Messages

Evening shot.
Once I decide the color of evening sky (which I will use also in other rooms), I'll rerender it here too.

Fascination. That idiotic game!

The final(?) Puzzle.
Where you have to turn some stupid wheel into position of birth sign symbol of an inspector according to his birthdate which you got from a flashlight(?) and then play notes on organ that are marked onto flashlight while using microscope to read them. There's also 3 cats with notes drawn on them. I don't even remember why or where did you have to play THESE notes...

omfg.

So, you have to know all astrological symbols, what they represent, the dates signs are assigned, the CDEFGAB notation, you have to guess which organ key represents what note (there's no way but to experiment)... argh.
I never got that done. Even though I'm 101% sure I did it right... just nothing happened.

THIS is the worst. puzzle. ever.

And of course, worldstones in Indiana jones: FOA sucked aswell. And finding one with topographic instruments.

Near-finished!
I'm using Vray instead of Mental ray now (thanks, da_elf!).

I think I have successfully achieved that cozy, colorful cartoony look I wanted, so I'm quite satisfied with this room now. Some additional details are still missing (I'll add them later), but hard part is over now.

Of course, my room is nowhere near these realistic renders da_elf did, but realism was never my objective at the first place.

As I make more rooms and improve on lighting, I may improve this one aswell.
To be honest, I'm extremely happy that I learned something so cool and new... and maybe a bit proud too. 
Thanks for C&C, everyone.

Well, when I started this room - and I have mentioned enough that it's my very first one, I had no clue what taper or FFD modifier is! All I could do before this one, was making boxes. And cylinders.

Now, the room isn't "wacked" by any modifiers, but simple vertex moving.
Then again, bookcase and some latter objects are.

I have never understood how to make unwrap UV stuff work (got most of things done by simple UVW box or face map), but I guess I'll give it a try.

Global Illumination? Well, It looks just soooo sweet if I'd get it to work properly. Same room with standard scanline renderer and my non-existant lighting skills looks like pure crap.

Then again, I've almost given up on getting it to work properly. Adjusting a single variable and waiting 20 minutes just to try again is damn stupid. Not to mention discouraging.

Seems that I have to borrow computer from NASA, because only 30000 triangles is still too much for 2x2,18 GHz dualcore processor with 7900GT Geforce card?

Thanks for comments so far!
For my very first try to make 3D room I didn't expect so much feedback.
Earlier, I used 3ds max only to create random unlit room with simple boxes just for reference for my 2D backgrounds.
Next version is here.



Lighting in 3D is still a hardcore mystery for me. Maybe you could give me some real tips, da_elf? Like, where to put lights, what type and what intensity?

Main problem is that any kind of adjust & try with such powerful things as GI and photon lighting is almost impossible due looooong rendering time, even if I render only 100x75 size image. So it's pure guesswork.

This particular image took about 18 minutes to render, though I have quite powerful system.

Better? Worse?

I'm NOT aiming for realism, but good looks.
And I personally prefer the more colorful (saturated) variant I did earlier: Color and cartoon goes together.
Also, I think that desk is way too "straight" and decreases cartoony effect, but it's quite hard to change it.

I DON'T know what lighting anomaly is near bottle. It just rendered there somehow.
This room has 4 lights right now, and 2 of them cast raytraced shadows.
I did bevel here and there, though due my lazy - or rather hasty - modelling, it didn't turn out too good at some places. (sp?).
Light-colored ceiling seems to hate photons - it reflects almost any color in room, resulting in dirty look.

Can't wait to see a character!

er... CHARACTER?!
** shudders

Sounds like a good idea.


* Fixed camera to a bit more adventure game friendly position
* Added ship in a bottle
* Added ceiling light (awful shadow! Still figuring out how to fix)
* Used UVW map on walls. Better? Worse?
* Fixed desk light a bit
* (temporarily?) removed all reflective materials (I just don't have the patience for 40 hour render)
* Tuned down frontmost light so its more ambient now
* Figured out how to use FFD boxes to squeeze everything simply

Ah, and I'm using 3ds Max 8 + mental ray renderer (Global Illumination + Final Gather)

I tried to emulate LucasArts' cartoony style and find some simplistic, good-looking way to create backgrounds in 3D... (my current 2D techniques are WAY too complex for me to ever finish any game).

notes:

* the wallpaper tiling is off because there's no UVW map assigned: but assigning one will ignore the wacky angle of walls and makes it straight... which looks worse. I'm still searching for solution to this one.
* The fuzziness of armchair texture is not a bumpmap nor intended thing: It's because of photons and I decided to keep it that way, because it looks cool

So, what do you think?
And what simple could be done to improve this heavily? I'm sure there's something...

Gobliins wasn't innovative for having multiple characters on screen, it was innovative because a large section of the puzlles were timed, you did this with one goblin while you did that with the other goblin.

Bah.
Goblins series were special because even if you knew the solution to puzzle, you didn't care much: Doing things in wrong way resulted MUCH more fun! I don't recall seeing this anywhere else, atleast not at that entertaining level.

To save up precious bytes, I suggest to scrap the TXT-corrector and let us all speak like true noobs. Many words get shortened this way and...

j/k

Curse of Enchantia - er... something absolutely unique. Better see for yourself.

[SO seconded!]

KGB for real-time spy-thriller hijinx (could have been done before but hey)

SO seconded!

Dreamweb (too) - but I see it more like a superb atmosphere creation and cyberpunk beginner's manual.

Countdown - "How to do horror in simple steps"

Amazon: Guardians of Eden - "How to hint player"

Police Quest 4 - Reality might be the best setting, if atmosphere is built well

Fascination - A way to make an enjoyable game out of total mess. and how to ruin it with very final puzzle

t's not down to though as to wether socialism can survive in the current political spectrum, it is down to humans, who are individual. The more savvy you are, the greater goals you achieve, and the more successful you become

SO wrong.

Individualism leads nowhere and thinking in global scale (thus realising global effects of every individual action) is a standard for educated human being.

If we'd all live only for ourselves, we wouldn't have schools, public transportation, army, research, hospitals... everbody would handle his own problems by himself (cure cancer, bake bread, invent bicycle--).

But then human beings never survived so far. We'd be eaten by prehistoric animals. Only cooperation and collaboration led people ever anywhere.

The democratic/capitalistic system we have here in Norway works great. In fact, it has been claimed to be the best country to live in, three years in a row.

Anything could work in Norway. Or Sweden.

* No hostile neighbors
* Location at the edge of the world
* Terrible geometry
* Cold!
* People come with Scandinavian Brainsâ,,¢ and Cold Natureâ,,¢ as standard equipment
(No crazy religiousity as in Middle East, No crazy temperament as in Latin America, No built-in aggresive mode as in Russia or near-idiotic blind patriotism of Americans)

Well, I haven't seen democracy or socialism ANYwhere really working.
Take a country. At the start, it doesn't matter on what system people build it up, be it cooperative socialsim or oppressing capitalism. If the country advances and strengthens enough to make difference on Earth, someone has to control it. Someone almost alone.

At the top of the pyramid, there's a man with others balls in his fist. Who cares who elected him? Who cares how the system is called? At the moment he reaches the throne, others either sing along or hide.
There's way too much references from history to prove this. Ask your grandparents, last time someone misused his power turned soil of Europe into a mass grave. Yes, Hitler. And his two co-killers, Truman (used atom bomb against human) and Stalin (competed Hitler in creating graves).

As I write, George W. Bush walks around with a black suitcase in his hands, capable of ending my life really fast and ensuring that there won't be even the country I'm residing in. For next thousand years.

Americans whine and hate their own leader. So does rest of the world. Ain't you democratic country? Why is he still in power if you don't like him and his doings? Do dropping polls and ratings save any of lives in Middle East? Nah. People are powerless.

And there's more of those men. Another one sits few thousands kilometres east and thinks how to remove country with history very similar of mine.

Whatever the system is, things stay same. There can only be more anarchy or less. But casual people never have power over their life.

"Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything."
--Josef Stalin

But talking about human absolutes - war is and will be one kind of basic human behaviour. This is what we are.
The fact that human is predator to other human is something that makes me want to be something else than a
human being.

I've been fascinated with communism for a long time, Guevara is a great hero of mine. However I'm realistic in knowing people are much too greedy to have communism work.

Cameron very clearly pointed out what's wrong with the ideas of socialism and communism.

I was BORN during communist regime and remember it quite well, though I was only 8 years old when it ended.
I personally love socialism (with its branch, communism) as a way for people to co-exist. With government handling ALL science, technology, etc research & progress and people all working together to supply with needed funds and manpower sounds like a progressive way to live for humankind. Way more progressive than these people working just to fill some capitalist's greedy pockets.

But that... just doesn't work. Because people don't really want communism.
And that's what spoiled this extremely powerful step of the last century - the Soviet Union.
If all people were in the same boat, the horrors of the Union wouldn't have to exist. Like building everything on heavy propaganda, market blockades, absolute state control and endless repressions of those suspected to not co-operate.

And then there wasn't those abandoned houses in my home city, where 1x1 cubic meter rooms (cells) can be found, with 0.3 meters thick floor of human droppings turned into concrete. Yes, the reminders of KGB...

Communist state must have only one leader. A powerful one. Like Stalin was.
But it's a bit too much power for one human being. So whole thing sucks.
All kind of democratic mess ruins the thing.
Because democracy is opportunity to have different points of view. But socialism has only one.
So democracy and socialism WON'T work together. Never.

I don't want communism back. Fact is, I'm simply too lazy for this. But a true socialist must be hardcore worker.

Like socialism? Study bees. Best example of this thing in work.

I see better solution in a massive plugin.
What it should do, is play multiple tracks at the same time. Like, in separate channels.
But start playing both at very same moment.
Channels with adjustable volume (a crossfader between)
One track could play muted or quiet, when needed, main track quiets down and additional increases in volume... simple?

OMG... We should make theatr's entry an AGS welcome screen
Simply superb...

I can't really photoshop but...



However, if something weird happens and I win, don't consider this an entry and grant victory to someone else.

Original

Maybe this helps:



It's a treshold filter. Wouldn't image be better if you used this for clearer shading reference?
Just apply filter to photo, pick a level you think that would work and try.

Currently, you somehow managed to change this girl's race. I can't explain how, but she should be black or latin by your painting.

Yeh, but software prices claim to be connected to torrents and P2P software. 

But what causes me to pirate is not the prices but EXTREMELY terrible inventions such as FilePlanet or Gamespot.
The only places where you can really get something instead of meeting 404 or broken downloads.

Just to download some lousy demo, you have to wait in line for ages, subscribe for spam, remember 1000 passwords, remind them to just wait for ages for email to come and of course, more spam. Even if you get to downloading the damn 10-minute demo thing, it downloads for about 7 kb/sec or so. For a 3Mbit connection user, it's unacceptable.

In all that time, I could just download the full game disk image, play it through and forget forever. In PC gaming world, only some games get actually used as products. Others are played only because there's nothing to play or you were dumb enough to buy it.

So I buy things I really play, not the ones I just have try - to know about games today.

* cuddles Hitman: Blood Money box

"You and Half-Life2 are all I need. Oh well, and Act of War."

Besides, Solitare comes for free.