Messages

What's a good HTML editor for people with no skill or experience in HTML.

Like AGS for Web pages?

[second]

Man, I'd love to help, but last week I joined a team to create the second greatest adventure game of all time.  Guess I should've held out.

Well, come on Stuh, you don't have to be good at perspective in 3D.  The computer does handle that part by itself.  It's like saying if you can't draw basic shapes, you'll suck at 3D.  These programs will do some things for you.

I agree with you, Darth.

You can do a fun experiment with software.  Download a P2P client & make a list of the hottest games with lots of copy-protection & games with little-to-no copy-protection.

- Games with the most, (like Half-Life with its "file-dongles", or The Sims with "embedded anti-copy code"),  are available, with cracks, in unbelievable amounts - like 900 sources.

- Games with the least, (like Baldur's Gate), will have 1 or 2 sources.....if at all.  It shows that if you don't treat your customers like thieves, they won't act like thieves.

Dasjoe - Copyprotection you don't notice is fine.  I think Darth is talking about games where you must register online to play (Half-Life 2); use a code-wheel (Out of this World); map star charts (StarCon 2); or worse........The game doesn't run even after you legally purchased it (7th Guest, XIII).

People say copy-protection is a waste of time because for every 1 that can be named that works, there are, at least, 5 that don't.

[and others]

I'm not saying I agree with software theft, or even file-sharing in general.  But it, at least in the United States, isn't illegal.  Which is why it exists.  50 programmers in a basement appartment don't survive against the combined forces of a 50-billion dollar industry by breaking the law.  Consider the people who've been arrested: kids with Camcorders in theatres, and kids who E-mailed songs that hadn't been released yet, (this was touted as filesharing arrests, but it wasn't).  Ethically illegal is quite different from literally illegal.  Many companies are trying to make it illegal - & this is what the industry considers winning.  Piracy is a derivative, & appropriate, name the industry placed on people they consider thieves.  If you use the term, you can't "pick-&-choose" what aspects of pirating you'll consider.

But that's not really the point.  The point is the industry is never going to gain ground in courts by doing the same quasi-legal activities of their intended targets.  It's like saying "They throw rocks at us & we throw rocks at them.  We want the courts to stop them from throwing rocks, but we're gonna' keep throwing our rocks & it's gonna' be okay."

I don't care if the industry cracks down - I don't download anything illegal; so why should it be okay for Electronic Arts & Jive Records, and others to download illegal data from me.  I've heard plenty of people screaming "File Sharing Losers Should Be Shot"!!  Let's start with the people who made the first claims

It's very nice.  Perhaps you could make the shape of the sign symetrical, (both sides straight or both sides pointed), as it seems people see it as pointing away from the houses as opposed to anouncing the houses.

.......I think Stuh has Painter fever.  Every quality piece seems to have been with Painter for some reason.

[1]

Pretty much every company on Earth has complained about piracy.  No longer limited to nameless criminals, many companies now threaten every citizen on the planet with the consequences of file-sharing, (as much as they complain - I think they love being able to attack everyday people).  Pirates, however, didn't just steal the riches & properties of merchants.  A just-as-common activity of pirates was to "hijack" a person's method of transport, (in the old days - their ships).

Everyone knows about, & hates, spyware.  It slows your computer, (method of transport), steals your ram, and a host of other problems.  It takes special software to remove it, and even then it doesn't always work.  Lately, I've had problems with 2 spyware programs.  One keeps advertising different CD's, (all from Jive Records), the other shows me upcoming titles from Electronic Arts.  I had to update my software to remove the EA spyware.  I still haven't been able to remove the Jive Records one.

it could be argued, & probably is, that these come from independent companies, but I've never heard of a store that sells music from 1 label or 1 store.

Spyware isn't, technically, illegal & neither is filesharing.  I say, if large companies want to gain any ground on filesharing, they're going to have to stop acting like the pirates they hate sooooo much.

........Although the truth is they just hate that, for the first time, you can hurt them as much as they can hurt you. 8)

[worst]

If I misunderstood anyone - let me know

I don't know if it would be as difficult as working out physics, I'm still talking about a mostly static enviornment. 

it's true that you'd still need some talent for art, but I also think it makes the art easier if you can always be perspective-perfect & only have to draw the art once, (which has already been stated).  You can also work & rework any part of the image until it's perfect.  With 2D you, sometimes, must rework an image in its whole to fix it.

one the worst things that can rip you out of the reality of any game, (2D & 3D), is the absence of the little details that make your world seem real.  You make an awesome tool shed, & spend hours filling it with everything important.  The process takes hours, & it's beautiful, but what about the stupid things that you don't really see.  Things like: some nails on the ground, splinters, a loose board, a fallen screwdriver, etc.  These are things an amature designer can't be bothered.  He/She hasn't the time.  Here's where I think 3D really shines.  Thousands of free-&-legal boring objects can be taken from the internet, (about 15,000 from Turbosquid alone).  Grab these items, scatter them amidst your incredible scene & you've got something great.  Some people may consider this an easy answer, but it's something to think about.

I'm not sure if some people fully understood the post by saying they like 2D better or 320x200 is better.  I'm sorry I wasn't clear.  I theorized that one could cell-render a 3D scene in say: 800x600, 1024x768, etc., to create an art cell.  The cell would then be resized to fit the lowered resolution.  This is a similar technique that Sierra used.  The goal of the render is to be as close to a 2D image as possible.

As far as animating, you are probably still on your own.  It seems that in these types of games, the 2 are almost mutually exclusive; so what ever you can achieve.  Although Sierra was notorious for relying heavilly on rotoscoping & motion-capture.  Even so I'm, almost, inclined to call the scene & the animations apples & oranges

Thanks for all the input; please continue to respond.  I recently threw out a nearly-finished game of mine, (done entirely in 2D), for looking to "Photoshopy" & I'm looking for a new technique.  I have a lot of knowledge of & am quite good at 3D imagery, but I also enjoy the days of lo-res sprites & would like to make a game where I wouldn't have to toss my talents out the window just because it isn't nostalgic enough for me.

[looks]

Here's what I don't understand.

Every time someone makes a game in 3D, many people say, "I like the old 2D art much better."  Rightly so, as you would have to be a large company, (or have a workstation & a lot of free time), to make a 3D game that looks half-way decent.  To make a good 2D game you simply have to be a good artist.

There aren't many of those, however, leaving a lot of our art lacking.  The lure of 3D being you can make any object look good if one were to care enough to take the time.

My question is why doesn't anyone try using the sega-inspired, now mainstream, cell-rendering.  Once only for high-end packages, it's now available for every platform; even the free Blender.  Cell-rendering doesn't require hardware-intensive radiosity lighting or shading.  At low-resolutions, it's a joke, but at, about, 800x600 & up, it really looks like a drawing; creating a piece of artwork similar to the size Sierra used in creating their beautiful low-res games.

Like Sierra, one could take this art, shrink it down, & viola!  A true low-res gem!!

I really think this would affect the quality of our games.

Are you making a free game?  Do you like to purchase commercial games?

If both of these answers are yes, then just rip them from your games.  Most Sounds can be extracted & it's a great way to put your FX pool into the 100's, (or 1000's).

Okay, after a slew of layman's critiques, here are some suggestions from a fellow 3D artist.

yeah, It wasn't meant to be serious.  It's like when you're with a group of friends playing video games & you say, "Now it's time for the master to school you in the game."

Just Uber-speak, for fun.  Sorry if it's misinterpreted.  I often forget what a Pacific-American dialect must sound like to other people.  Trash talk is pretty common here.

Okay, after a slew of layman's critiques, here are some suggestions from a fellow 3D artist.

Walls/Bushes - try loading your bump maps, (if you don't have any - use your textures), into a displacement channel.  This will give your wall depth from an angle, & make your bushes look bushy.

Lighting - I think it looks weird because it looks like it's the only light in existence.  Just make a big sphere & give it a purple glow to add some night-time illumination.

DragonRose is right.

What I was looking for was the original painting prescanned, like the one from the Critics Lounge topic.  It would just be interesting to see some of them.

Does anyone know where I could get some Sierra Online art cells.  They don't have to be original, but I'd really like to see them, or have copies.

Why don't you get a few of your friends & mug him one night?

Don't tell anybody, not your sister, anybody.  Rough him up good & he'll be out for a while, (no one beats their wife in with 2 broken arms.  He's not going to want a long investigation, or even a lot of cops coming over; so you're in the clear.

I knew some people who did it , & the guy actually turned himself around.

I hope this helps.....

I don't know if the job is ever funny, but I was wondering if there were any humorous stories of being a "moderator"?

Stories involving - you getting reported to yourself, or being PM'ed something like "Have you read what Pumaman wrote, I really think he should be banned!"

You know......Funny Stuff

[WILD]

There are plenty of games out there that are very adventury in spirit, though most would not think of them in that light. Deus Ex, Arx Fatalis, Ultima: Underworld, Planescape:Torment, Resident Evil 4, Metoid: Prime (1&2)... all are examples of adventures being absorbed into a different format, as all have elements of the traditional adventure, at least in my opinion.

I was thinking about this at the beginning.  A lot of games incorporate adventure aspects and people go WILD.  It seems natural that adventure games would do a lot better if they used this tactic in reverse.  People, obviously, still love a good adventure, or placing it in a game would be wasted code.

I didn't think about it, but Resident evil is a great example.  When you get right down to it, it IS the next generation of adventure games.  When you're near something you get a description of it.  You talk to people to further the story.  You get items; you combine items.  That's new Sierra.  It's called Survival Horror, but that's ridiculous.  What other genre is catalogued by its difficulty or by the enemies you battle.  In that vein, Half-Life should be in a genre called VR Space Invasion or the Sims would be in the Building-Peeing genre.

Couldn't someone just use the program to make speech, save it, and put the speech into thier game?

[It's the second example that makes people SO sick of Doom & Unreal. You can shoot....that's it? Really?]

I think it would be only fair if I actually answered your post, (intead of replying to replies).

I would like to see a game where the gameplay "evolved" as the game progressed.  We relate everything to movies as a reference point.  A movie is all story, if it's bad, it's because of bad plot.  A game is mostly play value.  We should look at games that have remained "timeless".

- Monopoly, it begins as a game of chance.  The luckiest person gets the most "quick" money.  Then is changes to a race to collect the most well-placed properties & land development.  Finally, it shifts again to bankrupting the other character.

- Chess, right from the start, there are multiple ways to play.  You can "plow" through enemy defenses, you can sneak behind enemy lines to take the king, you can set up defenses.  It literally never ends.

I think a game should start with an experience you want the player to feel & move backwards, ending with how you play.  Most developers start with how you play, & design conflicts based on gameplay,

Example: (You can jump - problem, getting really high) (you can shoot - problem, lots 'o monsters)
It's the second example that makes people SO sick of Doom & Unreal.  You can shoot....that's it? Really?

Great examples of game-understanding are: Resident Evil 1 (it's scary - how do we present these feelings to the player), & Tenchu (Ninjas - you're sneaky, how do we present this? You can't just slam into EVERY conflict head-on.....)

Sadly, instead of inspiring others to work this way, these games merely created new genres for others to copy.  The creator of Resident Evil 1 was actually fired from Capcom after refusing to "rehash" his game in a sequel.