Posts by Serenius

  • [GoW] Embry Station - Beta now available

    Holy awesome feedback, Batman. Thanks, Tron!

    Quote from Tron

    At the moment events are way too obviously triggered. The light happens to randomly flicker off just as you pass underneath, that guy happens to run into your field of view and get attacked just as you pass the conveniently located grate. Obviously those things need to be triggered to happen at the right time, but they have a very staged feel.To work out how those moments could emerge more naturally, lets look at the setting for the level. The subway has obviously been recently attacked, as demonstrated by the fact there are still survivors running around (well at least one until you see him get killed) and that fires are still burning in barrels. That being the case, the start of the level should be tense. You aren't exploring an abandoned tomb, you are stepping into a battle zone where an enemy could be behind any one of those pillars waiting for you.

    Since that is the case, emphasize it. Add sounds of distant fighting in. Earth tremors as explosions rock the tunnels. At the moment the light going out gives nothing to the player other than showing you know how to use a trigger. Why has it gone out? If it is because the lighting is all faulty, then have other lights flickering on and off. If you want it to be a clear consequence of the players entrance to that area then work out a reason why. Is that area badly damaged and unstable? If so make that obvious in the architecture and when the player steps into that first doorway make it clear the light has gone out because the entire area is unstable and dangerous and you shouldn't really be moving through it if you value your life.

    Quote from Tron

    Alternatively you could go the passive route, where you are just witnessing a random incident, which would stick out less if you already had the sounds of other distant fights going on in the background from the start of the level.

    I love these ideas and can't really figure out why that never occurred to me previously. I've altered the route of the first room to help accommodate the sounds of distant fighting idea, slightly slow down the pacing, encourage players to explore the tracks for the first frag grenade pickup by having them run right by it, and not allow them to skip the newly revised dead stranded area portion of the platform. Additional coming changes in the diagram below.

    [Blocked Image: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/4783596/Layout%20Revision.jpg]

    Screenshot of the newly destroyed hallway to help sell the unstable idea. I'll be adding in a mangled piece of metal dangling from the room and animated to swing slowly in Matinee to help further reinforce the idea.

    [Blocked Image: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/4783596/Hallway-Destroyed.jpg]

    Quote from Tron

    The boss fight area is boring. The one area of cover is in the middle of the room, but that is where you want to draw the beserker anyway. I would make the area slightly larger, have pillars around the perimeter, and the region under the skylight completely open. That way when fighting the beserker conventionally you have lots of cover, but to get the upper hand requires you to take a risk and lure him out into the central open area where you yourself are more exposed.

    I tried a layout like this during the initial prototyping phase, and while it did give a better experience for the single berserker, it didn't work as well for the second encounter with two berserkers simultaneously. I'll try prototyping it out a little more to see if there's a workable solution to make the arena a little more exciting and tactical.

    Quote from Tron

    Just a few random thoughts.

    And very much appreciated. I'm hoping the next release that incorporates this feedback is up to the quality on display by many of the other talented people here.

  • Dead Space 2

    Quote from Erratic

    Playing scary music before an enemy shows up on screen ruins your scary moment.

    During a recent play through, I realized they weren't actually doing this most of the time. The scary music would play when you got a monster in your field of view. If you turned away, it would stop until you looked at them again. The really fucked up part is when they would do that but no monster was there.

  • Sonic back to 2D!

    Water levels in Sonic were the PITA parts you were forced to play between totally awesome sprint-a-thons where you were moving at the speed of sound, doing loop-de-loops so fast the camera couldn't keep up, bouncing 60,000 ft. into the air off springs, smashing robots, and banging hot chicks.

  • The Iraq War: 7 Years and still not done

    Quote from JeanPaul

    You, me, and any other citizen in the world doesnt have even close to enough information available to make any sort of viable opinion about this war, there are just wayyyy too many hidden politics and inner workings to make any plausible position. And I really dont want to hear "its people killing people and thats bad!" because I can sure as hell tell you this isnt the only killing in the world going on right now, or ever.

    I'm glad to finally see someone else who has this stance. Let's make manbabies.

  • Crysis 2

    Quote from Rick_D

    Suffice to say Crysis 2 is easily the best looking game the current gen consoles will ever see.

    Provided you have a Cray Supercomputer and 8 ATI graphics station cards running in Crossfire so you can see it in medium detail.

  • Hammer update!

    Quote from Sentura

    Exactly. I would love to make levels in UE3 or Cryengine but there's no games under those engines that interest me or seem to have as big a fanbase as a lot of Valve games do.

    nor are their tools as easy to use. OR MAYBE THATS JUST ME

    Troll spotted.