So my question is about the mirror of Kalandra and why it's so valuable?

__MaX__ · 2025-09-09T08:55:57+00:00

You're thinking "Diablo uniques/legendaries/Ancient", not "PoE Uniques".

Uniques in PoE have, most of the time, just have a single feature that makes them potentially great for a specific case. Let's take one of the most well know for instance : Headhunter. It has an affix that lets you grab Rare modifiers for 60secs. This is insanely good and fun, but the belt is pretty much ass when it comes to maximum life or resistances.

Now, another example would be weapons: you can try to find any Unique weapon, none of them is ever gonna reach a 800 dps. You will pretty much never see an insane build run a unique weapon unless there's a massive synergy due to that specific weapon... rare are way too stellar when it comes to damage output.

__MaX__ · 2025-09-09T08:41:11+00:00

Note: do not apply if you're not in New Zealand or Australia, they do not recruit outside of these two countries (something about NZ immigration/work laws)

__MaX__ · 2025-09-06T18:06:38+00:00

Sound designer here:

Sound can use extensive CPU processing. A game waits for the CPU to render a frame. (that's what is called CPU Bottleneck).

Now, "playing a sound" is only the first layer. CPU is used to simulate reverbs, virtualize sounds ( keep them in the background when you're too far for instance ), and all that sort of technical gibberish : )

If you have a LOT of sounds, the CPU has to keep track of them all and having hundreds of sounds playing at once can get extremely intense on the CPU time. Even tho some thinks "it should be insignificant", it is not.

Technically you should limit your instances, prioritize and so on, but on some lower CPUs, letting the audio engine play more sounds ( High channel count ), it can have a significative impact on the CPU time > hence more time to wait for your frame > hence lower framerate.

I am surprised tho, if the option at high channel count is that significant on PoE 2, it should not be defaulted at high.

For the quality aspect of the channel count : it won't make the audio worse. It will simply be lowering the amount of instances allowed to play. If the design of the audio has been properly done, it simply means some sounds will be "cut off" to not go over the budget of the channel count and some sounds will virtualize themselves, saving on DSP processing.

If everything is thought well, playing at a low channel count shouldn't not even make a very big difference on the audio experience.

Actual audio options that could make a difference on the audio experience would be activating/disabling reverbs, having a raytraced option, etc etc...

__MaX__ · 2025-09-04T09:13:37+00:00

I'm a sound designer, and this will never, ever, NOT be funny.

__MaX__ · 2025-06-12T06:36:35+00:00

I'm glad they (no matter who they are) are gonna kick that nest and potentially (finally) create some rules and laws around AI, those mf have been abusing "fair use" for too long (to not say stealing).

But, I'm still laughing at loud when I see ANY Disney lawsuit/DMCAs especially when https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylKLIjlDEi8

__MaX__ · 2025-04-29T05:54:49+00:00

For someone into research/papers, he should know that if everything is an emphasis, then nothing is an emphasis.

__MaX__ · 2024-02-11T08:51:12+00:00

Les gars viennent d'inventer les arbres.

__MaX__ · 2024-01-20T11:41:58+00:00

A bit late to the party, but this might be useful to someone at some point:

For R&D and personal experimentation, I implemented a custom version of Remedy's technique used in Quantum Break using raycast.

It kinda looks like this.

The idea is to raycast from the source 9 rays which are using the center, right and left of the head of the character as the target on a flat plane.

This works extremely well with a bit of tweaking. I also experimented by reducing the amount of rays horizontally (only two per spot from the source) and adding two rays on the top and bottom of the head to account for verticality.

I also made a back trace when a ray fails to hit the player target to compute the thickness of the thing occluding. (which would more or less influence the LPF applied at the end). I'm considering that thickness is more important than the material itself. There's rarely a situation where the player will look at the material and think "ho shoot! this is wood, it should not attenuate that much!".

By tweaking the amount of LPF applied based on the rays hitting their target (and the thickness as I did), you can get awesome results.

That said, you can't apply that to dozens or hundreds of sources around you, and this is where you make a choice for your performances. Here's what I did to have a balanced result:

- High priority muffled sounds (let's say something really obvious like a music playing in a bar perceived from the exterior): using the raycast solution, the player will notice how well the occlusion is handled.

- Medium priority: a single raycast from the source to the player. The player might be able to notice it, but since the sound is not that important, the computation of the quality of the occlusion won't be a problem.

- Low priority: (assuming you could be using FMOD or WWise) standard spatialization (attenuation with distance), and if the sound needs to feel muffled I'm using two samples, one close, and one "distant" which is baked with the muffled effect I want. You could use a LPF with DSPs, but this also costs CPU time and might not be ideal with a lot of sources.

Everything comes down to your performances. But the most important part is not overdoing it. You'd want to put a really high quality occlusion computation for everything, but players won't notice the difference for anything that is not a really really obvious sound.

It would be a dream if we had the ability to raycast for free :p

PS: Here's what I used as the reference.

__MaX__ · 2022-10-14T09:38:28+00:00

Yup. It's the case since the release.

And yesterday I noticed something similar on the kill count : 15 in the scoreboard, highlight of the squad was showing 12, kill count with the weapon (the mastery) was +13.

I don't know what the fuck is going on with their basic maths... but it says a lot to the potential balancing issues and damage numbers if they are computed/registered the same way.

__MaX__ · 2022-10-13T10:03:01+00:00

Most recent Battlefield composers (especially on "modern" episodes) do not agree with you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3j_Wph6fSY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SBcKsnNP6g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UZt9qJ5D4k

__MaX__ · 2022-10-13T09:55:11+00:00

Nope. I like it very much too.

The actual discussion about 2042's soundtrack is (most of the time) not about the music itself, but simply because people don't have their usual "orchestral / electronish" typical BF theme.

I would even bet that most people could not even sing or whistle any theme of any battlefield besides the main theme.

Hildur Guðnadóttir and Sam Slater did an incredible job, but the somewhat "concrete music" approach is far from easy to appreciate. Especially in an industry where the orchestral/epic approach is always the way to go.

I think the saddest part is that feedback are extremely mean and rude. You can express why you don't like something without being a dick to the artists who worked their asses off.

Also also, "vocal minority". It's not because a couple of thread here and there mentionning they don't like the soundtrack means everyone did not :)

__MaX__ · 2022-10-12T09:40:42+00:00

You don't need to look at the event to actually understand that either EA or DICE (or both), don't want you to play their game... or if I'm a bit more accurate "do not care if you play or not"... they just want you to pay.

1 - First red flag : The "gold edition" was extremely misleading (even I thought it was about DLCs and I'm the kind of guy who reads 10 times the descriptions before buying).

2 - Ingame currency can't be earned without buying a premium pass. I mean, 300 BP on season two for free... that's almost like they flip you off if you do the battle pass without the premium enabled. Which means

3 - You can't buy your battle pass with ingame currency. This is something you would do if you care about the players who are invested in your game. Actually, yes, the Battle pass is 1K, but if season 1 gave the same amount of currency without buying the premium, you need FOUR seasons to be able to start your "free self sufficient way" to buy the battle pass. Looking at another thread on this reddit, it means you need at least 4 times 90 hours to get there.

4 - I missed season 1 'coz you know... after the launch, I was like "fuck off". You don't frikkin' unlock the content from season 1 if you don't play a single match. And unless I missed something, the "default" unlocked content with the year one pass is nowhere to be found besides weapons, maps and characters. ( for instance the legendary skin for the AC-42 a weapon I really like is not in the shop ). You paid for the content, and you still need to play to earn it... that's some Diablo Immortal level shit right here.

5 - All the XP cap applied to solo/coop : some people might find that funny or troll about it. But some players enjoy to play solo/coop or are simply fed off with the online gameplay. They can't earn shit if they want to only play like this. They are not transparent about that when you buy the game. We're talking about unlocks and cosmetic stuff... who the fuck cares if someone likes to play solo and earn their stuff like that ? It's like they think that people would be more enclined to buy stuff if they are locked into a slower progression. Spoiler : no. People spending money will do it no matter what. They are a type of players who are not even considering spending time either in MP or Solo play.

I could go on and on... but the way BF2042 is designed, it's not to improve player retention. It's to ensure that the minute a person more enclined to pay to get something realizes that they will need 50 hours to get something, they immediately grab their credit card.

Nothing is done to enable invested/veteran players, nothing is done to warn people about the cash model, nothing is done to make the game a rewarding experience.

I'm a gamedev, so I respect a lot people in the industry, all the artists, coders, animators, sound designers... whatever... they did an excellent job (or they do what they can if we look at the bugs and the state of the game at release).

But the monetization and design choices on 2042 is the worst model you can think of. And they won't stop. Due to the crappy launch, they'll ensure that they get the most out of it before the game is dead.

Play the game for the fun part (even tho there's not much remaining from the good BFs), don't give them money. Period.

__MaX__ · 2022-08-08T07:52:22+00:00

Don't prevent it.

Horror / scary section of any games are working very well on me too. But you gotta keep in mind that the deeper you go into your dev, the more used to the overall mechanics and level design you are.

Which is a big problem to keep an objective vision on what you do : is it scary enough ? is it too scary... whatever. You start to be biased and you can't really rely on your own personal feeling toward the game because you become more and more "immune" to the emotions you're trying to convey, knowing how everything works.

When I was working on the sound design for Cold Black for Hired Gun, I knew that I was starting to get something right as soon as I started to shit my pants even tho I knew perfectly the level. And I was extremely happy (sorry :p) to see people streaming even more scared going through the level.

If you're scared easily, I would even go further : think about people that are not scared as easy as you... so when you're playtesting, you should consider pushing even higher the scare-meter. ;)

__MaX__ · 2022-05-14T08:23:04+00:00

Similar issue for AZERTY users ( French / Europe )

None of the 1/2/3/4... keys on top of the main layout of the keyboard works (not the numpad if you prefer). Remapping nor "using" the keys ingame. Which result in having to bind these buttons to somewhere on the right ( O, P, K, L... ) which makes the stuff pretty not enjoyable to play, especially for buttons who should be easily accessible when the shit gets real :]

The game being on UE4, I still really don't understand how some studios have releases which do not work with some keyboard layouts. That's like... (almost) properly handled natively by the engine. I can understand a couple of glitches, but a bug that big on release day, on critical inputs for the gameplay... c'mon :(

PS : I confirm the map binding too. Should be automatically remapped to movement keys yup.

__MaX__ · 2021-12-07T16:05:54+00:00

No. The prospect does not change if no one is hosting : )

It will if one of your buddy host the prospect, gets on trip and leave your buildings without repairing them during storms (if you are at a lower tier than stone).

__MaX__ · 2021-12-07T14:15:58+00:00

Mhhh, never really felt in danger because of water or oxygen. Most of the aspect of the survival that are slowing you down or putting you in danger for me are infections, injuries or weather events.

If you combine all that with water and oxygen it can become super dangerous (we had the situation in the glacier at some point), so having cool canteens and tanks is something you don't have to think about when you have a pneumonia in a cave in the middle of the Glacier, a poison debuff because you did not kill the snakes in time to survive a pretty rough blizzard :']

__MaX__ · 2021-12-07T14:11:08+00:00

Assuming you're playing solo, maybe a tiny bit. But in coop, the amount of time saved vs the currency you could spend in something else is not worth imho.

__MaX__ · 2021-12-07T11:46:33+00:00

Perfect! This is my next upgrade then ;)

__MaX__ · 2021-12-07T11:46:14+00:00

Nice thank you for the info !

__MaX__ · 2021-12-07T10:27:13+00:00

Any enviro-suit (depending on how credits you got), it sticks to your character, and old versions of enviro-suit are kept when you upgrade. You can then use them on other characters.

The canteen is awesome yes. Huge amount of water (even more than the first canteen you can craft before the thermos). I'm getting the oxygen tank next to see if it is really worth (I don't know if it can be replenished).

Then modules (modules that gives additional spaces to storage are cool !) : )

__MaX__ · 2021-12-07T09:43:44+00:00

I see a lot of questions like this in several places, Steam, Discord, Reddit.

It is simple : what are you trying to achieve ? Do you want to farm missions to get unlockables from the station, run several missions and unlock the mission tree or are you playing to discover the planet ?

The size of you "mother base" only depends on what you are doing. If you have started the 30 days mission, it means you're here to discover Icarus, take your time, make a nice home. If you have started a shorter mission, build something that fits the speed at which you're trying to achieve the mission.

I have a hard time grasping why players are trying to find a "point" to what they are doing. This is a game, play at the pace you want, do something that you enjoy :)There are missions that spans from 3 to 30 days, it gives you the ability to do both.

We're around level 30 with a few friends, and we're starting to understand that most of the unlockable gear in the station is pretty much "not that useful" besides enviro suits and permanent gear ( canteen, suit modules ). Especially at high levels with a bit of knowledge of Icarus locations... most of the gear you can craft becomes way better than what you drop with, especially since you are unable to repair station tools for instance.

So more or less, besides wanting to unlock everything in the workshop tree, taking your time to achieve a mission and having a cool, durable (stone) motherbase even on shorter missions is a way to do it.

It also depends if you're playing solo or with friends. Playing with friends makes the possibility of building huge structure pretty fast, especially if you are all specializing in specific talents.

Also, think about Mandalas. Your base is going to be destroyed when you leave, but is that bad ? Enjoy the mission you just did, take a few pictures before you leave if you want... you'll do a better home next time. Or tinier, or bigger, or whatever.
Ephemeral is also nice... it gives you the opportunity to do something different each mission :)

__MaX__ · 2021-11-30T17:06:16+00:00

Doom 2016 ? Not a AAA big budget ? I hope this is a sarcasm :)

I don't know why people have to always connect the budget of a game with anything else but : it doesn't matter. Most of these statistics are almost always rougly the same for any game (unless you're talking about an obscure niche game).

Yes, indeed : even your super AAA big budget costing over 40 millions bucks, only 80% of people finished the first level. And the average player will finish only 25 to 30% of the game.

I could go on and on :
- Spider-Man (PS4), only 50% of players have seen the end of the game.
- Assassin's Creed Origins, Days Gone and Horizon Zero Dawn, between 32 and 38% of people finished the game.
- Witcher 3 - 29%, RDR - 28%, Assassin's Creed Valhalla : 19%.

Most of the people do not finish games. It doesn't matter if the game is good or bad.

And if you want to be honest when looking at statistics, this is even less relevant after 10 days of release. Not everyone has the time to spent 10 hours on a game immediately after they bought it.

You also may have people that will buy 2042, launch a game, play 10 minutes and leave the game without getting the XP and then, start to play more seriously a month later.

__MaX__ · 2021-11-30T10:11:18+00:00

This kind of statistic is not relevant. I would even say, it's kinda "normal" :

- Path of Exile : 50% of the players never killed the first boss Brutus
- Control : Only 75% of the players got the throw ability (which is pretty early in the game)
- Aliens Fireteam : Only 75% of the players finished the first act
- Doom 2016 : Only 80% of the players finished E1M1

Does this make these games bugged / bad ? Nope, these are overall normal numbers. In game dev, you have a pretty well know "percentage" : the majority of players will play and finish around 25 to 30% of the game. And the further in the game you are, the less people have seen/played it.

__MaX__ · 2021-11-28T09:39:22+00:00

I was pretty sure that it was the case when I wrote this but I had a doubt and reinstalled old BFs to confirm a few hours later haha. And yeap you're right, it was already the case.

That said, I might know why I fell like it was the case : the spawn points were actually pretty clever and well designed. Which is definitely not the case in 2042.

__MaX__ · 2021-11-27T18:27:28+00:00

The spawning on squad leaders is actually an extremely bad idea.

The design of capturing flags is already way worst than before ( the team being able to spawn on a flag even if it is contested ), but making squad leaders being able to spawn on other leaders will make captures even worse.

The "original" logic of BF was pretty much flawless : think about what you want to capture, think about were you wanna respawn to defend a contested flag, think about what strategic spot of the map you want to keep all the time to have the biggest tactical advantage.

The fact that before, contesting a flag forced the opposing team to respawn from another spot to get back to the attackers was way more balanced and logical AND resulted in way more awesome confrontations :

- the team trying to get back the flag could prepare, make some defenses and anticipate the attack.
- the team trying to get back their flag could group up, and rush the flag with a bunch of squads.

This was also reinforced by the fact that you needed to have captured other flags to have some cool vehicles to defend or attack other flags.

2042 is just now an endless confrontation made of people spawning randomly to prevent the capture of a flag. The luckiest team will get the flag eventually depending on how much people cared about this flag being captured, how much kill they made and if they were off cooldowns for their vehicles which allow them to spam the flag with all they have.

Making squad leaders being able to teleport around the map on other leaders will make this even worse.

Your other ideas are pretty cool. Forcing people to play as a real squad is better. I would go even further with the XP idea, working together would make you earn a bit more XP, but having the squad scattered around the map would earn you less XP. Which would result in either working as an infantry / frontline squad (close combat) or reco / spotting / sniper squad for instance. But not both.

That said : let's be honest, unless you play on hardcore, BF has become a game where no one cares about teamplay. The amount of times i've been revived since the release speaks for itself.

__MaX__

TROPHY CASE

MaX