Campaignjunkie

Working on the Unity3D VVVVVV-FPS thing with my thesis group some more. We're finally doing production. Here's a gray box of the first level. Gotta keep the palette pretty muted because the ground gets dynamically shaded bright yellow. Looking back on some GeoComp2 stuff for inspiration, mainly sparth's stuff / bengal's minima.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/tag/level-with-me/ Hey, I have a series going at Rock Paper Shotgun now. Basically, I interviewed a bunch of FPS level designers across the entire scene, and we all collaborated on the same Portal 2 level. Roundtable panels are usually too messy, so I thought having this shared Portal 2 level would be its own roundtable of sorts, and we could all talk through level design instead of pesky words. For part 1, I have Dan Pinchbeck (who name-checks Rob Briscoe a fair bit ) and, um, let's just say for part 3, you'll be seeing a very familiar Mapcorian...

Stealth is, by definition, a subset of strategy -- a larger, pre-determined plan / sequence of actions. You have to plan where to go after studying the area and patrol paths. Combat, on the other hand, is tactics -- reacting to the moment, to the immediate game state. In conclusion, [insert game that you like] sucks.

This looks perfect for the Hard Surface shaders. It's much better than the default specular blinn-phong things and the free shaders you can get are pretty good. http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/77946- ... ssets-pack

The layouts make the spaces look interesting, but I think you go over-board with detail. It looks too busy, not as readable as other TF2 maps. Don't be afraid to have "blank surfaces" with no wall gubbins; that's what this art style was made for.

I've never liked how they use the aliens as cannon fodder in these games. They were so compelling in Alien and Aliens because there were so few of them (or even just one) and they were still formidable / scary. Something more like the RE3 Nemesis, or the raptors in Jurassic Park, not "intelligent" but still cunning and smart. A "real" xenomorph from the movies would never just run at them so stupidly like that... it would wait, then run away if it was fought off, etc.

Unity physics don't like walking on walls... we have the basic core mechanics and gravity switching implemented, but we're getting a lot of criticism and feedback about disorientation / controls / how it feels. I'll probably post our initial IGF build when we hit that milestone at the end of October, but until then, I'm just way too embarrassed for how unwieldy it all feels. (And I've been doing triple duty as the main programmer / level designer / modeler for this first prototype, argh) In general, I'm kinda shocked at how different it is from VVVVVV already. Paper prototyping is impossible.

some level design prototypes for the VVVVVV-FPS in Unity3D me and other students are making for a design thesis... think Ico / Escher / Mirror's Edge, with the gameplay of VVVVVV and Portal.

How is this not like Max Payne? You have cello, guns, crime and narration. But yes, Max Payne definitely wasn't about NYC. It was about warehouses. Don't worry, I'm sure there'll be at least a few warehouse levels for the hardcore Max Payne fans out there. It looks fine and I'll probably end up playing it.

How about we just leave it at "games are ruining old games"

Lunaran: looking good. how big is the BSP with all those lightmaps? like, 500 mb? AtsEst: looks good... for a box full of boxes... I'll never understand the CryEngine community

If they're getting all this help, why are there still all these waves of layoffs and poor working conditions?

I liked how during the

I've almost always gotten replies from Robin Walker. He's the dreamiest... but yeah, they probably don't want to make any definitive statement on this because it'll either shutdown existing mods or only make them look bad or something.

I don't think you'll get any flak for it... imagine the headlines on RPS ("Valve goes after poor modder for using 1 car model from L4D") but at the same time I don't think they'll like it very much.

WAIT THERE'S A QUICKSAVE BUTTON?! Thanks for hiding it from the keyboard menu, Eidos I'm at the second city of the game now... Stealth is great and probably the most rewarding thing about it. It feels very "exciting" and works great with the cover system. Combat is much less interesting, as usual with these games. Which wouldn't be so bad... except for the mandatory combat in boss fights. DX1 had this too and it still pissed me off, with my arsenal of non-lethal close range weapons... But the first boss fight is just really really awful if you're a stealth character. I regret getting the "Conversation+" upgrade because now I feel it's too simplistic. I liked it better before, where it was like a better written LA Noire where you could actually read people based on their animations and what they say. Now I just watch a GUI indicator and then select what it told me to select. But I do like how it's much more involved now. Giving XP for going in vents was a bad idea. Just give XP for getting to the end instead? Giving XP for ghosting was a bad idea. (Now I just quick load / quick save upon getting detected.)

I guess we can post WIPs here? This is what I've whipped up so far tonight: I've blocked out a stepwell thing, inspired by the Chand Baori (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chand_Baori) and I suspect I'm going to need a much busier stone wall texture for this. Wish I could've made the steps narrower, but the hunters and the antlions are already having enough navigation problems as it is. I want to expand on something I did for a 1024 MapCore compo and have you do more co-op with a hunter / its shield scanner friend (which are basically the coolest NPCs ever made) among a modernist stone ruin complex. I was thinking I would have this puzzle where you constantly raise the water level to gain access to new areas / make it easier to kill antlions, but func_water_analog sucks too much (no fogging of any kind, really ugly shader fallbacks) and there's a huge exploit where you can just dive into the water and the antlions will follow suit and drown themselves. Maybe I'll parent a BlockLOS brush to the surface? But I feel like that doesn't address what's bothering me about it.

I'm eager to dismiss the numbers because there's an agenda behind them: to portray the game industry as more inclusive than it really is. How many 50 year old mothers will play Starhawk with their daughters? Are we making those billions of dollars from 50 year old women yet? What if a 53 year old man visited Lightbox by himself, outside the context of being a good parent who plays console games with their kids son -- then wouldn't that be a little weird? I'm not saying we need a "games for girls" or "games for seniors" thing because that's stupid -- but that JPEG is trying to hide how the core console industry is still a "games for boys" manshoot circle jerk. Fortunately, I love men shooting and I love circle jerks, so that's okay... an industry catered to the tastes of young men is great as long as we don't lie to ourselves about it and fudge some numbers as Izuno mentioned, just so some lobbying group (like the ESA) can point to it to claim the game industry is a universal good, resist government regulation and enact their own agenda. TL;DR yeah it's good that more people play games and I love FPS games blah blah blah, but we shouldn't forget the industry still has lots of problems and don't kid ourselves about how far we still have to go blah blah blah, AND don't let the Big Corporate Conspiracy pervert our love of games into a form of political lobbying

Um, yeah, can we get stats that the ESA didn't pay for?

For precedent, we should look at what Polycount did: the greentooth logo has nothing to do with their earlier branding, they just started using it and now it feels "natural", whatever that means. I think Thurnip's is the best branding so far... like, I'd actually wear a shirt with the "M" logo. The cube with the core isn't as iconic, though we might immediately respond to it for now.

I'm guessing this is web player deployment? Certainly looks better than a lot of the commercial web player stuff being put out. I have a tech question -- you're using dual lightmaps, yeah? And occlusion culling too? and if so, isn't this all a lot of asset data to stream through the web player?

They should hire some artists because the sheer ugliness of their models isn't doing their tech demo any favors. And where are the shaders / lighting models? Everything looks fullbright. Anyway, I'm skeptical, but maybe in a few years it'll be usable for something.

everything sounds okay and par, except the online-only thing... I want to play it at my own pace

The Flashbang Studios people had some blog posts about how they use box collider-triggers for a lot of their game logic. For more info -- http://technology.blurst.com/unity-phys ... -examples/ -- I think they're talking Unity 2 at the time, but it's still probably true.