Posts by Sigma

Quote from AlexM

It's spread out over 10 years? I thought Bungie was just bound to Activision for 10 years. If that's the case then 50 million a year is actually not that much,

Per: http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/0…EA4501F20140506

"Bungie's very ambitious plan is designed to unfold over a 10-year period, "said an Activision spokesperson. "The depth of creative content, scope and scale is unprecedented and is required to bring Bungie's vision to life."

This leads me to believe the $500 MM will be used over the course of the 10 years and not just the initial launch period--although if all of it is used at the launch period I still believe that Activision will recoup the costs inside of 1 year for the title--especially considering the possibilities of DLC and micro-transactions even if sales numbers do not hit the GTA V level. Demand appears to have lessened -- but I attribute that to consumer tiredness with the Call of Duty brand and not necessarily the FPS (or MMO) genre.

Bear in mind that the $500 MM is spread out over 10 years and is inclusive of short-term and long-term milestones, infrastructure, customer care, and marketing on top of the development costs of a whole IP. In terms of where Bungie itself is sitting, if analyzed as an investor might, it suggests a strong investment. With anticipated domestic (US) video games sales exceeding the previous year's $21 billion (ESA), the strong history of Bungie to produce record breaking sales, and increasingly beneficial conditions to consumers to gain access to video games (lowering barriers) as well as recent historical sales revenues exceeding the $500 MM (easily) for single titles-- through the use of initial sales, micro-transactions, and DLC sales--I can see the 500$ MM mark being hit relatively easy. First 24 hour sales will likely exceed expectations (if not records due to name brand alone) and propel further sales. The cash flow for the 10 years will be the determining factor, and the large investments up front will reduce costs down the line freeing up future possibilities of development. Of course good reviews and fun is a factor, but Destiny is already receiving good press (although the same was said for Aliens: Colonial Marines??).

The way the tweet reads... perhaps Epic is going to do something similar to Steam Workshop for UT. It makes business sense -- especially with the lower price point now for the engine. Capture the User generated content and micro-transactions with a portion going towards Epic while inspiring more people to subscribe to UE4 engine.

I won't gripe other than to ask if you are doing open development, and if so, can/would you share the design document? That might help garner more attention and prospective help. Furthermore, this is something more appropriate for the job postings section isn't it?

Outstanding! I cannot find anything more to do. As stated before.... Bake it!

Quote from Fuzyhead

Currently working on a highpoly weapon roughly based on this concept- current progress:

[Blocked Image: http://mathiswidrat.com/images/dual_special/dual_special_02.jpg]

This is going to be me nitpicking as always. Where is the chamber and ejection port for the "primary" CQB casings (magazine at the front--unless this was made for lefties--or is that tiny thing below the charging handle it? If so, how does the round move out of chamber and through that port?)? My solution would be to move the charging handle towards the butt of the gun and place the port in front of it. The forward handle clearly should be removable (but its kind of unnecessary with the way the trigger guarad forms into the magazine well which might as well be the forward handle). Finally the picatinny rail (on top) seems small on the height side--I'd feel like I was going to break off one of the segments trying to get any optic sights on there. Again, this is me just nitpicking.

To be sure, it is a great looking model and I love how well it is done (maybe 3d print this bad boy for some cosplay ). It is like the Kriss Arms Vector and an AUG had a love child.

Quote from Furyo

You can't make one union, you need to make as many unions as there are countries, or at least regions. Legally speaking, the unions in the US wouldn't even work in Europe, and vice versa.

I still think we're going to see one being made, but it will be some time before it happens. We need to wait for the proper conditions to be met, which are:

- Shift of negotiating power from publishers to content makers

- Global consolidation of the different segments of the market in a specific city/region (think all AAA in X, all indie in Y etc like Hollywood and multiple festivals)

- Less "This is my dream career, I will do whatever I can" mentality and more "This is a great job and I love it, but I'm not going to bend over and take it" on the part of developers.

Look back on the history of Hollywood, you'll see the same patterns before unions were created. But we're decades away (comparatively) from that. If United Artists being created by Chaplin and co as a reaction against the main studios is our equivalent of the indie scene bursting out from EA and Activision, then we still have to wait a bit.

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I might butcher this but... The USA sector might be able to forge ahead if some legal complaints filed recently regarding the movies industry go through. The MPAA wants to recognize digital goods as imports. That in turn legally requires enforcement of some trade agreements that create trade tariffs on those goods originating from countries that subsidize the VFX industry. If the VFX argument holds there is room to maneuver it into the games industry quite easily due to the prevalent subsidization of studios throughout the EU. Essentially it would lead to better labor standards and practices.

I will see if I cannot locate the original article reporting.

Just wanted to update this to include this important piece of information.

See: http://money.cnn.com/2014/02/28/inv….html?hpt=hp_t2

Quote

It looks like Mt.Gox has finally thrown in the towel.The company filed for bankruptcy protection at a Tokyo court on Friday with debts of 6.5 billion yen ($64 million), Japanese media reported.

This has been going on for the past week as Mt. Gox tumbled down. It should be noted that Mt. Gox controlled a very large marketshare of Bitcoin holdings (above 40% last I checked).

The market shift has not happened yet, but it potentially could (I don't think it will due to actions like this though). As for the investor pressure see : This and This. : Edited in as of Feb. 28. See THIS opinion article.

In reference to the AAA changes one need only look at events like this and the list.

Indies are booming though I think and will continue to do so for quite a while, especially with the layoffs at AAA as developers seek out their own fortunes.

Quote from Sentura

Where'd you get the "fact" that I'm sensitive to price? The price doesn't matter - what matters is what I can use the newly acquired product for. Had the lineup been 4 stellar games + a puss4 or xboner for 1000 euro I'd probably have considered it as well.

Also, while I appreciate that early adopters have their own intrinsic reasons to fuel the economy, I don't think it's necessarily good as a whole for the economy to sell too much. I can easily imagine a scenario wherein too many sales of a console lead to a flood of investments that will crash over time, like a game industry bubble. With everything that's already going on in the industry, I'm certainly not interested in having that looming on top. But then again, what do I know, I do level design not world economy hurr durr

Poor choice of word. The concept that I am trying to convey is that everyone recognizes (perhaps subconsciously) a value for the product that is converted from various considerations including "what can I use this for...", and then base purchasing decisions on the combination of those considerations (thereby giving us the "cash value" of the consumer's demand--which is the price of the product/service). Decisions are based on "value received".

Off Topic: I agree that over-selling without regulation (self imposed or governmental) can lead to bubbles (we saw this with the .com bubble busts and the housing lending mortgage crisis in the USA), but I do not worry about the same for the games industry as investors have learned some lessons since than (and if they have not they will bankrupt--see Rhode Island's struggles with its investment in 38 Studios (specifically post bankruptcy and dissolution)).

The impact that cuts at AAA studios will have is greater diversification of investments among games studios thereby insulating the industry as whole against critical failures. That's not to say there will not be up's and down's, there always are, and currently the games industry is experiencing both effects at different studio/games investment levels (indies are in an upward trend whereas AAA are in a downwards trend). The effect of over investment will certainly lead towards market saturation and market corrections (such as studio downsizing/increasing) will occur until new market distortion events (like a new console release) result in a new round of investments. This is all normal (although scary if you work in the industry experiencing the down turn). Until such time as the upfront costs of development do not require significant investment levels and/or community funded development takes over without recourse like those available to investors as the primary model (i.e. Kickstarter), it is the market economy we live and work in.

What should concern you is the event of sudden market shifts due to investor pressure at the top levels (i.e. investor pressure on Microsoft's new CEO to cut and sell and/or create subsidiaries out of the gaming sectors of their company--won't happen based on level of support being given to dev.'s currently though I do not think). But that could go either way as good or bad right now (personally I'm a fan of making it a subsidiary responsible for itself and not benefiting directly from its parent company--let's get Xbox lean and mean!).

In any group of transactions there will always be a select group of consumers whose price elasticity of demand is inelastic. That is their consumer behavior (demand) does not respond to changes in price (or over-pricing in monopoly settings like console video games). Thus you get the early adopter phenomenon where-in those people will buy the product knowing that a price drop exists sometime in the uknown future. They do this for a multitude of reasons including those mentioned in the article (specifically support of the company itself and not necessarily the product) and exemplified by HP's response (thanks for that by the way!); although typically this behavior is reserved for non-luxury necessities such as water and electricity.

What you are experiencing Sentura is the fact that your individual demand for games and games related hardware/content is, in fact, sensitive to price (elastic) and you tend to not be an early adopter. In either event there is nothing wrong with it as the early adopters encourage renewed investments into the industry--especially in these higher profits seeking times. While it may not be the best economic practice for an individual consumer, as HP mentioned, it encourages the total economy and is a good group behavior for the health of the industry.

So having dug a little further, I think what you are needing is either an obj. export or an .mtl export from Maya. Because Painkiller utilizes the Serious Sam engine, I suspect the export for Maya did not originally exist and so they built a plug-in for it. If you have either of those available (which you should for .obj at this point at least) than try that and see if it works. Here is where I am grabbing some additional information: http://forums.seriouszone.com/forumdisplay.php?f=5

Seems like this might have been the original plugin-http://www.okino.com/conv/pt4maya.htm

3D Explorer may be another option as well. Sorry, I don't have a link.

Milkshape 3D may also be an option to get it there. No direct export to Painkiller but Serious Sam is in there.

There is also this tool that might help as well : http://www.deep-shadows.com/hax/3DRipperDX.htm

Hope you get this solved!

Probably email and/or twitter will be the best method (unfortunately for us) without an "insider" to point them to you. Some reviewers such as John Bain (CynicalBrit a/k/a TotalBiscuit) readily make emails and snail mail addresses available. Might drop them a line and see if you cannot get a response.

This is what I found after a couple quick google searches:

"...First thing that we`ll release will be MP map making toolkit. At first you`ll need Maya for that (to export maps) *BUT* you can make the map in any program you want (even Radiant), import to Maya (in generic .obj format for example) then export. We`ll probably do plugins for other 3D software as well..."

Sorry I can't be of more help. Have not messed with Painkiller. Here is the editor far as I can tell.

This looks fantastic!... how can I help (if at all)?!

This goes on my wishlist.

Those have been my favorite so far as well Skjalg. I wish had the economics terminology and understanding a year ago that I do now.

Just wanted to make sure this got shared as I did not see a topic made about it. This could potentially be a great resource for anyone here. Included are the video presentations, PDF and PowerPoint documents accompanying the videos. You can find them here: http://steamdevdays.com/?vids

The videos include some of the following:

- Welcome Address

- Steam Machines in 2014

- The Steam Controller

- In-Game Economies

- Embracing User Generated Content

- Getting Started with Linux Game Development

- Marketing Your Game

- Music in Valve Games and Media

- Moving Your Games to OpenGL

- Community and Communication as Games-As-Services

- United We Win: Lessons Learned from Collaboration and Co-Working Around the World

- Getting Started Debugging On Linux

- Optimizing Linux Games for AMD Graphics using PerfStudio 2

- Data To Drive Decision-Making

- Is Early Access Right For You?

- Performance Tuning Applications for Intel GEN Graphics for Linux and SteamOS

- Steam Business Update

- Portal 2 and Team Fortress Alternate Reality

- The Evolution of Gaming Hardware

- Steamworks Features - A Technical Overview

And More!...

Quote from Warby

well should you decide otherwise and aim for employment as an artist id say just make more stuff!

See nothing "wrong" with what you are doing just a lot of "inexperience" just keep making stuff and it will get better and better pretty much automatically.

welcome btw !

I am definitely going to continue making more stuff. I like it too much to let it go. That and continue participating here as I can.

Thanks for the feedback. I have updated the site to include more work--but I am also looking more heavily into project & team management opportunities (for instance the Ubisoft Graduate Development program that is being piloted this year). It does help that my Master's degree (WIP) is concentrated on a financial/management area. So I am hopeful. Thanks again!