2d-chris

2 hours ago, Vilham said:

CoughChris'swhiteboxUT4mapentrywhichhadmodelsandbevelsCough

ahahaa owned, to be fair I was trying to make it pretty, which comes under art  

On 8/23/2016 at 0:10 PM, Mitch Mitchell said:

 

More than happy to offer beer to that, 'sir - that is the kind of comment the internet sorely lacks!

I do play games, but have spent a long time playing games part-time and definitely fall into the 'hobbiest' category for level design.

Side topic (maybe not) why is the CryEngine5 is not being used so much for whiteboxing, or full-on level design - the 'designer tool' (playing with it as we speak) seems a decade forward than other tools on other engines....?

because it's about games not tools, and personally I don't like crydesigner, when I was there I actually used the old tools because I thought they did simple geometry more efficiently - could of been improved now, but I really don't want all the complex geometry options for a whitebox, ideally you'd stick to a 1m grid, and if your beveling things you've kinda missed the mark for a level designer (for a whitebox)  I understand it could be useful for students without a modeling app, but there are enough free ones these days I can't really see a use for it :S

The mako missions had interesting story arcs though, I can remember a lot of them because they are quite unique, even if they where copy/paste environments most of the time ^^ I would say the lack of art resources forced them to have the storytelling aspects in focus, the very alive citadel hub made the barrenness feel cool and acceptable ^^ For some reason I really felt like the planets in mass effect where really being lived in (most of the time) it could be because the majority of planets you scanned had nothing interesting, so the ones you did go too felt special even if it was a small area with only a few buildings and points of interest.  I was a big fan of the mako missions in ME1 and it was a shame when they basically removed them in ME2, they had huge potential, so much that they tried to fix it with s DLC for ME2, but it's not the same  

I'm waiting for a few big patches, like pretty much every game I buy now 

love that bastion one, storytelling is fantastic, really hit me in the feels 

I should probably elaborate on my speculation, I expect it comes from two places, the first being a more consistent experience for players in public and competitive is important (because there is a real difference) and secondarily that the game has been very successful so it's totally justified to spend more money on servers, it could also be that Blizzard where a little afraid of overtaxing their servers at launch, and now have had the time to run tests to make sure it's all good to go with more throughput. Again, all speculation, what really matters is a better experience for the end user. 

1 hour ago, Jetsetlemming said:

It's now 63 even on quick play and vs AI. Also, the player update ticks dynamically lower to match your fps and internet speeds, so it's not actually updating faster than your refresh rate. Most people get "just" 60. Sorry AlexM 

 

The weird thing, imo, is that the 63 tickrate is 20KBps of upload bandwidth. That seems trivial for any modern internet connection, so why is it still something so avoided? This OW update makes it sound like a no-brainer, at least for games that don't have 64 player servers and shit like that. 

29 minutes ago, AlexM said:

What is the typical tick rate these days for multiplayer FPS'es? I haven't checked since halflife. 

Nonetheless, a tickrate higher than my refresh rate is awesome

overwatch on public is 20 and competitive is 60, nvm, it was 20 lol D:

1 hour ago, Jetsetlemming said:

Watching high level streams, pros don't seem any more immune to 'autopilot' than us normies.  

hehe if you mean something like seaguls stream (it's awesome check it out), then that's just for the luls, competitions are very different it seems. 

I assume a part of the problem is pros are so damned good at communicating her teleporter won't stay up for long, it's risky to play such a situational hero in most rounds. Reliability is the key. Having said that, next month she'll probably show up in some meta, so yeah, theory crafting for the win ...  

To be fair, even without nerfs and buffs, the meta evolves over time. Of course balancing has to do with that, but still, it's no different in DOTA 2 with the exception they have a lot more heroes, last years international was boring because the same 15 or so where picked constantly. This year isn't much different just with another 15 heroes, but at least they changed (mostly) Overwatch is in it's infancy for Esports, We'll see nice changes over time in hero picks and strats. Once the game has been out a few years, you'll be seeing the previous meta, current meta and evolving meta go head to head. 

10 hours ago, DrywallDreams said:

Hello Games has been working on this for over two years, using procedural tech in a way/scale that no one has quite done before.  $60 isn't so bad a price for the game, imo.  I've paid more for less.  Hell, I'm preparing to spend more than that amount on a single copy of a Tetris game, so I may be a bit crazy.  

Really, the game seems like this year's Destiny.  

2 years is not the point, and even then it's not a lot of time for a AAA priced game, you'd expect some serious quality and scoped content (1 trillion procedural world is pointless if the content doesn't compliment it) even Overwatch realized this and priced their game down to $40 for PC. Value is undoubtedly one of the most important parts of games these days, or well, perceived value I should say. I'm not trying to hate on this game, it excites me from a concept point of view, but for me it's a $15-20 game from what I have seen thus far, and charging full AAA price upfront to seeming catch the hyped fans is only punishing the people that cared the most. 

13 minutes ago, DrywallDreams said:

What were you expecting to see, though?  Real time procedural tech isn't going to get you anything more than goofy looking Spore creatures and somewhat standard looking voxel terrain.  Especially out of a 15 person team, the stuff they accomplished is absolutely nuts.  

but it's 60 bucks ...

because, robbaz ...

Well I can say we are actively working on new geometry tools, just don't hold your breath. I agree hammers geometry tools are great, unfortunately just about everything else is dated, with the exception of the physics and how they are integrated, very nice, still the best I've seen. 

I've seen good developers spending all their efforts on trying to improve tools and somewhat forgetting about the game, this is why usually you have technical roles for people who enjoy this type of work (and it's very important) but one must not lose sight of the game in the act of trying to make a perfect workflow, the workflow will mature over time, this is why sequels usually get developed faster each time. As the very wise Buddy Rich once said, "Don't think about it, just do it" It's very easy to overthink something, we are level designers, responsible for communicating and envisioning an experience for players, this has been masterfully accomplished on some of the worst tools you could possibly imagine. I;m starting to sound like an old fart here, but it works for me since I don't feel bad using any tools I've come across, there are always limitations, always problems you have to solve, that will never change no matter how good the tool  If you think it;s bad now, wait until you've used some of the "best" tools, then join another developer and go back in time, you'll feel even worse  so don't sweat it, think about the game and players experience as much as you can. 

Don't get me wrong, I get the theory, I've just observed very differently in my career. No, I'm not suggesting people stop trying to improve tools, I use very good tools every day ... I'm saying ... I give up, theirs no way to not offend people in these discussions hehe, this is why developers don't like to talk about this stuff ...  It's just, a tool. (this is my own opinion of course!) tools don't make games, people do. 

FYI - tools are usually made to speed things up, to save time, to save money (and often peoples sanity) they might, depending on the tool in question, make the game better, but not always. 

I think the difference is I don't let things get to me, I've learned the quirks of something like 5 engines, and the blockout phase is actually a small part of my job, so I'm not going to lose sleep about it. I have thoughts on improvements for all the tools within the various engines, but I've never hit a point where I can't create what is in my mind, you can do just about everything with all modern engines, of course, if you go out of the box from what the rest of the team is doing, you'd better know how to do it because that is asking for trouble  In crysis 3 I pushed the boundaries by building a level where the two major location you play in both get completely destroyed, that was a nightmare and a real challenge but worth it in the end, it was possible because I understood all the tools (cinematic tools, scripting etc) and was able to prototype it myself.

This is going a little bit off topic, but @Lacabra if you want to sit in a corner and get work done, being a designer who is coordinating relatively big teams on your vision is probably not the best job, when you work on a smaller team it becomes even more critical to communicate, I'm sure there are plenty of studios that assign task and you just execute, but I personally wouldn't go near them with a ton of bricks! Ultimately, it is up to me to decide how best to spend my time, flow happens when I need it to happen, but we're not grinding out content like slaves, we like to talk a lot and discuss options. This is especially true when you work on a new IP

I uploaded some videos of working with unreal's geometry tools, it's in the spotlight section on the right, Sid also produced some videos of his workflow, which is very different than me but a lot more traditional, I've built up a combination of Hammer, Unreal, Cryengine and Maya ... so a hybrid between all of these usually fits no matter what I need to design.

I want to add a little point that is overlooked, great tools allow you to make things faster, but guess what usually happens then, you get moved onto something else, so you will usually produce MORE work, but not necessarily BETTER work, the best companies will realise this and give you time to improve, but I just want to be clear in stressing that more efficient workflows doesn't actually make better content, out of the box, but it might produce it faster. It requires considerable commitment by management to understand this. As your game becomes more formalised, development times become even tighter, I can give an example of this. For Crysis 2, AI pathing used to take considerable time, as each point in buildings was hand placed, we later replaced it with an automatic solution for Crysis 3, what ended up happening is the time to work on the level dropped, and designers became lazier, before when doing the AI pass by hand we would carefully check that the space was good for the player and AI, afterwards it became something that was pretty much ignored. Now we could of added a task to make sure that everything was valid, but it was forgotten for time and convenience. Everyone wants things faster, but the realities is when things move at a certain velocity, mistakes are made and ignored, sometimes taking your time is a very, very good thing. 

Yeah level editors are much more than primitive editing tools these days, that's where Unreal obviously excels, being the complete package. Here is the thing though, obviously creation kit is designed for a complex RPG and it's also not designed to be flexible, it;s a tool designed for one thing, it's not fair to compare it to a tool traditionally designed for FPS games, but I suppose, what is the fun in that  It's the things you don't think of that are really tricky, dialog systems, tutorials etc, how they integrate into tools is just as important as world building. 

Building a complex RPG in any editor not designed for it is a nightmare, you'll end up writing most of the tools again, much can be said for racing games etc, expecting any single tool to master all of the genre's and workflows is just not viable. So as the saying goes, you must use the right tool for the job! Aint no multi tool that will do everything even if people have tried  

This is interesting, but I feel a little too simplistic due to the time constraints of the presentation and assumptions on developers workflow, nevertheless it's a good rundown of a few of the many tasks performed in a level editors. For example, I don't know any designer who crates (pun intended) a new brush (bsp) for everything that they add, instead, you modify existing ones or duplicate them, and work from there, just that one change in workflow produces drastically different results for UX (for example in unreal you hold alt + drag mouse to duplicate anything) Additionally, where as first time UX of where buttons are is important, once you've learned how to do something, you'll know for the future, UX often focuses on actions that needs to be performed for the first time, and to make sure that they are not frustrating, which obviously makes a lot of sense for a game, but something as complicated as a level editor is never going to be easy to pickup, especially since new editors have to do so much more than older ones (yes hammer looking at you, still love you though) a complex action that must be performed many times often gets a special macro or tool written internally for it, and simple ones often get hotkeys, although personally I don't really master hotkeys in tools because when swapping around them it becomes a nightmare. 

This is not to say that the UX experience of the tools doesn't matter, this is a great talk and a wish more people cared, it's just to say that every developer has their own preferences for workflow, some of the tricks I picked up at Epic make the hammer BSP method seem slow by comparison, it just requires that knowledge to be shared. The fact is that different developers use DRASTICALLY different workflows for creating levels, none of which are necessarily better or worse than each other, and this point alone makes comparisons complicated and messy, so by that point the best tool is the one that gives the most flexibility not necessarily the best  single optimised workflow. 

It all boils down to, the overall package, and just like everything in life each has their pros and cons, I've been saying this for years, but the tools matter a lot less than the experience of the developers themselves (I've heard some comments in this industry that believe tools are everything and that they can replace experience!!) I've managed to master every editor I've come across pretty fast, because as mentioned they all do similar things, the knowledge of HOW to do something soon becomes trivial, and then the tricky question is WHAT to do, which unfortunately is not so easy to answer

Flow is also important, but the realities of being a level designer in a studio pretty quickly ruins any chance of that, since you'll be interrupted or asking questions constantly, on the rare occasion it happens though, it's a wonderful thing

Anyway, keep it up, thanks for being brave, tackling the subject and fighting for the user experience! 

we're playing! (second test)

I'm pretty sure 50 is not average, since i hear the best player have about 75 

I'm not going anywhere near competitive, enjoying random no pressure quick play to death, if I want serious play I'll join a clan like the cs days  Pickup/Random competitive never worked great, and I don't think overwatch is an exception, they are usually a nightmare if your trying to be serious, play with a clan. 

Seriously guys, the creativity shown here is mind blowing, grats to everyone!