mozidesign.com Unorganized Thoughts of a Game Designer

Gears of War 2: First Impressions

It’s finally here, Gears of War 2, and yes it is bigger and badder as Cliff Blezenski said in most interviews leading up the release this morning.  Couple of friends and I went to midnight launch down at Best Buy and got home around 12:30 am and played till around 5 am. Currently at work with heavy amounts of coffee to keep me awake!

Anyways I did not do the campaign yet as I want to play co-op so my friends and I fired up multiplayer. Started off with Warzone, same as last time kill the other team anyway you can. Funny thing for me was that since I played the PC version of Gears 1 a lot the past few weeks ( did insane co-op with a buddy) the controls on console felt wonky and sluggish. Then after a few rounds of me getting my ass handed to me via various executions I finally got back in the groove of using my gamepad and was roadie running and taking cover with ease.

From Warzone we went on to the new game modes,  I think we tried Submission next, which is pretty much like CTF, but instead of two flags there is one, and it’s not a flag. It’s stranded civilian armed with a shotgun running around the level. The objective bring the civilian to his knees, grab him as a meat shield and take him to another spot on the map to capture a point! This game mode was pure mayhem!

Up next was King of the Hill, which is pretty much like Annex but better! Instead of running from point to point and capping it, King of Hill requires both teams to head to one point and the only way to score is if a team member stays on point for the duration of time, which is much better and requires more tactics than Annex where one team can capture a point then move on to spawn camp! As an added twist in this game mode, any team defending can not respawn if they own a point, but offense team can keep respawnning, but once they capture the point and get on defense they can’t respawn! This mechanic really changes dynamics of the battelfeild from second to second!

Next up was Guardian, which is pretty much a better verision of Assassination from Gears 1 where each team has a leader. The difference was that here the leader keeps the team alive and allows respawnning, if the leader is out the team has to play it safe cause there is no coming back if you are down! After Guardian we fired up Wingman, 5 teams of 2 running rampant around the levels! This was great and really enforced team work and tactics.

As the morning crept in around 3 am people from our group started to leave to go sleep so as soon as the group got down to four us left we fired up the co-op mode Horde. This game mode is pretty much a gaunlet pitting you against waves and waves of harder locust AI. Sounds easy but it’s not, the AI are really aggerssive and on higher levels no area is safe as Locust are coming out of the wood work with their best. In this mode two things freaked me out, the new Boomer variations all armored up with gaint maces and shileds and tickers. Tickers are worse than wretches and lambent wretches combined. These little buggers are small and fast, and have one motive to go kamakazi on your ass by finding you and blowing themselves up!

After a couple of rounds of Horde, the last few of us still up went back to Warzone with bots and played the maps that we did not see yet. A note about the bots, they are pretty good, not the best but offer up a good fight and are good teammates helping you up when you are down.

So all in all Gears 2 is awesome, and a quick note about the MP level design, it’s fantastic! The layouts are great, visuals are top notch and designs are bigger than Gears 1 with more z-axis gameplay in some maps. Additonally there are more gimmick maps this time like Avalanche which has a massive avalanche as an enviornmental hazard, Hail which offers up a dynamic storm if caught in is a slow death by mass ammounts of hail pellets, and Security which has scripted events putting up laser beams changing the flow of the level by locking and unlocking different paths.

Now all I want to do is finish my my work as fast as I can and get back home and fire up some more Gears 2! Whenever I get to the campaign I’ll offer up my intial impressions as well as final once I beat the game, but just from the polish and presentation in multiplayer I am sure the campaign is going to be kick ass!

Cheers!

Saints Row 2: First Impressions

First thing that comes to mind with Saints Row 2…GTA clone right? Wrong! In the 4 hours of playing the game I can honestly say that Saints Row 2 (SR2) blows GTA 4 out of the water…why? Well first off the game let’s you dick around with ease, and do crazy shit without getting the attention of the cops for a good while. GTA 4… you pull out your gun…10 cops on your ass…lame and not fun (Ok that was a stretch but for those that have played GTA 4 you know what I mean)

Second reason, side missions.  Side missions will be and always have been fluff to the core game, in GTA you could ‘hang out’ with people and play pool or get drunk… all good, annoying but it’s a side mission, what else could one possibly do? You know what would make for a good GTA 4 side mission, being a fake cop and wreaking havoc around town for a camera crew to film…I wish that was there or some game did that…oh wait… SR 2 does let you do that! Yes there are side missions were you can be a cop and go ape shit on the city of Stillwater for a camera crew. Good times! Though I don’t want to give away any spoilers about this game mode for those that have not played, I will say one thing, the camera man following has a twisted mind. For one encounter of quelling a domestic distrubance he suggested I use a chainsaw… the rest I leave to your imagination.

There are plenty of other side missions, which I have not gotten to yet but I assume they will all be more rewarding and fun to play than taking out a ‘friend for darts’. Oh and Insurance Fraud is still in the game, one of the best side missions from the first Saints Row.

Third reason why SR 2 kicks GTA 4′s ass…the radio stations. The first car I jack happens to have the Final Countdown from the band Europe playing….eff yeah! 80′s synth metal for the win! Then while browsing the other radio stations came across the rock station and guess what was playing… freaking Opeth, ‘Ghost of Perdition’! Does GTA have Opeth no… it does not! Almost everything on that station had big explosive metal tracks with double bass going and amazing riffs! GTA does not have mind bending metal tracks on their radio stations!

Just for my own curiosity and to share here is the entire track list of the metal station in SR 2: (I am fan of most of these bands!)

Anthem by Trivium
Bat Country by Avenged Sevenfold
Colony of Birchmen by Mastodon
Milk Lizard by Dillinger Escape Plan
Nothing Left by As I Lay Dying
Ghosts of Perdition by Opeth
Stars by Hum
Resurrection by Chimaira
Unsung by Helmet
What A Horrible Night To Have A Curse by The Black Dahlia Murder
Redneck by Lamb Of God
Deadly Sinners by 3 Inches of Blood
Barnburner by The Agony Scene
Woman by Wolfmother  (Ok Wolfmother is not mind bending metal but they still freaking rock)

So as you can see from my initial impressions SR 2 has cleary gotten my attention and hooked me in more than GTA did in the same amount of time. However, is GTA 4 a bad game no it’s not, it’s ground breaking in it’s own right but somethings about that game just bored or annoyed me (i.e. not being able to mess around an open world with out cop interference)

That’s it for now… once I beat this game I’ll post a more detail review but with Gears 2 looming over the horizon I don’t think I’ll be beating SR 2 anytime soon!

Cheers,

CBP 3 Volume 2 Released!

It’s officially now out in the wild! Community Bonus Pack 3 (CBP 3) Volume 2 is done, featuring 10 new levels and 2 brand new chracters for Unreal Tournament 3.

The pack can be downloaded from here:

http://cbp.beyondunreal.com/download

The levels included in the pack are as follows (using author community/screen names) :

DM- CBP3-Decay from “evilmrfrank”

DM-CBP3- Solar from “Kami”

DM-CBP3-Thor from “N3odoc”

CTF-CBP3-Agonas from “Raz” and “Sjoz”

CTF-CBP3-Arean from “Kami”

CTF-CBP3-The Excavation from “Plutonic”

CTF-CPB3-Krodan from “Hourences”

CTF-CBP3-Morgoth from “Monger”

CTF-CBP3-Vengeance from “N3odoc”

WAR-CBP3-Meditation from me “Mozi” (Screens found on my level design page need to update the info)

Additionally a big round of applause to “iWaNN” for remaking the classic UT chracter War Machine and the new character Kat. Also big thanks to “Spoondog” and “Ice” for keeping volume 2 on track, and a big hand for our testers for finding all the fun bugs we had to fix!

Screens and more info about the maps and characters can be found at http://cbp.beyondunreal.com/

Hopefully everyone will enjoy the maps and look forward to playing these online with the community during the week!

Cheers!

Make Something Unreal Contest

EDIT: 09/17/08:

Unfortunately I did not win WAR category in Phase 1… sad news for me a little hit of disappointment for the day but moving on… I’ll try again next round starting October got something in the works for that. More on that in the next couple of weeks.

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So a couple of months ago Epic started up the Make Something Unreal Contest (MSUC) once again for UT 3. Recently the finalists of Phase 1 of MSUC are starting to roll in  and both of my CBP 3 levels have been featured!

In Best Deathmatch Level category, DM-IronMaiden 2 did not get a finalist position but did get honorable mention. DM had a lot of good levels to compete against for the contest.  However, in best Warfare level I have secured a finalist spot along with 7 other maps! There are total of 5 prizes for MSUC Phase 1 in Warfare category so hopefully I make the cut and actually win some cash for my level!

Additionally my fellow level designers from CBP 3 have also secured finalist spots as followed:

In Best Deathmatch both Kami and Neoduck are in the finalist spots with their levels DM-Salvation and DM-August

In Best CTF, Spoondog our project lead has a finalist spot with CTF-Touch

And finally in vCTF, Plutonic is in with his level vCTF-The Dig.

Aside from the CBP 3 maps in the finalist slots the other levels from community designers all look fantastic and I have had a chance to play a few of those levels which equally have great gameplay.

So I wish the best of luck to all the finalists and hope that all the CBP 3 maps win in Phase 1! Below are links of all the finalists in the different level design categories.

Best Deathmatch Finalists

Best Warfare and CTF Finalists

Best vCTF Finalists

SP_Industrial Released

My first single player level for Gears of War is released! It is entitled SP_Industrial and can be found on level design page here.  Overall I think it turned out quite well, a little short but fun.  My next single player endevor (whenever that may be) will be longer than this now that I know how to make a SP level.

Teaser screen below and more in the level design page:

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Now that I have learned more kismet with this level and from my experience on WAR-Airlock I’ll be making some basic kismet tutorials to share some cool concepts that can make a level more interesting, so look out for those soon.

Till then Cheers!

Community Bonus Pack 3 Released!

It’s finally here, the long awaited Community Bonus Pack 3 (CBP3) for Unreal Tournament 3!

The CBP 3 is a collaboration of some most talented level designers in the Unreal Community, including yours truely. I had the privelage to make two levels for CBP 3, DM-CBP3-Iron Maiden 2 (which is a revamped remake of my somewhat famous Ownage level) and WAR-CBP3-Airlock.

CBP 1 and 2 were both quite successful for Unreal Tournament 2k3/4, but now for the first time ever the CBP 3 will be available on both PC and PS 3! Yes you read that correctly, these bad ass levels will be available for the PS 3 console.

Here is some cool release media created by one of the level designers on the team, Daniel ‘Green’ Rozanski.

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For more screens of my levels head on down to the level design page.

Also this won’t be much of a release without links, both the download for the PC and PS 3 releases can be found here:

http://cbp.beyondunreal.com/download

Enjoy!

Melee Weapons…Instant Kill?

Better late than never, but I finally got my copy of Call of Duty 4 and beat it within a week. My buddy was right that it is extremely addicting and I’ll probably do nothing else but play it all the time. I still have not tired multiplayer, but will do that in due time.

So what’s my overall perception of the game? One word, awesome! There are somethings that did bother me a little bit but nothing that made me want to stop playing. I am sure those of you that stop by have played it already but for the benefit of doubt I’ll remain relativiely spoiler free.

A general rule for an awesome game or film is to start with a bang to hook the audience and COD 4 did that, literally! The first mission on the cargo freighter was one hell of a level, I kind of got disoriented a bit when backtracking the level as it was sinking, but I assume that adds a little bit to the psuedo-realism the game provided.

Outside the sheer awesomeness of the gameplay and visuals COD 4 presented it worked like any other FPS I have played. However, there were two missions that really stood out that I have not seen in other FPS games. The first was the mission aboard the AC-130 where you provided air support fire for ground troops, the second was the sniper mission. The AC-130 was awesome becuase it the entire mission was presented from a view of an onboard camera and using that camera sight you delievered some heavy fire power to unsuspecting enemies below.  With sniper mission it was all about camping, which I do nomrally in most FPS games so I enjoyed it even more!

Now that I am done with COD 4, I have nothing new to play till GTA IV comes out in a few weeks. That will keep me busy for a while.

In the meantime I decided to fire up Doom 3 on my new rig. Last time I played it was on a rig with 512 MB ram and a Radeon 9700 Pro. Now that I got a Quad core beast with 4 GB of RAM and an 8800 GTX so I assumed it would work flawlessly on ultra high detail. Well it didn’t, the game ran quite slow, this had me stumped as to why this was happening with such awesome system specs. Turns out the game does not like dual monitor adapter, so I had to use the Nvidia control panel to tell it to run Doom 3 running single display instead of dual. Once I did that the game ran really smooth and looked great. Almost done with it again, recently finished the hell levels, damn did that shit look scary on such high detail.

Since I am on the subject of Doom 3 I can safely segway into the topic of this rant. Melee weapons…instant kill? I never really thought about it too much but now I have seen this in three games and it just seems odd. So my first example is with Team Fortress 2 and the Spy. Pretty sneaky fellow if played right and most commonly known for backstabbing people with a small knife. If you backstab someone they die instatly. Next example, COD 4, the knife if used to backstab unsuspecting AI they go down in a second flat no effort required. Doom 3, the chainsaw kills most demons and zombies instantly or in some cases a second or two.  However, in all three of these games using normal bullets to take someone down takes while and most AI or human player can sustain a barrage of bullets but knife or chainsaw takes them down instantly? What the hell!

I don’t have answer for this but it’s an odd design choice, ok perhaps TF 2 can be an excepetion given that the backstab is Spy’s main attack and it’s funny to do it or watch people get backstabbed. However in the case of COD 4 or Doom 3 I would assume that melee weapon would deal some damage and slow the AI down for a bit but not kill them instantly.

Anyways something to think about why do melee weapons kill instantly, I am sure there are other game examples that I can’t recall now.

That’s it for now, till next time.

Cheers.

Making of MP_Pipeline

The other day I finished up my second level for Gears of War entitled Pipeline. The download link is available on the level design page.

So when I started to make this level I thought it would be a neat idea to take iterative screen shots as I built the level from the ground up and talk about what I was thinking and planning toward the end result.

This level started the same as most levels I build, just messing around BSP cubes and building a basic shell of what I think would make for a good level layout. After a couple of hours of trying different designs I came up with this basic shell.

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If you notice in the top corner the level was actually entitled Caves, what I had in mind was to build a level that was underground with large opening looking up into the sky with some visible structures, sort of like a massive sinkhole. But then I remembered that the offical retail level MP_Goldrush is very similar to my idea so I decided to scrap the concept but use the shell to make something different.

After a little brainstorming I came up with the idea to make a factory that would be in the middle of nowhere, like the ocean. To add to that I decided to create the factory around a large rock formation, taken from the Caves idea I had before. Digging through the static mesh library and materials I built the basic idea of the level and textured the BSP shell and removed some extra brushes to create a more refined layout.

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With the level now textured it was time to start adding some static meshes for more detailing. Now there are lot of different static meshes to choose from and some seem to fit together than others for a factory theme. So what I like to do normally with most of my level design is to create a ‘junkyard’ near the level and just place a whole bunch of meshes that I think look cool and could possibly work.

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In the image above that is just a handful of the many meshes that I eventually added to the ‘junkyard’.
With the junkyard pretty much full of good meshes I started to play around with them and see how the looked on different sections of the level. After a while I found the right pieces and eventually the level started to take shape.

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After a week of working on the level I got all the details that I wanted to make the level feel like a factory, a total of 1936 static meshes to be exact. I felt like this phase was done and moved on to lighting.

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One of my many favorite levels in the game is Tyro Station, not only is the game play fun in that level but the environment with the red haze looks awesome. With that inspiration I decided to make a similar post process effect on the level

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I also added some directional lights to change the color to be a little more brigher than dark red as well as global spot light as the direction from where main light source was coming from. The spotlight also helped with some nice glare/refelections off some of the more metallic looking meshes in the level.

From here I added all the cover spots, play tested the level and got some good feedback for subtle improvements. So I went back and added some more details to the level, and started to give it a more run down look by purposely mis aligning floor tiles, adding broken support beams, trash, blood stains, and a few dead bodies out on the rocks outside the main playing space. In the end the static mesh count went up to 2453!

Here is the end product of the level fully textured, detailed, and lit.

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As well the final BSP wire frame

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And final mesh wireframe, looks cluttered but really is not.

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For more in game screens check out the level design page to the right. Hopefully you guys will enjoy the level and as usual comments and feedback is welcomed along with any questions that you may have from reading this.

Cheers!

First Gears Map Done…

Well I never did get a lot of response about this map from the forums, a lot of views and a few comments here and there.  Hopefully people that have stopped by on the forums have checked out the map in some state or another, but now the final release is out. Stop by the level design page to check out the screens and download the map. Once you do download it follow the install directions in the readme file if you put the map file anywhere else it won’t work… not a big fan of the whole My Documents file structure either but not much can be done about that.

As usual feel free to leave any comments about the map. Done some minor tweaks here and there but don’t think there is a lot more I can do with this map so now it’s out into the wild… enjoy.