jpg[/attachment]

When I felt like those goals were being met, I started carving passages along the sides of the level to enable flanking and strategic retreats such that a flexible defense could loop back around their key points while appearing to fall back. I then did a basic art and lighting pass on the map to make sure the visual style works. Now letting it breathe and I'm going to wait for testing feedback before doing another pass.

What do you think?

Cool levels! Liked the attention-grabbers with the panels!

I'm mostly wondering about the layout, since I'm going to add more stuff. :derp:

I was thinking one way to approach it might be to have the images in the gallery link off to individual pages on each game, and maybe put up 7 or so of the best screenshots I can find for the two shipped games I was on. Then I could use the devblog to just talk about personal projects. Does that make sense to people?

Hey everyone,

Could I get some feedback on my new portfolio layout? I have a lot of ideas for things I can add / change, but not sure which direction to go at this point. Any feedback would be great.

http://%7boption%7d

Thank you!

Looks really cool! I like having the central point under the rocket exhausts - is it going to periodically have a count-down / engine test and force everyone to leave the point?

Only saw this today. Still might have tried to put something together if I could do it in HL2.

Cool stuff man! I like the transforming aspect. It also was nice to have the alternate solution of jumping up and throwing the cube into the funnel.

Demo link: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/27774967/thecubedemo.dem

Thanks, I just reuploaded a version that seems to finally fix the issues with the portal alignment at the top of the chamber. I also changed some brushes that may have been interfering with the box dropper.

Congrats Chimeray!