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You're dreaming you lucky jerk 
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Jun 9, 2011 16:32
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Got an email today from Raven about a design internship they want me to interview for! Hooray!
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Jun 16, 2011 03:11
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Yeah, I've got my list from the Treyarch interview a month ago. Still don't know why I didn't get that 
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Jun 16, 2011 05:16
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Sigma-X posted:
I honestly never heard that while going there. But the parking spaces analogy was all over the place. aas Bandit posted:It's a good place to work. I'm currently enjoying a Friday-afternoon beer and some yay-we-hit-a-milestone pie. I'm really excited about it! My phone interviews on Monday 
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Jun 17, 2011 23:56
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Alterian posted:That's so weird. I swear when I went we had a brick city festival. (homecoming) Oh no I meant Sigma's nickname. Yeah the brick city stuff is all over the place. Imagine was last month and the questions I got about our work was hilarious.
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Jun 18, 2011 17:15
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Solus posted:And I shall model them poorly. You're gonna make poo poo. You're gonna make a lot of poo poo. What will help you out is recognizing why its poo poo and how to fix it in your next piece, or knowing when its unsalvagable or the idea is bad and dropping it. Rinse and repeat (for a long time). I gotta echo the old love for the book Art and Fear for anyone whos looking to get into a creative field. I just started reading it on a car trip and made it a few chapters in. You think Picasso or Michaelangelo popped out being able to make Guernica or the Sistine Chapel Ceiling? Or that they look exactly like what they pictured in their minds?
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Jun 20, 2011 17:25
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I think its just a really bad idea in general to pigeonhole yourself like that even if the degree wasn't a piece of poo poo. What happens if you graduate with a Game Design degree and you have to get a normal job?
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Jun 22, 2011 16:20
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Amrosorma posted:When did the thread title change? As a game designer, I miss the old one < Commentary on all of us who keep posting about interviews. Andio posted:I have a second interview for the Associate Producer position on Monday 27th, after having a phone interview earlier this week. Yeah I think I hosed up the Raven interview pretty bad due to being nervous. I didn't really have much time to prepare for it and it really showed, then in my haste I typo'd a URL in the follow up email after. Its really stupid stuff to beat myself up over, but I'll be really surprised if the guy contacts me again.
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Jun 22, 2011 18:02
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I'm gonna be a level builder/design intern at Raven! 
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Jul 8, 2011 20:39
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Monster w21 Faces posted:Congratulations! I'm looking forward to seeing what those guys are working on. I think Singularity is the best game they've ever made. I had a lot of fun playing that. The guy that interviewed me was pretty new himself so he didn't work on it. I didn't get to gush about it. We shared some frustration over Left 4 Dead versus and how my girlfriend's objection to the word arcadey was wrong because they use it all the time 
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Jul 8, 2011 20:58
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Super Slash posted:This has the most beautiful piles of garbage renders I've ever seen... wow. In general (because I made the same mistakes): -I'd nuke the biography and replace it with the resume. Its much more important and needs to be a tab. -All your screenshots need your name and your email at the very least! -A better browsing method for your screenshots. I'd recommend lightbox. Really easy to set up and use. -Talk about your levels more! You have small blurbs on the story. Tell me how you built them! -Give me some download links. Especially for Sandtrapped and CTF_Barnyard. I want to run around them. My experience is with Source so let me write you some  on those pieces:CTF_Barnyard Honestly, I'd remove this. I don't think its very impressive and it feels very flat. If you want to keep it though: The lighting skews towards RED so the BLU base is entirely in darkness. A lot of your lights it only looks like you're using the generic light entity. Valve tends to use a combination of this and a light spot. If you're using light spots, I'd bump up their values by at least double. I see a lot of texture seams, like in shot 1 on the blue roof to the far right, and shot 5 with the cinder block texture on the right. Your interior spaces look too big and don't feel composed very well. A way to combat this would be cielings, open them up a bit more and embrace the structure's shape, like a barn's slanted roof or the space that interior supports create. The canyon walls really bug me. One of TF2's greatest strengths is in what you can get away with as level boundaries, be it a picket fence or a giant stop sign. Rock walls feel out of place and really make it more claustrophobic. They're nice looking displacements, I'll give you that. Whats that metal support doing over the center of the map? The ground displacements are flat. Vary the terrain up, use the alpha displacement stuff, add some truck tracks for where the trucks drive (they can also do double duty acting as directional signs for players!). I like the previous shots but I don't have any form of comparison for how they look now. Why did you change them? What was the problem? Tell me your fix! I need a level overview shot! You need to talk about the level more at the very least. Skill Atoms are good knowledge for developers, yeah, but I want to know why you built the map this way, what research you conducted, how the space evolved, how play tests went, etc. Train Station quote:Please note that this video is due for re-editing to include the proper lighting which the level was built with, as the current lack of any real lighting is not representative of the final piece. You need to do this. The fullbright is really annoying me and that disclaimer made me want to avoid the video. Sandtrapped I'd say this is your best source piece, though I think the video is too long and you need to talk about the design processes.
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Jul 29, 2011 04:31
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aas Bandit posted:Congrats. Enjoy the madness. Hey! I started today. I'm over by the QA people.
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Aug 8, 2011 18:31
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So, first week at Raven is over: I'm having a lot of fun! The work is right in line with what I'm used to doing, and it was pretty easy to get set up and going. Its insane to be working with some of the people who inspired me to want to do design for a living. I'm working with people who worked on Heretic! I remember my dad bringing that home and playing it with him most of the night! Getting swag left and right, working with my idols, I can't believe I'm doing this!
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Aug 13, 2011 09:33
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Black Eagle posted:Even scarier, there are many developers who share these ideas. Most of their games won't see the light of day, but they're still there, waiting for their big chance to make the ultimate blockbuster. If only someone would take a chance on my dota/halo/tf2/wow/cod like mmorpg 
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Aug 16, 2011 23:57
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Solus posted:so an MMO version of Monday Night combat in space? I dunno, I was trying to throw out a bunch of games that couldn't mix, should've thrown a racing game and a card game in too.
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Aug 17, 2011 00:11
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Sigma-X posted:Obviously you have a microtransactions store to buy new cards right? Also your car gets advertising decals for targeted ads unless you pay to deck it out in microtransaction designs. Additionally you have to pay for gas. But don't worry, the game comes with a $50 virtual gas card.
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Aug 17, 2011 05:07
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I overheard one of the UI guys talking about a bug someone sent in, saying (the game in general) wasn't enough like the previous game. I could feel the heat from rage two cubicle rows away.
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Aug 20, 2011 01:09
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krysmopompas posted:Oh that's nothing; you should hear us at 2:30 AM. Oh yeah I'm sure. I've only been here two weeks and heard that last wednesday. I imagine if I had to clear the bug queue I'd be sending the QA people notes in my own blood.
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Aug 20, 2011 04:36
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Fishbus posted:Please tell me all about it, i'd love to hear what happened. Prefabs in Radiant own. I wish they worked this way in hammer.
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Aug 22, 2011 21:59
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NinjaShteve posted:Do you guys know any studios with internship programs that are available during the winter? I'm going into my senior year and I still don't have an internship and OU has an abysmal internship pool for game dev as of yet. You could try the various big publisher's (EA, Activision, Ubisoft, Zenimax, etc) job sites. They keep a big list of all the open jobs in the studios they own in one place.
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Sep 1, 2011 16:40
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Aliginge posted:Not to turn this too much into chat about a particular game, but working on games definitely gives me more of an appreciation that there are real people behind these games pouring themselves into it. Being faced with nothing but the corporate front of a game development team really detaches you from that reality I think. Yeah, its really strange being on this side of the wall. It was so easy to criticize games before, now actually talking to a bunch of people behind some of my favorite games I can get the whole picture. I think it should be mandatory that all games have a developer commentary.
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Sep 12, 2011 14:34
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Akuma posted:Generally people really don't have much of an idea of the reality of development and all the politics it entails, so anything that's less than perfect must just down to apathy of some kind. Yeah its really blowing my mind just being on the other side of the wall for a month. I will be more kind to games in the future.
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Sep 12, 2011 17:54
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Shindragon posted:Probably my biggest beef with complains is how far some go with insulting the game or developer. Calling them a hack, or a loser. I kinda feel like you need someone to just metaphorically poo poo on your heart at least once. It may suck for a while, but once you rebound from it you'll be a lot better off. Also applicable, Gob punching you after insulting your game. So the next time its better.
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Sep 12, 2011 21:12
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DancingMachine posted:My understanding is that Epic is pretty awful in terms of work-life balance. Great place for single early-twenty-somethings who want their life to be pretty much 100% about making video games, probably not so great for the rest of us. They work 10-12 hour days by default as far as I know. Their reasoning was just they naturally do this.
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Sep 22, 2011 14:59
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Shalinor posted:It isn't just that, though. Valve has hired people from all walks of life. I know they hired... what was it, a historian? An archeologist? Something like that. Valve recently hired a man who was reponsible for completely breaking the item system in TF2 at least 3 times over. When he was notifying them of a mistake in an update, Robin Walker (head TF2 guy) emailed back that someone was going to get fired. He emailed back his resume and they brought him in for an interview. During the interview one of the guys said "I know we've never met, but you've created a lot of work for me in the past." But yeah, I'm not suprised Valves the endgame for nearly everyone. Its a developers paradise. No publisher breathing down your neck, no shareholders, no worrying about money. Its a total anomaly. Irish Taxi Driver fucked around with this message at 19:50 on Sep 23, 2011 |
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Sep 23, 2011 19:48
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floofyscorp posted:Not me! I love Valve's attitude and it does sound like a great place to work, but most of their games haven't really grabbed me, visually. They look nice, sure, but nothing's made me sit up and say 'holy poo poo this is a pretty game'. That's why my list is topped by Blizzard and followed by places like Arenanet(I played GW2 today and spent 20 minutes in the character creation screens my god it's beautiful) and Three Rings(I really like Spiral Knights okay) I said nearly everyone! There are a few exceptions in the thread too. Blizzard would be... interesting.
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Sep 24, 2011 00:36
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Sam. posted:Doesn't Source still use some code from Quake? Yeah, Source is just built overtop of Goldsource. aas Bandit posted:Um...what? Call of Duty games, just to use one example, are still bsp. Yes, there are lots of models (props, vehicles, weapons, anything super intricate), but bsp is the majority of a level--not just some sort of planning skeleton, but the actual visible final level. There are in-editor created curve primitives and terrain meshes along with those, but the majority is still plain old brushes. Yeah, pretty much anything descended from Quake still uses BSP in some capacity. Does tech 5 still use BSP or has it shifted towards entirely CSG?
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Sep 26, 2011 01:36
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Vino posted:And things like octrees and hardware occlusion culling for scene management. One of the primary reasons for BSP was to ensure that things "around the corner" weren't rendered, but we don't really have the same poly limits anymore and our environments are very open, so BSP doesn't make much sense. It still uses BSP pretty heavily, actually. Those meshes are displacement brushes. They're not solid though, so it needs an invisible brush under it to actually seal the world. Portal 2 relied pretty heavily on BSP architecture.
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Sep 26, 2011 09:11
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Vino posted:I wasn't talking about displacements, I was talking about static props. I think we're disagreeing on different things. What I'm trying to say is that the BSP in Source doesn't have any detail, only large strokes are done with BSP and the rest is filled in with static props. In Portal 2, the basic rooms (large square boxes) were done with BSP, but then everything else was a static prop or decal or what have you. If you look at a screenshot like this, the only BSP surfaces you're seeing are probably the floor and maybe part of the walls. Everything else is a static mesh or prop or some kind. In some places in the game like when you trekked between testing chambers, there's probably times when you didn't see any BSP brushes at all. They would have been black and too far in the darkness to see. Nah, even if you take into account prop usage they still use a lot of BSP brushes for detail the props can't do. Portals can't be placed on props or displacements, for example. They hid it pretty well, you never have to place portals around heavy prop usage. Trust me, I've looked through most of the maps, at least in decompiled form, and I've done a lot of mapping for this! Their source maps included with the authoring tools also show some heavy brush usage. I know what you're saying, they're using a lot more models than they used to do, at least compared with L4D1/2, HL2 and TF2, but they still use quite a bit of brushes. Thats actually not a screenshot, its concept art. See all the extra detail on the right side and the broad strokes on the ceiling? EDIT: Lemme get home and I'll post a shot of one of the sources from the authoring tools. EDIT #2: Okay heres the speed fling puzzle from the old aperture sections in the giant spheres. Props on:  Props off: 
Irish Taxi Driver fucked around with this message at 00:08 on Sep 27, 2011 |
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Sep 26, 2011 23:31
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Fishbus posted:Might want to turn off detail brushes too. I left them on because there weren't many in that scene.
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Sep 27, 2011 14:45
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Sigma-X posted:Feels weird posting this having not bothered owning hosting for like the last 3 years but here is a thing - my portfolio: Feels a little confrontational and sarcastic. Like the "Guns (Obviously)" thing, and the last line of your preamble. It feels unprofessional. I'd get rid of the "Site best at 1920x1200." tag. You should design for all resolutions. I know you're a big fan of just having everything laid out like that, but it feels unorganized. From looking at your source you've just got a whole bunch of IMG tags right after each other. I'd suggest some headers and maybe even break them into general categories like Robots and Guns. I'd also use something like Lightbox to thumbnail and display the images. Its mad easy to group sets that should be grouped via params on the img tags, and its just a little extra javascript. On a javascript note, see if you can install Open Web Analytics on your server. Dreamhost has this as an option in the dashboard if you're using them. Also as a nitpicky thing from looking at your source, you should group everything into div tags. It makes it super easy to modify layouts with CSS and saves time later when you want to gracefully add or remove content. EDIT: Also your text isn't in <p> tags!!! EDIT #2: Also, wheres your email? Email on pictures would be good. Irish Taxi Driver fucked around with this message at 02:29 on Sep 30, 2011 |
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Sep 30, 2011 02:19
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Shalinor posted:At most, look into WordPress, and don't go crazy with coding your own everything. I coded my site from scratch in PHP, it wasn't terribly difficult, probably a few hours a day for two or three days (most of this was probably image related, be it watermarks, resizing, or building graphics/deciding the theme). If you're familiar with the coding, why not? EDIT: Well that was directed at Sigma who might not know. Nevermind. Irish Taxi Driver fucked around with this message at 16:59 on Sep 30, 2011 |
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Sep 30, 2011 16:54
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Sigma-X posted:If it didn't resize the vids and the images for you please let me know what browser you're using? Nah it did, its just something from my Web Dev class. My professor is screaming in the back of my head "YOU DESIGN FOR ALL BROWSERS AND RESOLUTIONS! YOU FAIL!". Sigma-X posted:Are you talking about the "it paid off" or the line immediately prior? Guns (obviously) is meant to be sarcastic but I didn't want it to come off as confrontational. It feels like you're saying "These are guns IN CASE YOU DIDN'T KNOW." Like you're insulting my intelligence. I don't know, sarcasm when you're trying to impress someone just comes off wrong to me. This entire block rubbed me the wrong way: Sigma-X posted:I am self taught and spent most of my time in college dodging business classes to work on games with my programmer friends before graduating from the Rochester Institute of Technology. It paid off. It says to me: "I totally skirted the rules and blew off responsibilities!" and makes me feel like you might have a problem following assignments. Sigma-X posted:As for the site design stuff: B) I'd probably seperate them by content type, so yeah. Robots, Guns, and then without headings inside of that you can filter by game. So RFA first, RFG next, SR3 (guessing), etc. C) That'd just be false promises then, if the person went there looking for your expertise in robots you just tricked them into seeing everything. Which MIGHT be what you're looking for, but I'm not a recruiter so I can't say how they would feel. D) Yeah its just for organizing. If you feel its fine, then its fine. E) Divs are also for organization. It makes it easier to go in with CSS and reformat/redesign if you suddenly decide you hate how your site looks. F) Its W3C standards for all text on a site to be encased in tags, which no one outside of the web design industry cares about. Also CSS formatting stuff. Feel free to ignore it. G) That'd probably help a lot with my disorganized feeling. Sigma-X posted:Trolling through my source you probably noticed the OMG I DONT KNOW WHAT IM DOING comment - I haven't put together an actual website in over 4 years and so none of my coding choices/standards/etc are any sort of informed decision - I am really pretty ignorant of how all this poo poo works. I was delighted when I was able to modify the javascript that resizes my youtube videos to cap them at a size, which is about the simplest modification you can make, to give an idea of my web proficiency. Its totally fine, you're an artist and not expected to know this. PHP is pretty easy to learn if you're familiar with the basics of programming, and super easy to work with HTML and CSS to quickly build a nasty site. Sigma-X posted:Is it obvious to anyone that the end-cap image will let you return to the top? I'm assuming it is not. It was to me. It was a little nerd cred and it works.
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Sep 30, 2011 17:39
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Bash Ironfist posted:Hey, question for you guys. Since I'm not working, I have a lot of free time on my hands between putting in applications and general job-hunting. I was wondering how hard it would be to teach myself to be able to write web pages? I figure I should do something productive with my down time, and it could be a useful skill to have. Any advise on this would be appreciated! Its pretty easy. I learned PHP through college but its really easy to pick up if you have prior programming experience. If thats too much, theres always HTML. For both sites you can use something like W3 Schools.
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Sep 30, 2011 19:18
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Any other studios participating in the Extra Life 24 hour video game marathon tomorrow? I know a whole bunch of the Activision studios are. Ravens catering us!  (Also just passed Treyarch in donations!)
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Oct 15, 2011 01:14
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ceebee posted:Trion will be participating. We're having huuuge zone events and prizes and poo poo. Hope it all goes well and we raise some money for dem sick kids! Yeah you guys are destroying everyone else. Way to raise 24k for charity about it.
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Oct 15, 2011 07:08
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Chainclaw posted:Wasn't Call of Juarez developed in Poland? Yeah. The "Gold and Lead" thing sounds like a translator didn't get it.
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Oct 19, 2011 23:24
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What game? Also congratulations. I'd love to deathmatch with Romero.
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Oct 22, 2011 09:54
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Whole bunch of highschoolers visiting today, I feel super cool. EDIT: I feel this every day, but today its a little more super.
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Oct 25, 2011 16:43
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Sigma-X posted:Especially because most of us were there doing the same thing. At 13 I was going to get a job with my Red Alert Total Conversion that was turning all the units into kids toys (I did not have 3d software so I was drawing sprites in Paint Shop Pro. There are about 300 frames for their infantry). I organized and ran a clan and WE WERE ALL GOING TO BE PRO GAMERS. I designed an MMO that was going to be Everquest but better. Then 7 years later World of Warcraft came out! Jerks I used to keep a journal when I was younger where I'd write a plot for a game sequel I knew was coming (like Final Fantasy 8 and 9) and see how close I got to the actual plot. I only got one of these dead on, and that was the Lord of Destruction expansion for Diablo 2. I felt awesome about that.
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Oct 26, 2011 16:15
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