So I made a working game level for FPS games

[shadowalk]

<!-- m -->https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/264 ... eamed.html<!-- m -->



If you're on a PC/laptop right now, please do check it out and tell me what you think. It's part of my portfolio for graduation. It will require you to download and install the Unity Web Player (1 MB download, malware/virus free). After that, refresh the page and give it time to load.



Controls:

W,A,S,D - movement

Space - jump

Mouse - mouse look



Thanks!

[happiness and harmony]

i would do this but i am at work and you need administrator access to download software onto these hoebag computers

[Mesarthim]

looks great mate! the only issue I had movement wise was going up some stairs - had to jump my way up.

[zim]

i have some thoughts/recommendations



why not use a skybox?

after moving, whenever i let go of a key i decelerate really slowly. it feels like i'm ice skating or something.

lots of empty space

your resume was really far away from the spawn point

could you possibly implement some kind of shader for the water?

replace ramp with actual stairs?

-you could possibly lower the elevation of the entire city area and build docks straight to the edge of town.

maybe lower the intensity of the light



personally, i would cut down on all the empty space, make it so the player can't see anything out of bounds (emptiness). you'd have to line the edges of your town with buildings, walls, etc. you could build the entire town with your resume being the center piece.

[shadowalk]

I tried using a skybox but I think I fucked up on implementing it as my cloud texture looked stretched out when I tried it. But then again, I didn't fiddle around with the skybox too much as I concentrated more on having excellent normal maps. I'll try the skybox again or if all else fails, I'll just make a dome shaped 'sky' in Maya.



Now that you mention it, the lighting did make things look a bit whitewashed so maybe I'll lower the lighting intensity.

[Lavabug]

would try it but there is no unity thingy on linux, is there a workaround? I'll reboot into windows if you really care about my input all that much.

[shadowalk]

I just googled this and I found out that the Unity Web Player does not yet support Linux.

[Lavabug]

Tried it out.



I don't know exactly what you want a critique on so I'll say everything that comes to mind:



The level itself looks pretty, with a proper sky, some more embellishments and some anisotropic filtering it could pass for an early to mid 2000's PC or dreamcast game. The textures on the houses look very low res though.



Collision detection is fucked though. I got stuck in the space between barrels and boxes whenever I got on top of them, and if I jumped close to the edge of a barrel I'd sometims fly off perpendicular to it, very unpredictable physics. Acceleration/deceleration is also weird. Also no mid-air direction control, which I suppose is more realistic than something like half-life, but if you jump in while standing still you can still move around a bit. Something tells me the actual mechanics were not the focus of this but rather the level itself amirite?

[shadowalk]

[quote name="Lavabug"]Something tells me the actual mechanics were not the focus of this but rather the level itself amirite?[/quote]



Aye. I'm marketing myself as a game level designer and not really as a developer of a full completed game with storylines, game characters, game mechanics/scripts, etc. A game of that magnitude needs an entire game development team, I'm just one savage.

[zim]

Just throwing this out there shadowalk, but if your focus is on level design why don't you use a different medium such a UDK, Source, etc?

[shadowalk]

Because almost all the game development studios here in the savagelands use Unity. There's one or two that uses UDK I think but they use it sparingly. Unity is the hot thing nowadays since the scripts are in C# and everyone here loves C#. UDK uses C++ I think. Plus, Unity is proven to be more stable although I think UDK has the better visuals though this may or may not depend on the game designers themselves.

[zim]

ah, didn't know that

[Lavabug]

[quote name="shadowalk"]
[quote name="Lavabug"]Something tells me the actual mechanics were not the focus of this but rather the level itself amirite?[/quote]



Aye. I'm marketing myself as a game level designer and not really as a developer of a full completed game with storylines, game characters, game mechanics/scripts, etc. A game of that magnitude needs an entire game development team, I'm just one savage. [/quote]



If you want some good motivation (or want your self-esteem completely destroyed ) check out the indie game Dust: An Elysian Tail. All of the programming and artwork/animation was done entirely solo over the course of 3-4 years, shit is incredible. Not 3-D though, everything is hand-drawn, which may or may not be more time-consuming. And the mechanics/physics surpass most 2-D games I've ever seen.

[Lavabug]

off-topic, but I've been playing black mesa source today and realized that the physics in it and HL1 are both completely fucked. If you jump in a moving train you fly backwards as if you were standing stationary w.r.t the train, also no apparently higher/lower gravity when you're in elevators going up/down. Pretty ::::::::::