Posts by blackdog

i would be very surprised they would remaster using UE when they have their own tech and surely been upgrading it further for upcoming games. Unless they have abandoned it going forward but...

What do you think?

Quote from Radu

3 hours ago, Radu said: It is appealing to imagine a place where you can start your own project and then pitch it to people with the potential to develop it into a full fledged thing.

1. From what I've been hearing on the internet from multiple sources, their bonus system does force people to stick on projects until their completion. If they leave early, they don't get the bonus. So people might limit themselves to short term projects or features instead of pursuing longer term options, which might not be ideal.

2. It's called job hopping and it's fucked up. Basically, people will apply to another company and negotiate for 10-20% increase of their previous salary. The reason why they do that is because companies have fixed salary ranges, so if you get close to the top of your range, you're not gonna get too much of a raise going into the future. Of course, it depends on the company, but there are situations where someone who's been with the company for X years in Y position is at a point where their salary is the same as someone who just joined their company. And they're not gonna be too happy to learn that.

The prospect of pitching something must be indeed liberating.

1. Well that makes sense, a bonus is a reward for a successful project, if I have a great idea, start it and leave, then the project has underwhelming results, it would be unfair I got the bonus for the idea and the rest suck up the failure. The system need to be progressive and proportional to the project, if is a long project bonuses should be fractioned and depending on successful milestones.

2. I imagine you mean it’s fucked up that you’re forced into doing that because of the ceiling. I’m almost already in that situation where I have been for 6 months lol; was talking with my manager about progression and was saying the company has bad options, so unless we become managers we wouldn’t get interesting bumps.

As far as I’m concerned, I’m so at the bottom end of the IT salary scale that for me it would be a great reward just to be able to work on projects I put forward/choose, eventually with bonuses depending on success of those. Pushing the concept to an extreme one could treat the company as an incubator and even give a revenue share on projects (for a limited time?), but then nobody would want to work on maintaining the releases and just work on a new thing that monetise.

Quote from FMPONE

17 hours ago, FMPONE said: also lol at when they say "wow it's amazing, it only took two months to establish Alyx as a project" and it's like, I guess we're not counting the twenty years it took to think up a new Half-Life game? aight cool

Found that bit interesting as well, but I took it as a more general guesstimation, as in: it takes about that time for devs to transition between (big) projects.

It’s nonetheless a very great way and place to work, rarely you can find companies with such a breadth of branches/projects. And even then, big corp that might, don’t encourage moving around, once you’re in your pigeon hole, they want you there.

With this structure,

1. people have the opportunity to tick completion on many projects or features throughout their tenure

2. Retention: people that thrive in this sort of environment will stay. I recently watch some talk mentioning people tend to look for a new job every 2 years (although I’d like to see where the data comes from, if works only when you’re in the big tech league)

That extract sounds weird to me… unless it means that because they don’t have dev experience they were sitting in their ivory towers, I’d expect managers without dev skills to be able to focus more on the human aspect and realise what was going on, I would kinda expect that people in dev would be more absorbed in the work and lose sight of the surrounding ?

Hopefully this case will bring a lot of fresh air all around the industry

Quote from Bunglo

46 minutes ago, Bunglo said: Is there spoilers? I speed scrolled to the last post in this thread. Don't you fuckers spoil this game for me. Also, someone buy me an index.

Not in the podcast, if that’s what you’re asking. I haven’t really followed the topic to avoid spoilers too, as I can’t afford/justify a VR set… I would need a new machine altogether as well.

I’ve been listening to game industry podcasts for months now. I started with The Quakecast, The Level Design Lobby and Level Design Podcast while I was painting my landlord’s second house last year, and then just managed to work the listening in my routine (I felt I was never able to find the time)… now when I’m grocery shopping or cooking, I listen.

When I started to expand my listening experience I discovered Designer Notes, a great series of interviews with very prominent personalities of the industry, I haven’t gone through everything, but still to this date the interview that I found most interesting was the one with Clint Hocking… I guess I’m a fan of Splinter Cell and there’s quite some behind the scenes there. Also very impressed of how quickly he levelled up in terms of job title, if I remember correctly he became creative director of game director by the end of the first Splinter Cell (starting as level designer and first job in the industry).

Part 2

More recently he was on the AIAS podcast talking more about Watch Dogs Legion.

I waited a while before posting here because I wanted to see if I would find any specific episode that I would have recommended more. As a “runner up” of sorts, I found the one with Chris Hecker (Spore, Spy Party) very entertaining, the guy being very outspoken (part 1, part 2), and since I was just playing through Uncharted 4, also the Amy Hennig episodes were fitting (part 1, part 2).

Hope it might be a useful/interesting suggestion ✌️

I have been going through a bunch of game industry podcasts in the last few months, I had skipped this episode on Alyx in fear of spoilers but since I had to drive a bunch Sunday, I took the leap. It’s all about Valve and their project management, or other aspects of the game.

And people were worried about sponsors dropping CSGO because of the violence/theme depicted

Haven’t been looking for more info really, but this appeared on my suggestions, possibly the first tech reviewer with a hands on, and quite a reliable person to talk about it

Quote from Pericolos0

On 8/5/2021 at 12:42 AM, Pericolos0 said: This sounds insane and would be huge news if true. all I can find about it is a comment taken out of context and spun into fearmongering by conservative pundits (of course).

Might be worth reassessing where you get your "news"

EDIT: also, please don't derail the thread with conspiracy stuff guys. There's EOT for that

I don't have intention to derail the conversation, but I'd argue this stuff is in the realm of the pandemic response, so it seems fair discussion... just like we were talking of "covid pass" (or whatever is called in any given country).

Also, sorry, but I don't find acceptable playing with airquotes, implying, and expect people to shut up about it.

To respond to your critique about sources: "flagging content on Facebook" is something straight out of the White House press conference (extract), while the SMS rumor was posted by Politico (which is labelled as left leaning from what I've seen). For the record, I always try to compare key news stories from different sources, I'm aware of biases.

I'm also always happy to be proven wrong, especially if it means discovering the situation is better than expected. But we probably all agree we've seen some insane stuff happening throughout this emergency, so I don't want to discount news on the basis of "how insane it would be" (I mean, unless it's really insane stuff, like "the vaccine contains microchips")... we probably all noticed that politicians adopt a strategy of throwing out wild ideas to test the ground, and eventually reel back to where they actually wanted to land, making people feel relieved cos "it could've been worse".

I hope it's clear from the above I don't have the interest in shifting the topic into a purely political direction, and even less say "one side is better than the other" and as far as I'm concerned I've said what I needed to say ✌️

Wonder if they were actually attempting to do the base kill

Quote from Zarsky

1 hour ago, Zarsky said: This one didn't age well:

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Oh wow, super recent… I’ve been listening to this podcast recently! (Not this episode)

Awesome for Danger Zone ?

This game was presented some time ago and it piqued my interest for the dystopian/cyberpunk presentation, very reminiscent of Blade Runner and the Total Recall remake (imo).

Trailer was good:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32gaWV-5hXg (no preview age restricted)

Anybody else interested? I am tempted to get it but worried it won't run very well on my 970M

Quote from ThunderKeil

1 hour ago, ThunderKeil said: Didn't he already announce his plans for a ''truth council'' during the election, anyway?

No point pretending to be surprised now

I have no idea, that’s news to me, but also beside the point.

Implementation is key: there’s a massive chasm between a “truth council” that is some sort of fact-checking entity that publishes material on different subjects on the White House blog VS spying on your private conversations.

I don’t imagine they announced anything about that in the debates, I can’t imagine that if they said “I want to snoop in your private SMS and various messaging conversations to see if you are spreading misinformation” that people would be very happy, and I don’t imagine a great % of those who voted knows about this now. Most people “fire and forget” when they vote.

Quote from ThunderKeil

On 7/31/2021 at 9:45 AM, ThunderKeil said: I'm not saying that's a good analogue for the current vaccine discussion, but I will say that was an exceptionally poor choice of comparison

As poor as the promoters of a vaccine passport/green pass/whathaveyou ridiculing the opposers by arguing “doesn’t a traffic light take away your freedom?”

I don’t know if abroad there is this tone of conversation, but that’s in Italy.

Quote from Pericolos0

11 hours ago, Pericolos0 said: its not the big pandora's box you think it is.

…no? In the last few days the White House has in succession announced they want to blacklist content themselves on social, as well as coordinating with phone carriers to look into private text messages for misinformation.

That sounds like United States of China to me.

Oh shut! I accidentally linked the same demo twice… this website acts a bit funny when pasting stuff from the phone ?

cheers @Zarsky, edited

I wonder if people will resign before the axe comes down. If it does.

Looks good.

Not sure your plans but you used the same stone wall texture... and I know it makes sense but makes the map feel labyrinthic already from the pics. Also the height of the wall seems the same pretty much everywhere, contributing to the effect. One thing to break it up could be using some moss, considering it normally grows on the north side of objects, you could try and see if you can "orientate" the map.

It would be great if you could find a way to cordon the areas, use some coloured trims to allow players to recognise the areas. Also some sort of fixture or decoration that could help distinguish the main lane to guide the players.

Apart from that, the biggest problems I see is the overuse of boxes (that maybe is a placeholder anyway) and the mid stairs that are a bit too long and could benefit from being broken up in 2-3 ramps with landings (then you could provide a (self)boost option)... so you're in a pretty good place.

Oh, the owl statue looks out of place, got any reference? will be replaced? feels like something from harry potter.