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Underground > Creation >

Game/3D Creation(s)

08:57 / 18.11.01

Does anyone has any information about game level/map design, 3D design, engine coding or the like? Books/links/whatever.... Anything would help.
I am interested in the aspects of game creation, however, I don't know where to being.

So, blah.

Thanks, in advance.

18:51 / 18.11.01

Well, you'd better have a look at Gamasutra then.

One of the serious think tank for video game creation. The registration used to be free, hope it still is. Very good content usually, most often written directly by industry folks.

Hope it helps.

Hermetech.
Who nearly became a game designer.

Nelson Evergreen

20:49 / 18.11.01

Abydos

People in the know keep telling me that if your traditional art skills and imagination are strong enough, you can get a foot in the door at the 2D design level and then learn all the big grown-up technical stuff as you go along. Apparently, people who know the software are two a penny, but not all of them have the creative edge; it's harder to teach them to be artistic than it is to teach modelling, rendering, animation, coding, whatever to someone who's already got it.

That's what I'm banking on anyway! I've had some promising feedback so far, so maybe there's some truth in it.

It's worth keeping an eye out for free demos; digital art magazines sometimes give them away free. You can download a thirty day demo of Lightwave which I'm yet to get stuck into but is supposed to be damn fine.

There's a good industry magazine on sale in the UK called 3D World; don't know if you can get it over there, but it's full of ads - development companies, recruitment agencies. Well worth a look.

And that's all I can tell you for now.

Best of luck,

Nelson

13:07 / 21.11.01

Neat.

Thank you both (Hermetech and Nelson Evergreen) for your help.

05:57 / 23.12.01

what you find trolling the discarded threads...(I don't know if you're still on this board, abydoss)

what engine are you planning to play with?

yawn - thing's buddy

20:05 / 30.12.01

i worked in the games industry for two years as a Lead Artist, heading up a team of modellers and illustrators. I was probably one of the last crop of people to get into the indusatry with no games experience at all.

If you are into the coding side of things, I'd advise putting together some simple demonstration of in-game physics - a sphere guidable by keyboard input which can 'bounce' off surfaces etc. If you have an artist mate get him to build something more complex than a sphere (a car for example) and apply your c++ nous to that. gamers demand more fom their gameworld physics these days - think gran turismo 3 versus sega rally and you'll appreciate what i mean.

If you're an AI programmer, some kind of circuit-based demo, where other objects onscreen interact/respond with/to the object controlled by the keyboard is a good bet.

For artists the usual advice is this: copy what you see in games. create HUD's (Head Up Displays) and menus, make 3d characters and texture maps to suit them. Make vehicles. Make locations. Look carefully at the games you like: are they 1st person shooters? If so, design your textures and objects accordingly. Are they platform adventures? If so, an entirely different graphic language should be employed.

Gamasutra as mentioned above is the place really. Edge Magazine is good for jobs in the UK. US, I'm not so sure.

09:11 / 31.12.01

uh here's some stills from my "3-d creation". It's not really for a game though. It's a 30 second short about the fear and anger that comes from knowledge of ones own existence. I like monkey.

Nelson Evergreen

15:48 / 04.01.02

quote:Originally posted by captain roaring:
I was probably one of the last crop of people to get into the indusatry with no games experience at all.

Sounds grim for me, then. I'm told the job market's all a-glut with recently purged creatives at present, and there's less hiring going on than usual....