SC2Mapster

The map shown in the screenshot looks really nice. Melee maps are really hard to make (I mean GOOD melee maps, in a "balanced for each race" kind of way), so I'm not against good advice. I have done 2 melee maps so far and they're pretty basic IMHO, I just can't seem to find how to place expansions, so I just end up placing 3 bases in each corner of the map + 2 gold expansions in the middle...

PS: "Ce soir sur SC2Streamsteur: Paysages de mêlée stupéfiants" would be more accurate. ;)

@Zytrug: Go

Hmm, I'm not sure... The only thing I know is the error started appearing after a patch (1.3 or 1.4 I think) and even though I checked in the Data tab, nothing seems wrong to me. I'm not an expert about attachment points (actually I find them very confusing), but I don't see why this particular model generates errors now if it never did before.

Great! That's one bug that won't bother us anymore...

Although I'd like to know why the hell there is an error message displayed in custom maps since approximately v1.4, when you use the immortal shield ability on any other unit. I just noticed that in the video from the front page (Last Stand alpha, if I remember correctly) and that's a bug I also have in Ikari Warriors. I guess Blizzard screwed something up (probably anticipating something from the expansion) and now I have no clue how we can deal with this...

Quote from Batomys: Go

The easiest way into the industry is through QA, just don't be surprised when you end up staying there for 5-6 years before moving up and out because everyone else had the same idea.

QA is not the answer to everything. The only career you can aim for when starting as a game tester is to become a game designer. And that is only if you're extremely lucky AND talented AND versatile AND experienced. Level designers don't start in QA, neither do sound designers, nor programmers, nor anyone else... There is more than 30 different jobs in the video games industry, it would be completely wrong to think being a programmer/designer gives access to any job in this industry. There is no "easy way", and if there is it's absolutely NOT through QA.

Quote from XenoYoxa: Go

@lolzguy: Go

bad all people care about now is graphics... gameplay is WAY MORE IMPORTANT. graphics should be on the bottom of the list.

...Obvious troll is obvious? Play more indie games, XenoYoxa. I'd suggest you try the Humble Indie Bundle first, before paying $60 for the latest blockbusters. Not every gamer is ready to pay that much money for a game that won't last more than 10 hours. The indie, casual, and social/serious games industry are much stronger than you think.

Quote from lolzguy: Go

I heard lots of stories, good and bad about the industries, on how you are mistreated and left alone, you are a nobody and blah blah. I just want to know what you guys think about the stories.

Short answer, they're true. Very short answer, bad idea. Now I'll answer to a few quotes from this thread to get into details. On a side note, you'll get more job opportunities if you're a developer/programmer rather than a designer (sound, level, game design... doesn't matter! design is overcrowded).

Quote from FuzzYD: Go

I've heard similar stories and IMO it scares me away. I'd rather just make games as a hobby than do it for a living. Plus, being a minor in a game company, you don't really get much of a say on design decisions.

This is partially true and false. Doing games as a hobby is actually harder than being in a video games company, because you have to manage ALL aspects of a game by yourself, and IMO you can't be pro enough to be both a programmer and a designer/artist. "Being a minor in a game company" does not mean your opinion doesn't count in the development process. I only had 3 jobs, and in each of these I was responsible for the whole design of levels, if not of entire cities, HD models, etc... It actually depends on how many people there is in your team. The less people there is, the more work you'll have to do on your own. And that includes design decisions, even if the Game Design Document (we call it "bible" as it covers every single aspect of a game) is not supposed to be changed. It might sounds weird right after what I just said, but I actually recommend doing level/game design as a hobby. Just because you don't have to worry about deadlines, press conferences, development studio being a pain in the ass, managing interviews, etc...

Quote from ScorpSCII: Go

I believe you will have more influence in a small company than in a big one.

Quoted for truth.

Quote from Taintedwisp: Go

The only real way to get in the gaming industry is learn how to use an engine (UDK would be the best start), and Make your own game, then someone would recruit you, It is suggested that you get up a small team to help make this game.

I'm not sure what to answer here... I actually think you're partially wrong, but I was hired a few times just because I mastered the Unreal Engine even before studying game/level design. So I guess you're right, but you don't have to make your own game or an entire mod to be hired. They like to see you're capable of managing various aspects of development all by yourself, but then they will make sure during the interview that you're also able to work in a team, very fast and efficiently, with deadlines, and possibly no control over design/programming decisions (especially in a big team, 10+ members).

Quote from zenx1: Go

I really think some awesome 2d games could do well and be interesting (compared to the amount of work and assets you would need for a 3d game). I actually wonder why gamecompannies dont make more of 2d games.

It's not off-topic at all. It's actually a very interesting point. You answered it yourself though, 2D games are still done nowadays, but companies would rather develop them for mobile phones and/or social networks (because it costs less, and casual gamers love these games). The Flash games industry is actually huge, and most of theses companies are indies. There were also excellent games done in 2D in the past few years (Braid comes to mind), but there is not enough demand for big companies to be interested in this. Big companies will only make games if they can make enough profit with it (huge teams, 200+ members, means a lot of cash lost during development), which also explains why you see sequels of sequels of sequels everywhere nowadays. Big companies don't take risks, indie developers do. If you're in the video games industry for a living, you'll need to join a huge team. If you want to take the risk of developing new concepts, making 2D games, get yourself known, then go for indie teams.

Quote from ScorpSCII: Go

If you find one, throw me a link. I'd like to get started with phone games aswell.

I don't have a link, but I think I remember most mobile phone games are done in Java. Look for a Java SDK and you'll probably find what you need. And tutorials as well, though you shouldn't expect much from these.

Quote from Mozared: Go

I'll give this a huge on-topic response at a later date, but for now; why don't you describe your experiences as a level designer? What do you do? What is your work process? Where does it start and end and who do you report to? Those are things I'm curious about. Also, to tie your situation into the bigger topic: how are your experiences as a level designer in regards to the industry?

You have nooooo idea how much I WANT to answer this question even though it's not addressed to me. But I actually did it in a few other threads already (more or less), so I'll just suggest something slightly off-topic instead: Why don't we make a sticky thread/FAQ about the video games industry? After all, there has been 3 or 4 threads about this matter lately, so I assume a lot of people are interested to know more about it, if not willing to join a video games company directly. That would be better to gather all our feedback/experience about this in a single thread rather than creating threads weekly, right?

Quote from Nardival: Go

In my personal opinion the best work environment would be provided by either Ubisoft Montreal

I met a game designer from Ubisoft Montreal who says otherwise... So I guess you're right, it all depends on what you're aiming for. Any job can be good or bad, though from my experience I'd say the video game industry is rather bad. It's very treacherous, at least... Too many people wants to "join the fun" but they don't even know what it means to work in this industry, they have to understand it's a very demanding job. Starting in an indie team is probably your best shot when you start, you shouldn't even dare to aim for big companies if you have less than 3 years of experience + at least 2 famous games you've worked on. If you look closely in the various job offers from big companies (Ubisoft, Eidos, Blizzard, THQ,...) you'll only see offers for seniors. Seniors have 5 years of experience at least. It's not a good place to start, and it's not a good job if your definition of a good game is "innovation and fun to play".

Quote from Taintedwisp: Go

Yeah Definatly, I wish Curse Would launch a similar site (SC2mapster) for the UDK

I can't provide a link because I don't have any right now, but I know for sure the UDK is well documented. There is probably a community somewhere discussing the UDK with basic tutorials. Don't expect to find tutorials for everything though, because a large part of a game development is actually to push boundaries further and further to get the best result possible. There is no tutorial for that, the limit is your knowledge of programming rules and your sensibility to design/creativity.

Quote from Mozared: Go

That puts me on 130, Zeal on 273. You are counting several games I've played too but didn't want to involve, though, like Tetris and Mario on gameboy and similar platforms that I think everyone knows and has had their hands on. I wonder if I can make that number; how did you remember all of them, though?

Really?! 273 is insane... Yet I forgot soooooo many games, especially on consoles and amiga, atari, amstrad... That's true some of these games are quite common (tetris and such), I'm pretty sure if you add them to your list you'll be close to my "score".

It took me a very long time to remember them though, as silly as it looks I just took enough time to make the list alphabetically (like Wheatley in Portal 2, trying every combination :D ). After that, I checked the other lists in this thread. It helped a lot actually, in the first version of my list there was something like 70-80 games missing + the games that were not mentioned in either my list or yours that popped into my mind while reading the thread (ex: I remembered Epic Pinball when I saw Jazz Jackrabbit, they have nothing in common except I played those games at approximately the same age... I also remembered You Don't Know Jack because of Jazz Jackrabbit... yes, that's completely random). Then I tried remembering games by which platform it was on, it actually helped remembering 30-40 more games. If I had spent as much time remembering the games by their platform as I did when remembering them alphabetically, there would be 100 more of them.

Quote from Deadzergling: Go

Perhaps we should consider joining a Gaming Addiction Group Zealnaga, lol.

...Yep! :D
I'm OK with it actually, it's nice to remember all those games (my most popular SC2 map is based on one of these, so I have no right to complain). No wonder why I'm in the video games industry now with all these games I've played for hours, if not finished once or twice... Shame on us all though, we forgot to mention Pong in our lists!

http://www.sc2mapster.com/forums/general/off-topic/31850-skyrim-creation-kit/

I tried it the first day it came out, but I'm not used to editing with it yet. I remember having a hard time with the Oblivion editor (I'm not fond of the UI to be completely honest, I can't even find basic tools to navigate through the map) so I guess the Skyrim editor is going to give me hell... There was an update recently, hopefully it fixed the huge amount of errors and bugs popping every second. So basically I'm starting from zero here, which was not the case at all about the SC2 editor.

@Deadzergling: Go

...And then I realized how many cool games I forgot in my oh so long list!
Cool Spot (SNES), James Pond, Time Pilot (Colecovision), Kid Icarus, Contra 3 (SNES), Ninja Gaiden (DS), Snake Rattle & Roll (I almost spent 20 minutes trying to remember its title while writing the list, thank you for this!), Tactics Ogre (SNES),... and the list goes on and on...

In my list I also confused the FF versions (FF3 in the US is actually FF6 in Japan), and I just realized Seiken Densetsu 2 and Secret of Mana are actually the same game.

I have to admit I had to check for a few names online, because some of them are so old I wasn't sure. I remembered a few of them by just checking the lists above... So yeah, I'm kind of a despicable cheater (and I obviously have no life), but they all match the conditions required nonetheless. It took a loooong time to write them down and I'm pretty sure there are still lots of them missing (Colecovision and Amstrad/Amiga games are very hard to remember, and I also had so many games on GameBoy and SNES it's almost a sin...).

Quote from TheAlmaity: Go

It's a big idea I have, and I highly doubt I'd ever finish it. I doubt I'd ever get to the part of replacing the main quest.

It makes me wonder how much we can edit the game with the toolset. I doubt you'll be able to do everything you planned, but it's worth trying. I never actually made a mod for Oblivion but I used to love Neverwinter Nights and its toolset, and each time I had a good idea for a mod I realized sooner or later that the coding part is a real hell for anyone not into programming. I assume it's pretty much the same with Skyrim and Oblivion, everything has to be scripted so it's pretty much impossible to do it alone (unless you're OK with spending months, if not years, on a single mod with no guarantee of it being worth).

EDIT: The editor is finally available! You can download it by selecting View > Tools > Creation Kit on Steam.

For those of you who don't know yet, the Skyrim Creation Kit is to be released this Tuesday! :)

Here are some news about the Skyrim Creation Kit from the Bethesda blog:
http://www.bethblog.com/2012/02/01/first-look-creation-kit-and-skyrim-workshop/

Finally a first look at it, even though it was supposed to be out in early January... Any thoughts? We have pretty amazing creative minds around here, so I assume some of you already have plenty of ideas for mods and maps in Skyrim. Care to share them?

I personally would like to create a prison mod, not just like Markarth where you have to talk to 3 guys to get out, but rather like a "prison break" mod where you really have to make a plan to escape a heavily guarded prison (dealing objects with prisoners and ultimately crafting your own weapon, corrupting guards, planning the best escape route, unexpected events like shakedowns, being moved from a cell to another, daily routine like eating at the cantina and such, etc...).

Quote from Kabelkorven: Go

"A player can bring a prisoner to a building. At the building the player can choose to permanently convert a prisoner into a marine, medic or ghost. "

Event
"any unit" changes ownership

Conditions
AND

• "unit-type of triggering unit" = "prisoner"
• "owner of triggering unit" = 0 (neutral)

Actions
Issue order to "triggering unit" - "smart command" to "closest unit to triggering unit"
Wait until "Distance between triggering unit and XXXXX" < "Y"
Replace "triggering unit" with "whatever unit you want"

...where XXXXX is a variable (or a function) defining which building is a prison that your player owns. It can be a little tricky, but try anything you can think of to be absolutely sure this refers to the building you bring the prisoners to. Something like "unit in region matching condition" is quite useful as it contains enough parameters to define almost any unit if it isn't stored in a variable already.

...and where Y is the radius around the prison position which will be used to detect a prisoner is close. 2 should be enough, make it 3 or maybe 4 just to be sure while testing.

...If you want to give the player the ability to choose which type of unit replaces the prisoner, include the Replace action in a Switch. You can add a few actions before that switch that will define a integer variable (by clicking a menu button for example, or picking a random number from 1 to 3). Depending on this value, the switch will replace the prisoner by the matching unit type defined in the switch (and you can also apply nice VFXs in the process, or do whatever you want to the prisoner like healing him or making him play an animation, playing an announcer voice or whatever... it's simple but it's a nice touch if you're into such details).

It's pretty basic but should work (I'm doing this by memory so maybe I made a few mistakes, but you'll figure it out), it is a little bit safer to store the prisoner unit in a variable as the first action though, instead of using "triggering unit" everywhere as a reference... In fact it's probably mandatory, or else "triggering unit" could refer to a non-existing unit by the time you'd reach the prison. Hope this helps.

Periodic:
Each tick, the actions are executed no matter how long they take. By using this method, you can have multiple iterations of the same actions running in a short period of time, which is very CPU-intensive and could cause either crashes or triggers going very wrong. Basically, periodic effects happen simultaneously if the time needed to execute all actions in the set exceeds the time between each tick. Avoid this as much as you can. It used to cause huge lags on BNet in my Ikari Warriors map, I got rid of them all, switched to Repeat Forever loops instead, and gained 10 to 20 FPS instantly without any additional bug. This was probably the most helpful advice for my map I received from one of our members, in terms of optimization.

While/Repeat loops:
Basically, in a loop the set of actions has to be finished before another set is executed. It's almost mandatory to add a wait in the "If Then Else" action. Without the Wait, the result is pretty close to a Periodic event. The reason you get errors when the Wait is missing is that the loop is repeated as many times as it can in a second, so basically 1s/0.03s = 33.3 times! The loop breaks and the trigger fails, you get an error because a set of actions is not supposed to be repeated 33 times a second. Obviously it's not good, so just put a Wait in your Else set of actions. It will basically do the same as a Periodic event, except it is impossible to have multiple iterations of the same loop (which is also better in terms of memory usage, by the way). If you want the loop to stop you'll have to break it, if you want multiple iterations you'll have to start them manually.

The worst combination would be a periodic trigger executing Repeat Forever loops. Any computer would crash in seconds.