Messages

How to find xy coordinates of C?

* C has to be exactly in the middle of points A and B
* A and B could be anywhere on a 2D plane
* distance between A and B is fixed

Sounds like REALLY simple school maths... is there easier way than
C(x) = (B(x)-A(x))/2 + A(x)
C(y) = (B(y)-A(y))/2 + A(y)
?

Especially when B and A could switch places?

It is absolutely awesome.

I wonder if you could do a tutorial about planning/idea -- I mean, I'm easily able to make such room, but I would never come to an idea to use such angles and shapes on room. Like that one room being higher with ceiling and so: where did you get such ideas?

Anyway, rock on!

You never drink anything while playing?  

Not really. Being tipsy yet trying to concentrate is annoying as hell for me. And if I drink enough to kill that feeling, well, I also cross line of safe electronics usage. Computer hungover is worst type - trying to figure out next morning why there's random stuff installed, why does keyboard smell of red wine and keys don't work,  how did music get erased and why there's porn for wallpaper...  

Then again, I - most of the time - multiplay Modern Warfare 2, that ultimate test in reaction and orientation. So drinking first ruins the game, and second - gets me double upset over this since alcohol boosts emotions. And that's how playing video game should not work on mood.

I see no point in drinking unless with many people, and I almost never drink alone. But that's offtopic.

Thinking about this, I wonder how often do they have to replace broken gaming devices at mana bar... "Here's your beer....oops--!"

I like the name!

But a game bar? So, you go to a social place for unsocial activities, also, consume alcohol where concentration and reactions are needed?

I guess it's fun too wii bowl with mates or something, but if you already dragged your ass out - you might aswell enjoy the real deal and real bowling lane. Video games are indoors activity, after all. I wonder if there will be any female customers there: even if video games will be not fatal, quick reputation as nerd bar probably will.

Also, as little I know women, I'm quite sure that no woman will attend to a BAR where her presence is secondary issue and mankind is gathered/concentrated around electronic piece of some kind. Same reason why RC model/ audio technics enthusiast/ car faggotry/ etc bars would rather be private clubs than bars - place where genders mingle.

Still, the name is spot-on.

Smoking is a good excuse to get out atleast 10 times on daily basis. 10 times 10 minutes is over a hour. So a hour of fresh air per day (which I know I won't be getting if I didn't smoke) somewhat balances unhealthy habit.
Also, since I work with my head, those cold air breaks work positively in clearing my mind and rearranging mental state.

-13C is actually quite OK weather here if there's no wind, of course. Summers are warmer, up to +30C but summer lasts about month and a half.

I personally DO NOT understand the location: Civilization started near Nile and Egypt,  and it's a paradise by weather. Has humankind getting stupider by emigrating so far north?
Or smart people stayed there and stupid ones went northwards...

Okay, nature is really magnificent here and I do know that ancient man chose this location because of flint deposits (which was super useful back then) and rich amounts of game to hunt.
But still... it's friggin' cold.

Acronyms: I'm not in the stage to self-diagnose various syndromes yet... actually, quite far from this.

My advice is: try to work on a team with the guys here, don't try to do everything!
Do sprites, or music for a project. Give advice, find bugs!

Well, that's the perfectionist part I want to shine with my creations only. Teaming up with worse artist/musician, etc would "ruin" my project. That's also why I never, ever use anything (music, art, etc) not made by me. Other makers use photos, free graphics and whatever and actually complete things...
However, being with BETTER artist/musician so on would erase the shine from the part I did.


Then again,
I still regret doing so little for ATOTK project: Even though I got credited (quite undeserved, I think) little did I know that this little ambitious project I lent hand with would grow something so impressive and great!

Health and diet part

Hm. I'm quite healthy (aside from chain smoking), stay in perfect shape quite naturally and move alot on foot since I don't have a car. But diet is absolutely wrong...
I might try to improve this some way, though I have low expectations and heavy barrier of laziness on this topic.

I imagine you have quite long winters in Estonia too, so having to be indoors a lot doesn't help.

-13C outside, heavy fog, you feel your nostrils freeze in about 20 seconds outside, and there's 2m high snowpile under my window. If I was a kid, all I had to do was to dig a cave into it and have a dream igloo.

So yes... there's not much sense going outside and not much chance to meet anyone outside that would want anything other than to get inside again. I'm also not the nutty type that goes to ski, though weather is more than perfect for this.

* I think hands could be a bit slimmer - he looks a sporty type (runner perhaps), but hands suggest rather different and bulky body type

* Feet look quite okay, but legs like he's hanging from a rope, not standing on the ground. Legs need bit more "on the ground" shape.

* Face looks quite gay stupid. Lose the lipstick-ish look from mouth, make lips more skin color, make eyes from 3 or 4 pixels in ONE row, not two

* Raise shoulders a bit and make them less round

* At least two times stronger contrast in shading would go a long way

That's most basic advice to improve this charater. If you want to go further -

* google a photo, and use it (trace, look at, learn, whatever) to give this character alive pose. Yes, "alive", because I cannot imagine living person having stance like this for any other reason than being hanged 3 seconds ago.

* Critics Lounge is not only for your sprites, seeing how others do it might be even more helpful than creating your own thread. Look how many stances!

You're actually pretty good at this, despite what you think.

Time to give back all christmas gifts and ask for money instead...

$598!

http://www.nvidia.com/object/GeForce_3D_Vision_buying_options.html
wannawannawanna

Increator, did you see the same film as me? The avatar people look nothing like the Khajiit from Oblivion. They kinda look somewhat similar to night elves from WoW, but still different.

Dunno, maybe we sense fantastical characters differently. Wide noses and cat eyes and human hair on something that shouldn't have human hair yelled khajiit at me. Didn't let myself to be distracted by blue skin though. Maybe that's where our viewpoints differ.

Also, what I actually thought most of the time during film was how awesome porn would be in 3d glasses & big screen  

Saw it.
Not good, not bad. I'd say "watchable".

Story was on the lame side - done hundreds of times (Dances with wolves, anyone?), some effects and props were really boring imo (like chopper/plane things and flying animals) but some were really good (tree shattering scene) and glowing forest/mushroom things at night.

3D-effect was... someplace (especially start) great, most of the time almost unnoticeable and few places downright annoying, like when ashes from tree rained down... It felt very much like it was placed there just to remind you that it's 3D and it irritated my eyes and senses instead of coming as awesome.
But I admit that at few moments, I raised my 3D glasses and though that it could be hi-quality 2D instead.

But what I do find genius about this movie is how it tries to push everyone's buttons, from green movement to anti-war to anti-colonization  to anti-genocide to anti-war-for-oil-stuff to heavy appeal from MMORPG players -- avatar cat-people race was almost exactly Khajiit from TES4:Oblivion, bow fight sequence reminded very much night elf scene from World of Warcraft intro, flying islands were straight outta Netstorm, etc. I none of the occurrences were intentional - it makes this movie very unoriginal.

I don't regret seeing this, but don't care much to see it again.
I would had definitely enjoy this more if it wasn't so dumbed down, military/mercs really felt/acted like one and natives too. All the simplicity felt a bit too childish and tale-like.

Bottom line - overhyped. It's no better or worse than most of the movies previous year.

Games with very visible advertising and/or product placement in them usually get torn to bits in reviews.
Only acceptable stuff is Nvidia or Intel logo at intro screen, real car (or any vehicle whatsoever) and weapon names and... well, that's pretty much it.

So unless it's a pile of gold coming in, I wouldn't suggest smearing your game.
Making a good game commercial (even if very cheap) would probably be much more worth than sticking ads onto it.

Then again, if I made GTA/driving/etc game based on my home city, I would go through every business at game locations and ask them if they want their true logo/name on game shops and how much is it worth to them. Of course, you should have game so ready that only logos/etc are missing and a good demo to show what and where. Or even with/without your-business-here comparasion. And maybe a dumb substitute name. Maybe walmart will buy the advert just so their building wouldn't be named walfart when they refuse.

Would probably earn more than game sales do!

Is it... game maker gif?

Download Gif Movie Gear and make it repeat. It's small and you don't have to buy it just to make gif loop.

[The Dig]

I haven't played it yet, but how about The Dig?

I do not suggest Dig because this thread made me wanna try this, I finished it in one run day before yesterday and can honestly say that this game simply sucks.

It's a psychedelic, humorless trip through boring and dusty alien-first-contact plot.
LucasArts really failed here.

Also, it would not be very interesting to watch, since there's 3 of total characters for 99% of the game and bland, lifeless backgrounds. Imagine this and crapload of Indy:FoA stone disk puzzles (with triple difficulty) -- that's The Dig.

(Graphics and music are awesome though)

Pity it has most anal way to get a trial, ever  

Edit: This program is absolutely awesome. thanks!

[More serious question!]

Ok, thanks. I guess it's quite useless as wikipedia article describes it's failure to become important and lack of support. I was actually just wondering, why don't we still have something that's 10+ years late.

More serious question!

Is there something that creates connected vectors with endpoints, and I can link vectors-points and assign images to them so I have something to create animations simply?

I mean something exactly like SSH's walkcycle generator, but with more options and power?
Flash... feels a bit too complicated for such little task.

[Question!]

huh?

http://email.about.com/od/outlooktips/qt/Back_Up_or_Copy_Outlook_Data.htm

Also, fresh installs of Outlook tend to delete mail from server whenever received. I had quite a trouble with this: Checking work mail at home, seeing that I'd been sent some design drawings - and next day at work, there's no mail, no drawings, so I had to go back home and retrieve drawings!

There's a check button to "keep messages in server" but it's buried under loads and loads of "settings" and "advanced" window trees.
Shame on microsoft making this so retarded.

Question!

I see GIF files. 256-color, animated, from 1987.

It's 2010 soon. Where's a modern animated image format -- with 24-bit color and alpha channel?
Is there one? I mean, something usable, readable by any browser, etc?

If not, why???...!

About depression: Depression is a condition of being chronically sad.
I do suffer under depression most of the time. I somewhat have learned to live with it, and what's most strange is that depression is actually fuels my creativity.

I'm not very stressed about it, in some ways, I even enjoy it. Sounds a bit emo, I know.
I'm an optimist. Usual motto in heavy depression for me is "if someone's sitting up there on the cloud and watches my misadventures as a funny tragic comedy, well, I'm going to give a helluva good stage performance!". This one always cracks me up.

But if you get sensitive all over, need to express yourself and share your world gets super high. So does the need to place yourself "on the map".

[somebody else makes them]

You nag about unfinished projects? Hell, how about trying to finish for 1 and a half year now? How about working so much hours you've forgotten how your house looks like. How about you having 8 months or so to have a good time with a lady?
Okay, on second thought I can't top your achievements. You win.

2005! Last time I added some content was last summer. Problem is, I've aged considerably during 5 years and everything about the game feels childish and very amateur to me now. Though it's still *that* close to being complete... I even showed it at local meeting of indie developers here in Estonia. (Something like local Mittens which I held with fellow enthusiasts, not directly to AGS related though)

Just think of it - you are not the only 25+ year old nerd in distress out there. By finishing something you may get others attention and together you could solve your mutual problems

Truth is, I'm not hardcore basement-dweller really. I was quite social in the past. But I don't have any friends left (some are living abroad, some are family people now), and no clue where to find new ones. And tragic event of last summer left me into some strange limbo with very little social activities. I'd like to restart everything but don't know how.

My advice (at least it works for me) - try to get motivation from elsewhere. For example, try getting a job that lets you use your creativity. You can work on some design projects, games etc and have a deadline. In that case you'd be forced to finish it. If you already have a job like this, then I don't see what's the problem...

Yes, that's the odd thing: I design cardboard displays and it's both creative and strongly deadlined job. Over last 1,5 years, I had a crash course in meeting deadlines. But it somehow doesn't apply to my hobbies...

Maybe it's as Wyz said:

I'm lazy, so I sometimes need extra motivation, making deadlines helps, but even more when somebody else makes them.

I also thought about dumping everything, ready (or not so much) over internet. Like music tracks to youtube and so on. What's the point in creations if no one could enjoy them? But I don't know if it's a good idea or not. Maybe I can leave some things behind that way.

Thanks for advice so far. It really helps to unfold my mess a bit.

Heavily fogging and dodging the topic. Like, "some little ones in the past, but I think they're lost in the internet by now" (which is true, actually. When I started out, I was much more productive) or something like this.

What I do know, is that the whole phase was caused by lack of motive. That is, there is more then one kind of motive, you can really want somthing but don't feel like it. It took me some time to figure out what was causing it. For my it was the lack of acknowledgement, I need to hear from somebody else that I'm on the right track.

You're definitely pressing correct button here. Reading this makes my brain tingle in weird way.

With creations - I refuse to use anything premade and pretty much ideas of others. So I might not be a very good team player... 10 imps bringing my ideas into life would be still awesome, though. Or simply clones of myself

So, acknowledgment?
First, I live in a country I call a frog pond - there's about 30-35 people who make indie games (out of 1.3 million!) and I know them all. Teenagers mostly, only 2 guys older than me. Of course, there's some professional developers, but they don't stay here for a second since it's much better paid in other countries. So, nobody really knows anything about making games or that such thing even existst - someone being able to make a video game... also, whenever I tell anyone I make games as a hobby and yes, one can actually learn that! - there's that damn question: "Wow! Can I see your games? What games have you made?"
...and that's an embarrassing moment.

So of course, I've suffered under lack of acknowledgment since I started all this (age of 7). Nobody really knows what I'm doing and parents believed most of my childhood that I'm simply crazy, doing some strange voodoo with computer at nights.

Outside hobby & friends it would bring would be something I'd really love, but I don't have a clue where to start...  also, Estonia is friggin' cold. It's -10C as I'm typing this and we jokingly call summer "a bad skiing weather". So there's not very many options...

Also, what I realize while typing this is that I've started to walk into my limits by this age and am afraid to let creativity go since it's one of few things I'm potentially good at...