Posts by grapen

  • [FC5] Wetland Turmoil (and a little review of sorts)

    Quote from blackdog

    1 hour ago, blackdog said: I think if you are applying or intending to apply to a job in Ubisoft, playing with this editor could be beneficial.

    Regarding similarities, I found the FC3 editor (which I used on the console version) and the FC4 editor to resemble the flow of the CryEngine 3, so you are probably right in your thoughts.

    Hope your map will be successful and downloaded a lot! :)

    does Arcade give you stats like that?

    Good point, if you’re really pinpointing a job at Ubisoft then this editor seems solid! I believe you get stats such as number of plays and ratings, haven’t really had a look at it yet.

  • [FC5] Wetland Turmoil (and a little review of sorts)

    I wanted to do something different in-between my planned projects, so I had a look at Far Cry 5's Arcade editor and made an Outpost level called Wetland Turmoil. I also figured that I'd take this opportunity to write down my more or less incoherent thoughts on the editor, for those interested in checking it out.

    I like Arcade overall. It's robust, easy to learn and simply put designed for cranking out levels fast. I think that's both a strength and a detriment, as on one hand it diminishes the barrier of entry and creates a huge PR buzz for the game, while on the other it hampers advanced users creativity. You can tell it's a watered down version of whatever editor Ubisoft uses in-house, as I was missing some stuff that I wanted. There's no prop scaling, flowing rivers, dynamic wires, scripting of any kind, custom post fx - things that you otherwise might find in the base game of Far Cry 5. Though I must say that the environment options available are powerful. Each node on the grid has a hard memory limit that is hit quite fast, especially when you add AI. This makes sense though as Ubisoft would not want to deal with huge, broken maps all over the place, basically a safety net.

    Terraforming, painting foliage, placing props, setting up compositions etc. is a blast though, and you get a lot of props to use, a majority of which are from FC5. Great fun if you, like me, are into that. If my memory serves me right, it's very similar to the old CryEngine editors from back then? I only dabbled a little bit in those to fully remember.

    I spent about 2-3 workdays from downloading the editor to publishing my map, which I think speaks for how easy it is to learn and iterate in it. Would I recommend anyone getting the game just for the editors sake? No, not really. As much as I think the editor is cool, there's both Unreal and Unity to scratch the same kind of mapping itch.

    So here's a few shots of my level. I wanted to take some inspiration from L4D's Swamp Fever, which turned out a really fun project considering there were hardly any natural swamp/wetlands foliage, so I had to improvise. If you have the game installed you could search for maps made my user "grap3n".

    [Blocked Image: https://i.imgur.com/kb7vwhp.jpg]

    [Blocked Image: https://i.imgur.com/A0e6Hjl.jpg]

    [Blocked Image: https://i.imgur.com/meGMBGk.jpg]

    [Blocked Image: https://i.imgur.com/ZjGMGof.jpg]

  • God of War

    Played about two hours so far and it’s just amazing. How can it look so good on this old machine? It doesn’t feel like God of War, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. If it continues to deliver I’m certain it will be GOTY. Easily.

  • God of War

    Quote from [HP]

    18 hours ago, [HP] said: So... I just learned that this game has a no cut camera, from the beginning to the end. wtf.

    Sounds great! One thing I loved about the souls series was the very low amount of camera cuts. Hope I can preload the game tonight.

  • [CS:GO] Chalice (Wingman)

    Quote from blackdog

    1 hour ago, blackdog said: So I had the right feeling on twitter :)

    looks great and would love to be able to try it with real people, real matchmaking.

    I find interesting the simple layout, but wonder if is actually too simple, as seems like you get a line on enemies right away in the open, CT knows right away where T come from?

    anyway, just like Scepter this looks top!

    There are three ways from which T can come from, you could try and hold two of them with an awp or scout, but it’s a huge gamble, especially with the windows T can use to throw nades through. CT’s should try and be dynamic and use utility to cover everything. Wish I knew of a server that run Wingmans, but community servers are rare these days :(

  • [CS:GO] Chalice (Wingman)

    Quote from poLemin

    2 hours ago, poLemin said: The outside area looks amazing and the layout looks interesting in the overview. I'll give it a try later today!

    I feel like the indoor area does not really fit the rest of the scenes, especially the clean texture on both the ceiling and the columns. And the plant pots from berth do not fit well in my opinion.

    Keep the good work coming! Excited to try this one out :)

    Thanks! The interior could definitely use some polish overall, I’ve been hesistant to create new assets for the map due to the short production time frame, but I’ll consider some things :)


    Quote from SirK

    3 minutes ago, SirK said: Looks awesome! Now I have to change the setting of my wingman map xD

    Whoops! No but really, castle maps are awesome, keep doing it!

  • [CS:GO] Chalice (Wingman)

    I just published 'Chalice' to the workshop, a small Wingman map inspired by a fortification in northen Italy, and a spin-off to my earlier map Scepter. Assets from 7 different maps came together to make this: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/fi…/?id=1362837520

    [Blocked Image: https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/2425628008264609160/DB40CD640BAF9E3F46E7D3EADD4769DC99E2421E/]

    [Blocked Image: https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/2425628008264609339/111B46F38C2B86FAFE23986D25C6DE25B3C0A192/]

    [Blocked Image: https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/2425628008264609496/8C37240CDF5853581E0568A51400CC6860E734D2/]

    [Blocked Image: https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/2425628008264609630/C10BBA8EB175BC26F84DAF7904A530E54A9C1A60/]

    [Blocked Image: https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/2425628008264609769/9D1EC1C79AC33ABD0CA19E9BCCB7F2C15BDAEDDC/]

    [Blocked Image: https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/2425628008264609928/6558550E3843CB2921A07F254D630D9C0DC3826D/]

  • What's going on with your life?

    Quote from biXen

    2 hours ago, biXen said: But I wish I could find a way to get at least 10-12 hours a week of solid project time done. Anyone been down that path? It's one of those things that don't make sense to me, because I love to do all the stuff I'm not getting done. So I can't find a logic way of approaching it.

    Absolutely. I have a full time job, wife and kids and so I’m usually able to get on my PC at 10 pm and get two hours in. I probably wouldn’t do this unless I was very goal driven. If I can get into the industry I’ll use my spare time for other things, for the most part. With how time consuming these things are I think goals are necessary in order to stay disciplined.

  • The cost of games

    Quote from FMPONE

    16 minutes ago, FMPONE said: Heard really good things about Nier. Not sure why people seem so into it, but maybe it's worth finding out after I get through my backlog.

    It is very much an oddball game, not what you expect from looking at screenshots. It explores existentialism and references many historic philosophers. Can’t tell you more, should be be experienced :)

  • The cost of games

    I’ve been playing NieR: Automata lately and analyzing it every step of the way. To me it seems perfectly adapted to today’s market situation for singleplayer games. The visual fidelity is very low for a 2017 game, assets and materials are being rehashed to infinity (albeit fairly well hidden for the untrained eye), you’re basically fighting the same enemies over and over, and the main scenario is pretty short.

    Yet despite this I’ve been very engaged, more so than I was in Zelda BotW to be honest, and I’m a long time fan of that franchise. The gameplay, soundtrack and story is so well executed, and without telling too much, they’ve been very clever with the replayability. The game is designed to offset the lack of visual fidelity and length in how everything plays out.

    I can think of one recent game from the same publisher even, where the exact opposite is (subjectively) true. A game that took a decade to get out, with a huge intricately and beautifully designed world, terrible combat and dull story: FF15. Luckily for Square Enix, NieR and their F2P mobile games make up for that loss. Ironic.

  • de_berth

    Hey there. The holidays have been very busy for me and I also managed somehow to catch both sinisitus and bronchitis. Ain't nobody got time for that, so I kept going and prepared one last update for the duration of this contest: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/fi…/?id=1216945465

    Before screenshots, I figure I'll just type down the story behind the map, for anyone interested. Initially I didn't think I'd even participate in the contest since I needed to wrap up my previous project. Yet when we were two months in, during the last days of July, I did a quick sketch for a layout on a piece of paper and got to grayboxing. Two hours later I had this thing:


    [Blocked Image: https://i.imgur.com/Pjar4V0.jpg]


    Much of it is still there today with some variation. With so little time remaining (3 months at this point, before the extension was announced) I needed to make the map as small as I possibly could, within reasonable expectations of 5v5 gameplay. The theme had to be something I was comfortable with, and where I could borrow a lot of stock content. My goal was to rush it and not have any dev stuff by the first deadline, I figured I had to in order to even have a chance at top 10. Admittedly I was a bit surprised at making it.

    As for the layout itself, I wanted to take some inspiration from Mill and Overpass for some familiarity. liked the idea of having a slightly faster route to one site, much like Overpass, although making it scary to rush. I also wanted to give CT's the option of playing more dynamically with different positions and crossfires like Mill. During the old era of CS, Mill was my favourite map and I still think the A site of that map is the most exciting site in the history of CS. Despite Berth being so compact and simple, I feel good about the options currently available to both teams.


    [Blocked Image: https://i.imgur.com/7xiCDMI.jpg]


    I consulted with an old friend and teammate alike, did some iterations and carried on. I really wanted to go for an overcast environment and ended up bashing my head trying to make it work. Spoilers: it didn't. There were just too many issues that I couldn't ignore, not to mention everyone hated it (hehe). After a LOT of palette iterations, I settled for mostly green and yellow, ironically inspired by the Mako reactor of FF7 after doing a re-run of that.

    I had some closed testing along the way and felt I was on the right track, though after the faceit playtests I got some good feedback that pushed me to change some things up. Thanks everyone who played and provided feedback, also a special shoutout to @Terri for taking the time to go so far as making a video and heatmaps. In the past few weeks I've cleaned up angles, removed some overly cheeky boosts and provided more art. Now for the update:


    [Blocked Image: https://i.imgur.com/054yF4O.jpg]

    [Blocked Image: https://i.imgur.com/TtiOjrI.jpg]

    [Blocked Image: https://i.imgur.com/5Wl8C9z.jpg]

    [Blocked Image: https://i.imgur.com/XOTssuH.jpg]

    [Blocked Image: https://i.imgur.com/0BeQ4Gq.jpg]

    [Blocked Image: https://i.imgur.com/qPUSooV.jpg]

    [Blocked Image: https://i.imgur.com/Z5MXuAQ.jpg]


    I think most notably, the map should feel a little less spacious. I removed accessibility to the giant metal stairs for both teams to prevent cheap boosts and awkward angles. B-site has received a makeover for a memorable look. It's now possible to reasonably hold "catwalk" while also removing a nasty headpeek. Underpass is now more fair for T's.

    Where does that leave the state of the map? Well, I'm not done, I want to continue workin on the art, but that will have to wait until after the contest. Thanks everyone who took the time to check out my map, also thanks Mapcore and Faceit for this opportunity. Already looking forward to the next contest, whatever it may be.

  • Fatal error loading pixel shader vertexlit_and_unlit_generic_ps30 (096F2140)

    Quote from overdo$e

    42 minutes ago, overdo$e said: Honestly I do have a lot of Custom content, almost all of it is custom. Weirdly enough I finished this map in august and it didnt have this error. When I wanted to release it this week it showed it.

    Anyways, ill try to cordon compile it a few times, thanks.

    Yeah they changed how the engine handles these incompatible errors this fall, before they would not even give you a warning, though some users would experience visual glitches. These days the game just straight up crash.


    Also, the fact that there's an issue with an unlit generic shaders should give some helpful info, you probably don't have a lot of those?