KungFuSquirrel

It's certainly one of the two biggest things I did wrong at the time, but I can also completely understand how they might feel that after going this far they need to "finish" it - even if that is a trap (and the other biggest thing I did wrong on NW - committing to the original path out of pride and trust in our team and their work rather than reacting to what was actually best for the entire project). Even doing an episodic release after this much time and effort has gone into it might require a significant shuffle of where they've got people and what levels they've focused on. But, it's absolutely the way to do it. One concern that comes up is whether you can maintain the releases following, but I think after all this time they're one team that probably wouldn't come up short in that category since so much work has been done.

Incorrect. Wolf = massively overhauled Doom III. Singularity = UE3. Wolf exteriors were shaky, but depended on more than just tech. Farm level turned out stellar compared to what was possible in the early days. Midtown as it shipped was a mish-mash of level bits hacked up and lingering from early 2006. That branch of the tech is actually better than most people will ever realize

I barely recognize this game anymore, but it looks nice from that. Hope it turns out well for you guys

But, don't forget, who would have expected back in the day that this newfangled "Call of Duty" game was going to unseat Medal of Honor for the next decade? I don't think that we'll see an immediate effect for this year's COD, people are already mostly immune to the developer swap going on there, but when Respawn's game hits it'll be with the biggest proverbial guns they have blazing. Things REALLY get crazy in the off chance they win the suit against Activision. But that'll probably settle out of court; these things usually do.

Yeah, it's a super nice way to get results, especially when you're dealing with flat textures. Almost all of Quake 4's level textures were built that way: http://iddevnet.com/quake4/ArtReference ... ngTextures

This is the fourth entry in that series

http://twitpic.com/1ahcyz

I need to get around to writing it yet. I have bullet points! Your post pretty much covers it, though - the best thing (team setting) and the worst thing (not stepping back and finishing the damn thing properly). I still look back on it fondly, though. Glad to see you do too!

It's such a terrible attitude for any developer to have. And I'm sure that's just one guy out of a company of a lot of dudes with a lot of viewpoints and he doesn't represent the whole studio, but talent, skill, and knowledge even today are still far more valuable than the specific knowledge of any one tool set and can be transplanted into virtually any tool that exists. I mean, sure, prior knowledge of the tools you'd be using is valuable if it's a company that has made their tools available, but brushing someone off on those grounds, particularly someone who has developed some mad technical chops in another engine, is just poor form. Only 5? I think we rolled him into NW almost 7 years ago, and he had some damn fine skills dating back farther than that. God I feel old. CJ, weren't you, like... 11 at the time?

I think Furyo's absolutely right about EAP - it's really the way to go if you've got your own funding. And a very different beast than EA, though new-look EA remains a marked improvement over old EA even if the old stigma still stands.

Supposedly, by Activision's payout schedule (which I also remember being the case years ago at Raven), they should see payout at the start of April. Supposedly. Which also supposedly factored into the decision to dump West and Zampella now, so they wouldn't have to pay them (which is also why they appear to be trying the "with cause" route instead of "without cause," which would likely leave them still eligible for some amount). So hard to actually know what's going on But I would wait a couple weeks before freaking out that all of IW isn't getting paid. If they haven't been paid in solid gold moneyhats by mid-April or so, then there's more trouble.

furyo more like failyo amirite lol

I have no clue how to answer your question, but if this is for your Dear Esther remake, I'm going to hug you. I had to strain to hear a lot of the lines in the first one, sometimes completely lost what was being said.

That's exactly why it works in a game. You need a central tower, a couple parts to assemble a solar panel, and you can make one as big as you want extremely cheaply provided your engine supports mesh instancing. The central tower is a natural glowing beacon that's a valuable landmark from anywhere nearby, and the subtle haze effect also helps fill in the larger footprint in the long-distance silhouette. The base of the solar panels creates an instant obstacle grid on the ground that you still have complete control over depending on the arrangement you use for the panels. This can be easily complemented by your existing palette of ground-level parts for additional layout and cover flow and control. If the panels are large enough, you've got a vehicle slalom course (imagine in the context of Halo, weaving through these on the back gun of a warthog while pursuing ghosts are weaving in and out of the pillars around you). Depending how you make the meshes, you can get variations from broken ones, or from subtle shifts in the angle of the panels, but there's far worse and more blatant cases of re-use of the same asset in other games in situations where you normally wouldn't see the same thing populating a large area to hold that against a case where you actually would. I pushed hard for one of these in Borderlands. Assets got made, but it got chopped around strangely and never made the cut to the best of my knowledge. Still like to think it'd have been pretty sweet. Would like to build another one someday. Maybe I will That said, this version still looks terrible.

The thing is, their studio is still there. They just fired the top two guys (well, at least one). Activision could force their hand a few different ways to keep everyone there, and possibly keep them doing whatever was reportedly refused that led to the firing. But, I don't expect IW as we know it to survive long. It sounds like these guys were well-liked by their team, and the bond of a strong team in this industry is very strong.

I hope the beginning of 3 will be " " HOWEVER... The end sequence remains one of my favorite moments of all time... Still loved the game, can't wait to go back to it for a second round.

I landed it somehow, though if wacko or peris has a code to pass along, the head of my company is dying with jealousy (he's claimed that the release of Starcraft II will be a company holiday, haha) Played one game last night. In a bizarre twist, I kicked ass. \m/

Not so fast, my friend! http://kotaku.com/335065/heavy-rain-dev ... nny-valley

He's based off this guy: http://images.google.com/images?rlz=1C1 ... =en&tab=wi

This is the most important part right here. Congrats!

I'd much rather have this: http://gizmodo.com/5365299/courier-firs ... ret-tablet

Dual-engine development is a weird thing. It worked ok for GRAW (but this is why in MP you can't take cover), but complicated lots of things for Wolfenstein. Strikes me as a really bizarre choice.

59-60 is a HUGE jump, getting 60 by the end of a 2nd playthrough is going to be pretty difficult if not impossible. I'm probably going to go try an insanity playthrough at some point to wrap that up, still have 100k XP to go or so.

Just wrapped up my second ME1 playthrough moments ago, save game ready and waiting for the new copy tomorrow. Haven't been this excited for a game since HL2. If I didn't have a child now, I'd take the day off from work for this one too.

It's more common than you might think. Lots of the Quake 4 textures were concepted out before they were modeled, we've done some of it here as well. You're looking at things that take a lot longer to create than they used to, so you get the same iterative benefits from concepting them roughly ahead of time that you would from a scene or character or what have you.