ReNo

I'm blown away at this promotion, it's a really clever and original piece of marketing. People complain about "in-game advertising", but here's an absolutely outrageous example of it and people are unanimously impressed. BECAUSE IT'S ACE. Looks like you've done stellar work bringing the Portal flavour into The Ball, hope it brings a lot of new eyes to your game. Seems like a monumentally win-win situation for all involved.

I enjoyed playing the trial on XBLA, but I've so many games in my "to play" pile just now that I decided to hold off on buying it. I'll probably pick it up in the future, especially if it appears in a weekly deal or something. Worth checking out.

This really is sounding less and less like it has anything to do with the first game...

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011- ... for-prey-2

Twitter reminders: Good amount - more could border on annoying but as it is? Spot on.

Voting: I like the "3 vote" system, but I reckon the voting window should be a little longer. The end of it snuck up on me as I was busy over the weekend and in the end I never got a chance to vote!

Scheduling: I think it was good. Didn't feel too soon to me, and I think the duration of the contest was right, as evidenced by the quality of the entries. I personally didn't enter this time around as the theme was more demanding of time than the last one, I was away on holiday for some of it, and I was a bit too busy for the rest. I'm sure the overall entry count was down simply because of the greater commitment required for this theme than ultra-low-barrier-of-entry previous one. The last contest also felt a little more novel given it's something I'd never tried, so it absolutely caught my attention, while this one was something I've done before so didn't excite me quite as much. Don't get me wrong though, I do think a 1024^3 contest is a great theme!

Next one: I'd give it at least 4 weeks, and 8 at the absolute max. Not so long as to lose momentum (people seem to be signing up to enter these - lets keep the place in people's minds), but not so soon as to burn people out.

Yeah it's horribly inefficient like that. My usual process after doing a compile in Source was...

- Load map with HDR on

- "buildcubemaps"

- "mat_hdr_level 0"

- "changelevel "

- "buildcubemaps"

- "mat_hdr_level 2"

- "changelevel "

- "changelevel "

I believe you could use "mat_reloadall" or whatever the command is as an alternative to force a refresh of the cubemaps after building them.

Sweet, never heard of that, but from the title alone it's clearly Lovecraft inspired which instantly appeals to me! I'll seek it out.

There's a lot of more subtle renewable methods as well that people can take on at a more local level. With solar panels on your roof, or ground source heat pumps to provide your heating, you can make pretty major reductions in how much power and gas your house uses. If these things become the norm it'd surely make a massive difference to our power demands. But it's tough for people to justify the up front expense when the savings take years to counteract.

I hate people like that cameraman in movies. Cloverfield, Paranormal Activity, this... Those fucking twats that won't turn off the damn camera and insist on filming everything while commentating with some smarmy remarks and laughter at their own hilarious camera behaviour.

"What? What's the big deal? It's fine it's fine! It's just a camera, it's not gonna kill you. Nobody cares, chill out!"

"Ok I'm turning it off, I'm turning it off! See, it's off..." /keeps filming

Do those people really exist in life? Well glad he got his torso blown off.

Me and my girlfriend while visiting a cool old castle town called Cesky Krumlov in the south of the Czech Republic. Nice place for a day trip if you ever find yourself in the country!

First genuine LOL of the day there, cheers Rick

I hate to stir the flames of the Diablo 3 hate, because personally I think it looks pretty ace and a damn sight better than those screenshots of the "old" version of the game, but I do agree it has similarities to WoW. By no means a visual clone as they are easy to tell apart, plus I really like the look they're going for, but I do see why people make the comparison.

On that note while doing a quick google image search of Diablo 3 screens just to check my opinion before posting, I found this screenshot strangely reminiscent of the one Dux just posted...

http://windows7themes.net/wp-content/ga ... I_ss19.jpg

Clearly uses the same stair asset a the WoW screenshot you just posted with a bit more grime on the texture Not trying to condemn such a tactic by the way as it happens all the time in the industry and makes a lotta sense, just thought it kinda funny!

Oooh, and they're based in Glasgow, but an hour from my front door Not that I'm gonna be going for a job in CG trailers any time soon!

Incredible trailer. Completely with Izuno here, the style of the trailer (the reverse storytelling, the choice of music, and the fact it's a really sad little vignette of a story) makes it feel really exciting and unique, which is incredible given it is a zombie game and I'm pretty much sick to death of those by now. Watched it 3 times already. Hard pushed to think of a better trailer in the past year or so, though maybe the new Deus Ex's trailer is on a par. What a lovely surprise.

Gutted to hear it's a no-go. Had a small hope alive that it might one day see the light of day. I really adored the first game, and still bust it out once in a while for a wee go at the time trials or speed runs. Alongside Dead Space it was probably the game of the year for me.

I think my personal preference is more on the 3 texture idea, but that sounds pretty cool too, and would certainly be a bit different to the other contests I've entered.

Samsung P2450H, 24" 2ms

I HAS SAME MONITORZ!!!

What do you guys make of it? Serving you well? My Samsung 226BW is having horrible flickering fits for about 30 seconds when I turn it on recently, and sadly I've had it over 3 years so it's out of warranty. Think I might take the opportunity to go up to a 24" and that model is one of the possible choices. I'd love to go for the Dell U2410 but don't think I could justify the price.

Oh sorry, I wasn't referring to the sounds, I just meant that what I WAS referring to (the very "mini" feeling sniper recoil, if that makes sense) might not seem like a big deal but is a nice touch and that it's attention to detail like that sets games apart.

That said, the sounds are mostly pretty effective sounding. I feel the need to draw attention in particular to the train on the 2nd level - the "choo choo!" sound and kind of model railway sounding engine are, again, such a perfect match for the theme. Lovely

That is seriously awesome work right there! The visuals and polish are incredible for a student project. I think my favourite bit is near the start when it demonstrates sniping - the ultra-speedy recoil is just perfectly judged and makes it *feel* all shrunken and cartoony I know that sounds like such a minor thing but its touches like that that can set it apart. Amazing job.

I'd love to see more contests. Can't guarantee always entering but keeping them intentionally small scale and not focused on putting out loads of custom content makes them extremely tempting prospects!

To add another idea to the pot, how about something riffing on the Halo forge style of level editor? Provide some standard terrain and let people build on top of it but not actually edit it. Similar in ways to the art pass idea, but instead of having the focus on the art, it's more on how you integrate your own layout and brushwork with the restrictions of the existing terrain. Sadly that would probably mean restricting entries to a single engine though, which I think these days in a community like ours could be a bad idea.

As for the voting method, I'd put my weight behind allowing more than one vote, as I think it spreads out the voting more. Having just one vote each can lead to the strongest entries hogging all the votes while others sit with none, which is a shame as sometimes they have plenty of merit and charm of their own, just not enough to win around somebody's sole vote. If voters could pick a 1st, 2nd and 3rd choice - with more "points" going to the entry based on that ranking - I think it would lead to more interesting polls with more of the entries competitive. Not sure its possible within these forums technically though.

The multiple categories question...I actually quite like splitting it up as it has been this time around. The current difference in leaders in each category attests to it's value in my opinion. It lets maps be celebrated for what they do well, regardless of failings in other areas. CJ's barragan map for instance has horrible gameplay (no offence, but you said so yourself!), but it has a really nice atmosphere and is the map that most makes you think "I'd love to be there", for which it is rightly winning votes in the visuals category. I'm not sure we then need an "overall" category though - maybe just adding the totals of all other categories would be sufficient.

I'm now part of a 3 man indie team so have to do a bit of pretty much anything and everything from programming to art, but previously I worked for Outerlight as a designer so that is perhaps more relevant. As a general designer I had lots of all round design responsibilities, but a big part of it was level design, so I'll describe how it worked there. It was only a team of about 18 developers though, so might not be too indicative of larger companies.

Typically we worked on a level as a 2 person team - 1 designer, 1 env. artist. We'd get together to brainstorm ideas (along with the other designers and env. artists initially), and once we'd settled on a theme the designer would start drawing out layout ideas and the env. artist would start gathering references for art style and assets. Once a rough layout was approved the designer would start boxing it out while the env. artist would start building general use assets for the level that weren't too rigidly linked to the base brushwork or layout (general use textures, themed crates and barrels, etc...). After testing the boxed out layout the designer would make adjustments for better gameplay, while making use of the general use assets the env. artist had produced. Once a fairly finalised layout had been reached the made-to-fit assets would be the env. artists new focus. The designer would be dropping these in while working on the technical side of our game's levels (room locators, interactive object triggers, item pickups, spawn points, drawing up non-artified floorplans for use on the in-game map, AI waypoints, etc...). Lighting was also part of the designer's role, though often the env artist would give their opinion on how it ought to look. As for sound, we had an external audio producer who would run through our levels and create soundscape files for each area. The designer would then be responsible for implementing these and liasing with the audio producer to discuss their balance and any issues.

As seir said, the larger the company the more focused and small your role will become. That's why I like small companies

Not at all! I agree, spy party does look very interesting. From what I've read it is a strictly 2 player offering (I'm sure the principle ideas could extend to more players though) but focuses entirely on "blending in" gameplay, similar but more elaborate than that The Ship used. BGT doesn't put as much emphasis on that, so if that was what drew you to The Ship it might leave you a little cold.

I'm definitely interested to see Spy Party's take on things. My understanding is that it is quite rigid in how it plays out - 1 spy inside the building, 1 sniper outside, and no option for the sniper to do anything but watch and take 1 shot. It's extremely focused gameplay, which isn't a bad thing, but isn't quite what we wanted to go for with TS2 which was more open. I hope it does well when I comes out though, I love games that tread a different path to the norm

Here's a rather long, random bunch that spring to mind. I tend to find world cinema more interesting than UK/US, so it's rather weighted, though in truth I enjoy English movies just as much. They just tend to be less memorable for me, and so less likely to come to mind when thinking of movies I really love.

The Fall

Pan's Labyrinth

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

The Warrior (Musa: The Warrior in some places)

Sunshine

Brick

Tekkonkinkreet

LOTR Trilogy

Infernal Affairs

Heat

Gattaca

Tale of Two Sisters

The City of Lost Children

Fast and Furious movies (yeah, absolute guilty pleasure!)

Battle Royale

Sinbad movies (another guilty pleasure)

Ping Pong

Versus

The Usual Suspects

Goemon

Oldboy

Dark City

Taxi (French series, not the US remake)

Brotherhood of the Wolf

Oooh, also, just noticed that we got a Eurogamer review today...

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2010- ... iew?page=3

We got a 6/10, which is lower than we'd hoped, but at least they are mostly positive aside from the legit criticisms levelled at the aiming/shooting. There is a lock-on if you click the right-stick in when aiming at somebody, but we didn't do a great job of making that obvious, and hitting people with some of the weapons WITHOUT using that can be quite a nightmare on the Xbox controller. It's not an issue on the PC, but that's not really an excuse, it just says we shoulda done a better job of making the aiming work well on Xbox!

Yeah I agree with an awful lot of your comments Thrik. It was an interesting u-turn in design intention through the life of BGT. Right after The Ship we started working on a few different prototypes for other game ideas, but The Ship 2 was one of the bigger ideas we shopped around to publishers. Our ideas for The Ship 2 took pretty much everything from the original game and - while simplifying a lot of the needless complexity as BGT has - also added lots more depth.

Some of it was really really cool and I'm convinced would be a lot of fun. I don't wanna go into detail, as who knows, maybe one day Chris will get Outerlight back off the ground and The Ship 2 could happen, and I'd hate to let the cat outta the bag prematurely Suffice to say, while BGT made changes such as removing the "passenger" NPCs (technically they still exist as "extras" but the tweaked gameplay makes them less influential) and made identifying player names automatic (mostly in an effort to speed up the gameplay), The Ship 2 would have gone in the absolutely opposite direction. The intention was to make the process of stalking and killing your target (and most importantly, getting away with it!) an even more elaborate process than it was in the original game. Think of how it was in The Ship, but bringing in more elements of "Guess Who?" and "Cluedo" Oh man, thinking back on it now, I can't help but get quite excited about it again

Easy to see why Ubi wanted us to go more in the direction of BGT though, even if our ideas for TS2 seemed to build a more interesting game for the "hardcore" TS players. The Ship has earned a somewhat cult status with PC gamers and has a good reputation with almost all who remember it, but the sales weren't fantastic. It was just too slow and complex for what people expected in an FPS, which lead to many people trying to play it as a deathmatch game and ruining it for not just themselves but everyone else on the server too. Speeding it up and simplifying it to try and appeal to a wider audience was a no brainer, and it's hard to fault Ubi for taking us in that direction.

Ultimately, even as a simplified version of The Ship, if you play BGT with a group of like-minded players you'll still find a game that rewards those who play it in a very different way to your average FPS. It's definitely no simple deathmatch game, regardless of how the trailers (that Outerlight had no hand in making) make it appear - and that's a claim that even has merit when you look at the deathmatch game mode!

Worst thing about it from my point of view is the marginalizing of the Xbox Indie Games marketplace. Previously once you hit game marketplace we had our own row, just like XBLA, showing the top downloads in a row. This gave a direct window into the XBLIG market and what was available (ok, not always appealing games on show, but still!) which helped pull in potential customers. Now we are the second box along in speciality shops, with a rubbish picture of some avatars as our "box art".

But hey I'm not privvy to the same marketing data that Microsoft is. Maybe they're right and this is truly the best place for XBLIG to flourish. We'll need to wait and see what it does to sales. There's a lot of conspiracy theories going on that we're being pushed to the side in order to avoid cannibalizing sales/exposure from XBLA titles though, as well as Microsoft trying to turn all us XNA developers onto their "sexy new market" on Windows Phone 7. As said, just need to wait and see how it pans out.

One thing I CANNOT see there being any positives to though is the removal of box art, game descriptions, screenshots, and (most importantly) the ability to RATE a game from your game library. Sure, they've made a nice new page for the games when you view them on the marketplace, but once you've downloaded it and access it from your game library you are presented with a bland, boring menu allowing you to play or delete, that's all. Who the hell is gonna rate games now you need to go in to the marketplace page in order to do it? It makes no sense whatsoever to remove this function from the place it was most likely to be used. It makes the box art of DLC titles feel much less important now too, which will discourage people from putting in as much effort.

It's not ALL doom and gloom though. There's a few really nice changes too. Once you actually get in to the XBLIG marketplace they've made great improvements, particularly in the genre browsing and increasing the length of the top rated/downloaded/new releases lists from 20 to 50.