Messages

[DID]

I would like to know on what points you base your assumption here that a C&C game would be "just another SC clone"? It seems that you build that opinion up purely based on the universe the game is set it, not the actual game mechanics?

You're a SC fanatic. Either this or RTS fanatic.
To me, it doesn't really matter if I can group infinite or twelve units, use peons to build a farm or have HQ put some crap into ground and let building pop up miles away, collect crystals or some gas too. The mechanics should enjoyable and make gaming comfortable, nothing else. To me, I mean. It's still all about destroying enemy, overpowering him with your wits and strategy.

By "clone" thing I meant laser beams and space junk. Yes, sci-fi. But sci-fi at "this" level.  And that's actually a compliment to StarCraft, because turning semi-realistic world of C&C into space-thing kind of ruined it. It has been done, and done well - and I mean exactly Starcraft here. Your love is simply a proof. Original C&C was unique among its genre, tying believable amount of sci-fi (Tiberium) into quite realistic world. Walking robots with dual laser beams and crazy palettes are something else (C&C: Tiberian sun, C&C3) and a theme better left to Starcraft fans.
So yes, I meant the universe. Which, in Starcraft feels even more "in place" and proper.

Also, what bothers me, is that RTS games are losing violence alot nowadays. Remember Dungeon Keeper? Stronghold?
"I'm buring! aagh! aagh!" infantryman on flames running around and dying in Command & Conquer? Way how unit growled before dying in Warcraft?
All that power, gore and feeling is pretty much gone in games now. Buildings pop into bits like balloons when destroyed, everything's so sterile and fragile... huh.

Of course, those are "classic" RTSes we're talking about. Sometimes, when I'm in mood for something really unique, I'd play eiter Metal Fatigue or Total Annihilation. Both, again, underrated.

Emerald: By UFO or UFO: Enemy Unknown we DID mean XCOM.

And that's (along with XCom: Terror from the Deep) the game I've been spent time on - in my life MOST. I really don't understand how could anyone not "get into" this game. Then again, XCOM: Apocalypse, which many people praised, didn't feel interesting to me at all.

Playing C&C3: Kane's Wrath right now and loving it.

It's much better than Tiberium Wars was, emphasizing action and destruction instead of stupid FMVs, and that's a rare case for an expansion. Even though Westwood took over time away every single thing I loved about original Command & Conquer, replacing near-possible modern machinery and units with starcraft-ey space mumbo-jumbo, even if this game doesn't look realistic anymore, just another StarCraft clone, I like it alot. Too bad that there's NO "teach rebelling villagers a lesson with chemical infantry and mobile flamethrowers"-type of feeling and missions anymore.

But for this, I still have Act of War: High Treason installed. I simply don't understand why such a brilliant game got so underrated. It's like Call of Duty 4: The RTS.

Those two games are in my play-sometimes list right now.

For turn-based gaming, which I maybe like even more, I'm still waiting for worthy sequels (third parts) to UFO: Enemy unknown and Jagged Alliance to be made. They won't be, though, I'm afraid. JA2 was the last gem, being way too difficult to gain reputation from not-hardcore-TBS players and UFO sequels and clones are simply one bad try after another.

Also, there was this old ancient-3d game named Incubation. I would love to see a sequel for this too. Remembering those cool 4-player hotseat TBS matches... ahh.

Don't want to start a brawl here - C&C music was great, I wouldn't say best either, but very good, no doubt - but BEST GAMEPLAY in RTS games? C&C? Urgh. No upgrade-system? No technologies? One resource? Super-weapons? Very small e-sport scene? Units that were, by themselves, good against everything so you just had to mass them?

Blizzard games were always about rush and speed. What's the first true RTS game in the world? The one that created and laid foundation to whole RTS genre?

Dune 2: Building of a Dynasty. By Westwood. Maybe, the only in game the world that truely needed only STRATEGY and nothing else. You could destroy whole enemy base with one missile launcher. This required exploiting some game bugs though. I'm talking about approaching towers at 25-degree angle, this somewhat made launcher's range a tile greater. Mass attacks didn't work really, due extremely strong (unbalanced) defenses and control issues. Also, things just cost too much to mass them.
Command & Conquer (first)? Same thing again. Mass units cost too much to actually make a swarm, and towers were too strong to even try. It was all about good planning and strategy again.

If you're blaming Westwood for mass tactics, that's probably Red alert (and further games) you're talking about. Mammoth tank, anyone?

But then again, isn't that what's Starcraft is all about?

I never liked Blizzard's RTSes much. Not after Warcraft 2, which took dark forests and sharp arrow from screaming bloody peasant and replaced everything with funny responses and lime-colored orc palette suitable for Disney characters, not brutal beasts orcs were in Warcraft 1. They basically turned deep, dark idea into a f-king wonderland.

Anyway, best gameplay throne has been taken by World in Conflict already, but before that, I consider Westwood being the king.

Yes, it could be whole new thread.

Coming back to music again, Westwood music is what really feels good along with explosions and sounds of tank tracks rolling. They have surely some geniuses working in sound department. I can't imagine much other game genres where metal-ish trance ("buttrock goa trance" by Ishkur's guide) would sound so right.

Remembered another two:

* Delta Force: Black Hawk Down. Especially "level completed" music! Better than in the movie
* Currently jamming @ Rise of Nations music. Also extremely good.

And of course,
* Red Alert 2 (best soundtrack in RTS genre ever)
* Dune 2
* Dune 2000 ("Under Construction" gives me still shivers, "Robotix" is perfect example how to make good RTS track, who couldn't love "Rise of Harkonnen"?)
* Command & Conquer (No words needed...)
* Remix of classical Command & Conquer theme in C&C3: Kane's  Wrath

But Westwood has always stood out with best music and best gameplay in its RTS games.

Thinking about what you said:

Well, i want to get my Nephews into the old point and click adventure games.

Well, take a random adventure game, however hard it is, and put Spider-Man in it as protagonist.
Playing guaranteed. Difficulty not a problem.

Firefox. About 2-3 years already--? I'm radical anti-IE from the days it messed up webpage I had to make for a cafe and delayed me and made my work look bad because in cafe, they had only IE. Which showed everything I made as a big, misaligned, buggy mess. So I spent weeks to straighten out bugs that were there not not because the webpage, but simply a product of idiocy of Microsoft corporation and it's retarded employees.
F-king stupid IE. Hate it. Forever.

But Firefox is quite good.
I added nice load of add-ons to make it prettier and FireFTP is quite handy too.

All this talk about how nice Opera is have strongly shaken my faith and I'm a bit pissed about it.
Until today, I though I'm using best browser out there. Now... I have this urge to try out Opera. And I feel guilty.

EDIT: RSS feeds? They do THIS? Those cool things? I, living in an Internet world since it was created didn't know this?
Morale:Even most pointless thread at AGS Forums could teach you something new.

I suggest using Flash for drawing (for all these lovely wacky lines) and a bit looser, cartoonier approach.
Your style is very functional, but... boring. Two-color shade would improve alot, too.

EDIT: This is about what I had in mind... (minus extra bold outlines maybe)
I'm not very good with Flash though to make proper example (...yet!!!)


Well, it's an idea. I like your current style too.

I don't like it much neither.
Then again, I don't listen to music that could have something like this as a cover.

Why?

* Contrast is too low (usually bad idea on black&white images)
* Blood-like-thing feels more like someone spilled cherry juice onto album
* Text on upper image part stirs with photo too much, it's hard to read what's there
* Image below, well... To be honest, I find removing face and leaving heavy bunch of messy hair kind of nauseating. I really don't like it, and would probably avoid it like in a store a cheap horror movie.
* (rushed?) Face removal left a load of artifacts. Maybe you simply didn't notice, so play with contrast and brightness on your monitor to see it.
   
  -- I guess you deleted the face and tried to re-texture plain color where face was. This is not proper way to do it. First, get X-Fader and use it on this grainy texture to make it tile. It's only a matter on 5 seconds. (cut as large piece of texture as possible, open it in x-fader, click on "xfade" icon, play with sliders if you wish, though not needed, and resave now tiling texture to use it on photo.)
Then, make a new layer (above face photo) and put a large chunk (or rather - tiling chunks) of texture onto it, so it covers whole face. And finally, erase texture's edges to make it round and cover face only. This way, you don't have to invent a bicycle.

What I do like:

* Those upper two images. It has somewhat old-school feeling, like grandpa's graduation or wartime photo. And yet, eyes look so young and crazy and-- It's quite cool. Clothing and mugshot style adds alot too.
* Lack of color on lower image. Light beige and black text gives somewhat professional feeling.

I would try some other fonts though.

These backgrounds?
What comes after super-impressive?
Masochistic!

I hope that this extreme detail won't make you quit at some point.

Princess Marian series maybe?
Calsoon 2?

There's more. But can't remember ATM.

If you believe in God then your are more than welcome to that belief... but there is nothing that says you HAVE to follow any particular set of organised religious rules.  Believe the bits you actually do believe and not the bits you feel you must believe in order to be a true Christian.

I agree.
I don't remember exact spelling, but in a bible somewhere was something that loosely translated as "don't seek me in the churches, you won't find me there" or something like that. The point was that it is not a church where one should look for God. I believe this goes for other catholic stuff too, you don't have to sing or drink Jesus' blood or anything else to believe, because belief comes from within, not from acting something or someone "on stage". And not thinking as some amount of flock, because people are often simply stupid. So some Christians bashing you at forum or something isn't something to lose faith to.

I mean, baggy pants won't make me a hip-hop fan and cross above my bed or on my grave won't make me a Christian.

But if all of above doesn't help you, act like a good Christian and turn the other cheek. Both suffering and human sacrifice (whoa, indeed... ew) is what's Christianity was BUILT onto.

Honestly, I don't like any of them, but one on lower left is one I would pick, if at all.
Ryan Timothy's tutorial is quite good, but I would add posterize filter after the tutorial and reduce levels alot.

Monkeys or clay, what a though choice! Or was it bone (for women)? 
This is stupid.

Zufub, don't conquer the topic. We're still trying to improve eternal_renegade's background, not teach you 3D.

Any religion that opposes science commits pretty much a suicide today. And suicide is a sin!

Why do catholic church (and/or many of its stupid followers) deny theory of evolution I don't know. Why couldn't it be also part of God's plan? Why must Old Testament be correct? Are we believing in God's love and supreme plan, or an old book?

Wiki says about Book of Genesis...

Scholars see the book as the product of anonymous authors and editors working between the 10th and 5th centuries BC.

So, who says there can't be no mistake?

I don't think one should rate religion by IQ of its followers or myths it's based on. I think that Holy Bible is pretty outdated and not a book to live by, especially since It's written by humans and is actually a collection of old tales.

As it's said often, we don't and can't have no real idea how God looks like, what He wants or what He is. This is what I believe. And this sounds like something more solid to base your faith onto. Not dusty book of jews' tales or intimidating priest promising hell and eternal punishment if you're not penitent enough.

But for me, in religion section, I'd write "undecided".
Free thinking is an enemy to almost any religion. Being brainwashed, at least at some level, is a must to be a believer. People knew this long time ago. Islam? Inquisition? Electric cattle prods? 

[darken]

Nice edit! But there's still some mistakes:

* What's that strange glow around the tunnel hole? Fix it. I provided 3D reference to get your tunnel lighting right, use it!
* Your texturing is crazy! It kind of attacks one's eyes. Use less contrast and more smoothing. Locker doors are especially sick. Try to gradient those sharp colors out by blending more similar colors near the edges or something.
* If you didn't do so yet, GET A PROGRAM, that supports brighter/darken processor on brush and anti-aliasing. GIMP is freeware and quite simple, for example. (huh, this rhymed)
* Cracks are bad. I made a quick tutorial to show how I do cracks.





1. I used line tool with anti-aliasing turned on, processing darken by 15%. On some walls, that's enough and no further steps are needed!
2. I used line tool with anti-aliasing turned on, processing brighten by about 5-10% and shaded crack edges to make them more 3d-like. Try to imagine how crack edges reacts to light, so you'd draw bright edges to the right side.



As you can see, lighter red means places where you should add brighter edges.

3. This is optional, but I used bigger brush with low brighten/darken and randomly brightened/darkened around crack area by 5%. This was done more by the "feeling" and isn't really neccessary.

Now, if you look at my 3D textured image, back wall and lower left corner, here, the cracks are generated by bumpmap. And they look very similar to this tutorial! Dark crack, bright edge, facing light source. So I guess, that's how the cracks should look: Computers do no lie.

this graphic rock! Wow! Which 3D programme are you using?

Are you referring to my edit? This does not rock. I can find about 100 things wrong with my quick modelling. But I really hope to get better one day. Especially at shadows and light.

I'm using 3ds Max 8, which costs hell and a bit more. But, arr.
There is load of freeware programs, like Blender, Anim8or, Wings3D and so on. None of them is as powerful though (not sure about Blender).

Ooh, I like your style! I mean, I totally love it.

Come to think of it, I think that I've seen it somewhere...

Suggestions about background:
* More colors! Try to use less saturation and more different colors
* Reduce floor area (on future BGs). It's much simpler to draw if floor doesn't make up half of the screen.
Also, it won't feel so empty and detail-less.
* Make window bigger and move it a bit more to the center of the wall. Wall will be less boring then, too.
* When everything's ready, light it up properly. It would add alot.

Which brings me to another important point - don't turn off your PC. Today's computers are built to be on all the time, there's no reason so shut them down, they can handle it. Turning them off and on again every day just shortens life of components in the computer, like this example.

I have not heard this before. Reference?

That's pretty much how I lost my first machine. After two weeks of power-on, it simply died. Motherboard got damaged enough beyond repair.
Sorry, no.

Well ok, right now, I'm completely satisfied with ym phone that works as a phone, you know, calling and text messaging

I thought so too, not giving up old trusty Nokia 3310. But now when I have a good one...
Bluetooth FTW!

I don't get the "crash" criticism at XP.
For example, last year, I recall at most 10 crashes. And every time it crashed because I did something really stupid.
Windows XP, if the hardware is proper both under computer case and users skull, does not crash. I don't know about Macs, but I guess it's about the same.

Windows ME, well, that was a different, painful and terrifying story. Let's not remember this one.

Viruses come and go. But to be afraid enough to skip playing games and aaaallll this software available to PC's sounds childish. "OMG, let's not go outside, never, you might catch cold!" Something like this.

Again, if you know how to handle viruses and how to browse net (get warez and porn from proper locations (P2P!), don't click banners), it's quite unlikely to "catch" something. Honestly though, a scan once in a month or two is still very advisable and a routine for casual windows user.

But just as with Linux, Mac users are OFTEN fanatics. Blind and dedicated, ready to attack even when there's no need to.
IMO, fanatics suck.

But with Macs being different, and so isolated from evil, "virus-infested" PC world, it's kind of interesting to see parallel technology evolving. They're still catching up with PCs. And still, in every damn Hollywood movie, that computer on the desk of department of whatever has a shiny blue apple logo.