My personal library

[FrostNova]

Hi, I've played Splinter Cell trilogy last year because I joined that 52 games challenge. Furost_nova's profile | Backloggd

I made a site full of level design articles in hopes of breaking into the industry. I began with google sites, but now I've migrated to mediawiki. I still want something better than mediawiki, but for now it was the easiest solution to publish text and have more freedom to format than google sites. My plan is to work in the industry. My long term goal is to make that site a professional resource and refactor everything. But that won't come until after some years of professional experience. 

For now I've stopped adding more articles because it's a futile endeavor. The reason is pretty much this article of mine: https://www.henry-ym.org/index.php/Environment_Art_x_Level_design_x_Writing._Ego_made_me_blind

https://www.henry-ym.org

I made this: https://www.moddb.com/members/frost-nova/addons

I have made maps for Open Arena before. If you ever seen maps called Lego + something. Plus, a colorful map with too many colors at the same time, circular arena style, called RGB. I made it too. I deleted them from moddb because I was going to rename to remove the "lego" trademark, but I guess I forgot to upload them.

[datiswous]

20 hours ago, FrostNova said:

I began with google sites, but now I've migrated to mediawiki. I still want something better than mediawiki, but for now it was the easiest solution to publish text and have more freedom to format than google sites.

I think you could use a better mediawiki theme. But if it's temporary I guess it's ok. There's loads of cms's and site generators out there. Since it's mostly static you don't need something like Wordpress.

 

Btw. I see in your articles that you are critical of Prey 2006. I personally think it's an awesome game. One of the best games I ever played.  Maybe your experience is a bit personal and I think it's better to give examples of games that are actually bad.

https://www.henry-ym.org/index.php?search=prey+2006&title=Special%3ASearch&go=Go

(I mostly disagree with your criticism)

Edited March 11 by datiswous

[snatcher]

Welcome @FrostNova !

Thanks for sharing your work with us. Looking forward to essays from you about The Dark Mod and the maps / missions.

[FrostNova]

I played Prey in 2021 I think. I think I was strongly biased because over time I tried to change the focus.

When I compare Prey to HL2, FEAR, Quake 2. Prey felt so out of place. But compare Prey to Unreal, Unreal 2, doom 3. The walk on walls and ceiling and the portal tech were super cool for the players at the time.

It's interesting that I loved FEAR. But when I searched the web for opinions about it I've found lots of ppl saying that FEAR was bland, crude. That Condemned was a much better game. For some reason the plot of FEAR with supernatural horror got me hooked in and made me not care much about the repetitive gameplay.

Edited March 11 by FrostNova

[datiswous]

11 hours ago, FrostNova said:

It's interesting that I loved FEAR. But when I searched the web for opinions about it I've found lots of ppl saying that FEAR was bland, crude. That Condemned was a much better game. For some reason the plot of FEAR with supernatural horror got me hooked in and made me not care much about the repetitive gameplay.

Yeah I have the same. I think the battles with the ai are so much fun and the atmosphere of the lighting and some of the scripted sequences is very nice. The levels are indeed very bland, but other aspects (i.m.o.) make up for that. Also I read Extraction Point expansion fixes some of the poor level design, but I personally don't remember the difference enough. I know Persus mandate is completelly different and should probably be ignored.

11 hours ago, FrostNova said:

When I compare Prey to HL2, FEAR, Quake 2. Prey felt so out of place. But compare Prey to Unreal, Unreal 2, doom 3. The walk on walls and ceiling and the portal tech were super cool for the players at the time.

I think it's a linair puzzle shooter. So it doesn't hold your hand at times. Which is fine to me. I think it makes sense that things are weird on an alien spaceship.

Edited March 12 by datiswous

[datiswous]

13 hours ago, snatcher said:

Looking forward to essays from you about The Dark Mod and the maps / missions.

Indeed that could be (more) interesting for the tdm comunity.

[revelator]

taste in playstyle is different these days, maybe because so many of the current games come from the console world but who knows. 

personally i love fear, fear 2 is also ok but fear 3 i kinda loathe it became to mainstream and was not even close to the atmosphere of the former two.

not to say all console game ports have been bad, i absolutely love the horizon series despite it starting its life on playstation. the old and sadly very buggy call of cthulhu dark corners of the earth was also a console port from xbox and it was a lot of fun when it worked.

sadly the studios trying to fit square blocks in round holes to make porting games easier has been rather rocky and playstyles as a consequence have suffered. like not being able to jump or invisible walls keeping you from exploring. most times due to the maps kinda ending shortly after said wall and causing some rather funny deaths because whoops you fell through the map at times they forget a wall and either you get stuck on invisible geometry or fall through the map. also some games with truely attrocious keymappings. older games from before console gaming got serious also used tricks to keep users from exploring to far but it was much better integrated with the games so did not fell as forced.