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I really hope Disney is done with Warren Spector.
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Jan 29, 2013 15:41
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baby puzzle posted:I really hope Disney is done with Warren Spector. I hope not. Warren has said that he wants to retire after Disney.
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Jan 29, 2013 16:11
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Welp, looks like someone else will have to do his 'one city block' idea. That person is me.
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Jan 29, 2013 16:14
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Coworker found this game from the Global Game Jam. Open Heart Surgery simulator! http://gamejam.bossastudios.com/  I couldn't stop laughing while trying to play. Makes me want to do a barista simulator and painting simulator in the same vein.
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Jan 29, 2013 17:00
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Frown Town posted:Coworker found this game from the Global Game Jam. Open Heart Surgery simulator! Ahaha, someone sent me that gif last night but it had THANKS OBAMACARE across the bottom.
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Jan 29, 2013 17:13
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...and official: http://kotaku.com/5979884/the-studio-behind-epic-mickey-has-shut-down
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Jan 29, 2013 17:46
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Aggh rejection. I haven't missed you AT ALL. 
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Jan 29, 2013 18:46
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Monster w21 Faces posted:Aggh rejection. I haven't missed you AT ALL. I like to treat interview rejection like a breakup. Feel sad for a couple of days and then pick yourself up, realise that there are lots of others out there and spend the next 3 months calling them 40 times a day and threatening to kill yourself.
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Jan 29, 2013 19:01
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"It's okay honey, if they don't want you, then they are the dumbest loving pieces of poo poo." My mother's words are true for all occasions
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Jan 29, 2013 19:45
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Dinurth posted:...and official: http://kotaku.com/5979884/the-studio-behind-epic-mickey-has-shut-down A friend of mine says he's also confirmed with two sources that Playdom has downsized an unspecified number today. ~ * Austin * ~
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Jan 29, 2013 19:54
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baby puzzle posted:I really hope Disney is done with Warren Spector. They are. quote:When asked if Warren Spector would perhaps be shifted onto the team working on Disney Infinity, a spokesperson confirmed "he will not be staying with Disney."
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Jan 29, 2013 20:22
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Jan 29, 2013 20:30
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In the continuing saga of "Trying to instrument an app without the warm embrace of daddy Zynga's in-house tools..." So Flurry does an ok enough job for free analytics on mobile. Apsalar, on the other hand, is terrible. But Flurry doesn't do campaign/referral/source tracking (unless you want to pay them $0.05/install). It's a pretty good hook for Flurry since now I'm like "drat, I sure wish I knew if users from source X were converting to payers....", but at $0.05, that adds up awful quick! Does a good, free package exist for campaign/source tracking (on iOS)?
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Jan 29, 2013 22:36
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Gameloft India shuts down, 250 people laid off. VVVV Yep, 27% increase announced on the same day. Senso fucked around with this message at 05:57 on Jan 30, 2013 |
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Jan 30, 2013 03:55
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Senso posted:Gameloft India shuts down, 250 people laid off. Goodlord, I swear I had just read an article today about how the companies profits were way up. Fake edit: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/185666/Gameloft_growth_continues_Annual_sales_rise_27_percent.php#.UQiepGed6So
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Jan 30, 2013 05:17
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Irish Taxi Driver posted:I learned off these videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUmVmAe--bk&list=UUjwJvEQG1fNF-MaV8brwFSw Thanks for posting these. Does the first series end at video 6? It basically showed me how to make a square room and compile it, it seemed like it was going to go further but then it just ended. I haven't explored BlackJackJonnyy's stuff yet because it seemed like I was missing something and there might be more to the basic tutorials. Edit: Found another set by a different guy, seems like good stuff, I'll watch those in the meantime, might learn what I need to know. Edit 2: So I watched these - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hw_B2EMH0ws - and while they started off good, there are lots of holes (like the explanation of Worldspawn settings, or texture alignment, etc.) Anyone know any other good, more in depth Radiant guides/books/whatever? Feeling a bit stuck, and I'd like to learn this. caldrax fucked around with this message at 04:30 on Jan 31, 2013 |
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Jan 30, 2013 06:11
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Amazing OP and amazing advice. Hoping to put up a megapost of questions when I'm not in class, I've never been so thankful for Goons.
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Jan 31, 2013 18:51
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caldrax posted:Anyone know any other good, more in depth Radiant guides/books/whatever? Feeling a bit stuck, and I'd like to learn this. Thats the issue  Theres not much. GTKRadiant and W@W Radiant tutorials may be helpful. As a designer we don't really have to worry about worldspawn settings, the director/art leads all mess with that. Texture alignment can be done with SHIFT + arrow keys with a face selected. I wouldn't really worry about that much either.EDIT: If you want to add me on steam I can try to answer any questions you may have: http://steamcommunity.com/id/irishtaxidriver Irish Taxi Driver fucked around with this message at 19:15 on Jan 31, 2013 |
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Jan 31, 2013 19:09
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Do any studios/games still use radiant for actual brush building? I know idtech5 still uses it for pvs/sound occlusion, triggers and some other "tech" stuff, but everything else is just plonking out static meshes. Working with Radiant/idStudio can be a quite smooth experience once you learn all the quirks and gotchas.
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Jan 31, 2013 19:15
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czg posted:Do any studios/games still use radiant for actual brush building? CoD in every incarnation runs on a modified Quake 3 engine, so we all still rely pretty heavily on Radiant's BSP/CSG tools. It still looks fantastic with some great art direction. Unreal / static meshes really bother me because I just see everything repeating meshes / models all over the place. Borderlands is a big offender in this to me. Outside of us though, probably no one still using radiant. Hammer is still brush based but no one uses it. Irish Taxi Driver fucked around with this message at 19:26 on Jan 31, 2013 |
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Jan 31, 2013 19:21
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The Quake 3 engine is the engine that will never die...
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Jan 31, 2013 19:30
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Irish Taxi Driver posted:Unreal / static meshes really bother me because I just see everything repeating meshes / models all over the place. Borderlands is a big offender in this to me. Part of this may be just rationalization, just because I love the engine, but I have the same problem--you can run into lots of obvious repetition if you're not very careful, when you're using meshes and models to build your world. There's something awesome about just being able to build whatever as a designer and have it look quite good if you spend some time and effort on it, even as typical environmental polycounts continue to rise. (And then you can always supplement with models and meshes where they'll do the most good.) (Yeah, I could have just walked down to the other end of the building and told ITD this directly. I'm lazy. Shut up.) Also, holy poo poo, it's czg. Old school in the house... 
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Jan 31, 2013 19:55
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aas Bandit posted:(Yeah, I could have just walked down to the other end of the building and told ITD this directly. I'm lazy. Shut up.) You couldn't have, I was out to lunch. I do have some cupcakes here, they're not poisoned if you'd like one. I didn't send out an email because I only have 5. EDIT: And yeah, I also have a personal bias towards brush based stuff. Irish Taxi Driver fucked around with this message at 20:32 on Jan 31, 2013 |
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Jan 31, 2013 20:29
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Hi pjw! Yeah I still love brushes too, but I also enjoy the freedom from the grid that meshes give you. I knew the cods still ran on "q3", but I figured they too were mostly meshes nowadays. Looking at those vids though I can see the brushes/patches shining through. It's still pretty impressive what you can pull off with such an "old" technique. Syndicate was built using brushes too. The problem with overly repetitive instancing is pretty much a non-issue in idtech5 since you can just stamp everything to look unique anyway.
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Jan 31, 2013 21:16
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aas Bandit posted:Part of this may be just rationalization, just because I love the engine, but I have the same problem--you can run into lots of obvious repetition if you're not very careful, when you're using meshes and models to build your world. There's something awesome about just being able to build whatever as a designer and have it look quite good if you spend some time and effort on it, even as typical environmental polycounts continue to rise. (And then you can always supplement with models and meshes where they'll do the most good.) If you spend a ton of time hand-modelling with brush, you can do some incredible things... but you just spent a week on a single room, and there's no time to make the rest of the world look that pretty, and everyone's left looking at you kind of funny. Besides, you can do the same thing instanced mesh-side, but the process is less coupled and more possible to parallelize. You assign X art time, and the artist makes as many cool assets as they can, and then the designer uses those assets. Want a more unique environment? Up the art time. Nice and clean, instead of a big hairy mass of "just go away and I'll make you a beautiful map in 3 months - trust me." CoD is a great example of it, actually. All that man power, and... how much SP did they manage? 4 hours? Granted, it has an MP focus and limited map count, so maybe this is the one time where spending a ton of time per map makes sense (given that those are your ENTIRE game), but in a game like Borderlands? That would be suicide. I'd much rather have a big environment to explore than one city block - no matter how beautiful that city block might be. EDIT: Note that I am a graphics programmer, though, so I basically hate unique meshed environments. "BUT MY BEAUTIFUL VIDEO MEMORY!" EDIT: VV Congrats! Shalinor fucked around with this message at 23:11 on Jan 31, 2013 |
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Jan 31, 2013 21:43
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Just wanted to let people know that I'm the new Global Community Manager on the Dead Space 3 team here at fabulous Electronic Arts! I've been here a couple weeks and it's pretty great.
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Jan 31, 2013 23:07
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JosephStalinVEVO posted:Just wanted to let people know that I'm the new Global Community Manager on the Dead Space 3 team here at fabulous Electronic Arts! No you're not. Duncan is. You're clearly Joseph Stalin.
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Jan 31, 2013 23:10
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Looks like Ubisoft is looking for a junior technical artist. I knew I should have learnt some MaxScript... https://jobsearch.direct.gov.uk/GetJob.aspx?JobID=771445
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Feb 1, 2013 00:14
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Shalinor posted:The other side of this argument, though, is that the world is naturally repetitive. Art emplacements and fancy architecture and the like aside, the interior of most homes can be pretty cookie cutter, never even mind offices. Desk fans and cubicle dividers don't have a ton of variance beyond color / etc. So instanced meshes might result in slightly repetitive environmental deco, but in many cases that's not a bad thing, and it always means you're able to produce more content faster. I agree, but repetition is more visible in games and I see companies get blasted for it constantly. We do a lot of instanced content, so while... Shalinor posted:If you spend a ton of time hand-modelling with brush, you can do some incredible things... but you just spent a week on a single room, and there's no time to make the rest of the world look that pretty, and everyone's left looking at you kind of funny. Besides, you can do the same thing instanced mesh-side, but the process is less coupled and more possible to parallelize. You assign X art time, and the artist makes as many cool assets as they can, and then the designer uses those assets. Want a more unique environment? Up the art time. Nice and clean, instead of a big hairy mass of "just go away and I'll make you a beautiful map in 3 months - trust me." ...this may be true, we are actually working in parallel. The prefab system we use means we just cut a level into chunks and you get that answer from 5 people in a team instead of 1. Put in a scripting layer, now the scripters can be parallel, audio, art, performance, etc. I've never worked with a mesh based system so I can't really speak about the advantages/disadvantages, but I don't get why it could be faster or more efficient from just reading wikipedia info on it. It just sounds like art would churn out props and designers would place them, instead of designers handing art a level and they take it from there. Has anyone worked with both here? Shalinor posted:CoD is a great example of it, actually. All that man power, and... how much SP did they manage? 4 hours? Granted, it has an MP focus and limited map count, so maybe this is the one time where spending a ton of time per map makes sense (given that those are your ENTIRE game), but in a game like Borderlands? That would be suicide. I'd much rather have a big environment to explore than one city block - no matter how beautiful that city block might be. Does anyone want to play COD singleplayer for more than four hours? Its basically explosion after explosion and ridiculous situations. I think if we tried to do a more elaborate thing for singleplayer we could produce something interesting, but as it stands I think it would wear me down. Theres only so many interesting soldier variations you could fight. I'm just using Borderlands as an example because their style really highlights the repetition, and Borderlands 2 just made it a little worse by re-using most of the content. That drat metal plate is everywhere. I think a game that had really good use of a mesh based system was Rage, but that was because they put an insane amount of effort into it. Irish Taxi Driver fucked around with this message at 00:58 on Feb 1, 2013 |
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Feb 1, 2013 00:48
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I interviewed for a CS position at Trion today, and I ran into that typical problem where they ask me if I have any more questions and my brain goes "oh poo poo oh poo poo oh poo poo I can't think of anything else". For anyone who does interviews at their company, what are considered good questions for potential hires to ask, and how many questions do you prefer them to have? My imagination went dry after about four and I'm worried that might have botched the whole thing.
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Feb 1, 2013 01:48
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miscellaneous14 posted:I interviewed for a CS position at Trion today, and I ran into that typical problem where they ask me if I have any more questions and my brain goes "oh poo poo oh poo poo oh poo poo I can't think of anything else". For anyone who does interviews at their company, what are considered good questions for potential hires to ask, and how many questions do you prefer them to have? My imagination went dry after about four and I'm worried that might have botched the whole thing. I only did programmer interviews, and the general question period usually is handled by HR rather than tech, so I can't really comment on that side of things. But after bungling that question period a few times and feeling particularly dumb from it, I started writing down those questions in advance and printing them. And I just bring out that sheet, explaining that I'd rather not forget to ask something. For what it's worth, the only 2 offers I ever got were after I started doing this. But that's mostly just from better confidence and preparation. As for questions themselves, I've always personally avoided questions on specific conditions and salary. Those are better left until you get an actual offer, I think. I've gotten in the habit of asking about general benefits and convenience (i.e.: is there some soda/vending machines/etc., is there some sort of game room, are there any gym arrangements, is there somewhere I can lock up my bike after my commute, etc.) as well as core hours and the possibility of telecommuting. I normally also jot down some things about company culture, just to show an interest beyond the job proper. Incidentally, the answers I got regarding said company culture were what ultimately made me choose between the aforementioned 2 offers. Edit: vvvvv Oh god yeah, crunch too. Jan fucked around with this message at 02:06 on Feb 1, 2013 |
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Feb 1, 2013 01:59
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miscellaneous14 posted:I interviewed for a CS position at Trion today, and I ran into that typical problem where they ask me if I have any more questions and my brain goes "oh poo poo oh poo poo oh poo poo I can't think of anything else". For anyone who does interviews at their company, what are considered good questions for potential hires to ask, and how many questions do you prefer them to have? My imagination went dry after about four and I'm worried that might have botched the whole thing. The best questions to ask are the ones who's answers you genuinely want to know. One of mine is usually about crunch and their company's attitudes toward it, for example.
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Feb 1, 2013 02:04
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Irish Taxi Driver posted:Does anyone want to play COD singleplayer for more than four hours? Its basically explosion after explosion and ridiculous situations. I think if we tried to do a more elaborate thing for singleplayer we could produce something interesting, but as it stands I think it would wear me down. Theres only so many interesting soldier variations you could fight. Agreed, at least within the very narrow confines of what makes up CoD's Single Player game mechanics. I'm a pretty huge fan of CoD's multiplayer (especially Blops 2!) and I've been thinking for the longest time that CoD SPs biggest downfall is the lack of choice on a strategic and tactical level, in managing individual firefights, squad command, deciding for yourself what objectives should be and how you should proceed to accomplish them or even the choice to attempt to avoid firefights altogether. Instead you have a designated NPC to follow and you have control of your own two feet, your gun and you are rarely trusted by the game with anything more than that. I guess that's the problem with attempting to emulate the cinematic Hollywood experience. Man, Brothers In Arms had so much promise, just a shame it didn't take off brilliantly. 
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Feb 1, 2013 02:05
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miscellaneous14 posted:I interviewed for a CS position at Trion today, and I ran into that typical problem where they ask me if I have any more questions and my brain goes "oh poo poo oh poo poo oh poo poo I can't think of anything else". For anyone who does interviews at their company, what are considered good questions for potential hires to ask, and how many questions do you prefer them to have? My imagination went dry after about four and I'm worried that might have botched the whole thing. It's not a huge deal to not have too many questions, but it is kind of expected that you will both be able to come up with a few ahead of time, and a few during the day. There's a few categories of questions to ask. At the highest level, there's the ice-breaker, soft questions, like "What's your favorite place to eat around here for lunch?" or "What's your favorite feature you worked on in a game?". Then there's the serious question you'll ask that the answers help you out just as much as the people looking to hire you. Things like "Where does your company plan to be in 5 years?" "Does your company plan to grow into new genres / platforms / monetization, or focus on its current size?" Much of the time these questions aren't going to influence whether you will take the job or not, but it will give you a better idea of the work environment, and the people you'll work with. Sometimes you will get a red flag, maybe you're trying to escape working on a platform, like Kinect, and the answer to the studios five year goal might be "We want to transition into the motion controller space, we're excited about the Kinect". Extra curricular stuff is also great to ask about. "Does anyone play board games after hours?" or "Is there a casual sports thing people do?" are good to ask, especially because these activities are an easier way to join yourself into a studio's culture.
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Feb 1, 2013 02:08
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Jan posted:As for questions themselves, I've always personally avoided questions on specific conditions and salary. Those are better left until you get an actual offer, I think. I avoid asking about pay like the plague. The questions I did ask though, were something like: "How long have you been working here?" "What do you think about the company?" "Have you played the game very much?" (this is one I only use for MMO companies) "Is this position focusing on telephone or ticket support?" In general I don't like saying no to them asking if I have more questions, as my best interviews were when I always had a question for them until the interview itself was over. I'm definitely going to write down a few of the ones suggested so far, so this helps. The stressful part of all this though, is that it was my only interview in the last couple months just because the QA/support job prospects in Austin are so terrible right now.
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Feb 1, 2013 02:11
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Chainclaw posted:Then there's the serious question you'll ask that the answers help you out just as much as the people looking to hire you. Things like "Where does your company plan to be in 5 years?" "Does your company plan to grow into new genres / platforms / monetization, or focus on its current size?" I try to spend a lot of time finding out about the company, about the role of the position I'm taking, about the roles of my interviewers, they long-term views on things. I want to know a lot about the culture of the company and how that influences the end product they make. Do your research about it as well, it's good to have some jumping off points about the company/interviewers/etc, if at all possible. These are the kinds of stuff I'd consider important, but I'll also echo that it's unlikely to make or break an interview. Much less so for lower level positions, but increasingly important for higher level ones.
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Feb 1, 2013 02:23
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miscellaneous14 posted:For anyone who does interviews at their company, what are considered good questions for potential hires to ask, and how many questions do you prefer them to have? I like when people ask LOTS of questions during interviews, not just at the end. A free-flowing conversation is usually best, but I always ask if they have anything else they're curious about at the end (as well as giving them my card in case they have followups later). It shows they want it to be a good fit for them and not just a job in general. Some of my favorites to be asked: "What do you think I could do during my first month/quarter/year here to have the biggest impact?" "Why should I NOT want to work here?" "What reservations do you have about hiring me after talking?" "What's the development environment/toolchain/etc look like?" "How fast are your iteration times between hitting save on a file and seeing it in-game?"
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Feb 1, 2013 03:00
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Just got an email from Microsoft, talking up Windows 8's number of downloads... and then offering a free copy of Halo 4 if I publish an app on their store, and mentioning how "every app gets you an entry for 1 of 12 Xbox 360 consoles with Kinect."  Are they really doing that poorly? Or maybe this was just someone's really confused idea of "what game developers want"? ... I mean, I don't know, it seems like maybe they should talk up... revenue shares, or advertising incentives, or number of impressions apps on their store get, or... you know, any of those things a software developer publishing to their app store might give a honk about? Shalinor fucked around with this message at 03:08 on Feb 1, 2013 |
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Feb 1, 2013 03:06
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Bribe them with merch, that will convince them to throw themselves under the bus for us!
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Feb 1, 2013 03:08
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MS wasn't/isn't really trying to woo developers to the Surface. It's weird given how much they pushed MSDN licenses and Xbox in years past. I blame them being entirely separate divisions and not having any real idea how to do it.
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Feb 1, 2013 03:13
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