We're looking for level designers that want to work the standard deal: long hours, lots of glory and...paid too.
Bullfrog is currently looking for level designers available to work in the Southeast London area to join a team performing a console conversion of a high profile game based on the Quake 3 engine. Aspiring applicants should reply via email to Stephen Murray (smurray@ea.com). Please send a resume, but no map files unless specifically requested. If you have something available online, please point me to it.
It is with both hope and regret that I inform the gaming community of the serious problem that has arisen in relation to the HORIZONS project. As you know, HORIZONS was supposed to be a privately funded project; the problem is that the funding has fallen through, and the project is now facing extinction.
We have been in talks with a publisher for close to two months now and have just been informed that it's going to take them even longer to make their 'decision', and the problem is that we cannot last during this amount of time (we have already been privately and personally funding HORIZONS for the past 9 months). At this time, we have a team of roughly 20 people; many of them industry professionals that are migrating from other companies to work on HORIZONS. This team will fall apart and be disbanded over the next few weeks unless something is done.
As far as I can tell, the only way that HORIZONS will be bailed out is if somebody acts quickly and works with us to make this amazing project a reality with the proper financial support (millions of dollars). We have the people, the talent, the design & concept, and even more importantly, the drive and ability to make this project a reality. We are only interested in working with those who will not waste our time and are interested in making things happen instead of talking about it.
Got a few questions in email after the last update, figured I'd post them here:
- The new patch should not break old save game files, so no need to start over in the SP game
- An additional Storyteller feature that was added I forgot to mention: the ability to re-position objects after they are placed and also the ability to remove all placed objects (or very nearly all, we may have missed one or two, there are too damn many).
- The patch size is about 2MB (800k of actual patch data, the rest is the self-extractor and patch application itself). This might grow a bit as the localized data is added, however.
- There will be a single patch released for all languages.
- The save-anywhere feature is accessed via the ESC menu just like LOAD.
- The pause feature is accessed via the "pause" key.
- The issue with the 5-button Microsoft mouse is fixed in the patch.
Also, we are starting phone interviews and stuff for open positions here for our next project. If you're a programmer, designer, or artist (and are kick-ass at your job, naturally) send some stuff to "jobs@nihilistic.com". Full-time on-site only, please! There's just no subtitute for working on a small, efficient, talented team so why not give it a shot, you won't regret it. We're planning to add just 3-4 people total to bring the head count here to like 15, and will continue to focus on only one triple-A title at a time. If you sent stuff earlier during crunch mode, feel free to re-send it to that alias if you're still available. Thanks.
We like the PC. We're good at exploiting it, and our last two games (UT and Unreal) have been very successful on PC. We would be stupid to walk away from the platform we know and love, a platform that is consistently evolving and allowing us to stretch further and further. We have no problem with people shifting their focus away from the PC or watering their PC product down to the lowest common denominator -- it just leaves more opportunity for us!
Link of the Day: LG Electronics'
Internet Digital DIOS Refrigerator. An odd glimpse at the future. What did
George Carlin say? "Nail two things together that have never been attached
to each other before, and some schmuck will buy it from you!" Something
like that. Thanks Jay H. Edson.
Bonus Link: BUYGAMES.COM - The Game Superstore.
Featuring "Quake 3- Arena Elete" for sale. Thanks Travis McPherson. If
their decidedly non-'leet spell-checker is bad, their proofreader is worse, as they
describe the game as "Fueled by a radically modified version of the Unreal
3D engine." Wow!
Story of the Day:
"We Are at a Good Point to Pass This Off", says Genome Scientists (MoonApples.Com). Thanks Louis Chyp Sineni, who points out
it's a bit subtle, but the Jeff Goldblum quotes are worth the price of
admission, and besides, it connects so well to today's OotB.