Posts by Mitch Mitchell

Which mapping tools does everyone use for CS:GO?

Quote from text_fish

17 hours ago, text_fish said: I'd rather they didn't release any kind of editor than put me through that soulless bastardisation of hobbyist level design.

It's a time-saver. A massive time-saver. If you'll permit me: it's a time-saver so large and important that it would cut down the amazon rain forest with the right-click of the mouse.

It would not be something for final designs, it would be for final analysis.

Quote from nikkoship

23 hours ago, nikkoship said: I get what you're saying, but I think this is kind of an outdated way of thinking. The line between environment art and level design is pretty blurry, especially in the community scene. Many community mappers wear both hats out of necessity. Mappers have never been exempt from making their maps look good, and times have changed. We simply can't keep up with the quality standards with basic bsp tools. That doesn't mean it's impossible for them to implement robust geo tools or a modular mesh kit, but the reality is that making a complete art-passed map in 2017 (even in brush based engines) might mean you'll have to use some form of modelling tool.

Strongly disagree, this can be scripted like this:

1. Create BSP level, playtest the hell out of it until it shines like the tower of the pharaohs.
2. Apply a script-aware texture/material to walls, floors, ceilings, windows, doors and differentiate between outside and inside.
3. Apply script to map/level
4. Script asks where the walls, floors, ceilings, windows and door meshes are - trims are assumptive.
5. Script auto-populates level with said meshes, keeping inside the 'dimensions' of the BSP Geometry.
6. Script has a 'seed' to RNG the usage of meshes for variety.
7. Profit.

So, all you need are the meshes and trims and let the script figure it out and kit-bash the stuff together for you. No need to model anything, and the environment artist stays in the basement where they belong If you really think about, it's just a big look-up table.

This is actually something I'm looking into right now with Unreal Engine 4...that engine is like Microsoft Excel, in that the money people will make from it is much larger than the cost of the application, the scope of Unreal Engine is immense, and soon will shall have VRay...

Quote from text_fish

3 hours ago, text_fish said: I dunno. I kinda assumed the move away from idTech was because everyone complains mega-textures are too hard for the community to make. That might be a bad assumption though, I have been known to make them on an almost daily basis.

To be honest, if they released some maya plugins and a bit of documentation I wouldn't mind learning to use Maya. It's obviously important for devs to support modding communities, but we also have a duty to ourselves to keep up with modern level design standards.

My honest opinion is they will not, and adding to your point, I wouldn't be interested in using Maya to level design with, as far as I am concerned; Maya is not a level design tool - it's an 3D environment art toolbox.

Radiant is a LDT, and Radiant is also not a 3D environment toolbox.

That said...bethesda do like community mods, except Doom MP had snap-map, which although novel, was very limiting for level design.

1. Collision is poorly implemented, many doors feel about 5 units too narrow - and they have used the actual polygons of the models in the environment for collision instead of creating a collision mesh through optimisation.
2. Graphics are clearly 512-1024 texture size, but that's understandable as this game is about speed not pretty graphics.
3. Matches always seem one-sided, you either pwn completely, with members on the other team rage-quitting - or members of your team rage-quit due to unbalanced teams and you spend the rest of the match being chased by 4 players all with stacked loadouts. You either stick it out / grin it and bear it, or you quit yourself to fight another day.
4. Spawns are either death-traps, surrounded by an over-powered opposition, or you spawn too far from the action and are left to humble-bumble, trying to find pickups before finding the opposition, who are typically camping the QD or RL.
5. RL is OP on every map, so everyone camps its spawn location.
6. The maps in very broad and general terms feel the wrong size, with an extraordinarily narrow path through each level, making the slightest deviation from that path a deathtrap, by either stopping you dead in your tracks, or slowing you down - none of the maps feel intuitive as of this date 25-08-17 - many kills for players who are just bumping into walls and doors and have no forward momentum, therefore get killed easily. This proves unsatisfying, as it is nigh impossible to be absolutely certain that kills are the result of hard work and effort in attack/guard/act/react or, just bad luck on the other player.
7. Tactics therefore seem irrelevant.

Overall, with about 250 hours so far on this game, I am not impressed - they have produced an unsatisfying mess of a game, with little replay beyond appealing to fans of the original, yet not taking the game forward and so, there is nothing here to please a fan, as they can play quake live and enjoy the game to a greater extent than this incarnation.

If they fix the collision detection via optimisation, improve the spawn locations and make the classes more interesting, they might have something - but as for now they do not, yet I feel as if they are not going to address the key issues of playing the game and have "done an Epic" by releasing something purely for fans of the original, and not thought on how to move the game forwards at all in the slightest: á la Unreal Tournament 4 Alpha.

C+ Must try harder.

I doubt they will ever produce a level editor as it looks as if it came straight outta Maya. This is a shame, but understandable, as if they were to do this (release an editor) the community (Mapcore!) would create levels which remove the inherent problems this game currently has in its level design...

[Blocked Image: http://cdn.edgecast.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/581…pg?t=1485531652]

http://store.steampowered.com/app/581630/

This game is a lot of fun and covers many of my favourite things: First Person, Ninjas, Swords, Guns, Zip lines, Stealth and the Unreal Engine.

It's very early access for this game, but the level design opportunities are extremely interesting once this goes into Steam Workshop - one to keep an eye on for sure.

Quote from blackdog

5 hours ago, blackdog said: Understand what you mean… dunno as I'm not looking into the application process, I assumed there was an option as I think to understand they gave some money to community members working on weapons and items that are being used in the game. Not sure if that's happening, if is result of application or is arbitrary.

whatever it is I think is incredibly positive and very nice of Epic to support community.

If you're planning to contribute to UT only for money reasons, than I'd say you're in for the wrong reason and you should look elsewhere, because even if you could apply for a grant, that entails a selection process so no guarantees of getting any return.

Always need a selection process, always.

That is one of the things I am asking: what were/are the conditions for handing over a cut of $25K? How did/does Epic Games make such a determination? Who was involved? Who nearly got a cut, but didn't? And why? What is it they could have done to be part of the cut? This way, there is no confusion or misunderstanding regarding any remuneration, earnt or given; awarded or won.

See the problem?

If it's a clearly defined set of rules, which are not guidelines, recommendations or muddy provisos; then people willing to contribute will do so, regardless of remuneration. Mandatory not advisory. A red sign, not a blue one. They are not giving out money for no reason, surely? To do so would undermine the intention of having content created, and draw more people. So...what are the reasons? What is the criteria? If the reasons are wholly and indeterminate, then the community contributors, involved in all manner of contribution from coding to logos (the current contributor for the main logo, didn't get a cut) and then there are bug hunters, testers, music and sound-FX composers, server admins etc, would not know what they are meant to provide. Yet, all of these talented and passionate people didn't get a dime?

The only people who did get a cut were (awesome) mappers. There are people who have contributed, who were not selected for this cut, who have submitted maps, which Epic games have included as part of their game - so...reasons? If it was clear, this would not be an eyebrow-raiser for me. It's not, though. It's out-of-the-blue, unadvertised injection without any premedication.

If you are going to hand money over to your community (no pressure for any company to do this) then you absolutely-positively need a selection process, independently verified and checked prior to handing over $. To not do so, alienates your target audience. This forum is full of very intelligent and insightful people, I do not need to explain the negativity of alienating your audience through reverse passive-aggressive behaviour.

Also, as a side-note, I am very interested in whether one can apply for a grant, as this is something which would be great to see on these forums, no? Maybe some colab, involving Skype/discord - wouldn't that be cool? Get a Mapcore team together? Sweet-Jesus, it would be Epic. Pun in-ten-ded. I would also believe (as I'm sure many do) that if Epic Games start handing over $ to teams of people in a grant manner, then other games (the new Quake immediately springs to mind) could start something in the minds of developers. Am I just singing from the rooftops, with my voice being drowned in a chorus of cats? Or did level design paradigms and maxims suddenly turn into a study of office-based Lotka–Volterra?

Always need a selection process 'sir, always.

Oh, if you can apply for a grant with Epic Games to get $5K to design an Unreal Tournament Map, then I completely agree with you: it is great news and a great day for mappers the world over. Gamers, too.

If you can't apply for a grant to design an Unreal Tournament map, yet Epic Games will hand out money to whomever they see fit, and only did this to get more people playing UT4alpha because numbers are low...then it's not great news.

Anyway, I've got the question of how to apply for creating an Unreal Tournament 4 map out there, so we'll see how they respond to that. Appreciate your answer on the grant application process, but this specifically was not covered in the streams or documentation I've seen.

Apologies for the run-on sentences and split infinitives.

I've asked them how you apply for a grant, just curious...because I'm not convinced anyone actually applied for a grant.

I guess that's kinda the thing. You have to apply, yet they didn't apply and just got the $ handed to them.

It came from nowhere, and is really about Epic than the mappers - I suppose I am questioning the decision making process by Epic. They already had two mappers with maps included in their product, yet did not give them anything from the grant money. Why was this? They ignore them, yet, those who took part in a competition and were awarded $ they give more $ ?

Quote from blackdog

8 minutes ago, blackdog said: I posted about the grants awarded to mappers in the UE4 topic the other day after the stream.

I only very quickly double checked, because I wanted to compliment our mappers, but from what I saw the grants have been awarded to mappers of the community, not the Mapcore contest

DM-Unsaved - won the competition.

DM-Batrankus - one of the top five.

Nato_ChrisJM - last place, I believe, even though their awarded map was something else.

Payback - Don't think they had a map available in time, or didn't submit...not sure.

Scinbed - DM-Croft

So, I think Payback was the only one who didn't actually take part and Nato's comp map wasn't what won the grant.

LINK

Let me get this straight...the winners of the Mapcore competition top five just got an additional $5k each/$25K combined?

Just clarifying, because this is the first I heard about this and have not seen any notifications about this anywhere. It does seem a little odd they didn't give any $ to the people who created maps which were already included in the official deployment.

So, no $ for existing (official) contributors and no notifications about the intentions of Epic Games regarding contributors and payments. At least, I didn't hear about it, but as always stand to be corrected if I missed something...

Quote from dux

On 26/10/2016 at 4:18 PM, dux said: When did he say that?

Oh, in his Ronku 'apology' video, where he listed the reasons for having a channel on YouTube, and specifically that he said to his girlfriend he saw the money being kicked about and said 'you know what? I could make money from that'.

Famous line (about making money from being part of the Ronku programme and not listing that he was part of the programme) 'If I cannot make any money from doing this, what is the point?' . That is pretty much when my jaw hit the floor, and I shouted at the screen "Because you are passionate about video games!"

Extrapolating, if YouTube channels about hamburgers were the number one YouTube channels, (at that point in his life), he would have made a hamburger YouTube channel.

After watching 'that video' I realised he was a video game 'tourist', where he will jump up and down about a new EA game (like need for speed, few years ago) claiming he is going to be 'super' into it, with 'lots of content planned' and is 'really looking forward to it'. What actually happens is once the marketing 'push' ran out and EA were no longer giving $ for content as part of their affiliate program, his content changes to something else. So, he picks up a few new subs, rides the marketing train for that new game, and then moves on to the next game.

He is not alone, he is just the most prolific example in recent times - and I have no interest in content of that nature. I only watch YouTube channels either from official sources, like from the actual developer, or from people not in any affiliated channel/partner programs, because there are always daggers behind those smiles.

If a game is bad and the game hasn't launched...

Those that know, won't tell and those that would tell; don't know.

Sadly, not everyone is Jackfrags and openly admit to not having any interest in video games, and is only doing it for the money...their words.

There is also a section on Twitch, and occasionally, you get mapping and level design in the 'gamedev' section. It is not as 'scheduled' as other broadcasters, but still...

Really wish this was in UE4, I'd pay so much to have this tool.

The material assigning isn't that critical, but the actual brush tools are.

I'm trialling using MS Visio, as this is not only good for layouts, but gives me something to present in a very 'clean' format.

nice

Quote from Buddy

On 09/09/2016 at 6:54 AM, Buddy said: Haha, no. How else would they sell their UHD players?

Sony do not sell 4K UHD Blue-Ray players, nor make them.

They sell upscaling drives for regular Blue-Ray and have media streamers and televisions, which although can take advantage of a 'true' UHD 4K signal, they simply do not manufacture or sell such a device.

If you crunch the numbers on market penetration, manufacture costs and consumer demand - you got another 3 years until you have to do anything about it.

When it comes to electronics, when Sony move, so does the industry.

I would be guessing but I believe Microsoft are taking a hit with this "S" model, and probably an even bigger hit when their other console gets released @ some point - they really do not have a clue about how to respect gamers, they really don't.

I'm thinking Spring next year we'll get an annoucement or possibly a product from Sony on 4K UHD Drives, but considering the way the market is, I wouldn't bet on it. I think they showed a prototype, but nothing concrete - humbled to be corrected on anything I've said on this...

Chicken or egg, guys - what do consumers buy first? the 4K UHD Television, or the 4K UHD Player?

I thought I'd wait for a night to come back to this, see if others wished to pitch in and then did.

Level design is just not art, it is blocking out spatial dimensions to fit a set of variables to make something work inside of its own rules.

Once you put a light somewhere, or paint a wall; then it becomes art - everything beforehand is in the hands of your peers.

It's the beforehand I'm talking about, because that is the most critical and important part of designing a level, and that is the thing sorely lacking for the reasons given. Either the game has nuanced gamers, or the gamers are too broad, yet too insular to gauge and quantify their requirements.

My mapping is going well, the project I am pitching for is tough, yet think there is great potential in what I am showing them.