COD4 Source » design

New Design and Features for COD4SOURCE

cod4source — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 04:57:07 +0000

As some of our observant readers may have noticed we have a completely new design for COD4SOURCE. This will be a permanent change in an effort to make the site a bit easier to read and make it look better overall. I will be making some small tweaks to the design, and please let me know what you think of the new design and what changes you would make. Your feedback is important here and I will take all suggestions under advisement, and make changes as a result. For example, what do you think of the new header image? Is the color of links okay? Is the body text readable?

Also note that you can now register as an official site user, giving you an editable profile and making commenting faster and easier. We will be back to our usual Call of Duty 4 strategy posts tomorrow. In the next week or so we will also have a totally new feature up on the site to go along with our new design, so stay tuned for that.

Why Creek is a Terrible Map and Call of Duty 4 Map Design

cod4source — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 03:29:37 +0000

Map Design isn’t just giving people a place to frag, it is an art form. In a good map players of all skill levels and play styles can interact and partake in a balanced game of Call of Duty 4, without the map ever getting boring or tedious. Map design is an exceedingly complex part of video game design, and I don’t pretend to be an expert in that area. What pains me though is when a perfectly good map is ruined, not because of the graphic design elements, not because of glitches in the code, but because of a fundamental misunderstanding in how the game play flows in a first person shooter .

The example of this poor map design is Creek. When it first came out with map pack containing three other maps it was greeted warmly, but after playing actually playing it a few times the opinions started to change. People complained that game play on the map was stagnant and the only way to get kills was to camp. Normally this would be discounted as typical gamer whining, but on Creek there was actually some truth to this accusation. The problem with Creek is there are only 3 points of travel, or choke points, noted in the image below (A is the path through the cave, B is the path over the mountain, and C is the wide opening next to the mountain).

Want to try to interact with the opponent via a different path? Tough luck, the way Creek is designed the only way to do that is to drill through a freakin mountain. In some situations having only 3 choke points would be manageable, but Creek is such an open map that a single Sniper on either side of the map can have a clear view of every choke point. Once positioned the Sniper can just sit there and pick off enemies. Players trying to bust through a choke point have virtually no hope of success, and have drastically lower kill death ratios. As a result your typical 30 person TDM Creek has 22 Snipers camping on either end with 8 guys running back and forth getting shot until time runs out. This fails the fun test which is ultimately why Creek is such a flawed map.

So please Infinity Ward/Activision, next time you release a map pack make sure you actually test the map with real players first, it’s sort of important.

Video Game Design Jobs and Call of Duty 4

cod4source — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 19:41:58 +0000

This site does a lot about playing Call of Duty 4 and the strategy aspects of the game; but have you ever considered what goes into designing and creating such a great game? It took two years, a team of over one hundred people and millions of dollars to create Call of Duty 4. We take the huge amount effort required to create these games for granted, because all we have to do is pop a disk in and play. All that work is not for free though, video game companies and their employees reap huge profits from creating a successful title. For people like myself, who love video games, creating them for a living would be a dream job. Before you take that huge jump into getting a job in video games you have to consider many things, like applying to a video game design college.

So what goes into designing Call of Duty 4? And more importantly what does it take to become a video game designer? Video game design takes place at many different levels. The video game creation team needs to coordinate game mechanics, programing, graphics creation, audio and tons of other things. To organize everything video game design is generally centered around a core plan written before any work is done. That plan is a living document and is heavily modified and adjusted as time goes on and the game is tested. Once the plan is written you get on to the real hands on work. There are programmers writing code, artists designing graphics, audio engineers recording the soundtrack and writers creating the script and storyline for the game. This group of people are the ones that make that abstract plan into an actual working game. Jobs doing this hands on work is where there is the most demand for motivated and skilled individuals.

So what do you need to do to become a video game developer? Well if you are reading this far down into the article you definitely have some sort of motivation and aspiration to get a career in the video game industry, so you have that out of the way. What you might not have right now is the education and skills to do the actual work. Technical skills like computer animation, C++ programming, 3D engine architecture, artificial intelligence, and many many others. These are obviously complex fields and to learn about them you are going to need to get a formal education at a school totally devoted to video game design. If you have any interest in video game development just fill out this simple form to start the process to become a video game designer.

I hope you found this interesting and I wish you luck with your ambitions in the field of game design.