kyyrma

Buddy, you are aware that P4R is a satire website? Nothing posted there is true. You'd think one with old-school gaming skills could have deducted that Usually they are pretty subtle, but articles like this or this should give will give it off.

This is a bit off-topic, but I'd like to know. How did the course go? How many lectures / working hours did it consist of, or was it more of a single workshop? Did the students have a specific goal? How old were the students? How did they take to using DR and the gameplay of The Dark Mod in general? I'm sorry about all the questions, but I've been thinking of holding some sort of course for young people aspiring to work in the game business, so I'm naturally interested

Unfortunately this rarely works out well. Designers create a game around those systems (there is simply no way a team would have enough time to balance each level for both the players playing with and without quest markers, loot glint, awareness indicators, etc. any variations thereof) and when you disable them, you'll run into situations where the level doesn't flow as intended. A very good example would be the Professional mode in Hitman Absolution, which is an absolute trainwreck. Or disabling item glow in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, which also made the weakened walls invisible. Or trying to play Splinter Cell: Blacklist without the slow-mo instant takedown ability, where it is painfully obvious many rooms have guard placement set with Mark & Execute in mind. [rant] This is really something that I hate about modern games in general. I think looking at The Elder Scrolls is a good example. In Morrowind you would find books that describe vaguely a hidden ruin or something similar. Sometimes you even updated your journal automatically with this information. You could then decide to go and search for this hidden ruin in your own power, uncovering more clues as you go. When you finally put all the clues together and found the place it was an amazing feeling. In Oblivion and Skyrim, you would open a book and BAM, you have a new quest "Find the lost artifact." Activate that quest and you get a quest marker pointing you right at the goddamn location, even if it wasn't even mentioned in the whole book! Its terrible, lazy, instant gratification. And I wonder who it caters to, as games like Minecraft are immensely popular which to me suggests that people still like to actively explore the unknown instead of being spoonfed everything. [/rant]

While I see your point, the problem often is that people are really bad at evaluating what they can actually pull of in that limited timeframe. Especially if we are trying to get new, possibly first time mappers to join in the competition. For example in LD I think less than half of the projects started actually ever get finished, but that works in contest where there are thousands of participants. But still, just my 2 cents.

I agree that a month would be a good timeframe. How would you all feel about limiting the size of the build? So that the level has to fit for example within a certain doomunits x doomunits cube, or that it can only have a certain number of rooms? I think having further limitations could help contestants avoid making overambitious levels while being more creative what little space they get.

Lots of really disheartening things in that video, although they have fixed some of their previous bad decisions like XP. The loot glint is really obnoxious, and seeing icons above the guards saying things like "Alert!" is ridiculous. Do they think players don't want to be immersed these days? Here is another video, that was new to me at least: It features some more icons popping out of guards, and the worst hidden safe in the history of hiding things. I'm afraid every house will have that identical "oddly protruding painting" that highlights when you get closer than five meters to it.

Just want to say that your experimentation with this is really interesting. Not much else to contribute unfortunately, but I'll be keeping a close eye on this thread

Has there been any speed-building competitions before? I'm a big fan of competitions like the Ludum Dare where contestants have a very short timeframe to finish something playable. Sometimes giving people clear limitations can bring out really cool projects. Limiting the timeframe is one thing, but you could also do things like limit the size of the level (as an example of a similar contest, Doomworlds Congestion 1024 maps are some of the most clever Doom maps ever IMO). Having a deadline can motivate some developers to finally finish something, and once you have that first project under your belt its much easier to continue creating and publishing content. Another idea I could put forward is a community level. This wouldn't be a contest per se, but a project where each participant would for example furnish and detail a single room in larger build.

Looking great Sotha. One observation though. the timing of the audio is a bit off. There is a period of silent peeing from 0:13 to 0:15. It's a minor issue, but something that is very noticeable at least in that video. Are you using the gentle_trickle.ogg? It sounds quite similar, but it seems much shorter.

Great work! Try this sound if you are going for a more softer, stream of piss hitting the soft ground sort of effect: http://freesound.org.../sounds/119927/ Comes with CC0 license, so we are free to use it for whatever. Edit: Here is an edited version I made of that one. I tried to make it less sharp and more soft in sound, and also converted it to .ogg.

It is a cultural thing I think. Nudity is not a big deal in Europe, and even less in Nordic countries where for example bathing naked together is a very natural occurance. But on the other side of the ocean, cultural tolerance for nudity has developed differently. For me personally, in this case I see it just as a function vs. aesthetic kind of thing. You can't see even a peek of the nipples of a female model, her breasts are glued to her rather generous top. Same thing with peeking upskirt. The modellers could have added all that detail, and by golly it would have been more immersive and realistic, but would it be necessary for the purposes of a stealth game? Not exactly. Doesn't really matter to me either way, I'm just glad you are looking into it Sotha!

And to be honest, TDM already has guards getting wood from being knocked out. It couldn't be much worse, could it?

While I'm all in for gritty details in the TDM world, I must say I'm with Lux on this one. Not because seeing a guard's pecker offends me or anything, but simply that its really hard to make it so that it doesn't become too silly. Especially when its not a necessary detail for the animation to do its job. IMO the function of a piss animation is to provide a window of opportunity for the player, and that window of opportunity is telegraphed to the player by the animation and sound effect. No fleshy members required. And anyway, in most scenarios the NPC will probably face a wall and it will be dark as hell. So maybe its better to just leave it to the players imagination?

Been going through this a few times now, and while I'm disappointed some key items are in the same place every time, I'm surprised by some of the hidden interactivity in the level . Makes me think that a similar level in TDM wouldn't probably be hard to achieve, it could even have random guard variations.

Check out this Thiefish game made in Unity. It was built in seven days by Redefinition Games. The game puts you in the shoes of a thief who has a list of objects to steal from a house before the owner returns. The trick is the objects are in different places every time, and the list of objects changes between each playthrough. See how well you can do! My first playthrough got me the rank of Professional Thief, with some 30k+ loot http://gamejolt.com/games/puzzle/the-very-organized-thief/18991/ Amazing how much tension they have managed to build in such a small game.

Not inspiration as so much as instruction: Thief vs. Deus Ex - A Design Discussion A 60 minute talk between Warren Spector and Doug Church, very interesting. Beginning Level Design, Part 1 Beginning Level Design, Part 2 These two are by Tim Ryan. I don't particularly agree with all the points Tim makes, and his own track record in the video game industry is dubious at best, but I still think these are great reads for someone who is just getting into level design. There is a lot more on the site of course, and Gamasutra is really a goldmine for those interested in game design in general. I love their post-mortems (see for example the post-mortem on the original Thief) and industry interviews as well.

I had a similar experience trying out Swing just a few days ago. After a few attempts I saved and decided to get back to it later, thinking that I must've missed something.

Cheers, I'll be keeping an eye out. Keep up the good work

Thanks guys, glad you liked it! I've been toying around with some ideas, although my better half is very much hoping I wouldn't touch Dark Radiant for a while. She hates it when I finally crawl to bed at 3AM or so I've been thinking of making this level a part of a trilogy, the second level taking place in a smoke shop that serves as a front for a criminal syndicate. We'll see!

Very nice vids Wiz, enjoyed them a lot! You've got a very professional look going on with both your video editing and website. I was wondering, would you be interested in doing a playthrough of In a Time of Need at some point? I'm trying to learn as much as I can about level flow and design, and being able to see exactly how another person approaces the level I've designed would be really fascinating.

Ah, I had thought I had fixed that. I think some part of the door/hinge/VP is misaligned from the grid. At some point I recall snapping them to the grid, but I might have CTRL-Z too far doing some other edit later on and misaligned them again. Thanks for pointing this out. The first problem you mention is caused by the visportal not being connected to the actual sliding door. It's located at the stairs instead, and doesn't close when you go down. Normal door visportaling didn't work for that particular door, because of its "airlock" nature (depending on where it is, it can block off two different passageways). I noticed the sound propagation problem during testing, but didn't find a simple enough way to fix that. Might be something to look into if I decide to update the map at some point. The second problem is caused by the outer wall and gate being hidden once the player reaches a certain distance from them (this is to boost performance outdoors). I had thought its impossible to be far enough from the wall and still see it once it disappears, but apparently I've missed some position. Could you send me a screenshot where you can see the skybox through the wall?

So let me get this straight. You connect the cable from the DVI Out on your GPU to the HDMI In on your TV-set using a converter? After which you get a lovely picture (?) on your set and your computer reverts to just the wallpaper. What do you mean by lovely picture on your set, is it just the wallpaper there as well or do you see your regular screen there? It sounds like a problem with assigning the primary and secondary screens. Right click on your desktop and pick "Screen Resolution..." You should find options for multiple screens there.

Cheers Biker! I'm afraid I never took you up on that offer of helping to optimize the level, but it runs pretty well, doesn't it? Actually, those of you who have played it, how was the performance? Especially in the front door / balcony area?

Body awareness is kind of cool when its done right, see Dark Messiah, Arx Fatalis, Crysis, Mirror's Edge etc. However the Dinosaur-hands thing NuGarret seems to be doing is terribly annoying, as was the hands taking half of the screen in Dishonored. Anyway, on the topic of the tutorial level, I think I agree on some of the points. Because you are free to come and go between the different tutorials, the set of equipment the player might have varies a lot. Some more structure or even just a suggested order could be an improvement. I know there is the slippery-slope argument to making things more accessible, but to put it in perspective, some of the games that are considered the very classics of the immersive-sim genre like Deus Ex, System Shock 2 or even the original Thief had way more straight-forward tutorial levels.