You should have created this thread in the Tutorials section of the forums... but a tutorial for making TD maps is already available anyway: http://www.sc2mapster.com/wiki/galaxy/tutorials/
(editing for beginners - TD explanation/tutorial by OneTwoSC)
anything new going on around here or is it same-old-same-old?
Depends on how long you were away, but I'd say a little bit of both. I was away for 4 months (mostly during summer), and I saw lots of things were done for the community (newbie Wednesday, map of the week, sc2streamster, the "get your map in our front page" system,...). I came back a little too late so I don't know that much about it, but I like what I have read so far and I find this very interesting. I can see that other members have left the forums as well, probably because of their personal lives or just because Skyrim is awesome... and newer.
I lost interest in mapping during these 4 months (professionally speaking as well, to be honest), but I still keep doing a few updates here and there when I'm in the mood for it, so I can understand how you feel... I'm expecting the expansion(s) to boost my interest in SC2 and modding again, so I think I'll come back into mapping for a few months when I'll get my hands on HotS. Hopefully you'll do the same and you will make some progress on your maps too. Aside from that, I'd say sc2mapster as a whole is pretty much the same. We're still lacking testers but we have plenty of ideas! :D
I don't know where you're getting those crazy numbers.
Your link doesn't tell about the cost of the UDK itself, you need to pay for it per seat per year, PLUS royalties and fees. If you're developing alone your commercial app (and actually it's even worth on I-phone because Apple fees are higher), the cost for the UDK is:
$2500 per work station per year (only if above $50000 worth of sales)
+ 20% of royalties for Epic Megagames (only if above $50000 worth of sales)
+ $99 for commercial use (once)
A warehouse company uses UDK to create an application for employee safety training. They develop it on one computer and then install the resulting application on two computers for their internal employees to use. They require a single UDK development seat license for a total cost of US$2,500 per year, for as long as they use UDK to develop and/or maintain the application.
A team creates a game with UDK that they intend to sell. After six months of development, they release the game through digital distribution and they earn US$60,000 in the first calendar quarter after release. Their use of UDK during development requires no fee. At some point prior to the UDK Application’s release they will need to secure a royalty-bearing commercial UDK license with its US$99 license fee. After earning US$60,000, they would be required to pay Epic US$2,500 (US$0 on the first US$50,000 in revenue, and US$2,500 on the next US$10,000 in revenue). On subsequent revenue, they are required to pay the 25% royalty.
An architecture firm uses UDK to create a live walk-through presentation for their customers. They charge their customers a fee of US$500 for each walk-through. Before they begin to charge customers for the walk-through, they would pay Epic US$99 for a royalty-bearing commercial UDK license. They sell walk-through presentations to 100 customers in the first quarter, bringing in US$50,000 in revenue. No royalty payment would be required to Epic for that first US$50,000. In the second quarter, they sell another 100 walk-through presentations, bringing in another US$50,000 in revenue. They are required to pay US$12,500 to Epic. On subsequent revenue, they are required to pay the 25% royalty.
The guy I met was a computer games professional. I must have confused these numbers with the total cost of AAA games development (salaries included and all that stuff), but let's do a little math here anyway:
Companies developing AAA games have 10+ computers using the UDK. Already $25000 of expenses, just for one project. Make it $75000, because big companies never develop only one game at a time. AAA games are done in one, if not 2 years, which also doubles the cost. We're at $150000, for 3 projects in 2 years. We're just talking about getting the UDK here... Let's say these 3 games sold 1 million copies each, you can basically add $30000 to the total cost, which makes it worth $180000 already. We're not even close to 3 millions, even before euros... but again, we're just talking about the UDK here. Still, this is not cheap at all. This is a very high price and it's explained by the fact that the UDK and UE are the most advanced development tools to date.
I don't think so, I'm using Ultra settings and it happens to me as well. And I don't think it's an editor bug either because I've already seen this on other level editors (Unreal Editor and such). Tweaking with fog can be pretty tricky sometimes (it's actually a full time job to deal with lighting and visual/environmental effects), as all parameters interact with each other and there are many ways to achieve what you want to do.
But if at some point a part of the map disappears behind fog, it's because one of the values in the parameters is out of bounds and the engine is not able to understand what to display. It's made that way to optimize rendering (ie. not rendering what is hidden by fog reduces CPU/GPU usage). The only way to prevent these "hidden blocks" is to adjust your fog parameters until you find something looking similar. I did this myself in my maps (Ikari Warriors and Sand Worm Survival), though the fog is different in both I had to deal with depth of field nonetheless... and it worked, but I think it took me half a day to figure it all out for each map!
@joecab: Nice map, actually I like each map you show in the forums every now and then.
I'd say polished gameplay/game mechanics first. It means whatever possibilities of action the player has, it must be easy-to-use, free of bugs/errors, fun and interesting... all at the same time. Nothing must be overpowered or useless, everything is here for a reason and it serves its purpose well. And ultimately, if you make it balanced for both casual and hardcore players, it's even better. There is nothing more frustrating for casual players to lose because the map is all about skills (micro-management maps comes to my mind), and hardcore players (especially in SC2) are pissed off when losing because of a noob.
I'd say good replayability is secondary but very important nonetheless. What's the point of having a good gameplay if it's the same map over and over again? It needs to offer more than one option that will make the game a little bit random (but not too much, because gameplays based on randomness are very frustrating for players!). It could be all about spells, a set of heroes, levels of difficulty, but it needs to be fun whether you play it one time or a thousand times.
And finally, I think nice visual effects and graphics are a huge plus. It's always enjoyable to explore a well-made map, and it's even more enjoyable if it shows something unique (maps with raising lava were kind of cool in the first months, now it has become too common). Each designer has its own way to make maps, the Weekly Terraining Exercise on these forums is a pretty good example for this. It makes all the difference when the map is nice, it's more immersive that way.
The UDK is the most advanced engine to date... and the most expensive too! $2500 PER YEAR, PER DEVELOPMENT SEAT, for commercial use (ie. as soon as you intend to make money out of it, whatever is the amount), which means if you have 5 guys in the team (which is pretty much the minimum required to make a game) it will cost you $12500 already. And I'm not even talking about fees and royalties. I heard a few years ago (when the UE3 was just being released) that it could easily cost 3 million dollars, just to get the licence for AAA games for a year. Here's an interesting article found randomly on the web about both the Cry Engine and the Unreal Engine prices: http://fragileearthstudios.com/2011/10/23/cryengine-and-unreal-for-free/
I assume making a MMORPG "just for your own fun" is not worth, so yes, the UDK is awesome but it's also expensive as hell.
I wasn't really aware about the ability to make MMOGs with the UDK. You still have to code the whole streaming system on your own though, which is pretty much a huge pain in the ass for anyone (even for a team of 10+ Korean guys). I was thinking about Skyrim and such but you're right, the multiplayer side of these games is null so it's not a good start.
You don't. It works ingame if I remember well (happened to me a few times when making the Sand Worm Survival arena), I think it was caused by the fog density being too high or something like that... At some point the ground is probably too "covered" in fog to be displayed: assuming the fog values range from 0 to 1, if you set it to 0.5 the value will be out of bounds much quicker, thus it won't display the ground below anymore. But I think Mienk is right though, the "hide lowest level" is probably why it does all of this in the first place.
Not really. It's just another level designer which is conscious that a good map comes to the price of a good atmosphere. I did this kind of effects in both my melee maps (one of which is on a rooftop, not really a sky atmosphere but it's as close as it can get), and Sand Worm Survival, but nobody really noticed. And I'm pretty sure it's not "that" unique anyway, the map is not even complete so I'm pretty sure you can find more of these on BNet, unfinished maps featuring good-looking ideas are legion. Not that I'm flaming the guy, I just don't agree at all with the "unique" part. The map looks good indeed, but it doesn't deserve a thread more than any unnoticed and unfinished map you can find while browsing BNet. Come on, the guy just tweaked with fog and atmospheric doodads... Who hasn't?
After all that time asking for one, I think it's time for you to finally get that beer you want so much and that nobody will give you. I'm in a good mood today. And you're welcome.
Happy thanksgiving, America! I thought thanksgiving in Canada was the same day as in America, Wikipedia just taught me it's not. So, better late than never, happy thanksgiving Canada too! (I miss this country, hopefully I'll be back there in a few months)
Seriously if you really didn't like Diablo 1 or 2 then this isnt really your genre IMHO.
I don't stick to any genre in particular. I like hack & slash games as much as others, but I am very rarely fan of any game. I just focus more on the gameplay mechanics than the game as a whole. Don't get me wrong though, D1 and D2 are excellent games, D3 wil probably be as well, but I just get bored very easily by pretty much any kind of game anyway. When I feel like what I'm going to do after 30+ hours in the game is pretty much the same as if I only played an hour, I kind of feel it's just "another average game". It doesn't mean I won't play it or enjoy it, but it explains why I hate games like Counter-Strike. That's also why I like games like SC2 (or Unreal, or Skyrim, or Minecraft,...) more than the average games: the huge modding community brings enough custom content to be able to experience something new even after years.
PS: Forgive my lack of respect for EA, as I feel most of their games are of mediocre quality.
Tell me about it... I don't even remember playing any game from EA that was worth buying... Darkspore was kind of a good idea for a game, but when I had access to a beta-key I was bored in less than a day. I'm probably a bit naive here, but I still hope they will listen to the fans about Syndicate and make sure the co-op mode(s) includes enough squad-based strategy. I'm pretty sure now that the solo campaign will be a huge rip-off of Deus Ex HR, but if the multiplayer aspect is well done, it can still be a good/average game. It won't bring back the whole "conquer the world and tax them like hell" part of the game though, which is very sad... Hopefully, we will see videos about this in the next months to come. I think I can deal with the "Deus Ex rip-off" issue, I've seen worse.
Then so did the teacher... If one of his best students got a bad grade, you can assume the teacher is not good enough to teach properly. From what I know about universities, I remember my teacher in economics just kept giving good grades to anyone writing down what he taught us word by word during the exams. We even put him to the test by cheating and having our books open during the tests, and it worked. There is no point in that and we all complained about it at the time, he was unable to give us an answer. My point is some teachers just suck, their teaching methods are lame, and if the students fail it's not always about the student. Still, you will have to do with it because he won't get fired so easily. You on the other hand, can suffer pretty badly from low grades.
You can find Syndicate (from 1993) very easily now by searching "Syndicate abandonware" on Google... Unfortunately, Syndicate Wars is not an abandonware anymore, it's protected by the ESA now probably because EA was about to release the sequel.
I agree with the "FPS are too popular now", and I think that's exactly why they chose to make it that way. I also heard about X-COM, but to me it is and will ever be a squad-based strategy game...
I have watched as many videos as I could find on Youtube about Syndicate 2012, from what I saw about the online part it seems a little bit better than what I expected. They still haven't shown anything about a world-wide "taxing strategy" to increase income, or anything about researching new weapons and body parts, but if they do I think this game is definitely worth trying. It will probably still lack the replayability Syndicate had though... It was fun to see events happening worldwide even though you were not doing anything, you knew the missions were going to be slightly different if you gave the opponents enough time to research body parts or weapons you don't even have yourself.
I have. The interface it's completely annoying. And it's one of those things that claim to have a lot of flexibility and customization with their own easy to learn scripting language! *flashing text goes here* But instead it's a poorly documents scripting language :P
Easy-to-use editors are very rare. Most mappers don't have any idea how user-friendly the SC2 editor is, compared to any editor you'll eventually use when you're a pro level designer. Editors like the UDK, SC2 editor (or any editor from a Blizzard game), Farcry editor, Bethesda's level editor and such, are very VERY user-friendly. As far as I can tell from my experience, unpopular level editors are usually not even documented when you build your maps, so you have to learn how to use it properly on your own... You have to be careful anyway, any wrong step in this kind of level editor will crash everything. That's why I always advise level designer wannabees to ALWAYS try any kind of level editor they can find. If they want to join the video games industry, they will eventually come across badly designed level editors at some point, so they'd better be prepared.
About MMO editors, I personally don't know any. But I'm not a fan of MMO games anyway, so I never really checked. I know for sure though that the UDK is not optimal at all for MMOGs: The UDK makes highly-detailed maps with lots of data included in the file, and these maps are not designed to allow streaming (you can't play in a map while another one is loading). Loadings between maps are extremely long and "memory heavy" in the UDK, which is strongly not advised for MMOGs.
MMOGs usually use streaming, which means the landscape is split into square sections (cubic, actually) that are loaded whenever you come close to the limits of the current section you're in, without preventing you from playing at the same time. It simulates an endless environnement by loading in memory the closest section(s) in range, which cannot be done in the UDK as far as I know. I'd rather recommend engines such as Morrowind/Oblivion/Skyrim, which are already using a streaming method to display the environment around your character.
You, computer purists, probably have already played -or at least heard- of these awesome games from Bullfrog: Syndicate and Syndicate Wars
Rumors were spread on the web that EA was planning a sequel to these games after they purely and simply swallowed Bullfrog. These rumors were true. The new Syndicate game (entitled Syndicate 2012) is going to be released in February next year, almost 20 years after the first game...
You can also find a gameplay video (11 minutes) with comments from a producer:
What do you think?
I personally am a huge fan of the first game. Actually, if I had to make a top 3 of my favorite games of all times, Syndicate is on the list. I expected a sequel to this game so much that, during my studies as a game designer, I wrote lots of documents detailing the first Syndicate game to try to create a sequel on my own. When I knew Syndicate 2012 was going to be out, I kind of left it aside, telling to myself "oh well, they're going to make it faster than you anyway, just give it up". Then I saw the teasers, trailers, and gameplay videos on Youtube.
I am disappointed by the conversion from a RTS game to a FPS game, and somehow it revives my need for a real sequel, a game just like the good old days but only improved here and there. I may actually make a few SC2 maps out of it, if only I had enough time and not so much projects scheduled already. Syndicate 2012 smells like a huge rip off of Deus Ex Human Revolution and a few other games, I would have loved to see a 4 players co-op RTS game instead... I have nothing against the 1st person view, I'm just sad they removed the whole strategy aspect, where you had to tax countries to make researches, persuade cyborgs to replace those you lose during missions, etc... I still have a little bit of hope that the trailers are not revealing how deep the gameplay really is, and I really cross my fingers that EA did something interesting out of it.
0
You should have created this thread in the Tutorials section of the forums... but a tutorial for making TD maps is already available anyway:
http://www.sc2mapster.com/wiki/galaxy/tutorials/
(editing for beginners - TD explanation/tutorial by OneTwoSC)
0
Depends on how long you were away, but I'd say a little bit of both. I was away for 4 months (mostly during summer), and I saw lots of things were done for the community (newbie Wednesday, map of the week, sc2streamster, the "get your map in our front page" system,...). I came back a little too late so I don't know that much about it, but I like what I have read so far and I find this very interesting. I can see that other members have left the forums as well, probably because of their personal lives or just because Skyrim is awesome... and newer.
I lost interest in mapping during these 4 months (professionally speaking as well, to be honest), but I still keep doing a few updates here and there when I'm in the mood for it, so I can understand how you feel... I'm expecting the expansion(s) to boost my interest in SC2 and modding again, so I think I'll come back into mapping for a few months when I'll get my hands on HotS. Hopefully you'll do the same and you will make some progress on your maps too. Aside from that, I'd say sc2mapster as a whole is pretty much the same. We're still lacking testers but we have plenty of ideas! :D
0
Your link doesn't tell about the cost of the UDK itself, you need to pay for it per seat per year, PLUS royalties and fees. If you're developing alone your commercial app (and actually it's even worth on I-phone because Apple fees are higher), the cost for the UDK is:
$2500 per work station per year (only if above $50000 worth of sales)
+ 20% of royalties for Epic Megagames (only if above $50000 worth of sales)
+ $99 for commercial use (once)
Quoted examples from the official UDK license details:
The guy I met was a computer games professional. I must have confused these numbers with the total cost of AAA games development (salaries included and all that stuff), but let's do a little math here anyway:
Companies developing AAA games have 10+ computers using the UDK. Already $25000 of expenses, just for one project. Make it $75000, because big companies never develop only one game at a time. AAA games are done in one, if not 2 years, which also doubles the cost. We're at $150000, for 3 projects in 2 years. We're just talking about getting the UDK here... Let's say these 3 games sold 1 million copies each, you can basically add $30000 to the total cost, which makes it worth $180000 already. We're not even close to 3 millions, even before euros... but again, we're just talking about the UDK here. Still, this is not cheap at all. This is a very high price and it's explained by the fact that the UDK and UE are the most advanced development tools to date.
0
I don't think so, I'm using Ultra settings and it happens to me as well. And I don't think it's an editor bug either because I've already seen this on other level editors (Unreal Editor and such). Tweaking with fog can be pretty tricky sometimes (it's actually a full time job to deal with lighting and visual/environmental effects), as all parameters interact with each other and there are many ways to achieve what you want to do.
But if at some point a part of the map disappears behind fog, it's because one of the values in the parameters is out of bounds and the engine is not able to understand what to display. It's made that way to optimize rendering (ie. not rendering what is hidden by fog reduces CPU/GPU usage). The only way to prevent these "hidden blocks" is to adjust your fog parameters until you find something looking similar. I did this myself in my maps (Ikari Warriors and Sand Worm Survival), though the fog is different in both I had to deal with depth of field nonetheless... and it worked, but I think it took me half a day to figure it all out for each map!
@joecab: Nice map, actually I like each map you show in the forums every now and then.
0
I'd say polished gameplay/game mechanics first. It means whatever possibilities of action the player has, it must be easy-to-use, free of bugs/errors, fun and interesting... all at the same time. Nothing must be overpowered or useless, everything is here for a reason and it serves its purpose well. And ultimately, if you make it balanced for both casual and hardcore players, it's even better. There is nothing more frustrating for casual players to lose because the map is all about skills (micro-management maps comes to my mind), and hardcore players (especially in SC2) are pissed off when losing because of a noob.
I'd say good replayability is secondary but very important nonetheless. What's the point of having a good gameplay if it's the same map over and over again? It needs to offer more than one option that will make the game a little bit random (but not too much, because gameplays based on randomness are very frustrating for players!). It could be all about spells, a set of heroes, levels of difficulty, but it needs to be fun whether you play it one time or a thousand times.
And finally, I think nice visual effects and graphics are a huge plus. It's always enjoyable to explore a well-made map, and it's even more enjoyable if it shows something unique (maps with raising lava were kind of cool in the first months, now it has become too common). Each designer has its own way to make maps, the Weekly Terraining Exercise on these forums is a pretty good example for this. It makes all the difference when the map is nice, it's more immersive that way.
0
The UDK is the most advanced engine to date... and the most expensive too! $2500 PER YEAR, PER DEVELOPMENT SEAT, for commercial use (ie. as soon as you intend to make money out of it, whatever is the amount), which means if you have 5 guys in the team (which is pretty much the minimum required to make a game) it will cost you $12500 already. And I'm not even talking about fees and royalties. I heard a few years ago (when the UE3 was just being released) that it could easily cost 3 million dollars, just to get the licence for AAA games for a year. Here's an interesting article found randomly on the web about both the Cry Engine and the Unreal Engine prices:
http://fragileearthstudios.com/2011/10/23/cryengine-and-unreal-for-free/
I assume making a MMORPG "just for your own fun" is not worth, so yes, the UDK is awesome but it's also expensive as hell.
I wasn't really aware about the ability to make MMOGs with the UDK. You still have to code the whole streaming system on your own though, which is pretty much a huge pain in the ass for anyone (even for a team of 10+ Korean guys). I was thinking about Skyrim and such but you're right, the multiplayer side of these games is null so it's not a good start.
0
You don't. It works ingame if I remember well (happened to me a few times when making the Sand Worm Survival arena), I think it was caused by the fog density being too high or something like that... At some point the ground is probably too "covered" in fog to be displayed: assuming the fog values range from 0 to 1, if you set it to 0.5 the value will be out of bounds much quicker, thus it won't display the ground below anymore. But I think Mienk is right though, the "hide lowest level" is probably why it does all of this in the first place.
Not really. It's just another level designer which is conscious that a good map comes to the price of a good atmosphere. I did this kind of effects in both my melee maps (one of which is on a rooftop, not really a sky atmosphere but it's as close as it can get), and Sand Worm Survival, but nobody really noticed. And I'm pretty sure it's not "that" unique anyway, the map is not even complete so I'm pretty sure you can find more of these on BNet, unfinished maps featuring good-looking ideas are legion. Not that I'm flaming the guy, I just don't agree at all with the "unique" part. The map looks good indeed, but it doesn't deserve a thread more than any unnoticed and unfinished map you can find while browsing BNet. Come on, the guy just tweaked with fog and atmospheric doodads... Who hasn't?
0
After all that time asking for one, I think it's time for you to finally get that beer you want so much and that nobody will give you. I'm in a good mood today. And you're welcome.
Happy thanksgiving, America! I thought thanksgiving in Canada was the same day as in America, Wikipedia just taught me it's not. So, better late than never, happy thanksgiving Canada too! (I miss this country, hopefully I'll be back there in a few months)
0
I don't stick to any genre in particular. I like hack & slash games as much as others, but I am very rarely fan of any game. I just focus more on the gameplay mechanics than the game as a whole. Don't get me wrong though, D1 and D2 are excellent games, D3 wil probably be as well, but I just get bored very easily by pretty much any kind of game anyway. When I feel like what I'm going to do after 30+ hours in the game is pretty much the same as if I only played an hour, I kind of feel it's just "another average game". It doesn't mean I won't play it or enjoy it, but it explains why I hate games like Counter-Strike. That's also why I like games like SC2 (or Unreal, or Skyrim, or Minecraft,...) more than the average games: the huge modding community brings enough custom content to be able to experience something new even after years.
0
Tell me about it... I don't even remember playing any game from EA that was worth buying... Darkspore was kind of a good idea for a game, but when I had access to a beta-key I was bored in less than a day. I'm probably a bit naive here, but I still hope they will listen to the fans about Syndicate and make sure the co-op mode(s) includes enough squad-based strategy. I'm pretty sure now that the solo campaign will be a huge rip-off of Deus Ex HR, but if the multiplayer aspect is well done, it can still be a good/average game. It won't bring back the whole "conquer the world and tax them like hell" part of the game though, which is very sad... Hopefully, we will see videos about this in the next months to come. I think I can deal with the "Deus Ex rip-off" issue, I've seen worse.
0
Then so did the teacher... If one of his best students got a bad grade, you can assume the teacher is not good enough to teach properly. From what I know about universities, I remember my teacher in economics just kept giving good grades to anyone writing down what he taught us word by word during the exams. We even put him to the test by cheating and having our books open during the tests, and it worked. There is no point in that and we all complained about it at the time, he was unable to give us an answer. My point is some teachers just suck, their teaching methods are lame, and if the students fail it's not always about the student. Still, you will have to do with it because he won't get fired so easily. You on the other hand, can suffer pretty badly from low grades.
0
You can find Syndicate (from 1993) very easily now by searching "Syndicate abandonware" on Google... Unfortunately, Syndicate Wars is not an abandonware anymore, it's protected by the ESA now probably because EA was about to release the sequel.
I agree with the "FPS are too popular now", and I think that's exactly why they chose to make it that way. I also heard about X-COM, but to me it is and will ever be a squad-based strategy game...
I have watched as many videos as I could find on Youtube about Syndicate 2012, from what I saw about the online part it seems a little bit better than what I expected. They still haven't shown anything about a world-wide "taxing strategy" to increase income, or anything about researching new weapons and body parts, but if they do I think this game is definitely worth trying. It will probably still lack the replayability Syndicate had though... It was fun to see events happening worldwide even though you were not doing anything, you knew the missions were going to be slightly different if you gave the opponents enough time to research body parts or weapons you don't even have yourself.
0
Easy-to-use editors are very rare. Most mappers don't have any idea how user-friendly the SC2 editor is, compared to any editor you'll eventually use when you're a pro level designer. Editors like the UDK, SC2 editor (or any editor from a Blizzard game), Farcry editor, Bethesda's level editor and such, are very VERY user-friendly. As far as I can tell from my experience, unpopular level editors are usually not even documented when you build your maps, so you have to learn how to use it properly on your own... You have to be careful anyway, any wrong step in this kind of level editor will crash everything. That's why I always advise level designer wannabees to ALWAYS try any kind of level editor they can find. If they want to join the video games industry, they will eventually come across badly designed level editors at some point, so they'd better be prepared.
About MMO editors, I personally don't know any. But I'm not a fan of MMO games anyway, so I never really checked. I know for sure though that the UDK is not optimal at all for MMOGs: The UDK makes highly-detailed maps with lots of data included in the file, and these maps are not designed to allow streaming (you can't play in a map while another one is loading). Loadings between maps are extremely long and "memory heavy" in the UDK, which is strongly not advised for MMOGs.
MMOGs usually use streaming, which means the landscape is split into square sections (cubic, actually) that are loaded whenever you come close to the limits of the current section you're in, without preventing you from playing at the same time. It simulates an endless environnement by loading in memory the closest section(s) in range, which cannot be done in the UDK as far as I know. I'd rather recommend engines such as Morrowind/Oblivion/Skyrim, which are already using a streaming method to display the environment around your character.
0
@Mozared: Go
Surprisingly, this one fits EXTREMELY well for some odd reason:
0
You, computer purists, probably have already played -or at least heard- of these awesome games from Bullfrog: Syndicate and Syndicate Wars
Rumors were spread on the web that EA was planning a sequel to these games after they purely and simply swallowed Bullfrog. These rumors were true. The new Syndicate game (entitled Syndicate 2012) is going to be released in February next year, almost 20 years after the first game...
You can also find a gameplay video (11 minutes) with comments from a producer:
What do you think?
I personally am a huge fan of the first game. Actually, if I had to make a top 3 of my favorite games of all times, Syndicate is on the list. I expected a sequel to this game so much that, during my studies as a game designer, I wrote lots of documents detailing the first Syndicate game to try to create a sequel on my own. When I knew Syndicate 2012 was going to be out, I kind of left it aside, telling to myself "oh well, they're going to make it faster than you anyway, just give it up". Then I saw the teasers, trailers, and gameplay videos on Youtube.
I am disappointed by the conversion from a RTS game to a FPS game, and somehow it revives my need for a real sequel, a game just like the good old days but only improved here and there. I may actually make a few SC2 maps out of it, if only I had enough time and not so much projects scheduled already. Syndicate 2012 smells like a huge rip off of Deus Ex Human Revolution and a few other games, I would have loved to see a 4 players co-op RTS game instead... I have nothing against the 1st person view, I'm just sad they removed the whole strategy aspect, where you had to tax countries to make researches, persuade cyborgs to replace those you lose during missions, etc... I still have a little bit of hope that the trailers are not revealing how deep the gameplay really is, and I really cross my fingers that EA did something interesting out of it.