Campaignjunkie

I didn't think additive + subtractive BSP was a big deal because (a) I'm told that the UDK brush editor sucks anyway, (b) okay, so people can use subtractive BSP to make trims or simple room shapes... does anyone here honestly think trims or simple interiors will be what impresses voters? I like Erratic's level for the weird giant pillar and use of color correction. The trims don't even factor into it. In fact, I'd say he's almost wasting his brushes by using them like that! Here's how I, personally, will be voting for "best use of brushes" -- it's based on how much a brush does. In the winning example at the leveldesign.nl compo, one single brush is a ramp / a cave / 4 walls / light fixtures / a flag platform, etc. ... Besides, almost every level here is a floater. Hollowed out spaces are relatively rare / useless.

New draft, updated changes in red. Geez, we're getting a lot of rules. And here I thought we could keep things simple...

Erratic: nice. Yeah, I think we'll do one central "rules / discussion / WIP" topic, and then one "submission" topic. Does that sound good? That's how they do stuff on Polycount. We can have up to 25 poll options... judging by the posts and thread views here, I think more than 8-9 people are going to enter?...

What was the "very embarrassing bug"? A giant prop_static accidentally hidden? Also: if / when this goes official, I hope you make a lot of money with the donation thing!...

FarCry 2 seems cool but damnit I want to start wildfires! And why does everyone talk too fast and mechanically? They really dropped the ball on voice over direction.

Well, I wanted to do one right NOW, but they just finished theirs so they aren't going to do another one for a while. Plus, they have judges and scores, but I prefer something casual and relaxed and democratic. (They spent a month or two to plan theirs!) And re: the patch / displacement / terrain question, I think we should just disallow height field terrain AND disallow use of displacement and patches as terrain? (I mean, it'll be obvious...) Here's another draft: Comments / feedback / changes?

A question: do we want to allow specialized brush / displacement editors? I'm referring mainly to Microbrush2, DispGen and Twister. On one hand, they're not level editors... but on the other, they can do really cool stuff and people might make cool stuff with it. I can imagine some awesome effects with Twister especially, and if it encourages people to go out and try / learn these tools and bring it back to their other work, isn't that good?

Whaa? At that point, is it even a brush, if you're merging all these solids together? Okay, I've added a definition of brush to the rules: Does that address peoples' concerns? I don't know how Unreal does it, but in most Quake-based engines I can't imagine more than 40 or 50 faces on a brush, and even then that's really pushing it. But if someone finds a way and makes a single really awesome brush with 100 faces, why should I stop them, with my personal lack of imagination?

I think 20 brushes is a good amount. It makes you think, "do I need this brush? What is this brush doing?"... which I think is a question that people skip over a lot. Then again, no one's going to verify whether you stayed under the limit or not. (Honor code and all that.) ... but like here's a floater I made in about 90 minutes as a test run. It's HL2DM low gravity KOTH instagib with ar2-altfires. The displacement sphere came from a 6-faced cube, so it counts as 6 brushes. (textures / skybox by Hipshot, converted and HDR-ified by me) [attachment=0]20b_nara0003.jpg[/attachment] [attachment=1]20b_nara0004.jpg[/attachment] ... and here's some examples from the leveldesign.nl compo: Like I said, this doesn't have to be a 10 month project. You can crank out an entry in an hour or two, in your editor / engine of choice, and enjoy yourself... Or you can make an awesome CTF map (like the leveldesign.nl people did) with only 20 brushes and plan everything meticulously.

FINAL EDIT: Updated rules can be found here, please use these... I know there are a lot, but they're mostly there to cover edge cases: viewtopic.php?f=57&t=15843 ================= EDIT: err, can someone move this to 3D forum? My bad. EDIT 2: INTRO Over at leveldesign.nl they've recently wrapped up a 20 brush level contest -- http://www.leveldesign.nl/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=102 -- and the results are really cool and inspiring. Maybe we could run one of our own too? (I recently discovered an invitation to be a judge in my Snarkpit inbox which I haven't checked for months... oops) THE RULES I think they have too many rules though (http://www.leveldesign.nl/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=86) so we could keep ours much simpler. I propose these: - For our purposes, a "brush" is a single convex primitive that was built in a level editor, whether additive or subtractive. - A small MP map in whatever engine you prefer, but that engine has to use BSP. (Source, HL1, Q1, Q3A, UT, UDK, Crysis?, etc.) Any game mode you want, though DM / KOTH would be easiest and CTF would probably be most difficult. - 20 brushes max. Each "face" of a patch or displacement, before it was subdivided, counts as a brush. - No fancy 3D skyboxes filled with props; use only the most basic skybox setup for whatever engine you're using. - No static meshes, detail props or particle systems, unless they're already part of a weapon base or capture point or other gameplay entity. - Each sprite / decal / overlay counts as a brush. - Custom textures allowed. Paint whatever you can within the time limit... - Unlimited number of faces on a brush, light actors, postprocessing, weapons, ammo, player spawns, vehicles, whatever. - Special brushes (skybox, portalsky, trigger, nodraw, etc.) don't count, as long as the player can't walk on them or run into them. - IN GENERAL, just try not to do stuff that goes against the spirit of this compo. TIPS & TRICKS (?) - Use the clip tool to make bevels; that way you can easily put trims, if you want. - Vertex manipulation is your friend. Remember -- in Hammer, you can select two opposing edges (the yellow boxes) and press CTRL+F to split the face! - Displacements and patch meshes are your friend too. In theory you could make your entire level out of one displacement... if that sounds like fun to you, go ahead! JUDGING From there, we vote on winners in several different polls: Overall Winner, Coolest Use of BSP, Prettiest, Coolest Layout, Weirdest, etc. whatever categories we want. No one will have time to play levels, especially with so many different engines, so they'll just be judged based on two (2) screenshots: (a) a beauty shot and (b) a layout shot. It isn't ideal, but let's be honest, it's how people would vote anyway. All we need is, like, 3 people and that'll be enough to get started. People can jump-in whenever they want. Sounds good? or bad?

Okay now I really want to play it but now you've also kinda spoiled it. Hmmm.

Hipshot: you should've finished that!... Whatever it was. Or tweaked / changed your mechanics if the grav gun wasn't working out. Happy: That's awesome and really realistic. Anyway! Here's some of my Doom 3 level, for a Thief-style mod called "Dark Mod." They've just released 1.03 publicly and already have 30+ levels out. If you guys like Thief, you should look into mapping for it, their version of Radiant is pretty alright and they have a lot of textures / props (a lot of them are bad, but you find the good ones quickly enough). Going to Doom 3 from Source is kinda weird, but it's fun to figure out the quirks. The standard for map size is pretty great too, a lot of maps are just a handful of rooms but they're praised and loved, and I imagine a DM level would round out a portfolio quite nicely and prove you can learn a new engine properly as well as digest new single player mechanics... cough cough. (I miss light maps)

Gah, I only have 1685 hours in Source SDK

Congrats! A warning though: Irvine is probably the most boring place to live. Ever. You'll want a driver's license and/or a car, ASAP, so you can take weekends into Los Angeles or something. Good luck!

Congrats Briscoe + Corwin!

Yeah, I already have Braid and Machinarium... and Osmos is, like, in every single bundle ever.

Having worked on both: Nightwatch died for a lot of reasons; no animators but a lot of animation to do -- which stalled NPC code that relied on animations which stalled map design that relied on working NPCs, rampant feature creep, a global content reboot or two, an engine getting increasingly obsolete and so it was difficult to recruit for staff turnover, etc. (Who wants to work on HL1 when HL2 is out?) There's probably more to it than that, but that's what comes to my mind first. Black Mesa has well-staffed departments (or it did when I was still there) and experienced leadership that has shipped MMOs, and Source is still relatively viable / usable for the near future... and since it's a remake, there's a clear roadmap as to how to finish things. (You won't see new, entire chapters or entire new game mechanics) To sum it up, I don't think the comparison is accurate. They're both huge single player mods with talented staff (and a lot of turnover, haha) but that's it.

They're still working on it. A lot of it is very far along. So give them a chance... or not. It's not like they owe anyone any explanation.

Playing through Mass Effect 2. I liked how they stopped kidding themselves and got rid of the RPG elements. Now I can just focus on killing lots of things. The "Jack" character is really annoying though, a rather large misstep on the part of the writers.

Geez, what is this, the gay police? Anyway, it's based on this: http://www.increpare.com/2008/12/rara-racer/ Your apartment in Brooklyn. Probably too green. Trying to match the near-future of George Clooney's apartment in Solaris. Using PhilipK's Morning Star set.

If you need a paragraph to explain how to navigate your website, and it's a paragraph that no one reads, then don't do it. Change the page structure of your site entirely. Make it a lot simpler; there's too much hovering and clicking. Look at this: http://www.magnarj.net -- simple pages that let their work speak for them.

Reviving an old idea: a level where you have to make a level. (Sort of.) We'll see how it goes. (before I get attacked for posting what's got to be the blandest Hammer screenshot ever: this is an in-game screenshot... your view = the 3D view in Hammer, the wonders of env_screenoverlay...)

I love you, Lunaran.

I don't get it. You have a job already? It's hard to give portfolio crits if you don't have any intended audience in mind, e.g. an employer.

I only got halfway through Churnobal, kept running out of ammo and getting killed by stuff in creepy underground labs, too hard