Messages

Most people upgrade their computers to follow up with a particular game that requires you to have the state of the art... other wise most ppl don't really need super fast computers. mMst pll just use them to surf the net, read email/forum and maybe play Solitaire/Freecell/Tetris... maybe they write a few texts with wWord, but that's about it.

A few years ago (3 or 4) I replaced my old one (that was about 4-5 years old) with a little sleek power efficient eeee-PC. I've been pretty happy with it, even though it was actually a down grade in relation to my old one (that was a lot more powerful, but less energy efficient). And for the last 4 years, I haven't done much more than "most" ppl do.-.. surf the net, read email and play solitaire...

However, today, I just realized that if I'm going to continue dabbling into making 3D models and renderings, that I may actually need my old computer - or an updated and even more powerful version of it... I just can't stand the slow processing, the lagging mouse pointer, and hours of rendering (for a single image, just to check and adjust materials and lighting)...

Hey.

Just a very little update on this... I just found out that Autocad render soft is actually using the same engine that 3DS Max is (Mental Ray, though maybe not as detailed as 3DS Max). I was just surfing the net, trying to find good alternatives to render my model (and tried accurender nxt, but hated it!) , when I stumble into a site with some nice tutorials, and nice rendering even (http://www.cad-notes.com/autocad-and-photorealistic-rendering/)! So I'll go do so some "study" on AutoCad rendering and set u some lightings and hope to post a new pic soon.

It would make sense, in a starship you'd want to save as much space as possible, thus the rooms won't be palatial.

Funny that you mentioned that, cause I thought the same think and yet... I was watching an episode the other day and noticed that the ships hallways are unusually high (like double normal hight)! This makes no sense in real life (but guess it aads to the drama of the scenes)... lol.

I'm thinking that sometimes realism should be put a bit on the side. The paint overs with the more realistic shadowing/darker, makes the pic too dark in my opinion, and losses some of the impact and strength of the picture. Thus I prefer the lighter picture.

The boulders on the grass plane, have a problem in my opinion. They make the grass plane look "empty". Not that I have a problem that there's just grass, but is there a reason for those rocks there? They just look out of place to me. Maybe you want some decoration along the path? Or you just want a grass plane, easy to maintain? Just food for the brain...
Lovely BG and yes, I want to play this game too!

Congrats to the winners!
And many thanks to those that thought mine deserved a few points.

Probably silly question, but can't you just load your BGs on your paint program, adjust the gamma and then re-import them into the game?

Mines unfinished, but lets face it, even with an extension I probably won't have the time to finish it anyway. So I'll post it, just for the sake of participating.

This looks awesome! And so my favorite theme, Space!!

1. AprilSkies
2. bicilott
3. babar

That's a lovely BG! Very rich in detail.
I don't have that much input on composition or colors, I like them just like it is. However, think the lighting of the scene needs work. There seems to not be a clear light source in the shadings. Or better said, lighting seems to come from the left, but it should come from the windows, so maybe make it "reflect" on the floor and celling, that has no shading at all ATM, and maybe that will help out with shading the objects in the room.

As for the character I think he passes very well in the style, and I can't even tell he's a 3D character, he's got a very "comic" look that make him look 2D. And the only thing I think would make him to blend better in the BG would be if he had the same light source as the BG (from the windows to his left), instead of receiving light from the upper right.
Since it's a 3D character, you could just render him with light from the left, and using different views according to the rooms light source (or would that be too complicated? I'm still new to AGS, so forgive me if it is ).

You could do a window top to bottom, or a "half" one, with clear glass from about 60-70 cm high to top and panel or frosted glass in the bottom part (or a one glass with clear+frosted part, as there's the possibility to add an adherent film to the bottom part). With a minimal frame around and then do sliding doors.

Guess I didn't pay that much attention to the briefings then.

Jagged Alliance? Really? Looks nothing about what I remember it... maybe I fell into a deep hole and forgot how games looked like?

The back reminds me of Dune... though I don't remember if the graphics were this good...

@Ghost, I may have not produced much yet, but I have spent many hours trying to find good reference walk cycles. I hope the bounce/recoil isn't too exaggerated though, think the up position was the hardest to do, since it involved rotating the body as well as extending it slightly (maybe the leg should be a bit more straight?
And yes, ideally drawing all sprites and positions would be preferably. I just don't think I have the patience or will to do it at this point, when am just trying to grasp the concepts and don't want to use too much time with graphics.

@Giraffadon, Thanks. you mean the shape of the sprite's back? If so, will try and work that in.


I did for the most part tried to fill in the gaps, and redo some of the shadings, so it would fit the new position, but guess there's still some odd pixels here and there that need fixing.

I have now installed GraphicGale and have stumbled into an odd thing when opening my png files... Frame 3 have 2-3 other "frames" hidden on an alpha channel, and some of the other files seem to still have a black rectangle around that I used to ensure I was importing the file from Corel Draw into Photo-Paint at the same size. I had deleted them... or so I thought. .
This is happening with frames 1, 3, 4, 5 & 7.
Do you guys know how I can get rid of these stuff? Cause I can figure out how to turn alpha channel on/off, but no idea how to delete them.

EDIT.

Okay, done some clean up and fixes. Please let me know if something still looks odds... Oh, and love GraphicGale! Finally one prog that has an original size window, so I can see what am doing in real time!

[IMGzoom]http://i725.photobucket.com/albums/ww258/Cassiebsg/Jake/New/Jake_RW.gif[/imgzoom] [imgzoom]http://i725.photobucket.com/albums/ww258/Cassiebsg/Jake/New/Jake_RW1.png[/imgzoom] [imgzoom]http://i725.photobucket.com/albums/ww258/Cassiebsg/Jake/New/Jake_RW2.png[/imgzoom] [imgzoom]http://i725.photobucket.com/albums/ww258/Cassiebsg/Jake/New/Jake_RW3.png[/imgzoom] [imgzoom]http://i725.photobucket.com/albums/ww258/Cassiebsg/Jake/New/Jake_RW4.png[/imgzoom] [imgzoom]http://i725.photobucket.com/albums/ww258/Cassiebsg/Jake/New/Jake_RW5.png[/imgzoom] [imgzoom]http://i725.photobucket.com/albums/ww258/Cassiebsg/Jake/New/Jake_RW6.png[/imgzoom] [imgzoom]http://i725.photobucket.com/albums/ww258/Cassiebsg/Jake/New/Jake_RW7.png[/imgzoom] [imgzoom]http://i725.photobucket.com/albums/ww258/Cassiebsg/Jake/New/Jake_RW8.png[/imgzoom]

assimilation, ignoring or annihilation...

You guys forgot about PEACE. Come on!

No I didn't... both assimilation and ignoring are acts of peace.
By sharing your knowledge with others, you turn them a bit closer to your own, until they cease to exist as they did before, and turn into something closer to what you know.
And if you ignore them, well, you leave them at peace and share nothing with them, which might be considered as egoistic by some and a blessing by others...  POV, it all depends where you stand or what you believe. There isn't a single truth, but billions (read it as: "as many as there are people on the face of the earth).

Thanks Ghost, I'll check that prog out. I tried Gimp, but can't get the hang of it.
I can see that the arm/shoulder moved a pixel or two too high. Will try and fix it.
And yes, I just created a side view, and then broke the picture into segments/objects I could rotate/move.

@Oldschool_Wolf, I didn't bother rotating the feet, or the hands... even the arm I didn't break it in 2. So I know those need a little tweak.
Feet should not take that long to fix since there's not that many pixels there, so it should be an easy fix. Arms am not sure I'll bother. Not for the purpose of this one game... don't know yet.

While I my work on the BSG game sluggish it self forward, I got and idea for another game... And while for the BSG I want the art just right, as well as I need to spend some time with the story writing, this one I don't want to focus too much in the art.
It'll also keep me free from a known universe, meaning I can focus a bit more on the coding/scripting of the game...

Anyway, I've been working on Jake a 10-12 year old boy. And am currently working on his sprites, while I've already created 3 rooms for the game.

I've finally managed to get Corel to work for me, even if in a painfull way. Using Corel Photo-Paint to great the art, then Corel Draw to rotate objects (for creating animations) and back to Photo-Paint to retouch the sprites and save them as png. It's a bit of a pain, but it works.

Anyway, posting here my first "decent" walk cycle... Feel free to bash it to death.
Just looking for some feedback about what might be/feel weird with his walk.

[IMGzoom]http://i725.photobucket.com/albums/ww258/Cassiebsg/Jake/Jake_RW.gif[/IMGzoom]

[IMGzoom]http://i725.photobucket.com/albums/ww258/Cassiebsg/Jake/Jake_RW1.png[/IMGzoom] [IMGzoom]http://i725.photobucket.com/albums/ww258/Cassiebsg/Jake/Jake_RW2.png[/IMGzoom] [IMGzoom]http://i725.photobucket.com/albums/ww258/Cassiebsg/Jake/Jake_RW3.png[/IMGzoom] [IMGzoom]http://i725.photobucket.com/albums/ww258/Cassiebsg/Jake/Jake_RW4.png[/IMGzoom] [IMGzoom]http://i725.photobucket.com/albums/ww258/Cassiebsg/Jake/Jake_RW5.png[/IMGzoom] [IMGzoom]http://i725.photobucket.com/albums/ww258/Cassiebsg/Jake/Jake_RW6.png[/IMGzoom] [IMGzoom]http://i725.photobucket.com/albums/ww258/Cassiebsg/Jake/Jake_RW7.png[/IMGzoom] [IMGzoom]http://i725.photobucket.com/albums/ww258/Cassiebsg/Jake/Jake_RW8.png[/IMGzoom]

have you tried another browser? If it works there then fiddle around with the settings of your favourite browser. If it doesn't work with another browser your internet it broken

Haven't tried it from another browser in this PC, but they work fine from Chrome in my tablet...
I think it may have to do with blocking images from sites on Firefox options, but I just can't find the option to see what sites are blocked for pictures... I used to be able to block them with the right button of the mouse and choose to block them, but that option has disappeared from newer versions.
This and the recent "discovery" that there's no longer an option in Firefox to "ask me every time" when sites want to sets cookies, is starting to annoy me, and I may soon look for another browser that lets me have control of how I want my internet surfing to be.

Edit: Okay I just managed to solve this problem. I opened a imgur pic on the browser, choose the "view image info" option on the right mouse button, and the I could see that "block images from this site" box was checked and I could unchecked it.  (love it when I manage to solve a puzzle...)

This game reduces Civilization to a one-button game. Check it out!

Done, but no point instaling/runing it, can see what it is about by the screenshots, and seems pointless. If all options lead to victory, then there's really no point in playing it, you already won/finished the game... :/

But maybe there is another choice. Some say the Mayans gave up their cities and moved back to the forest... And there is Fight Club!

And some ppl also do that, some even take "followers" with them. We (our civilization" calls these "cults" and their're all over the globe. It's really up to you to decide what rules you want to follow. Serial killers, criminals, etc, they follow their own set of rules, and they work for them. It's the society in which they live that try to stop them, cause they don't follow the established rules... Is that so bad? Considering you have obviously decided to live in "our society"/civilization?

I would ask you what is so wrong with what humans did for 90% of their existence, but you would think that I'm joking, right?

Nothing wrong with survival.
However, if all your work is applied at the "simple" task of survival, then you have no time to develop, grown, enrich, etc. You'd be stuck in a stagnant civilization. And instead of using countless of hours writing essays and such here, you would be somewhere out there making your own clothes from animals you just killed to eat... 

There really only 3 choices... assimilation, ignoring or annihilation...

If you are technologically superior to other cultures/civilizations/whatever, then you can choose to share your knowledge with others and help them come up to your level (assimilating that culture);  do nothing and let them alone (ignoring) or take advantage of your advantage and annihilate the,....

Don't think there are other choices there...