Posts by MikeGon

Hey @ItzOmega,

Your demo reel is great, but honestly I don't think demo reels even matter for artists anymore. They're important for content that needs movement by nature (animation, fx, audio...) but not for art. ?

In all the companies I worked for, art leads would literally just browse ArtStation, find artists they like based solely on their stills, and make decisions based on that. They often completely ignore demo reels, because they have dozens of portfolios to skim through and they really don't have all day. It's a very fast process. That's why quality images beat videos when it comes to artist portfolios.

(btw I'm not an artist myself so I don't know these things for a fact, but I heard this soooo many times that it's just burned in my mind at this point...)

For your portfolio, if I can make a quick criticism I'd say that it's not focused enough in terms of role. What are you applying for? Are you an environment artist? character artists? props? weapons? Those are all different jobs in most cases, and I strongly suggest molding yourself towards a specific role, focusing only on that, and dropping everything else. Putting your time and energy into a single aspect will make you MUCH better at it, and the quality of your work will soon follow...

It's daunting sometimes to take some projects off your portfolio, but think for the greater good!

Also there's a few GDC talks about artist portfolio you should look at if you didn't already:

Good luck man, Keep us posted!!

@General Vivi A lot of things have changed between the two, Glad to see you're comfortable with making layout reworks when needed!!

Amazing work @Radu! It looks fun and really nice too, like we're back in a Far Cry 2 type of setting which I love!!

Also I'm happy to see something that's not Source on this forum for once ?

Here's a few thing that came to mind while watching your gameplay video, please take this with a grain of salt. (I'll be using timestamps from your gameplay video to point out specific things)

I think some of your bases need a bit of work. At 3:50 we see that the base has a flat, huge empty space at the center with next to no LOS blockers, so if you move to the center-ish you can clear the whole base while barely moving. This hurts the exploration, and makes the remaining areas of the base largely unused. Things are layed out in front of us, so it feels less compelling to move around and explore.

IMO this is roughly what the core gameplay loop for an encounter in a PVE game should often look like, if you want to make it interesting:

(Note that Action doesn't only mean combat. It can be "interact with a thing", "pickup a new weapon", "board a vehicle", etc. and you need to tuck away those things in the first place so we can then Discover them)

This is exploration, and it's usually more fun than having the thing just sit there visible the whole time. You actually represented that perfectly in most of the surrounding "wilderness" areas, like you have those nice elevations that block LOS, creating reveals when we move past then (that guy at 0:11, the pond at 0:38) I would try to do some more of that in the bases, to merge action with exploration!

Basically find ways to create a few pockets within these bases. This can be done in numerous ways, which I'm sure you're aware since you used them elsewhere (buildings, large props, elevation, etc.) Maybe that truck at 4:25 is inside a garage with open doors, so it's slightly less visible from all angles, maybe some of the patrols are temporarily on the 2nd floor of a building, so you have to turn around it or go inside to get them, maybe the terrain has slants and ramps we need to use to get around, etc.

Some other areas are extremely open, like the farmlands at 4:55. Due to the nature of the theme it's kinda hard to come up with ways to add LOS blockers, but still it's always possible! There could be farming machinery parked in the fields, little shacks here and there, cases of gathered rice, sandbags that feel like they would be rice bags, big lumps of dirt between the field sections, river crossing through creating a small valley, etc. Even stuff like roads can be made less open by making them thinner and concave, so the edges become blockers against the outside (I think you did it in a few places).

I guess my overall point with all this, is that blockers aren't just covers for combat, they're also essential for exploration. Now I don't know what the LD philosphy for Far Cry is overall, but I'm fairly certain doing this would improve things!

Also, the 2 first bases feel very similar to me... I would try to give each of them more differing visual/gameplay/narrative flavors, just like you did on the 3rd one, which has shacks, no walls, and a radio tower!

Similarity = repetition. Repetition = boredom! ?

Fiction - I think a bit more worldbuilding could help here! Asking yourself a few questions bottom-up, and answering them one by one will solve that for you. For instance:

• What is the purpose of this base for the bandits?
• Why do they need to establish bases here in a rice field?
• Why three bases?
• What is the purpose of each individual base?
• Are the bandits gathering rice?
• If so, are they doing it themselves? or are they forcing local farmers to work for them?
• If not, are they growing/smuggling drugs or something? What's the process? How do they ship it out?
• And now: How can we communicate these answers through the environment?

You can even go into details like:

• What are the two dudes standing in the pond doing? Fishing? Gathering rice?
• Do the bandits work and guard all day? Where do they go when they want to take a break? Where do they sleep?
• How do they move in and out of the area, and between the bases? Using vehicles? Helicopters? Can we show that using roads, landing pads?
• That shack at 4:54, is that someone's home? They're not there, what happened to them?
• Again: How can we communicate these answers through the environment?

You probably thought these things through already, but showing these is really what makes places feel lived in, and I would love to see more of that in there!!

Again, amazing work Radu, and please take all this with a grain of salt!

Keep it up!

-Mike

Quote from +Rusty+

On 9/1/2018 at 5:58 PM, +Rusty+ said: Little workflow exercise with a simple prop also some substance painter (Iray) renders (rarley use the built in render)

Cool stuff @+Rusty+!!

I would say be careful about resolution vs object size here, this is a minuscule object so having a lot of geo/big texture on it would probably not be ideal in most games, unless it's for a cutscene...

Although if it's just for practice then never mind! ?

Quote from Interfearance

35 minutes ago, Interfearance said: I understand any greivances about some online dude criticizing a work of this caliber. I also understand that I might have been too rough in select previous cases, creating more frustration when I post feedback. I haven't posted a fraction of my "work" so I am basically an idiot who wastes his time on mapcore to people who don't know me. I guess I brushed several people the wrong time along the way. I don't want to victimize myself further, I don't feel bad for myself. Let's go our own ways and resolve this.

No one is perfect, but we all learn and improve every day guys ❤️

Quote from FMPONE

Just now, FMPONE said: Remember, that post was reacting to a dumb IGN video, not a Call of Duty video. Most of the buzz I’ve seen around this game is actually very positive, people seem excited for it this time around.

Absolutely, I was talking in a broad sense but yeah COD might turn out genuinely good!!

Might turn out good. Let's wait and see!

Quote from Pampers

On 6/23/2019 at 1:40 PM, Pampers said: this covers 90% of all youtube gaming content

https://twitter.com/burgerdrome/status/1139360651187326978

yyyyep. That's why I filtered out most "GAMING NEWS!! $$$" youtubers. They just read Reddit, press record and ramble for as long as they can and try to stretch it to 10-14min, then fart that out every day. When they have an opinion, it's always in lockstep with the popular one, to validate their audience and preserve trust.

Quote from FMPONE

On 6/19/2019 at 2:11 PM, FMPONE said: 

lol, damn!

Doesn't matter much anymore when the initial steps for promoting a "AAA game" don't go well. They will pay all the beloved Youtuber/Streamer shills to play and say good things about the game, and people are gonna start thinking this is a good a deal. Usually it's difficult to detect (and that's the whole point), but other times...

Games now work the same way as any other marketable products. Companies can literally buy gamer's trust, and it works reliably because most people forget and don't think 2 steps ahead. We're kinda fucked honestly

It does seem like people are starting to react to this though, so there might be hope. Let's stay positive...

Good work on the layout, and nice choice of theme!

Did you draw that overview on Etch A Sketch or what? ?

Based on what I'm seeing here, I'm not sure if your sites would be close enough from CT... they look like they're halfway between both teams, while in a conventional defuse map CTs would have time to settle and even get past the site before encountering Ts... there's usually a chokepoint right in front of the site Ts have to push through. This, combined with the objective, is what makes one team feel defensive, and the other offensive!

(This might actually be what you're going for here, I'm just making assumption based on your overview)

Just throwing this out there, but since you're going for a bayou/riverside setting, you might be able to use some of the props from the L4D2 "Swamp Fever" campaign!

Keep it up, Good luck with the contest!!

Last time I used Blender I got frustrated because the UI and workflow was an unintuitive mess

...but that was in like 2006, it probably received 1 or 2 updates since then ?

One day I might finally cross this thing off my life goals bucket list: modelling a blender with Blender

He looks so cool, can't wait to see his gameplay!

His face reminds me of some Dreamwork character for some reason, can't remember which one

but I might be dreaming... anyways back to work

Hi @Mamorex, your stuff looks pretty cool!!

I know writing text is pretty boring, but a little explanation could go a long way in communicating your though process here! Design is all about decisions and intent... images don't communicate that as well as words.?

The diving board jump onto catwalk / baby pool drop thing is crazy and original, but I'm wondering how it's gonna play out in a real match. I think it would be fine if this was a niche side thing, but here it's one of the two routes to the hostages! Also it took me a few minutes to understand the baby pool drop thing, so I think a lot of players will be confused at first... and I don't think bots can do any of these jumps btw

In the pool room again, the "concrete pillar on catwalk" part is weird... I know I'm supposed to walk on the railing next to it, but it doesn't feel great for both gameplay and fiction.

There's a lot of awkward, dead-end little rooms packed with props... it's cool to add spaces for storytelling, but I think they shouldn't be playable (e.g. door is locked, we see a cool thing through a window, and that's it)

A thing to keep in mind with interactible objects, is that as soon as we use one it creates the expectation that the next identical object will behave the same way. This isn't the case with doors in your map (green door interactible on T-spawn, green door non-interactible on CT-spawn...) I'd say make the interactible doors have 1 consistent appearance, and non-interactible doors have a different one.

There's a few more props that encroach navigation space, like the benches in the locker room for instance... I suggest having a single row instead of 2 per section, to simplify it a bit, and moving them a bit further away in the alcove, not aligned with the lockers, to make it less likely to accidentally bump into them while moving across the room.

This wall is at the awkward height of "Is jumpable question mark???" (it actually isn't). I'd make it a bit higher so it's visually clear

There's also a lot of snagging on small collisions. Disabling collisions on small props and adding clip brushes will solve that (large window by the pool, railings in the staircase, doorframes, etc.)

Overall it's looking pretty nice! Keep up the good work ?

Looks neat dude!!

I like your overview showing where things are and where zombies come from! I also like your gameplay video at the bottom, but I think it should come in way sooner in the page. Videos are always better at communicating gameplay than screenshots, especially yours since you added voiceover!

If you take a step back and squint, all of your screenshots look identical... I'd probably replace some of them with different ones, like one of an interior, one looking downwards at an area, etc.

Also there's still a few typos, I highly recommend running all text through a spellchecker before publishing, even if it looks all good at a glance...

Cheers, Keep it up!

Quote from [HP]

11 minutes ago, [HP] said: Good point, lol. Yeah, I'll pick it up once I'm done with CTR. (Loving the Adventure mode in that game, as random as it sounds)

Ohhh that's another good one! I have great memories of playing this when I was a smaller-sized human, on the PolyStation One

Quote from [HP]

5 minutes ago, [HP] said: The Switch is hand down one of the best consoles I've ever owned! Those 3 games will keep you busy for weeks, if not months too! How you finding Mario Maker? I wanna pick it up, but I feel it's a little too close to what I already do for a living? ahah

One of thing I love about it is bringing it with me in parks and whatnot, working on Mario maps and getting a tan at the same time ? Being able to do that anywhere is sweet!

The "too close to what we already do for a living" part is exactly why I picked it up... It's like having a blast playing a game, but getting extra training at the same time!

Besides, who is this game made for if not for us? ?

I stepped in a GameStop for the first time in years, and finally got around to buying a switch:

I picked up Zelda, Mario Odyssey, Mario Maker 2... and we'll see if I can still resist picking up Smash for much longer!

Buying a new Nintendo console at the store brought back nice memories... felt like I was a kid again ?

Nice progress so far!!

Will the train be stationary like this (and make people late to work ?), or will it pass by on a loop a la Overpass?

I see you uploaded it to workshop, I'll take it for a spin as soon as I can!

Quote from Rooke

On 7/12/2019 at 9:20 AM, Rooke said: [Blocked Image: https://secure.i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02531/Favela_2531369b.jpg]

Nice choice of theme btw! Due to the nature of it I expect a fair amount of verticality?

Keep up the nice work, Good luck with the contest!

Hey @Donskioni, Welcome to the community, It's good to have you!

Cool stuff, be sure to post a few more screenshots or a workshop link so we can look at the spaces!

Quote from Donskioni

On 7/10/2019 at 1:06 PM, Donskioni said:

Yeah there's definitely something weird about this lighting... I recommend your refer to the sky list and check out the lighting values they're using for a given sky. That should give great results and be an ideal starting point to tweak the lighting however you like!

Keep it up, Good luck with the contest!!

Thanks!! I love the place, so many great trails for biking, and it's not as rainy as people say... or is it? ?

Quote from Howw3

3 hours ago, Howw3 said: Honestly the COD games especially the future ones have very creative map themes. 

Totally! Notice how they often clash multiple differing themes together (Jungle has Village + Temple + Burnt out area, Elevation has Snowy mountain + Nepal village, Contraband has Beach + Jungle + Ruins + freakin Frigate Shipwrecks etc. etc.)

Quote from 0kelvin

23 hours ago, 0kelvin said: I'm learning japanese. I expect to reach intermediate level by the end of my undergraduate course. I'm not interesting in studying in JApan, but... just in case I ever need it.

That's awesome!

All you guys who are learning languages just for fun, what kind of crazy motivation levels do you have omg