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Monster w21 Faces posted:If there was any justice, CryEngine 3 too.
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Jul 1, 2011 12:59
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Whalley posted:Thanks to your advice in another thread, I looked up a bunch of stuff with CryEngine 3 recently and drat, that's an engine built to be customized. I can't justify buying Crysis 2 or whatever CE3 comes packaged with to be able to tool around with it, but it looks like it would be even funner to play with than UDK. Honestly, you absolutely should buy it. I really enjoyed Crysis 2 and it coming with an SDK is a neat bonus
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Jul 1, 2011 15:11
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There will be a stand alone CE3 SDK released later in the year too.
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Jul 1, 2011 15:19
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djkillingspree posted:Hey so I'm esteemed lead designer of the just-over70-metacritic-earning Dungeon Siege 3, if anyone has any industry questions for me shoot away. What is your overall design workflow like?
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Jul 1, 2011 15:22
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RIP Black Rock Studios... Disney devs are dropping like flies.
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Jul 1, 2011 15:55
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It is a sad day indeed, read about that this morning. Terrible news. What is happening to the UK!
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Jul 1, 2011 16:05
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Amrosorma posted:What is your overall design workflow like? Hmm, that's a complex question. Generally designs for systems and levels move through somewhat similar stages, so I'll discuss it at the high level now and if you have more specific questions I can go into details from there. I may be misinterpreting so lemme know if this is not what you are asking. Usually a design starts with a brainstorming meeting or two. From this the lead designer or the appropriate sublead (lead system designer, lead area designer) will write up a design constraint doc, basically outlining the requirements that the eventual design must fulfill. For an area, this will usually include things like required NPCs, story events, locations, etc. These are usually less than 5 pages. Then, the constraint doc goes to the designer, and they come up with a design brief, which is a high-level design doc going over the salient points of the design. These are usually about 5 pages. These are discussed with the various leads, and this is generally the point at which big things in the design that are likely to consume substantial resources and we need to say yes or no to are discussed and given a thumbs up or down. Then, the designer usually starts of the actual design doc, along with preliminary "real work" like blocking out the area or getting a prototype system in. Once they finish the design doc, there's a final review pass and we move on to production for the area or system. This whole process, from brainstorming to start of production, is usually a month-ish. If something is very schedule cramped we sometimes need to cram it into less time but it's pretty difficult to do so. And, the actual time in production varies from project to project and even based on the specific system or area. For system design, we also tend to have more iterative development where we would repeat a compressed version of this cycle over and over again to extend/improve or add features to a system.
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Jul 1, 2011 16:10
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Aliginge posted:Honestly, you absolutely should buy it. I really enjoyed Crysis 2 and it coming with an SDK is a neat bonus  Monster w21 Faces posted:There will be a stand alone CE3 SDK released later in the year too.
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Jul 1, 2011 16:11
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djkillingspree posted:Hey so I'm esteemed lead designer of the just-over70-metacritic-earning Dungeon Siege 3, if anyone has any industry questions for me shoot away. Stop taking my co-workers  More of a comment than a question.
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Jul 1, 2011 16:17
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How the gently caress do I move from Art to Design? Anyone make that journey here? I want to design combat systems and stuff. I want to be the guy saying the gun shoots reticulated induced plasma balls instead of just the guy who models the plasma baller.
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Jul 1, 2011 16:17
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you'd rather make the plasma baller instead of making the plasma baller. Seriously, I don't know, I'd just try and spend some extra time getting involved in design meetings and fluttering your eyes at the design lead.
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Jul 1, 2011 16:32
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Monster w21 Faces posted:What is happening to the UK!
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Jul 1, 2011 16:34
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djkillingspree, what was the reasoning behind the multiplayer design that is purely drop-in, with zero persistence for the second player?
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Jul 1, 2011 16:40
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Fishbus posted:and fluttering your eyes at the design lead. ... anywho, the most direct approach is to just found a startup and pick your role. Go indie with a small group, and be a designer/artist, and roll out to just designer as the project grows.
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Jul 1, 2011 17:07
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Lurking Haro posted:This is what I applied with. I've done interviewing for design positions in the past and had to read through a few briefs in my time. I also have a few minutes before I leave work - so you get the arguable benefit of me being nasty. I'm focused on those things we would have picked up on and these issues vary wildly between studios so feel free to take my comments as just that, comments not some rule set. 1) There are some odd turns of phrase and typos which would be picked up by spell check or similar - this would certainly make me irritated before I reached any of the substance. Maybe it is a translated doc though. 2) The game-world map is essentially useless (unless you were applying to a company where everyone can understand Chinese characters which is possible). In any case I'd want more of a sense of how the areas link - what are the transitions and how is gating operated if it exists. 3) There are numerous items mentioned but only passing mentions of where items can be gained and how and what currencies might exist. There is also no mention of whether item load-outs are limited, items are consumable etc. 4) It is mentioned that there is an end-state for the game but no mention of how long that is anticipated being reached in, whether there are scoring methods or just the experience of winning. This makes it hard to judge where replay value might exist. A loose story board would be appreciated - and at least one story-boarded mission would go a long way to expand on what you could design in terms of specific challenges. 5) The target audience is online distribution so it would be good to include what multi-player interaction is possible (coop, duels or simply scores outside the game etc.) 6) Enemies are listed but the description doesn't explain what they do, what special challenge they present. Names aren't really relevant to design at this stage, I need to know what makes pixel group A uniquely differentiated from group B. I also need to know what reason the player would have for fighting them (other than stealth-immune animals and mission targets) given that stealth is stated as large part of the game. 7) Combat moves are listed with button combinations. These button combinations are system specific and not very relevant. The space would far better be used to state what the cost, advantage and disadvantage of each attack is. 8) A mini-game for stealing could be a big turn-off if it is wildly different from other game mechanics - but you don;t mention what this mini-game might consist of so it is difficult to tell whether you considered this. As a summary, you have given more detail than is required in many parts of the document and no or few details in the areas where I'd be looking to judge you - balance, mechanics, flow, USPs and mission structure. I'll now await folk leaping in and critiquing this critique :P
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Jul 1, 2011 17:08
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Hold on to your pants as you read through this... http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1439404/000119312511180285/ds1.htm
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Jul 1, 2011 17:19
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devilmouse posted:Hold on to your pants as you read through this... I had the gigantic bassoons from Inception sounding off in my head as I read the first page. They're underwritten by Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and BofA-Merrill Lynch? What could possibly go wrong? 
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Jul 1, 2011 17:23
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devilmouse posted:Hold on to your pants as you read through this...  I did see it appears that they're valued at 1 billion?How are you employees making out? Are your stock options worth mentioning even now that your company IS having an IPO?
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Jul 1, 2011 17:26
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Sigma-X posted:How the gently caress do I move from Art to Design? Make stuff in your off time, whether it's a module for singleplayer or a map for multiplayer. NWN2, Dragon Age, Oblivion, Starcraft II, Team Fortress II - all valid options. A completed, balanced, and interesting map/module is a great start and ties in well with shopping it up with the design and production teams. The intent is that while critical analysis of existing ideas is definitely an asset, it's vital to also show the ability to work a design concept through release. Multiple completed projects are obviously better than just one, but as with an any portfolio, it's important to avoid bloat.
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Jul 1, 2011 17:27
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I got bored somewhere around "it's a 2d metroidvania fighting game with ninjas". Nothing about your design excites me as a designer. You gloss over the potentially interesting bit of the non-linear world, and spend pages listing controls and weapons and nine different types of health pickup. You have stuff like "A shapeshifting fox, try to trick the player and then attack." How does it try and trick the player? What does it shapeshift in to? "A powerful youkai" what's a 'youkai' and what does this mean for the design? "An obake hopping around on one foot" tells me literally nothing about the design of this enemy (such as how they attack and what makes them different from the other enemies), all I know is art are going to make it hop. And "target platforms are everything that has DD" but then you don't say anything about platform-specific design. Are you expecting to put exactly the same game on PC and DS? Are there any DS-specific controls you're going to do? What's going to be on each screen? Oh and you have B button doing jump and also "Attack with Side weapon / Use Item". Plus what that last poster said about the easily caught typos (missing spaces etc). As a design document it's short and missing a huge amount of design. As a pitch document it goes into unnecessary details and doesn't sell the USPs to me.
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Jul 1, 2011 17:27
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My feedback was basically going to be exactly what FreakyZoid posted - but in short, you haven't grounded your design at all. This reads like an idea sheet. I see no discussions of mechanics, or what the gameplay actually is, just ideas - and while all design documents go through this phase, this is the phase at which they're the most useless, and certainly not something worth submitting anywhere. The biggest failings for me were: - Relatively poor English, when Design requires clear communication above all else - A Ninja-themed Metroid? Really, that was the best you could come up with? Why not throw in some zombies while you're at it. ... and some of the names of powers were cribbed directly from Naruto. I don't know if this is because the Naruto names are just generic Japanese phrases, or because you're Naruto fan, but it stuck out like a sore thumb. Half your movement powers look cribbed from the Naruto platformer on the X360. The one phrase "Kawarimi no Jutsu" in particular is burned into my frontal lobes from hearing Naruto spout it constantly in that game, and that voice sprang up the second I read the power name, pitch-perfect. Though I am especially confused why a company would ask for a design document as part of their application process. Really? Not a portfolio of implemented game designs? Or do you not have a portfolio, and so they asked for this as a way to cull out applicants? EDIT: VV Ah. Could the bubble be nearing to burst, hmmm. Shalinor fucked around with this message at 17:38 on Jul 1, 2011 |
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Jul 1, 2011 17:34
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Shalinor posted:I don't speak Lawyer A handy summary! http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304447804576414111297459234.html *GULP*
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Jul 1, 2011 17:36
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Chasiubao posted:djkillingspree, what was the reasoning behind the multiplayer design that is purely drop-in, with zero persistence for the second player? It was the implementation that made the most sense given scope, time, and budget. We would rather have a complete buddy co-op system ala SoM than an incomplete D3-style implementation.
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Jul 1, 2011 17:38
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Hughlander posted:Stop taking my co-workers I don't think I am! Maybe I'm wrong though.
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Jul 1, 2011 17:40
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19orFewer posted:I've done interviewing for design positions in the past and had to read through a few briefs in my time. I also have a few minutes before I leave work - so you get the arguable benefit of me being nasty. I'm focused on those things we would have picked up on and these issues vary wildly between studios so feel free to take my comments as just that, comments not some rule set. Thank you for your time. This isn't exactly the document I sent in, as I translated it into Japanese afterwards. That's also why you can't read the map. The notations on the map basically just say forest, city, ninja village and etc. I certainly will consider these points to flesh it out before sending out applications again. I'd also appreciate critic from some more people.
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Jul 1, 2011 17:46
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Shalinor posted:EDIT: VV Ah. Could the bubble be nearing to burst, hmmm. This is absolutely what happened in the 90's with insanely overvalued poo poo.com stocks, but since Zynga is actually bringing some money in, the bubble is not going to burst for a while.
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Jul 1, 2011 17:53
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Another 'How I Got into the Games Industy' tale for you to throw on the pile. I'm a level designer / scripter. I was a keen gamer since the days of the ZX Spectrum, but never once had the idea to turn my hobby into a job, even after a couple of friends of mine became QA testers. I was studying design at collage at the time, permanently broke and pretty miserable. I needed a job to tide me over until university started and one of my tester friends got me an interview. He gave me the heads up about the interviewer, telling me he was obsessed with Star Wars. I aced the interview; we just chatted for about 30 minutes about games. He even told me that the other applicants were poo poo and that basically, the job was mine. I spent a summer in a large, dark, air-conditioned office, playing a golf game on the N64, surrounded my people my own age with similar tastes in music, film and of course, games. And they paid me. The university offer got quickly forgotten about and for about 5 years I worked on about 10 different games, some developed in-house (mostly poo poo, with the odd exception) and others from external studios, some of which I had the mixed blessing of working at off-site. I worked hard and, when the monthly bug stats were produced, was never below 3rd in a department of 30-odd testers. There were times when I had to work away from home for weeks on end testing a boring football management game, times when I worked nights (9pm - 5am, an actual night shift, gently caress you Driver 2, you piece of poo poo) and times when there was literally nothing to do but wait for an email from Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft telling us that the game has passed submission and we could all go home. But it was mostly fun. One of the best things about the work environment was the Lan gaming that went on at lunch time or after work. Normally it was QIIIA, sometimes it was Half-Life and once, it was Counter-Strike. After I played that game for the first time, my life changed. I *had* to map for it. I'd been tinkering with radiant and blocking out maps for QIIIA with limited success, but once I was up and running on Hammer with Zoners Half-Life tools, that was it. All I cared about was making the best Counter-Strike map I could muster. I found it addictive, and once mapped for 28 hours straight. Talk about a learning curve. I can remember thinking that if I have a job making maps, I'd be a very happy chap. I saved screen shots of many of my early, unworkable, paltry levels and look back on them if I ever need a laugh or morale boost. They were quite poo poo. But... I'd learned a lot about both the technical side of the Half-life engine, what it takes to produce a polished game level, the intricacies of what makes some maps poo poo, some good and some classic. I'd also learned how important (and difficult) it was to finish something. I also learned that I can't texture for poo poo, but it’s good to know your weaknesses as well as your strengths. I was made redundant probably around a year later and was forced to scratch around for QA positions wherever I could get them, working at Argonaut, Kuju and then Sumo Digital, each on a temp basis. I got each of those jobs based mainly on my reputation gained at Infogrames. It's a small industry and long-term, it to pays work hard, communicate effectively and not be a dick. While at Argonaut, I was still mapping for Counter-Strike, but also learning 3DSMax and Lightwave as well. After telling anyone at Argonaut who'd listen that I wanted to break into design, they invited me back after my stint as a tester, and I had my first real design job. It lasted two whole weeks before the company collapsed and I was back looking for QA work. Several of the more experienced designers from Argonaut landed scripting jobs at a big dev company in Leeds and I was hearing rumours that they would be hiring more if their current game was a hit. I was desperate not to fall back into QA, so I frantically started learning to code C/C++ from books and started hammering out crappy little programs. I'd learned to save absolutely everything by now, however scrappy or insignificant it felt to me at the time, so by time I was interviewed, I had lots of varied work in a portfolio to show. I was lucky to get the job, and although I struggled to keep my head above water for the first project, have really found my feet and I'm still enjoying it 6 years on. Usually if I ever get asked how I broke into the industry, I just tell people I started as a tester, worked hard and got lucky. So, apologies, you guys get the long version.
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Jul 1, 2011 18:16
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Amrosorma posted:since Zynga is actually bringing some money in My concern if I was Zynga would be how to become independent of Facebook without losing our paying customers.
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Jul 1, 2011 18:21
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devilmouse posted:A handy summary! http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304447804576414111297459234.html Congrats on all those sweet, sweet IPO shares. Hope they are treating employees well in this!
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Jul 1, 2011 18:30
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Fl0yd posted:I saved screen shots of many of my early, unworkable, paltry levels and look back on them if I ever need a laugh or morale boost. They were quite poo poo. Please post these. As a Source modder and not employed in the industry (yet!), I have an interest. Rubber Slug fucked around with this message at 19:02 on Jul 1, 2011 |
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Jul 1, 2011 18:46
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Our parent company puts out a lot of press releases for investors and junk, and the other day I happened to be reading one that was talking about restructuring shares to reward a couple of long-standing employees and I just thought "Huh." And then I found out holy poo poo one of them is me! It was nice to feel valued. Had a wee bit of a stressy couple of days since I'm off next week (first holiday in... God knows) and I had to get builds ready for Hong Kong and it was all going wrong and I had to stay late and argh. So it was nice. They didn't have to give me anything, it's not in my contract (come to think of it, do I even have one?) but they did anyway. Who says the games industry is cold and monstrous? Excited about my game almost being done. Looking forward to it being released and seeing what people in this thread think about it. Hopefully my curse won't kick in; three boxed products I've headed up have been shelved in the last few years. I think this'll be 3 for 3 digital distribution titles if it actually comes out. Speaking of that, one of the other DD games was an iPhone title I made at work basically for fun while we were between contracts. I did all the code, all the tools, all the design, all the graphics. It was a little three week labour of love. And nowadays I overhear our new benevolent overlords (DNA Dynamics - seriously they sound like the baddies from some scifi show) talking with publishing partners and investors and whathaveyou about my little game like its some commodity, it's a "piece of content" that may yet become a "piece of android content" and it just feels weird. You know? I mean it wasn't original and it didn't set the world on fire but it's... Mine.
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Jul 1, 2011 19:37
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Lurking Haro posted:I'd also appreciate critic from some more people. Alright I'll throw my two cents in, why not. Everyone has mentioned it so far, but there really isn't a lot of design in this design doc. There are a lot of ideas, I would argue there are actually too many ideas, and no real focus on what's fun or unique about it. Every sentence seems to bring up more questions than answers. Each idea feels like a dangling thread of 'how is this implemented?' You say that fights will be "cool" but you never say how. You bring up a pickpocketing system complete with "a minigame" and "penalties" but you never elaborate. It's just, it's really all over the place. You should go and cut out 80% of these random ideas and try to get right down to core gameplay and what makes it interesting and separates it from all the other ninja games out there.
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Jul 1, 2011 19:38
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djkillingspree posted:Hey so I'm esteemed lead designer of the just-over70-metacritic-earning Dungeon Siege 3, if anyone has any industry questions for me shoot away. Here's one for you, which I'm particularly interested in because the game I work on is in a somewhat similar situation. DS1 and DS2 were developed by Gas Powered Games. I assume you're working for Obsidian. Were there any difficulties in taking over the franchise from another developer? To what extent did you communicate and collaborate with them, if at all? Did you feel burdened by the community's expectations for the game, or the previous developers'?
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Jul 1, 2011 19:48
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Rubber Slug posted:Please post these. I will hunt them down for you, but I doubt you'll can actually learn anything from them that I couldn't tell you verbally (and remember, we're talking about WorldCraft here, not your new-fangled Source engine with its massive draw distances and countless polys being thrown about every frame). Don't spend an afternoon putting cylindrical banisters (two per step) on all four storeys of a staircase. You will probably die of old age waiting for your map to build. In fact, don't have a map with four flights of stairs in it. Especially when each of those stairs is over 16 units high and everyone has to bunny hop up them individually. Don't start your map by creating a ~500m x 500m flat square brush and then simply place buildings and cover on top of said brush, and expect your map not to be anything else other than total poo poo. Don't have spawn points placed partially under ground level when you send your map out to friends hoping to get it tested. Don't leave gaps in the floor so players can run around under the map on the bottom face of the skybrush. Don't use a single hollow brush as the skybox (I was tired, and it was leaking). Don't put crates in rooms that are bigger than any of the door into that room. Don't use the carve tool, not ever. Don't look at an entire wall made mostly of shattered polys and think "I'm sure that'll be fine". Don't spend an entire Friday night putting wording (made entirely from brushes) on the outside of a building that no-one is ever going to see. Don't make maps with massively complex layouts in which everyone gets lost, even you. Don't ignore lighting tutorials, stick a big "sun" light entity in one corner of your map and think "that'll do". Don't make a map where the terrorist and counter-terrorists spawn so close together, they can hear each other buying equipment. Don't install WorldCraft on your machine at work and get dragged into the producers office for a severe repremanding for working on your awesome new monastary based map when you should really be testing <some game that will remain nameless> And so on...
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Jul 1, 2011 20:20
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Fl0yd posted:Don't put crates in rooms that are bigger than any of the door into that room.
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Jul 1, 2011 20:42
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Nome posted:Here's one for you, which I'm particularly interested in because the game I work on is in a somewhat similar situation. There weren't really too many difficulties. We identified pretty early on that 1)we were introducing the consoles as a primary SKU and 2) that gameplay would have to change substantially to accommodate that. We also had mixed opinions on how well the gameplay in the first two games had aged, so we were pretty sure we were going to depart fairly heavily. We talked with Chris Taylor and got some feedback from GPG, but it wasn't really a massive degree of collaboration. The only aspect of the community's previous expectations that was a burden were aspects of their game that weren't really executable within the scope of our project. Honestly if we made the DS1 and 2 fans happy, I think we would have alienated a much larger audience.
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Jul 1, 2011 20:50
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Fl0yd posted:Don't put crates in rooms that are bigger than any of the door into that room. 
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Jul 1, 2011 21:49
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My first game just went live yesterday. Its a F2P facebook game if anyone cares to check it out. I did pretty much all of the character animation except for a couple things and some of the art assets. Check it out here
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Jul 1, 2011 22:36
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Fl0yd posted:list of whoopsies "If you run out of level design ideas, just make some stupid platforms that move around in midair. This way the player actually wastes a lot of time getting over these platforms, giving him the impression that the map was big." and "When jumping, the player's character should make a sound like he's critically constipated. This is used to alert the player to the fact that he hit the "jump" key and isn't simply defying gravity and floating into the air for no readily apparent reason." There a list of "Rules of Online Play" appended to the end, with things like: "If you use an elevator, no matter what you do, you will be facing the wrong way when it reaches its destination and you'll get shot in the anus." and "Always join the winning team or the team that has the most players on it. No, really. Go ahead. No one minds. YOU FUCKTARD."
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Jul 1, 2011 23:13
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Whalley posted:I'm going to jump all over this; the way the engine handles lighting and terrain just gets me so excited. Yeah, I read this announcement a while back and after tooling around in UDK for a bit I'm really interested in the release. I've had this idea for a Robinson's Requiem survival sim kind of game forever and CryEngine 3 is just the perfect thing to build the kind of outdoor environment I'd want for it. FreakyZoid posted:Ha, I've seen plenty of shipped games that have that particular oversight in them. Clearly, the crate was brought into the room in pieces and assembled in the room! After all, making transportation more difficult is the intended purpose of a crate, right? The Cheshire Cat fucked around with this message at 00:43 on Jul 2, 2011 |
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Jul 2, 2011 00:37
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