Posts by Castle

It looks really atmospheric and i love the ATB system it has. Reminds me of the Grandia series a bit.

Quote from Thrik

I can't think of anything they've done for about 13 years that's really had much of an effect on the community or industry. Doom 3 didn't do much for me even if it was a decent game, and Rage failed to draw me in beyond its technology too. The engines of those games haven't taken off either.

I 100% agree with everything you mentioned in your post Thrik. However Doom 3 if I recall was the game to bring on normal mapping out as a standard feature. Now granted this was something that was likely to happen anyway Doom 3 turned it into a next gen must have feature for every game to follow. It had a pretty big impact from what I remember.

Cool

Hey if radiant stays alive then its better for me anyway, I have been using radiant for about half my entire life XD

I also feel CODRadiant is the best of all of the Radiants out there by a very large margin.

Man its so awesome to see these. Also the editor Romero had up there looks a lot better than DEU or even Edmap was back in the day.

Quote from blackdog

You are taking things too seriously.

By the way I wasn't saying Ghosts looks "next gen", is a feast compared to UE or whatever. It is what it is and frankly I don't see them switching to that kind of tech paradigm, since they can iterate quickly and efficiently with something derived from Radiant, I expect them to stick with the old.

Guilty haha Sorry Ill shut up after this.

They are expecting to survive post Battlefield 4 though? There must be a true backup plan. I understand the renderer was reworked, I also know TotalBiscuit's main complaint was related to rendering. Lower FPS without significant visual quality increase can murder a games reputation really fast. Especially if its a competitive FPS.

http://youtu.be/AAgc43e-zp4?t=13m25s

TotalBiscuit just goes maybe too far in this scathing review... but yeah, no cutting edge IP can survive this for long.

Quote from blackdog

Where so you get it's Q3?

They said they have a new engine when they announced Ghosts so, you can contradict if you work there… but then you would already know the answer to your question, right?

Quote from Algor

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IW_Engine

From what i saw it just looked like it has more features to the old engine. It was still radiant for development. I'm a little surprised I am the one breaking this news right now. Maybe I should be quiet. You can just look at the game and see its not a completely new engine without even seeing it in development though.

On that note, however, since when does adding a few systems and features make something a completely new engine? I thought the same thing when Bethesda claimed Skyrim is a new engine too. It most certainly was not a 100% new engine.

To me a new engine would be something started completely from scratch or modified to a point where it shares almost no similarities to the older engine. For example Source can safely claim it is not Quake 1 anymore.

Quote from SpronyvanJohnson

Ghosts already used a new engine right? (not that you can tell). Not sure if Radiant still applies to that engine. Anyway, the next game is coming from Sledgehammer and is made for next gen so I take it they have a engine that can utilize that potential. But knowing Activision it's probably the same but with radically enhanced fish AI that's almost as good as Mario 64.

Its all still in Radiant and its still a highly modified Quake 3 engine.

I find the situation interesting as the void that has been left in Id software's wake is now causing companies who once relied on Ids engines be technologically surpassed. While valve will likely continue to be amazing its hard to say if anyone else will and if Radiant has much life left in it for anything outside of hobby level design. We may also be seeing the final days of brush based level design too. I am speculating to the max on this one here

Now that UE4 and Crytek are going strong right now does anyone know what the plans are for the poor old quake 3 based COD engine? Is COD going to jump ship? Will this be the final days of Radiant on commercial projects?

I have gotten a lot of feedback on the level this week. One of the main things that came up is that the center bridge I added makes it too fast to access the flag room from one side to the other. Most of the rest of the feedback seems to be cosmetic with a few bugs I need to address.

Hmm, what should i do about the bridge making it too fast a path to the flag room?

Quote

Your map need flanks dude, even without playtesting it I know that the middle will be hell.

TF2 mapping this seems to be the norm. Center is always setup to be the only major conflict zone and any methods to get around it are typically frowned upon. Most modern games, especially realistic shooters like COD have flanks all over the place but if you look at TF2 maps other than 2 Fort they all tend to have super insane mid fields with no other option but to go through it.

Can you give more details on the textures you mentioned?

Quote from mr.P

nice q3 levels, good 'ol times!

havent played tf2, but the map looks alright! all mapping is welcome here

Cool because in the coming days I plan to map on all kinds of different game engines! XD

Hey everyone at the core! I'm an oldschool mapper from way back before brushes.

I have been cooking up a TF2 ctf map for fun lately and I have it in a pretty good state now. All feedback is welcome of course! It feels a bit strange to come here and not have a CS:GO level like everyone else. Please forgive me! lol

Here are screenshots of the level from my portfolio.

You can download the level if you wish to play it.

I have also done something very different with the design of this level. I recorded the entire building process from the very start all the way to where it is now. I have time lapse videos with commentary and everything. I just released the final video for this level tonight on my YouTube channel.

So what do you think?

Thanks I found this useful. I was not aware that area portals scissor on this engine. I also didnt know about area portal windows.

Are there reservations about hiring senior rank level designers for something like this?

Quote from e-freak

well, good work is good work, even when the game wasn't the best. also it's easier to see what you've been doing recently, as opposed to putting an old title up first that might make it look like you haven't been in the industry for a few years.

That's a damn good point, ill reorder it to chronological order asap.

Quote from SpronyvanJohnson

Yeah, I noticed your recent posts there. But I think I first came across your stuff all the way back on Map-center.

I could make a selection for you

I am up for seeing the list however I feel my problem finding work has most likely been from a less is more angle. Its been a tough time even getting interviews! I feel like I need to just go ballistic and try again with everything I have done documented. Guns blazing. I am not about to give up on my career at this point! I find it absurd that I have been having so much trouble!

On a happy side note suddenly I have been randomly contacted one day after I put the portfolio up lol

Quote from SuperDuperYeah

I'm not exactly sure how anyone would ignore you based on the fact that you worked on a certain game. I would rather look at how you handled overall design and design problems in a breakdown section in your portfolio before judging your abilities. One thing I particularly like about designer's portfolio is seeing a part where they state some problem that occurred and how they fixed it.

While browsing through your portfolio I had a bit of problem to read the text under your images. I think that could be easily fixed by changing the color font to something that stands out a bit more like "pure white".

You say at some point: "I designed a heavy combat sequence, followed by a boss fight with multiple rockets launcher soldiers...". That's a good thing to know but it gives me little insight in how you actually designed this area. Maybe some quick bullet points of how you thought about this encounter ? I think the images could also represent the action a bit better. Maybe show the heavy combat or even capture a short video of this sequence. You also said that you scripted everything. Maybe tell us what language you used and what you had to do specifically in order to make your scripts work (again in short bullet point form). Overall maybe be a bit more explicit about how you did things or thought about certain stuff.

Wow you have an awesome track record o_o.

Hope I could help !

Display More

Ill get to work on making the text easier to see.

The boss battle sequence was all done in Kismet. I was the one to initially layout the entire area then I split the map for other designers. I have often been the one to get everything in place then hand chunks off to more junior designers to do the rest. I was then given the different parts back to finalize later in the project.

Ill see if I can do short bullet point lists and be more explicit about what was used and why.

You guys have been super helpful thank you so much!

About the chronological order thing. Its been suggested that admitting to working on Aliens is a big mistake that could potentially get me ignored instantly. I dont know if its true or not but different people tell me different things on this so its hard to decide to hide it altogether or put it lower on the list.

Quote from SpronyvanJohnson

Wow, the great Castle from back in the Id's days now on the Core. Well I'll be damned, Welcome.

Regarding your portfolio, less is more. There's just too much stuff on there. I would pick your best work, make some very impressive shots of that and only feature those.

I still visit Quake 3 world from time to time!

for my portfolio, I cant pick what I like most
lol

Hey guys

So it looks like the main things I need to address are

1. The header

2. Personal work blends in with proffessional work.

3. Make sure its more clear what position I held for each project.

4. Make sure links in the about section are more visible.

The one about personal work blending in with proffessional work ends up being the tougher one to solve. Some games i have done personal stuff as well as worked on proffessionally.

Quote from FrieChamp

Hi Russel, welcome to the Core!

Quite a few projects you've got listed there. It's hard to tell which ones are hobbyist-projects and which of these games you've been involved in professionally. The fact that I can't find a resumé ties into this. The ability to enlarge some of those screenshots would be nice, too.

hmm I looked through my options with carbonmade and dont see a way to make it so images can be enlarged. Nearly All of them are 1920x1080 though. I suppose carbonmade is a bit limiting on this front? Or am I just missing some detail?

Quote from seir

The header - try something bigger and not Times New Roman-ish. I always use Verdana which is simple but yet not so "classic". Get out with that "-= =-" dude, how old you are? Just type who you are, a Level Designer or Level Artist/World Builder? I dunno...

Try to sort your personal works from professional experience. Check out my portfolio of some others to get the idea.

I couldn't find information about what kind of job you're doing (except from some descriptions under the pics which I don't know what pic you're referring to). Try creating a pattern of project presentation so: start with the name of the project and your role, provide additional details etc. You can describe that with few lines of text or table with text in cells which is more logical but also looks a bit to simple. I've picked the cells way because writing in English is not my best part

I can't see the links for your folio and stuff. I mean it's in the same style as your usual text so you need to move your mouse cursor over the text to "find" a link.

It would be awesome to see your email

Good luck, man!

Display More

Your portfolio is impressive! When you compare environmental artists with level designers its like that scene from office space where the designer would be "Whats the matter with you people!? I have design skills!!"

I was Lead game designer for a bit near the end at Nerve software but otherwise I have been a senior level designer or lead level designer depending on the project. I guess I am all over the place. personal projects mixed in with proffessional doing random positions.. *sigh*

Ah yes i definitly see what you mean. Do you have any suggestions?

What I might do is make something a bit more fancy in Photoshop with fancy text like "Castle Does" instead of the current header.

Hey guys, I have been lurking here a bit looking to finally get my act together and finally get back on my feet. Been unemployed for way too long. I hope to be a regular face here in the near future too as I enjoy doing projects in my spare time and have been actually recording my antics on youtube as of late.

http://castledoes.carbonmade.com/

As always all feedback is welcome. Its missing a few games and projects I worked on at the moment but I plan to get those all rounded up. I have been having poor luck finding work.

Thoughts?