dt1000

Thanks!

Thanks, man!

No no... Thank you! :D

In response to post #68817146. Thanks! :D I doub't I will have time to do a Fallout 4 mod. I am super busy at the moment. And I still haven't finished the game yet! :( Why not do one yourself?

In response to post #68816741. Thanks! :D

In response to post #68815911. Or maybe I just don't like working at a sausage party?

In response to post #68793801. No worries - I am always happy to answer questions. Career Highlight - my submarine-exploding Medal of Honor level getting a shout out on Venture Brothers. And also being the top hit for "Level Design" on youtube! That was pretty surreal. Something I am really proud of - the Neural Subnet sequence in Deus Ex Mankind Divided - System Rift... watching streamers play it, and seeing the look on their faces when they work out the final twist at the end is totally priceless! Also setting up the subversive direction for the crypts in Shadow of The Tomb Raider - I was lucky enough to have a team who really knocked it out of the park there. What have I been playing - Subnautica. It's amazing!!! The perfect mix of relaxing wonder and nail-biting terror! What am I looking forward to - Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines 2. And System Shock 3! What is my all-time favourite game - Rez. Followed closely by Bomb Jack, and then Super Cars II. :D

In response to post #68771296. Thank you very much! I will try and answer your questions as best I can... Hobbies - I like cooking. Anything that involves building something. And board games. Lots of board games. School - I have a degree in Mechanical Engineering. I found it a bit dull, so I never persued a career in it (although I really enjoyed the design and building elements of Engineering). Previous Job - I worked in marketing for 5 years before becoming a full-time Game Designer. It was videogame marketing though... when I left university it was the only job in the industry I could get, and it was kinda fun, so I stuck at it for a while. What got me in - that is a tough one... I think I have always loved three things: making stuff, videogames, and entertaining. When the tools to mod games came along it was something I just naturally started doing. Doom was the first game I modded properly - it was amazing for me to pull back the curtain of such a visceral experience and see the smoke and mirrors that made it happen... I was hooked! Advice/experince - make something different and release it. As I touch on in the interview, it's important to stand out, so make something interesting... and it's important to close, so be sure to release it! Plus you will find out pretty quickly from user feedback if you are doing good work or if there are areas you need to improve on. My experience releaseing Act I of Scourge of The Lich Father was basically what kick-started my gaming career. I saw that people were enjoying my work and it had a drug-like, addictive quality: I had to make more, so people could enjoy more!

In response to post #68772856. #68792221 is also a reply to the same post. Whoops... seem to have replied twice. Need. More. Coffee.

Yaaaaay! I am so happy you asked about this! I do indeed have the plot for Act III (in my head at least). It was going to be short... more comparable to Act I in size. The Blade of Souls would eventually lead you to a remote island, with a massive spire on it. No surprise - the spire is Zellenath's lair. The player would have to battle to the top of the spire (solving puzzles an mini-quests along the way) to confront Zellenath in his true form - a Dracolich! After two years spent working on Act II , I just didn't have the bandwidht to complete it, so I tried to incorporate a decent ending into the second act. I am thrilled to hear that you enjoyed it!!! :D

In response to post #68773116. I''d like to... being an indie developer is a bit like being a pro modder - I get to do all my modding on my own game during work hours! In terms of modding an existing game, I am a real stickler for quality, so even a small mod would take a large chunk of my time. Maybe a big studio would like Thunderbox to create some DLC for them? #coughBethesda

In response to post #68775056. What needs to be done to make this happen? I would have thought the files would have been cross-compatible. Is this not the case?

In response to post #68775646. Thanks - that's most kind of you. I barely have time to play games myself now... especially as RPGs can have hundreds of hours of content. Modding used to take all of my free time... the plan was to make it my job, so I could liberate my free time... which sort of worked out! :)

In response to post #68782026. Thank you very much - it's my pleasure! :)

In response to post #68782476. Thanks, man! I hear what you are saying, but teams will always need junior members. It's prohibitiively expensive to staff a team with very experienced talent (the best people won't work for peanuts) and, on top of that, there is quite a lot of work required that is not particularly tricky (for example, placing cover rigs or mapping out sound triggers) that could easily be done by a junior designer; you really don't want expensive talent frittering their time away on technical grind work. When I was modding for a hobby I had a marketing job, and I took a 50% pay cut to work as a Level Designer. so yeah, making decent money right off the bat is tough... but it's possible to build a career once your foot is in the door. The biggest bit of advicce I can give anyone who is trying to break in to the industry is to be different - make sure your work has an interesting angle that employers won't have seen in the other applicants' remo reels.