Messages

Thanks so far.
And what about school? University or courses?

I somewhat don't believe that you can become a professional modeller through school or it's worth much.
My logic says that these few lessons you get at school will only give some overview - practising modelling takes alot more time than you can have in school lesson.
Then again, what do I know?

So tell me, does school help in modelling, or is it just for a certificate paper?

http://www.3dtotal.com is a site of wonders.
Most of the stuff up here looks like it's not even made by human. It's simply too perfect!

Has anyone any idea how to become one of artists featured there?
I mean, how to learn all of this. Hardcore skills in 3ds Max and Zbrush.

Any good/heavily recommended books?
Superb sites?
Other extremely basic things to start with?
Anything?

I think that I finally have a dream.

Looks good!
And green.
But good.

I suggest monochromatic noise for the floor. Or is it? *too blind*
And less of it, of course. About 6-8% of noise should be enough to fake some detail but not make things too messy.

Also, make the sofa smaller. It's more like a weird bed right now.

Name comes from main melody, which - atleast to me - reminded synth classics from 80's TV-series...

There's a huge gap from a dark game mostly obscured in shadows with a few bumpmaps like this, and UnrealTournament2007, or Crysis or what have you. I thought this was plain to see, but apparently it's not?

Yes. But you have to admit that this game looks quite modern also. Just in much smaller scale.

And in *this* game, I actually don't see anything that a small team of enthusiastic people couldn't do.

Fact is, high-tech wonders are becoming available for amaetur games without hardcore programming and that's definetly good.

But taking a look at Crysis screenies ensures me in my theory: Few more years and no new game is rated by it's 'graphics'. Because they will all reach highest human-recognizable-level of realism and only level design is then that matters.

With so many free or cheap graphics engines around - can it be really that difficult? OGRE 3D alone reaches pretty close to highest wonders nowadays graphics could do.
And for a good level design you simply have to be clever: hire someone of these guys pumping out Quake or Counter-strike maps. There's people who do it as hobby, and are quite proffesional at that.

I believe that any project team with little budget, lots of time and heavy willpower could do commercial-level graphics and physics.

Optimizing for mass use and actual playability of the thing is way another thing...

[looks]

What--?

Impression:
The ages-old variable of "graphics quality" is about to die nowadays.
Bump mapping & realistic shadows make all new games alike, and you can't really compare realistic 3D to realistic 3D.
This game stands on Doom3 and Half-life 2 standards and that's quite weird for a game of this type.
Although that was a pleasant surprise, I must say.

This makes making great graphics easy: Bumpmap, shadows, good level design.
Add a good physics engine and your amateur project looks as good as any commercial.

The good:
Atmosphere rocks! I really like idea of walking around and interacting with everything in adventure game style.
The game reminds Silent Hill games, but with the exception that this one I actually like.

The bad:
Awful controls! Dragging things around was quite a pain.
Nerd as a protagonist! With so much heavy things around, it's stupid to run from tiny winged monsters...

I also expected more text in this game. But oh well.
Thanks for the link & hint, The Book!

I made a track which I would like to use in my game.
Problem is, I crossed borders of my planned ambient, relaxing style and went much further this time.

Please listen to this and tell me if you think it's usable for adventure game or not.

http://www.increator.pri.ee/muz/1980.mp3

Using headphones is strongly not recommended!

Many of named exist already.
I recall making text-only cyb brothel on QBasic in 1995 ...

Anyway, here's piece of my (un)creative mind:

Cyb ISP
Cyb Library
Cyb Weapon Factory
Cyb Police
Cyb Internet Portal (Cyb eBay?)
Cyb Warez group (like razor 1911, myth, etc)
  ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warez )
  Could be cool! Hire crackers, suppliers, couriers, demoscene people, ...worldwide!, bribe police, etc
Cyb Fire depot


Thinking about them, I suddenly feel urge to make a tycoon game!

First: I don't think that after getting pranked like that, Thomas VoàŸ actually cares if slut is a right word and if people appreciate him calling her so. I know I wouldn't care. And I think that it's just his way of expressing anger.
Too... radical, IMO, too. But this thread is not for getting a free behaviour lesson, but a story how a lesson was learned.

Second: I somehow think also, that girl was somewhere near and just watched Thomas. That second time, she maybe brought a friend to show him Thomas, or that girl's just a moron who likes to sit, watch & giggle. Or simply too shy!

The thing would be much more serious (it wasn't, right?) and cursing more justified, if her so-called boyfriend met Thomas instead and introduced him to martial arts.... 

So, beware of pranks like that.

[I had]

Right, so erm... did we help??

In odd way, yes.

* First I read the posts at this lockergnome site.
* Then decided to search around in this lockergnome forum for something similar.
* Similar cases crossed with word "dropper"
* search for trojan dropper led me here:

http://help.lockergnome.com/security/RAZOR-EXE-Tiberian-Sun-game-ftopict8558.html

* The last post says "Run the file (renamed to RAZOR._EXE) through VirusTotal."
* Virustotal? Well, I had something to "run through VirusTotal"! Wasn't difficult to guess what this VirusTotal thing might be...

Well, and it was simple from this point!

[ANOTHER]

Well, telling about problems do help. Weird enough, I found out (mostly by luck) what's the thing I'm dealing with.

It's called

W32/Dropper.BEW
and Trendmicro identifies (though fails to desinfect) it as TROJAN_DROPPER.BEW

I found ANOTHER "_" folder, from another area on my hard disk.
Well, nothing too surprising here, except that this one was 17 GB LARGE!!!!

And I keep erasing stuff from hard disk and wondering why the hell do I always lack free space...
Also wondering why is my hard disk so slow...

Dropper.bew just loves folders named "Downloads". Because other "_" folder was also a subfolder of "Downloads".

Tip of the day: Don't name anything "Downloads"!

Well, I think I'll get this virus under control, found some tools to remove it and scan has lasted 2 hours already, with increasing numbers of infections. 1769+ infections and I'm at the letter "L" yet.... 
I still think that I need a corner for my repeating interesting virus problems - maybe I should start my own webpage...

Anyway, just for fun, if you have any directories named "downloads", try adding "\_\" to address bar and check out if you happen to have same mystery folder / surprise gift of eraseable data...

Just out of curiosity, how did you end up finding this?

I defragmented hard disk and where it said "optimizing -filename-", some weird file which I had no idea about - was in works. There ya go.

Right. I have a folder where I put my downloads.
Now, by pure accident, I found out that this folder has a subfolder that I knew nothing about.

Why? Because it's invisible!
It's not hidden by windows default. And I can see all hidden folders. But this one... it doesn't exist and still does.
I can access it though, but only by giving windows explorer full path to this folder.
I mean, by typing it into address bar.

the name of the folder is simply "_"
The "undersling character" or how it's called in english...

What's really weird is that this folder is full of stuff I have no idea about.

Just take a look:



There is lot's of stuff inside. Nice names, but every RAR archive is 750KB in size and has something called SETUP.EXE packed inside. I haven't excecuted it, so I have no idea what kind of setup is this.

These things come in all by themselves, and I have no idea what downloads them.
Some kind of trojan downloader most likely. Since I'm on broadband, it has all the time it needs to fill my HD with this junk.

Last time I checked, there was 1690 MB(!!!) worth of archives. All cutely named. All the same thing.
I can erase them, but they keep coming back.

I can't erase the folder, since I can't see the folder. Not from outside.
Anyone has any clues what this might be? I know that Trend Micro Internet Security 2006 has no problems with poltergeist like this and neither does Spybot: Search and Destroy. Neither does Ewido Security suite....
Ad-aware, Pestpatrol... nope, everything feels okay for them. Even NOD32 antivirus did not notice anything spectacular.

So, I'm looking for a ghost trojan downloader.
The one no most-known antivirus programs could detect.
And which has (IMO) power to restrict windows from accessing a folder, probably from NTFS.

Heck, I can't even figure out how to google info on this!!! 
EDIT:

Thinking about it again, I think that it's not a downloader. All files have same "last modified" time, and my connection just can't download 160 MB of stuff within same minute. So the virus should be simply duplicating itself with different names.

ProgZ did the magic!
But I suggest to re-edit ProgZmax' version as following:

  *1: Lessen the number of different wrinkles; make existing ones much larger (and logical!!!!)
  *2: Use shading colors more bravely, especially on pants: The blackest shades DO
     come out, difficult to explain, but it feels like this shading swaps careful technique
     for realism... in other words:
     allow dark colors to be on the front of the pants too!
     Just figure out how logical it is and where. Wrinkles could be deeper (lay shadow), for example.
  *3: The doctor seems to be well-built, a strong man. I think that his palm could be even bigger.
  *4: The left eye seems to get lost on both versions...
  *5: The doc seems to be a bit fat. Refine his outer body contour.

Apart from that, amazing!!!

EDIT: To help you a bit, I quicky sketched a shading map for similar pose. Notice that possible logical wrinkles are drawn in red. I think that it's all and even more wrinkles than you need for this character!



Also, see how darker shades go under left knee: That's what I meant in *2 !

Using character sheet means that I have to clean it from antialiasing.
Modifying it means that I'm not using the font in its original form.
Or in form it's sold to people. Because what are the benefits font gives to people? Easy typing, scaling, etc...
I won't get to enjoy any of that. Like, I might aswell draw letters totally from scratch. All I'm using are shapes to save a bit extra work?



So I guess that this wouldn't be illegal?
Using the font is typing text while it becomes on screen in THIS font style. Nothing else. And no one cannot take a copyright on latin letters.

But I actually don't care much, anyway, I just need this stupid logo.
Also, I dreamed about making menu buttons in same font, but doing it manually, it would be too primitive, unless I get this font somewhere or similar free one.

Oh well. Thanks for finding out the name!

In the world of millions of free and useless fonts, I finally need one - and it's not free.
Yes, Eagle Bold it seems to be.

Unless I find something similar enough for free, I'm clueless.

Damn.

Can anyone name this font or something that looks similar? I'm doing a webpage for a cafe, but can't find that font to reproduce the logo.

Thanks!

Those are premade setups, not optionally chosen, so I believe they're all compatible.
Thanks for the hint, though.

With Windows Vista and DirectX10 rumors, I'm still a bit undecided on video card...

Thanks for tips. Never even thought about dual core processors, stupid me!

There's 2 systems I found and probably decide between:

*Processor: Intel Pentium D 930 DualCore (3,0GHz, 32/64bit, 4MB)
*Motherboard: Asus P5PL2, Intel 945PL chip
*RAM: 1GB DDR 533MHz (DualDDR)
*HDD: 320GB Serial ATA II 7200rpm 16MB
*Video: Asus 256MB nVidia GeForce 7900GT DDR3 TV-out 2xDVI
*Other: LightScribe 16x DVD-writer, Artic Silver 5 thermal paste, 10/100/1000Mbps LAN card, 8-ch Soundcard, Antec LifeStyle Sonata II SmartPower 2.0 450W Case, Firewire, USB 2.0, trust keyboard and Logitech mouse

Price - about $1400

OR

* Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ DualCore
* Cooler: Arctic Cooling Silencer 64 Ultra TC + Artic Silver 5 thermal paste
* Motherboard: Asus A8N-SLI, nForce4 SLI chip
* RAM: 1GB DDR 400MHz CL2,5 (DualDDR)
...And same things as previous setup, including same video card

Price: $1445

I'll probably skip "other" things (I can keep those from old set) and get only a Motherboard + CPU + RAM + HDD + Case + videocard. But is it worth it? And which set would be better?