OhSnap

Zombie thread, coming through. Thanks for your feedback Minos, very much appreciated, if not slightly late. I actually started a redesign and then procrastination kicked me in the throat and I just kinda spent 6 months poking at it every so often. I'm a horrible person... I finished up recently; simpler, minimal-er (?) design, I hope navigation is more intuitive than before. I cut the amount of videos I had from 13 to 6. And kept them under or hovering at the 3 minute mark. And supplemented the videos with screenshots, for those that are adverse to them for whatever reason... I'm happy with it, more or less, unless someone says it's an assault on their eyeballs or something... Now I just have to do more projects to build up the content I have.

The first gate (before the missile truck) was entirely my bad. I thought I pressed the use key, but I might have reloaded or just moved forward instead.. I rewatched the video and I didn't hear the 'buzz' sound when you 'use' an illegitimate thing, so I'm guessing one of those. That was why I went hunting around for some secondary way to open the gate. I'm guessing most people will be able to hit their use key right, and get through there with no trouble... I'm special. If I'm wrong, and it really is an issue with people not finding the gate controls, you could throw in some sparking wires, change the button to the orange wheel, or use those wire plugs that you have to plug in correctly before the gate will open (super minor puzzle element there too...). You could also have something jamming the gate to prevent it from being lifted, like a barrel or wood, that, when dislodged, the gate opens. If the gate is 'jumping' while jammed, it would be a good attention pull, and as long as its well lit, dislodging debris from something is fairly intuitive. You could also have the gate start open, and it drops when the character gets close (hinting that the combine is actively blocking you, instead of just throwing bodies at you). There's a lot of ways one can draw attention to a door they need to open =)

Yeah sorry, I had actually downloaded it on the 7th when you released it for playtesting, but then it took me awhile to actually play it. And then you 'released' it a day later... so.. I dunno. A few clarifications on your points; 8. This is just a case of getting the key, before you even reach the locked door, metaphorically... I didn't know the hallway was blocked, so I didn't know the truck opened it up. 9. Understood, regarding the fences. I believe chain link fences behave this way, but are models (not sure if your fences were models or brushes). It wasn't a huge issue for me, just something that popped at me. 12. I saw the door open, but like point 8, this was a case of opening the locked door, before I encountered it. 13. Important point. I'm fine with backtracking. As long as I know I'm supposed to. The enemies mislead me to the direction I was supposed to go. The general "I'm going X direction because its the ONLY direction available" is also causing this frustration. I didn't know I was on a mission to unlock a door, I just stumbled upon it. If, instead, I reach a locked door, and branch off in another direction to open that door, then I'll know what my actions resulted in, and would be perfectly fine with backtracking to the door that I know I unlocked. (eg. elevator at start of Ep2. You reach the elevator, oh it has no power. Follow power lines to turn on power. Backtrack to the elevator. Ok it's a really small distance that you backtrack, but the principle is the same) 14. I was referring to the fall damage I took, as being cheap. Basically, you punished me for jumping to the platform, instead of using the gravity gun. What if a player beelines for that crate? Then they're punished twice by missing out on the other crate and grenades on the upper walkway. Personally, I'd put a warning of some sort. Shake, debris, dust, some vertical struts that break. Let me know I'm about to fall (even if it's just a 1 or 2 second warning), don't just thrust it on me. Because if I have a warning, its MY fault I fell. If there's no warning, its YOUR fault I fell. 10. Saved this one for last, because it's most important to me. There's MANY different ways to lead the player through a space. Lighting, audio, movement, enemies, props, etc. Play through HL2 and ask yourself every 5 minutes "why am I going in this direction" and you'll find multitudes of reasons. Ep1 is an easy example. Through the first 70% of the game, you're heading towards the citadel. It's a key landmark in (almost) every map that you're heading toward.

I'm not Sentura, but I have emerged from my Cave of Lurkdom to do a playtest vid as you requested.. Cheers. http://youtu.be/iDytwx218TU

Humbly, shamelessly, asking for some feedback from you fine folks. I've been out of work for awhile and have sent out resumes literally across the country and have gotten next to no responses. So either my portfolio is weak, or my resume is (or both...). It seems the general consensus is that people don't want to watch videos. So how does someone who did mostly scripting work display their work? It feels like misrepresentation if I show screens of a level I had no actual layout/art work in, but did all of the scripting. Am I just weird? I've looked at TONS of LD portfolios and I can't find any that fall into this category (of not having done layout work, but have done scripting) to compare against. While on the topic of videos... I have 13 videos on my webpage. THIRTEEN. That's probably 12 more than random HR person will ever look at. If you've done work spanning the entire game, not just contained to a few levels, how do you condense your presentation into something an appropriate size? Personally, I'd love to just have a 2 to 3 minute video of all the best stuff, but that means presenting my work with no context and just being bullshots. Pretty much a movie trailer... Surely this wouldn't be able to stand alone, it would still need content to compliment it. Riiight? Need halp...

Hi everybody. I was a designer at Crystal Dynamics and finished up work on Tomb Raider, which I've added to my portfolio. One note, I mainly have videos, as about 98% of my work was scripting work, not layout work. Which... obviously doesn't show well in stills. I'm kind of stuck at the moment with the knowledge that recruiters look at resumes for like 10 seconds, and will likely not spend 3 minutes watching a video. Any feedback would be appreciated. http://www.benstoddard.com/

I forgot that I had played this whenever it was released previously and had a weird hour long feeling of deja vu =/ Visually, looks great. Good lighting, texture work, brush work, use of props, etc etc. Not a fan of combine architecture because, lets face it, you see one combine base you've seen em all... Other than that though...Design wise, solid. Never got lost, breadcrumbs in some areas were good (some areas could have used more though), no key crap to deal with... Two little nitpicks I have to get off my chest; I'd give it 4.5 out of 5 ninjas.

This thread makes me feel old.. first game I ever played was Lode Runner. Probably around 1985 or so. Got me into level design; me and my brothers would make more and more difficult levels for each other to complete. Good times...

http://crymod.com/ Finally some announcement about the editor and SDK. Hopefully the price will be down when the editor finally comes out

I gave it a run through on single player as well, here's my thoughts; Stuff I liked - Unique setting, haven't seen anything even close to resembling this in any other map out there. Huge plus, imo, since playing mod after mod that feels similar just tends to make them blend into each other, if that makes sense... The flow seemed really good. It had a good mix of all the elements in the stock maps. Fish-in-barrel setups, tight areas, open areas, etc The lighting, aesthetically, was great. Another huge plus, since lighting is like half of the level and so many people seem to neglect good lighting. Item placement was good. Varied weapons and items in exploration pockets with a spattering of interactables like propane tanks n such. Your custom help decals. It felt a bit like the light sensitive decals in the new(ish) Splinter Cell game. I liked that, even if it broke the fourth wall. Architecture of the buildings. Very... different. Stuff I didn't like - I got hella lost... In the first two maps, I spent, at least, 50% of the time trying to find the 'right' way to go as I did killing stuff. Dunno why, but it didn't feel intuitively correct. No zombies were on the road, there were lights in the distance, but nothing close by to let me know that's the correct way to go. In map 1, there is a decal telling you about the locked door at the top of the stairs, and that leads back to the very beginning of the level. I didn't feel like I was being led through the map. This mostly ties in with getting lost, but it felt like I was just stumbling around instead of determinedly saying "we go THAT way!" Huuuuuuuge maps. Maybe they don't feel so big if people already know the map, but man... I started to feel a little fatigued through the first two maps. All those long handrails without vertical posts. Not a deal breaker, just it scratched at my consciousness the whole time playing. Seemed to be a lot of light props that had fadeout distances that were really small. Had a bunch of areas that were lit with invisible props until I was right up on top of it. Very minor, but whatever. The finale setup. This is a personal issue, not at all one with the map, but I'm not a fan of the typical panic-tank-panic-tank-rescue finales since they play out the same exact way, flow wise, anyway. That's pretty much it. I have my own opinions on the other stuff, like branched paths that offer variation of difficulty (difficult w/ items, vs easy without, etc) mainly being, it didn't feel like I was actually making a choice between those at any point. If the level was arted in a way that said, you know, armory to the right, safehouse to the left, with more items in the right path, then it may have felt like I was actively making the choice to get the items along the difficult path. But, possibly due to perpetually being lost, I never got that feeling. Although, that seems likely to not be the case for people who play this multiple times, especially in a VS setting, and have learned the different paths. One last question, for the alarm rolling panic event (I forget which map it's in...) any reason you broke valve convention and used trigger planes to start/end it instead of interaction objects? Was curious about it, since I spent a little bit looking around for a blue glowy object and almost missed the laser beam or whatever it was that triggered the end.

Looks like someone broke street date and it's in consumer hands. Some guy confirmed it doesn't have the editor in it. Sadly, that was the only reason I wanted to buy it.. Other people mentioned a day 1 patch that could be the release of the editor, but apparently it was on a live stream or something so nobody can source it. http://crymod.com/thread.php?threadid=67530

I've heard that critiques should start with the positive stuff... So, the layout seems ok. No weird nav flow, fairly simple, colors don't make my eyes bleed. All good stuff. For the other stuff; The 'about me' page is redundant. You already have that info in the header of your page. Make your email a proper mailto link, and throw in a link to your resume, and you're done. Minus one html page to worry about. If you don't have one, get a LinkedIn page and throw that link there too. It doesn't hurt. You have these weird email/print/pdf links in the frame of your main body. I have no idea why you'd want those there, and why anyone else would want them there either. Is it put in automatically or something? It seems to exist on all your pages. Your LD work; I'll just echo Serenius' comment about your portfolio looking like an environment artists portfolio. You have no overhead of your maps, no flythrough, no gameplay videos. Not even a link to the file to play it. The info on your 2d games say that you were in charge of art, sound, music and UI. LDs design fun, artists make stuff pretty. There's some overlap, but not a lot. Hence, different job titles. Figure out what you want to do and redo your portfolio for that. This may vary based on company, but LD's don't do modeling work very often. Personally, I only blocked stuff roughly in maya and just told the EA "this blobby rectangle thing is a supposed to be a statue, 800x300x300" etc etc. Basically, your LD stuff is lacking designery stuff, and you have extra EA and 2d stuff that won't get looked at (unless you're applying at a smaller studio that might incorporate that skillset) This could vary, and I'm a young'un in the industry, so feel free to get consensus from others. For your resume, I don't say this with malice, but your objective line is the most generic objective statement you can put on a resume. HR people get tons of resumes, and that's the first thing they read. It doesn't have to be 100% OMG IN YOUR FACE AMAZING, but at least make it somewhat unique to you. The rest of your resume is a wall of text. You have margin and header space to work with, shrink those if you need to and space the text out. The second page of your resume isn't needed. I'd throw in your school/graduate stuff somewhere on the first page. You already have IGDA mentioned, being interested in basketball and music isn't important enough to warrant space on a resume, and references being available is generally assumed. Grammar nazi stuff (sorry I come from a background in QA...) The alternating caps of Created, Designed, and Implemented seems... odd. "features an collassal" on your Mammoth description page should be "features a colossal". "15 days where" should be "15 days were" on Timeless page, etc etc. Get someone to proof-read this. This probably isn't a *huge* deal, but better safe than sorry. And that's about it... Sorry if I come off as overly harsh, I don't intend to. In case I do, here's a dancing banana :bananawrench:

Started to pull out my list, but realized most are on this page anyway. http://csyvertsen.net/?page_id=242 If you use RSS feeds, you always get recommendations based on similar content.

I had the same account creation problems. What I finally did was make a dummy name that I was pretty sure wasn't taken, using a fake email address (eg. asdf1234@someplace.com) through the whole "create account" in-game. Boom. Got in just fine...

I can't even get in either. Thought it used a gamespy login, and I know I have one of those (from, you know, back in '98 when everyone did...) but can't log in with it. The forgotten password opens up mycrysis.com, so made an account there, still wont log in. Doesn't even toss an error or anything, the login/password form just resets to blank again. Meh... Not hugely interested in the MP anyway, only downloaded it on the slim hope that they forgot to remove the editor it. And they didn't. Heres to waiting 3 more weeks...

Unplayable for me. AI wouldnt pick up guns/health packs at spawn AI kept on falling into the water (either on the wood planks by the first boat, or the 'car bridge' thing. After the first bridge, where you have to go under the dock to climb up the ladder, the height clearance isn't high enough. I had to duck to get through. Hella zombies always spawned on the rock to the side of the boat near the car bridge where nav mesh didn't appear to be connected. They just stood around waving at me menacingly. Can't really give any more feedback than that. Tried playing through like 4 or 5 times, but since the AI kept on drowning themselves, SI's would get me or witches were spawning in choke points (ladder after car bridge, door in evac building). Tried noclipping through to get screenshots of stuff to point out, but apparently SI can still get you in noclip... so it wasn't worth the effort. Also minus points on not having it packed into a vpk file.

I'd suggest fleshing out a narrative for your map. Currently, it doesn't appear to have one (or it has one, that you know of.. but it's unclear to the end user). For example... In the mall, everything is so clean. But there are dead bodies. What happened here? Did it close down before the outbreak? The stores look open and rather inviting, so guessing not. Would riots break out and stores busted into? It's possible. It's just too empty to be meaningful. The player will move through this area in 30 seconds and forget about it 2 minutes later. The little courtyard with all the trash. Where'd the trash come from? It's the outside of an evac center, so it makes sense there'd be tons of people, but there'd be something to order those people. Like barricades making curved lines. Maybe a tent on the side for registration info? At least a trash can or two?! And why is there a sleeping bag (?) and lantern there? Out in the open, exposed, during the ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE! The whole 'crossing the river' thing. I still don't know if that's a real intentional bridge or supposed to be a makeshift bridge. Why would people create a makeshift bridge to cross the river? Bad stuff on their side? Evac center on the other side? Military outpost? Something? Speaking of makeshift bridges (if that's the supposed route), the long sheet of wood REALLY feels out of place. I would definitely suggest finding a different way to create a makeshift bridge (crane drops cars into the river? Plugs gaps with suitcases? Other equipment?) The other makeshift bridge in the last screenshot looks more genuine. And why are the boats there? Are they wrecked? But they have their lights on... Maybe they were evacuating people? But the area is lacking suitcases, clothes, dead bodies, etc. Maybe the boats were bringing something IN to the area? Military people? But there's no barricades or other equipment to suggest this either. Make sure there's a reason for everything in your map being where it is. If it's there 'just because' then it may be better to change it or remove it Or just give this a read http://www.worch.com/2010/03/11/gdc-2010/

I've gotten a few gems from this photo pool. And it's pretty active. I have it set up on an RSS feed and it ticks in between 50-100 photos a day http://www.flickr.com/groups/indecay/pool/

Wasn't really sure if I should post this, but what the hell... I guess I'm in the clear minority, because I didn't really enjoy this. Which is sad, cuz I DID like part 1 when I first played it. My notes/feedback; I completely missed the car the first time I played it. Was wondering why the hell I had to spend 5 minutes running to get somewhere. Would have liked the car placed in front of me at the start. This start may have soured the entire experience for me... The valves and bright light under the broken bridge totally misled me. For whatever reason (maybe I was hitting the use key too fast) when I got close to the door, nothing seemed to happen, so I was convinced I had to do something with those valves. The first combat area disappointed me. The lone guy shooting at you didn't really feel enough to justify the squad that shows up when you reach the street level. Aside from that, I had problems with this combat area. I think I died like 5-8 times. All I did was stay back near the green car and let the enemies come to me because I couldn't really move. There's no health pickups in the area, and you start with no energy. I felt bored, frustrated, and pretty much trapped. All I could do was wait for them to come to me. I didn't even realize there was a puzzle with the gas tanks until I found the valve. Personally, I feel giving someone the answer to a puzzle before they know there's a puzzle is kind of bad. Right after I blew up the gas tank I immediately had the thought "It would have been cool if the previous combat encounter was cut in half, and a small squad approaches me as I exit the gas station so I can shoot the gas tanks to blow them all up". That would have made me feel Once I had gotten up on the roof, I had NO idea where to go. I was lost in the area for about 5 minutes. I don't remember if the dude inside the building had died or what, but I finally just started shooting everything I could see and finally saw the barrel in the building. Missed that you are supposed to get into the pod in the next building. The console beeping at me after you use it misled me =( The valve to turn off the steam pipes rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe its just that I saw too many valves in the level already... The VO of the dude telling me my mission seemed really low. The static spewing radio next to him was as loud as he was. Totally missed the car jack bar my first time (the blocked door didn't really get my attention as something that needed solving). I ran around for what felt like ETERNITY (but was probably 3-5 minutes) and finally gave up and noclipped through the door. Hated the run to the elevator. The machine gun forced me to wait for the other enemies to show up (much like how it happened with the first combat area for me) and it just felt frustrating. Think I died another 4 or 5 times probably because I was trying to brute force through it. 3 hunters at once felt like a bit much. I didn't really feel like I was being cool fighting them, since I had to run around screaming looking for health packs and getting out of LOS of them, pick at them a little, run away more. The ending. I didn't really get any affirmation of what I did. No "thanks for saving us all" or even a "thanks, but your princess is in another castle". Fading out during the elevator ride really confused me at first, then sorta irked me later on. Stuff I DID like (or, thanks for reading this far...) The death message when I jumped into the water where the bridge breaks at first. The lighting in the tunnel before the rebel camp The crow/seagull on hooks in the rebel camp. I pondered the meaning for awhile, but went away empty handed. Maybe a yin/yang thing since the birds are black and white...

Crystal Dynamics. I think I'm in the minority here on mapcore, being not european or in canada...

Yeah that was what originally threw me, scripting vs editor tools that do "traditional" scripting for you. I'm pretty familiar with Source and Kismet so I just threw together a small scripted gameplay segment and hoped for the best as I emailed that off to the HR guy that asked for "scripting examples" from me. Guess I over-worried, since I got offered the job

As a level designer, how much time do you spend with scripting? What language do you use (or if its proprietary, what is it most similar to?) Obviously this will vary between something like a single player designer and a multiplayer FPS designer, but just checking for a general consensus. I've got a resume in somewhere and they seem to be placing a lot of weight on scripting knowledge =(

*edit* well damn, Corwin did me better with screenshots... And we both called some of the same stuff. Cheers. Stuff that popped at out at me; (Apologies if this seems overly negative. I blame my job) By screenshot number; 16 - Angled brace made of concrete is odd. I don't think bridges actually do this. Also, the texture is still at 90 degrees and not matching the geometry angle. Those yellow traffic trash cans seem out of place under a bridge, especially with a random lantern there. Why is there a lantern there? You can make some visual narrative that could explain these things, like another survivor group using the trash cans to make a sort of barricade/shelter or something. 17 - Really long unbroken skyline. Antenna's, water towers, electric poles, buildings in the distance, needs *something* to break up a straight line. Huge building with plain brick wall is... dangerous. 19 - Skyline again. This place looks really empty (the ground). The light doesn't seem to cast an actual light on the ground even though it appears to be a pretty powerful light. 20 - Cool, running on busted up boats. Initially thought you could turn it into a dynamic prop and sorta sway, but that'd probably mess with nav mesh. Anyway... Those lights in the background look weird. The light bulb is visible, but the lighting on the wall starts like 20-30 units below it. Another really long unbroken skyline 2 - 2? Weird order of screenshots... Is that boat hanging halfway off a dock or something? It seems odd (ie, physically impossible, unless its resting on something). The wooden trim around the dock is slightly raised, but not under the handrails? Not sure if that was on purpose, it just jumped out at me. 3 - This one prompted my whole post. Ok... Unbroken skyline. Two materials for a building without something breaking the transition. The windows on the second floor of the building on the left look like they're doors. The building also wouldn't have 3 separate doors, within 10 feet of each other. The building on the right, are those awnings or balcony's? They look like balcony's, but they don't have rails. None of the buildings have anything else (gutter drains, power boxes, wires, etc) 7 - What are those black girder things on both sides of this bridge? This entire thing really confuses me. Is this a make-shift bridge or a 'real' bridge under construction or something? Would need a better look at it... 10 - DOOR TRIMS! Magical floating doors connected to a brick wall do NOT exist in the real world. The transition between floor textures is also a bit jarring for me. 11 - Window trims on the ceiling. Also, the texture tiling. You have it split in half on both edges. Something looks weird above the right doorway where the wall meets the ceiling. Not sure if its a different texture or lighting weirdness. 12 - Huge area with nothing in it. Cement bricks look GINORMOUS on the shop on the right. Malls don't usually have visible brick or concrete on the inside... 14 & 15 - Your lights here look weird. Place the light higher to the ceiling, turn off "cast shadow" on the light prop. Place looks too big as a restaurant too. Ok your next set of screenshots are all named the same thing... Why do you hate me? Comments from top to bottom 1 - Is that a wire connecting crossing a river from lights to a generator...? 2 - The concrete barricade in the street looks really out of place, since it has nothing else there explaining why it's there. The apparently 50 foot long single piece of wood creating a bridge feels MORE out of place. 4 - Dock, connecting to some sort of rock thing, in the middle of a river? How do the boats get past this? EVERYTHING - There doesn't seem to be any power lines in your part of the city.

The lighting link posted is good, check that out.. It's probably a good idea to read up on general color theory as well. All your lights appear to be purely white (except the fire and red lights on the forklift) Not to harp on it too much, but door trims. Seriously, look at ANY door in the real world. They won't look like yours. I know you might figure it's just a stupid minor detail, but there's this thing called cognitive dissonance where you notice the tiny things that look WRONG even if they're really minor. So even if your map is doing a lot of things really great, a lot of people will instinctively be drawn to the things that look weird. For me, that's door trims... Other stuff; In screenshot 004, you have 2 different buildings sharing a face. White bricks and red bricks. It looks... odd, to me. It might just be the perspective, but I'd put something to break that line up, like a fenced alley or something. (Why's a camping lantern sitting on top of a car...) screenshot 007, large swathes of walls/ceiling with nothing interesting on them. screenshot 010, a window wouldn't have its bottom edge that close to the floor. In my college drafting class windows were always at least 36 inches off the floor, but, admittedly, I don't know if that's an architectural standard or was just the teachers. screenshot 016, there doesn't seem to be much debris for the area, considering it looks like a bus went through a brick wall. (I know I know, it's a WIP... just saying) screenshots 019 to 022, this whole area (with the white tiled floor) looks REALLY open. What is it supposed to be? I could see it working as like a building lobby, but there's no desks, counters, chairs, plants, etc to suggest any use for this area. screenshot 025, it looks like the air vent or whatever that is on the ceiling can be moved to line up with the edges of the boards (?) on the ceiling. screenshot 029, is that the broken plaster wall used on a brick wall? Not sure if there's a prefab broken brick wall, might have to do it the hard way

Couple things that jumped out at me; Doorways should have trims. Your walls look REALLY thick. 16 units maybe? I always thought 8 was standard Some of your rooms look GINORMOUS. The starting room is hella huge, and has 2 tables and a TV in it. What room is this supposed to be (in the real world)? High Voltage sign near an elevator confuses me. Is it an elevator? Now I'm not so sure... It also looks really dark. It's hard (or impossible?) for me to get any sense of the flow of the level, but make sure something is leading the player along... Lighting, objects, blood smears etc. Get it playtested and insist on some people running through with their flashlights off. It helps a lot in finding weak areas that aren't leading the player. (Did for me, anyway)