Posts by MikeGon

Quote from Radu

On 6/26/2019 at 10:32 AM, Radu said: Is this the right thread for this?

https://kotaku.com/the-human-cost…ps-4-1835859016

Man, reading about the way QA are treated seems so surreal. Although Ubisoft has its issues too, compared to Treyarch it seems like heaven. I've heard similar stories about EA from colleagues who have worked there previously.

Yeah it's pretty depressing to think about honestly

Sadly that's pretty common for large game studios from what I've seen.

One common element in all those reports overall, is how the QA team is treated differently from the other teams, and I think that's at the core of the issue.

Of course not all companies are like that though, for example Eidos is great with the QAs and really treats them like everybody else! I mean I don't want to speak for them, but I'm sure they would agree.

Unfortunately the studio I was part of, Defiant Studios, pretty much exploded due to a nonsensical conflict with our publisher...

Good news is, 3-4 weeks later, our team got picked up by People Can Fly, and now represents the NA branch of the company!

But obviously during the hiatus, the future was uncertain... and people had to look elsewhere, including myself (cuz livin' in NY ain't cheap, ya know)

So I just moved to the West Coast last week, and just started yesterday at 343 Industries, working on the next Halo!!

Absolutely love the studio and team, and I can't wait to share more details when time comes ?

Can someone edit my entry in the top post please? Thank you very much ❤️

Cheers guys!!

Just moved to Redmond WA, and it's my first time here on the West coast!

I'm starting at 343 Industries on Tuesday, meanwhile I have time to explore the area, get used to everything etc.

Aaand looks like I'm back at the "living with extreme minimalism while waiting for the movers to deliver my stuff" chapter of life. Hopefully it's gonna take less than 2 months this time...

Cheers!

Yeah I got big things happening at work, meanwhile I'm still scrambling to work on Opal on the side and I can't interrupt the project, so I won't be able to participate in this one I'm afraid!

Looks exciting though!! Good luck to all participants, and Thank you MC staff for putting this together!

Edit: Commas are important

Quote from blackdog

On 6/8/2019 at 5:04 AM, blackdog said: @MikeGon Well for Nintendo there was rumor they were going to release a cheap version of the Switch, like other products before. Sony is not going to E3 at all…

Square Enix is taking the Sony presentation slot and will (should) unveil the Avengers game. Hype for that brand couldn’t be higher now.

Yeah totally, it's coming at the right time I guess.

I have no idea what they're going to show... admittedly I am a bit nervous but I know this is in good hands

Quote from Interfearance

On 6/8/2019 at 5:32 AM, Interfearance said: I couldn't even watch the new Pokemon trailer. I cannot play an single player game at 24 fps with no AA. They are jumping their own hardware and are probably better off switching back to orthographic games if they want quality graphics and frame rates. Don't tell me "its not that bad when you play it". I literally could not even start playing botw because the frame rate turned me off. Just pc things I guess. I even emulated botw with double framerate (which means animations are twice as fast) and it felt more "cinematic".

I'm the same. Feels like as soon as I tasted the sweet fruit of stable high fps that most games have nowadays, I couldn't go back anymore!

If they managed to make freaking Gamecube games run 60fps 15 years ago you would think that good framerate is a standard for them by now- not only because of the lowering hardware limitations but also the collective knowledge of our engineers that's always rising...

But on the flip-side it's understandable because in terms of specs the Switch is basically a mobile platform, not a console. Here's a read.

Quote from Interfearance

On 6/8/2019 at 5:32 AM, Interfearance said: What am I saying, the human eye can't see over 24 fps anyway!

Come on you're exaggerating... wasn't it 12 fps? Right but if you count both eyes 12+12=24. My bad, you're right!

Awesome, Can't wait! I wonder what Microsoft is cooking...

Btw 2 of the games I worked on / am still working on will "supposedly" have presentations this year, I heard

I mean we can Google it but you have a pretty common name though

Cool art style! Reminds me of that old "toonshader" in 3ds max

[Blocked Image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b7/Toon-shader.jpg]

I like the humour and tone too, it doesn't take itself too seriously

Quote from FMPONE

On 5/22/2019 at 2:55 AM, FMPONE said: also kind of glad I never played the original, this feels really polished.

Fair enough but idk if playing the original would even affect one's experience in a negative way- that game was ages ago and it's fair to say most people didn't play recently, so it's like a fresh start

Spoiler

The game banks on what people roughly remember about it, but it doesn't follow it down to a tee either... Like Mr. X is barely there in the original, he's like a special enemy only on 2nd playthrough, but here he's a lot more present and it totally feels like it was always like this!

Sometimes they even use your knowledge of the original to subvert expectations. For instance in the original, the licker is introduced in the 1F West Corridor, and they know that everybody who played the original remembers that. So what they did is that they put a corpse there with a wound that clearly just got killed by a licker, to make you tense AF when moving through that corridor, but... no licker. Instead they introduce it a bit later, right before the Stars Office, in a different way.

And they completely changed the less memorable stuff and replaced it with something that's hopefully better, like the statue pushing part is gone, the giant spiders in the sewer, the Ada part is completely different, etc.

Definitely one of the most impressive approach to "remaking" a game I've ever seen!

Quote from Interfearance

1 hour ago, Interfearance said: Good enough for my first Max model. It feels a lot clunkier than Maya, but I guess the modifiers are cool. This will do for the gray box.

Good indeed ?

Oh yes 3ds is certainly an acquired taste haha

but you can make pretty much anything with it, just like Maya (someone correct me if I'm wrong)

I'm not a modeller but hopefully I can help a bit. Pretty sure you can make those shapes with modifiers in 3ds Max:

• Large glass surface with geo + modifiers like Taper/Spherify/FFD box etc. Don't need to worry about the bottom, you can just cut it + sink it in the ground
• White trims with splines and loft
• Supports for white trims with spacing tool, using the same splines

Would the interior be playable or not? If not, can we go right next to the building or is it meant to be far away?

YOOOOOOOOOO GUYS

Quote from ElectroSheep

3 hours ago, ElectroSheep said: We are actually looking for this as well. There is a lot of bilingual daycare here in Montreal (English and French) and from what people tell us is that it's kind of naturall this way.

Dunno yet appart that.

You could send them to English school while speaking French at home (or vice-versa), and I guarantee they'll learn the Montreal way!

Genre tu parle en Francais but sometimes you switch to English dans le middle de ton sentence. ?

Hey this looks great!

I'm not really the guy to comment on visuals and aesthetics, but looking at the topdown there's a couple stuff that stick out to me:

From CT spawn, the path to A looks way longer than the path to B. This would be fine if Ts actually need more time to get to A as well, but a side effect of this is that players will probably default to the one that's closest to them, because they can get to the action faster. That might be acceptable, but personally I like to make them both at same distance so they both feel as compelling as one another.

T-Spawn to Mid looks longer than CT-spawn to Mid. Usually timings should be made such that the first guy on each team both turn the corner and see each other exactly at the same time. Otherwise the first guy gets to prepare and aim, which makes the encounter more advantageous for them...

btw I'm making these comments based on what I'm seeing on the topdown shown above, including the doodles, and I know it's probably not meant to be accurate. But hopefully that helps!!

@fewseb I like the point you're bringing about the roads, I agree that roads leading outside the map could add even more world-building in there. In fact it's there on a couple maps (King's row comes to mind, that gated road on the right immediately out of attacker spawn, also on Hollywood on the left side):

[Blocked Image: https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*Kn03KZm7rTygnFYCVJByfQ.jpeg]

but i don't think that kind of stuff is critical at all, especially since they are situated in pretty much to the least visited areas on each map, because attackers sprint out of the spawn as fast as they can and this is quickly behind them...

(in fact people are so rarely playing there that its freaking hard for me to find screenshots of it! Good thing it's actually visible on the loading screen image for Hollywood )

I played a lot of it since it came out, and fell in love with it!

I'm actually surprised we're not talking about it more! It has great mechanics, art, and is also a masterclass for level design so I highly suggest you guys play it, at least for research.

Quote from blackdog

1 hour ago, blackdog said: I never played these kind of games (like ninja gaiden) cos they were always so focused on those mad combos in the style of fighting games, which don’t appeal to me.

Yeah It's definitely closer to a fighting game now... It's the kind of game you have to dedicate time and patience to, and then it pays off with a great feeling of accomplishment. You learn and become good at the game, instead of the character leveling up or something.

So many games were tough as nails back in the day, and this game is in that same kind of vein, but it's still very fair. If you played any tough retro games, it'll be very approachable for you.

TLDR, if you played any DMC/Castlevania/Contra/Ninja Gaiden before you'll be fine

Hey @Roald I really like your portfolio, it's simple and your projects are all in one place, and easy to go through!

One thing I would do is put the email address on the front page, so recruiters can quickly glance at your stuff and contact you. Apparently 98% of visitors spend under 30s on a portfolio website, so you need to get the point across real fast:

(Those are stats for mine but I can't imagine it's very different for others...)

Think about what you have time to do in like 25s... this means that they don't really read text, just skip through Youtube videos, etc. Recruiters quickly look at your stuff, send it to leads, see the email address, contact you and that's it.

The other pages (contact/about/log) won't really be used, you could almost remove them if you want to make your portfolio even simpler. Content is what matters, which is why I personally prefer to remove everything else. That stuff is usually redundant or not so useful anyways:

• Personal statement/description - Nobody reads that, unfortunately... and that's mostly what interviews are for anyways, to see what you're like as a person.
• Working experience - They can easily see that on your Linkedin or through the projects themselves (like if you have The Division in your projects they know you worked at Ubisoft...)
• The list of softwares you know - It doesn't mean much because they expect you to be able to pick up any software anyways.
• Contacts - Only your email address is needed, which you can put on your front page anyways.

Anyways good job it's looking solid!

Looks fun!! Getting this when it comes out for sure

Quote from Interfearance

On 4/7/2019 at 9:31 PM, Interfearance said: Lattice looks great and it seems like you got the "big stairs" right, as well as the warping of the ground.

Thank you, but I actually haven't touched the stairs yet ?

But if you look at photo refs, you can see that those large steps are actually real. I think the reason why they feel weird to some players is because they expect them to be your standard sized steps and they look like a mistake. Maybe mixing them up with normal ones could help with this...

Speaking of photo refs, I just backed up all my files and refs on the cloud! (Let's just say that a certain misfortune teached me a good lesson recently... ?) So here's a Pinterest board with all the photo refs I'm using for this project. What's cool about this is that you don't have to worry about your PC suddenly combusting and losing all you stuff! Plus it's pretty smart at showing you similar images that might be worth adding to your board.

Quote from Interfearance

On 4/7/2019 at 9:31 PM, Interfearance said: Maybe you should incorporate more brick colored shutters into the theme as Skopelos seems to have a fair share of those as well as the preexisting blue ones.

I agree! I've been using mainly the blue ones because the white/blue color scheme looks good, but I should add more variety in there.

I should probably make a tintable custom prop for these since I'm using them all over the place too...