If I were to make a portfolio showing my work to a games company, which engine would you suggest I make maps for that would impress?

Anything that has a modern workflow. Unreal would be a good one.

The GOLD_MMO engine is pretty awesome I hear <_<

I remember asking Massassians about game engines some time ago (April, I think), and I ended up reading a lot about the UDK (Unreal Development Kit). If I were you, I'd check it out... You can make some very impressive things with it if you have the time to learn it.

TODOA

JK

Unreal is your best bet, but you'll also need some good work to show from something like 3DS Max or Maya or one of those types of programs.

...which he would be using with Unreal to make maps anyway.

Unreal Engine 3 is pretty much the only choice.

Sith2... err...

You know Wolfenstein 3D Editing is just about far far far more active than JK editing has been in like 8 years. Or ever!



But yeah, UDK. I think I mentioned that the last time!

Crysis might also be fun. In fact I meant to start editing it right before I decided to edit an outdated ancient game again >.<

I actually have edited Wolf 3d... I had a really cool project going on in it called Time of War,had a ton of source code changes like a car level and new menu colors and end level triggers instead of ending every level with a friggen elevator... never finished cause I upgraded to XP

There's other engines worth learning, maybe GameBryo or Cry Engine, but I don't think they're worth a significant amount of time. Everyone and their brother uses Unreal, so any skills developed can be immediately applicable. It's where I would spend most of my time, but I'd encourage trying other things to get a different perspective.

Many people will say UDK/Unreal, but UDK doesn't have any built in AI (besides the crappy multiplayer AI).

If you want to use Unreal, showcase a lot of your scripting ability with kismet, because we know Unreal AI sucks. Source is pretty well rounded but a little more difficult to use.

For a sample portfolio you can check out mine at [url]www.bengettleman.com[/url]. It got me a junior contractor position so I haven't updated it in like 2 years =[

Uh.

I suppose. Any company that would hire a dedicated 'mapper' (i.e. someone who only knows how to drive Unreal Ed, Hammer, Sandbox or JED) is already so far behind the curve that they might actually need artists with highly specific technical skills.

A modern game developer isn't going to care what engine you use for your portfolio pieces as long as you can create something fun and cool. In basically any production work you'll be doing almost everything in 3ds Max and the asset pipeline will automatically munge it into something the game can use. This includes Unreal Engine 3 and Gamebryo.

If you're interested in getting technical skills that people will actually care about:
- Learn Photoshop inside and out, including how to use plugins.
- Learn 3ds Max inside and out, including how to use plugins.
- Learn to use RCS/VCS like Subversion and Perforce.
- Learn build systems like Jam and Ant.
- Learn Lua and maybe Python
- Learn both GLSL and HLSL.

I just figure it might be nice to say, "yeah, I know how that works."

I know art direction is left to the designers, but Source engine games have this distinctive "Source engine look." There aren't many non-Valve games that use the engine, but those that do, have that "feel" to them. Different than Unreal 3, which has been used for all sorts of different projects that look nothing like each other.

Maybe because Source can't seem to do convincing lighting among other things?

Whatever you do, AT LEAS TIT'S NOT LITHTECH.

Lithtech! OH MAN. Such memories.

I am still flabbergasted.

Who even said that?

Yeah I can't find it anywhere in the thread.

It's on Gettleburger's portfolio site.

Oh ok, yes, what the hell are you talking about, Gettleburger?

It's like that article on wikipedia that said JK supported "N64 style antialiasing" whatever that means.

The N64 had edge antialiasing. JK did not support edge antialiasing.

Really? I couldn't ever tell on any of the TVs of the time.

Lithtech! That's what SHOGO: Mobile Armour Division was on wasn't it? I really must buy that from GOG.com one of these days.

Yes. And nice stealth marketing there!

(Good game, tho')

Yeah, I know. But the N64 never rendered at the full resolution of a TV. 320x200i plus edge antialiasing looked a lot like 740x480.

Edge antialiasing requires you to sort all polygons back-to-front. The bad games never bothered, like Superman 64. That's why great N64 games looked great, and bad N64 games looked like Playstation games.

Heh, I always wondered why that was. Good bit of info, thanks.

So I guess I'm editing UE3 then...

Any reccomendations on games? I just looked over the list and it's pretty bleh.

Get UDK, don't need a 'game'.

A game is nice if you want to say, make a singleplayer campaign. UDK has no save and load functions.

Context: Does he want to do level design? Or art? This post is from the LD perspective.

Response: I'm talking about gameplay. If you're working on single player stuff, you aren't going to have a game without enemies or puzzles. UDK has no enemies and Source has a bunch right out of the box which makes it more useful.

If you want to make something pretty and get a job being an artist, go ahead and use UDK - but there are extremely high standards for getting into the industry as an LD on that basis alone. If you want to make a real single player map you're better off using something else.

I want to make a single player campaign that will impress. That is my goal

What the hell, I didn't know UDK was that restrictive. Ugh.

It's not restrictive at all, they just don't do any of the work for you.