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This photo of an Airfix model:

www.hisinsa.com/hisinsa/graficos/CENTURYTOY/10123.jpg

seems to be the muddy green I was talking about. Not sure, could be brown. This one is definetly green, though:

http://gebirgsjager40.com/images/kubel15701.jpg

This is bloody hilarious.  I laughed so hard I now have a sore throat. Life would be less entertaining without people of this caliber. bike-pusher, I salute you.

You made an electric Martin Luther King? Genius! Think of the possibilities: your very own cyber-Ghandi, scouring your e-mails for spam! Replacing that bloody MS Paperclip with Mother Teresa. We could even bring back Elvis as a password memoriser!

An electric Martin Luther, on the other hand, would be crap. You'd never get a PC to cut down Christmas trees.

I failed my test first time and still haven't retaken it yet. Should I pass, a 1993 flame red 1.3i Mini Cooper with some lovely additions and some furry dice will finally get out of the garage and on to the road, with me behind the wheel. The heater matrix needs fixing/replacing, though. Argh.

[you]

I think your teachers were impressed with the fact you made the game, not the game alone. People just don't realise you don't need to be Eidos to release a game these days, believing games creation is shrouded in some dark veil of complex programming and fiddly artwork.

Christ. This topic is already reaching the critical mass.

A few points:

Yes, both sides have had their say but the discussion shouldn't stop until it reaches a conclusion. If that takes a century, so be it. You'll feel better for it in the end, although at least admit when you're wrong and someone points that out.

You might think the other guy is an idiot but if he's right then accept it.

No, the US are not evil. They just put too much confidence in their government and manage to occasionally vote in power-crazed imbeciles to run the country once in a while. England did that too, remember? Tony Blair is a git. Everyone knows he's a git. His Mum probably thinks he's a git. He's running the country. How the hell did we fall for that one?

The only thing that separates the two countries is the power they wield. America can wipe out life as we know it and England can.. er.. ..uh. Yeah.

And no, there is nothing wrong with posting links as some form of evidence, so long as they are from a reliable source and  don't come from a website that has a forum where most of the regulars believe the Earth is being secretly run by a clandestine order of homicidal owls.

Woops. Okey-dokey. Easy mistake, I suppose. I should pay more attention when playing all those WW2 games.. It's a slightly bluey-grey, right?

I'll finish off the image some time this week. Isn't the canvas roof usually a muddy green though (sometimes lime green). At least I *think* it usually is.. My knowledge from Airfix models would suggest this, anyhow.

There's a lot of cash to be reaped off the Iraqis and Bush probably wants as much as he can fleece without people noticing. Pretending they're not looking for money and digging up dictators and looking for WMDs they'll never find is just a way of hiding that.

Makes you wonder what he's spending it all on. America has a national debt that jumps by $2.34 billion per day, but judging by his usual mentality, a f***ing huge coffee machine is probably on the Bush wish list this Christmas.

Nice officer. Looks like the bastard child of Adolf Hitler and Stalin.

Here's my work-in-progress Kubelwagen, as promised:



Very work-in-progress. I signed up to the forums, by the way, but thought I'd post this here since its only a demonstration.

Hah hah. You're right, it was Interference. The first part of his message said "Quote from InCreator," so that's why I said you rather than him.

I wouldn't want to drag you into our project, but if you really want to help then I won't refuse. Heh heh.

I'll tell both of you exactly what we'll we need first, but right now I have to go to work so I'll give you the information later.

Well, *that* was confusing.

Yeah, ok. I'll give this a try. I don't have 'net access in my student house so I doubt you'll want to wait until Tuesday to see what I can do so I'm downloading some pictures of the vehicles you mentioned and I'll have a shot at drawing them in PSP over the weekend and I'll post 'em here on Monday, unless you'd prefer them in the Critic's Lounge or something.

Excellent characters!
Do they look same in the game?
And if so, are you really able to animate them?

One would assume so.

I wouldn't have thought it would be too hard to animate them. Only when you have blurred / unsharp lines on a sprite is it hard to animate consistently.

The simple technique of marquee selecting parts of the sprite, moving it, filling in the gaps and tweaking to suit the relevant animation makes life so much easier, especially with speech animations.

Blinding work, by the way. I might be able to help you guys a little (drawing individual parts of scenes, eg. German cars) but I can't devote a HUGE amount of time to it, what with uni course work. And I just aquired a Gamecube: time seems to be suddenly flying past. Erk.

www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk - Yeah.
www.verge-rpg.com - The VERGE RPG engine
www.planetunreal.com - UT2k3 stuff. Regularly uninspiring.
www.pennyarcade.com - A great little distraction during Uni lectures. Down, last time I checked though.

Hrm.

I couldn't help laughing at the end of the game, as I was running from the plane, trying to reach the Glastonbury Tor in time to save the world, only to confront yet another bunch of boxes.

Yes. That was the single point in the game where I turned round, stuck my hands in the air with comical surprise and yelled "Oh No!!" at a small collection of inanimate objects sat watching my progress.

And on DX2: I'll probably buy it when it comes out over here, but Ion Storm should really take more care in how they construct demos. They're supposed to be a taster for the full product: to see if you like it. Ravenous public or not, if Valve did what Ion did - the way they did it - then no-one would be waiting for Half-Life 2.

I don't know if this thread goes about that, but my favourite book is "Jurassic Park".

Have I ever told you that you're my favorite crack-head?

You know more than one crack-head?

True or not, that's brilliant. Screenplay material.

This is totally off this topic, but have you played Deus Ex 2 yet, Interference? I'm a few hours into it and by my reckoning it's by no means a 'dumbed down console shooter'...

It's not out over here 'til March (ouch), so I got hold of the demo. Usually an example of how good the full game will be - to an extent - it wasn't exactly the shining example of gaming brilliance the hype-mongers were shooting for. The lack of skill points has removed any sort of reward for doing side quests, the inventory is a pain in the proverbial, the demo seemed to have been slapped together by a chimpanzee with two house bricks and the AI Ion Storm so vehimently argued was well above anthing else turned out to be fairly easy to outwit and occasionally annoyingly psychic.

My only hope is that the story - which I can only fully appreciate in the full version - lives up to what I was hoping. But then, when I said "dumbed down," I was referring (albeit lighheartedly) to the mechanics behind the game and not the story, which I have sadly barely touched yet.

But will I like it even if the story IS good? I don't mind not judging a book by its cover but if the cover is close to falling off and someone has written it using a leaky fountain pen then you'll forgive me for feeling a little disheartened.

I don't feel that's the fault of the Xbox that DX2 is the way it is, I feel that's the fault of the marketing department for thinking everyone who owns an Xbox is a drooling idiot. "The Future War on Terror"? Who on Earth thinks this crap up? The tagline itself reduces the game's appeal to me solely on the basis it makes it sound like a post-9/11 cash-in to appeal to the terrified and the bereaved, which is very wide of the mark.

Come on, it wasn't the greatest game ever but I enjoyed it. Some annoying design decisions but overall very entertaining to play.

Ancient civilisations are what BS has been doing well for years, to do a total U-turn would alienate its audience, it's like Ion Storm suddenly deciding to make the Deus Ex sequel a dumbed down console shooter without any semblance of... Ah, wait.. That's what actually happened. Bad example.

Aside from that more-than-slightly gentle dig and DX: Invisible War, understand the point I'm trying to make: BS3 introduces new things to the plot but stays relatively in the same region as the last two games since thats what its built on.

The plot does twist and turn unexpectedly, and what you're finally fighting is not what you thought you would be near the start of the game.

I don't feel the characters are all that bland either. I've seen much worse, and I genuinely warmed to George and Nico. Their humouring of one-another - even during life-threatening situations - is fun to watch.

A couple of BS3 moments that did it for me:

Spoiler

When George is told by the Knights Templar they're putting their finest knight on the job, and the dawning realisation that they mean him.

[close]

Spoiler

The final scene in the Egyptian temple with Anubis

[close]

And, yes, everybody knows there are far too many block puzzles. To the point its comical. That's what I meant by "Some annoying design decisions." They're not that bad, anyway. Just far to obviously a puzzle.

Our local book store sells The Dalek Survival Guide but I think this is slightly closer to the ol' comedy bullseye. I eagerly await a follow-up, along the lines of "Labour Party Political Broadcast Survival Guide."

And the greatest book ever is The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy.

The new sprite is marvelous
Looking farward to the game! Keep it going!  

Thanks. Early stages yet, mind you. The proverbial ink the plot synopsys was written in is still wet.

I'm in the process of simultaneously scriptwriting and drawing / pixel-arting backgrounds and sprites. Much easier than making RPGs, mind you. More freedom for your art: no specific object sizes to stick to etc.

If Mr T doesn't win, I'll eat my desk.