I have been working on an entry for the world of level design story challenge these past weeks and to my surprise it was featured on the home page of cry dev today! My entry also featured in the recap blog post on world of level design its self. Still working hard on my entry to get it all finished in time but it was a very nice boost to see all this when I woke up this morning.
You can follow my progress here.
How stunning is this?
Thought I would give this very cool site a quick word, as its all in a very good cause. If you ever had real issues trying to understand programming books and tutorials this will solve all your problems. It will pretty much take you right though learning Java Script from the very start and gets into quite complex stuff later on. It’s all done in a very nice web 2.0 style, with Foursquare like badges to collect as you go.
Its the same guys that are behind the 2012 code year, well worth checking out if you want to learn some code as everyone should these days.
The years are going quicker i swear yet the summer feels so long ago now, maybe the wind and rain blasting against the windows as a type this don’t help things. So yea 2011 was one of those all right years that wasn’t bad but, I also didn’t do anything massive.
Got some pretty cool maps done over the summer and realised the error of my ways on a L4D map that was taking forever and I just threw away in the end. Want to and have to change things going forward. First of all planning is going to take a much more important role in everything I under take. Its far too easy to just scribble a quick layout on paper and jump straight into source and unreal. I really need to think about each prop and corner of the map if I want to get places with this. Been reading a new book called Pre production blue print that is helping me out a lot.
I did start to get serious with a bit of code towards the end of the year and now know the basics of unreal script. I still really want to take a look at iOS app development again and am in the planning stages for an app I would like to make.
At the moment I am just working on some short projects to see the year out and things I can finish during my holidays. Once that’s over I can look at what I am going to under take, trying to do several things at once also does not work as I know only too well.
Back again with my review of 2011 games. Its a complete list of every game I played in 2011 with a score for each one. Enjoy!
Dead Space 2 – 4/5
Bulletstorm – 3/5
Rift – 2/5
Dragon Age II – 3/5
Homefront – 3/5
Crysis 2 – 4/5
Portal 2 – 5/5
L.A. Noire 3/5
Bastion 5/5
From Dust 4/5
Deus EX: Human Revolution – 5/5
Gears of War 3 – 4/5
Ico Shadow of the Colossus remake – 4/5
RAGE – 2/5
Batman Arkham City – ?/5
Payday The Heist – 3/5
Battlefield 3 – 4/5
Uncharted 3 – 5/5
Modern Warfare 3 – 2/5
Skyrim – 5/5
Halo Combat Evolved Remake 5/5
Minecraft – 5/5
Star Wars: The Old Republic 4/5
Just a quick post to say merry Christmas and hope everyone has a great 2012. Planning a big year for projects so should have plenty to say in the next few months. Anyway hope everyone had a good day, still have my annual game of the year type post to come.
Alex over at world of level design has posted two different articles in the last few days about planning your projects. Why I failed for years at level design and game environments really struck home with me and reminding me of how I use to feel a lot and still can at times. How to plan level designs and game environments then goes into a lot of detail on what directions you need to go in order to improve your planning which will help you out a lot in the long run.
Alex is also about to release Preproduction Blueprint a massive e-book/video series on everything related to planning maps and environments before you even open the editor for the first time. Its going to be well worth checking out once it launches.
As we are on the subject insta from mapcore and developer of source mods such as Mission Improbable and Whoopservatory also wrote an article for world of level design on the same subject not long ago. Planning is something I am working on really improving as its gotten to the stage where it is holding me back.
Darkway
Started a Crysis 2 single player mod a bit back and am trying to get as much time in between assignments as possible, working towards something that is very atmospheric and has great scripting and a little less towards combat.
The Blue Box
It’s an unreal script assignment for now… Things to come on this later, something I am quite excited about.
Visible Spectrum
Group project at uni game based around changing between a black and white and colour world for combat and puzzles. Been put in charge of all the scripting but, will also be doing a fair bit of level design. It’s in pre-production at the moment.
Have to admit that I didn’t enjoy my course a lot in first year. Apart from getting some 3D Max skills at last, a lot of it was quite boring and I would have much rather spent that time on personal projects. After switching to a different course for my second and third year (from game design to gameplay and production) I just love it. Loads more focus on scripting and prototyping along with some group planning and production work and theory about realism in games. It should be noted that I am often not a fan of Theory but am really enjoying it this year its super interesting.
In general this has made me care a lot more about all the assignments I have been set and treat them like I would any other project and put my full soul into all of them. I am also doing my best to work in time for personal projects, that’s still the most important thing I can do day in day out in my opinion.
This is a tribute to a man who was not afraid to be right, say what he thought and most importantly be no one but him self.