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Being famous is a result, not the reason for doing something. Although very nice, it should remain subtle in the end of things, not the fuel for doing something, cause it leads to rather unpleasent phychology (as you very well know).

It's not so much about being famous but more like being somebody. You know, I described how meaningless my life is - I'm useless worker ant. No wife or kids to provide to, no-one really benefits from my existence.

And I've always dreamed about going out with a bang, leaving a mark of myself. Since there's no way I'm inventing a dynamite or cure for cancer, creating is all I have. And well, something I have talent in.
Pity it has its downside... then again, maybe creating is what gives me false illusion about being/doing something useful and I should end this stupid struggle and do something else...

Also, perfectionism. How to cure it? If I drew 50% simpler sprites, add 50% less explosions and glow effects, did "tiny" projects as suggested, etc - I could finish my creations and release them. But... i wouldn't like them then!

edit: Also, not being able to finish stuff thing: I realize that I have no skill to work hard. Since age of 3, I've always been that wonder kid, I learned to read by age 4, NEVER did any homework at school since I grasped things "from air" pretty much, and success never needed any effort. So, from the start of my life, I've never had to work my ass off for - anything. I think creating something to the finish actually needs that skill... Kids who had problems at studying spent days and nights to do homework and for them that skill is pretty natural. So I guess I'm paying the price now.

Well, situation is what title says: I'm messed up with no clarity at the horizon.

My life routine is simple: work and home. No friends, going out, women, outside hobbies, nothing. Just work and video games. So basically, I spend 16-18 hours infront of PC daily. I'm male and 26.

Only thing I have besides this, is creativity. And this also has become a terrible struggle lately. I mean, I have near-lethal urge to express myself somehow. Make something. Be known.

I try making music, drawing, making a game of some kind, make a video, 3D modelling... but sad fact is, I'm unable to finish whatever I start. And quite quickly really. I start a new track in FruityLoops, make a basic beat, try to add bass and I don't like it. Quit & play some game.

I start a project in AGS or Game Maker, animate main character with painful amount of quality and dedication, write huge portion of engine, save and close. And somehow, I cannot continue this project, ever. Whenever I'm the the mood, I open it, fix few lines of code, and close it again, without progressing thing much.

Opening old projects always make me go "wow" and think that "this is so awesome, I must be crazy not to finish it", but somehow, that feeling fuels me only to make little insignifant changes or addons and never to actually continue those. Also, I like video games. Too much. I start watching a movie, and 30 minutes into movie, I have urge to play something. Same with creating.

I have about 80 unfinished songs of different genres, over 300 game maker projects (of which most would surely be liked by players), about two dozens of AGS games... all unfinished with dim hope of ever seeing release.

Sometimes, I think that I'm doing it wrong. I shouldn't create at all and do something else. But there's nothing else to do. And this urge to do something, release, get famous - won't go away.

I won't add a question or anything to the end of this post. But if you have an opinion or advice or just anything relevant, I would love to hear this.

Sherlock Holmes is a good boxer and cane fighter. Also, carries a revolver.
Kicks and window diving aside, that's all I saw in the trailer, so it's true to the story.

What I think is that they will still probably stray too far from intellect and deduction stuff, but there's a good part - that other side is Indiana Jones' side, which isn't worse really. Explosions WITH brains. Just not true to Sherlock Holmes stories, but as entertaining.

And yeah, I wouldn't want to see my hero injecting heroin (which he really did in books at some period) so adaptions should be selective at some amount.

Well, for games and novels - books rock and games not so much. Usually, I feel opposite, but not with Sherlock Holmes. I've played three new games (and two old) and every one of them gets boring at some point. "Case of serrated scalpel" is best game in series IMO. Also, novels are shorter and more action packed than games and you don't have to pixel hunt anything nor play every damn classic puzzle minigame...

See movie, read books, but play games only if you want more.
Also, it's hard to pick up and imagine characters as English, but Soviet-time (80s) russian TV movies of SH are actually quite watchable. Since russians avoid courts and bullshit - as with all russian movies/series, it's on youtube.  

I like it!
How exactly did you do smoke puffs rolling-out-from-center thing? This thing I like most.

I mean, what was technique in this?

Generator looks awesome!
But it's... kinda cheap.
Also, it looks to be limited to 64x64 16-frame animations?

I will never make as cool explosions as generator does, but I think I still make them myself
And if all fails, I'll make my own generator

Thanks for quick & helpful response!

I said "realistic" so "masochistic" approach of pixeldrawing everything won't help here, especially since I plan to use explosions with 2D sprites of 3D models (which I model because I suck at animating them in 2D), and I need about 10 different explosions!... but those moving pictures really helped --

-- because I think that movement of flame & smoke elements and dissipating was that I missed so far.

I decided to go for still using alpha channel, so 256-color GIF looks quite stupid here with jerky edges and all, but everything will appear soft and transclusent near edges in-game.

Flying debris, smoking and burning stuff will be particles apart from animation, since I plan to put some physics into it.

So, after billion (yes, billion) mouse clicks, I ended up here...





Some touch-ups are still needed yet. Or did I miss something?

Does anyone know a good tutorial or way to animate an explosion?

Out of 7 or 8 tries, I ended up with this-




And I'm not happy with this at all :'(

I want my explosion realistic, not transclusent and not anti-aliased on edges.
What should I do (using real life animation/grab from movie etc is out of question)?

Just one quick thought on the base thing: 25 minutes + 40 minutes are... 1 hour and 5 minutes 

Bases different than 10 (or even something more complex, like day/hour/minute thing) are really just a matter of being used to.

Matter of being used to - yes
Comfortable - no

Ugh. This makes me dizzy.

But even while I don't see how using numbers that result in answer to a calculation instead of simple units (like hexadecimal F means base of something blah blah complex but decimal 10 means simply 10 apples or coins) useful in "real life", I think I understand how it's useful on paper (or rather - as digital data)... but, we don't use hexadecimal in everyday life anyway.

Still, I will die not fully understanding hexadecimal.

A question:

Why do people use hexadecimal? Especially when mentioning specifics about computer memory?
I understand the usage of binary, since it's the base of nature, but hex???

Does it have some crazy benefits or it's simply so because some nerd started to do so back in 70's?

And here's a nice interview with the game's creator...
http://www.adventureclassicgaming.com/index.php/site/interviews/547/
apparently God told him to make it.

Prophets have been always mistrusted and mocked...

I would go for making my own engine with Game Maker.
RPG's use rather isolated spaces (like AGS rooms) so GM should handle the load OK.

Also, since you make your own engine, you can have whatever you want. And it's alot easier than digging in a mess of source code of some RPG-oriented tool

Okay, a question:

Where is country border?

I know where it is on land, from sea level to plane-reachable area (airspace).
But further? Is it still same country 400km under ground? Or outside atmosphere, in space?

If it's same country under ground, inside earth, how do borders go? Do they follow sphere shape of earth and get narrow near the middle of earth where they end? Like a top of a cone? In which case, are all countries neighbors with border in the middle point (earth's center)?

And if borders extend into outer space (though I don't believe this)...  do they go for infinity? So, planets technically cross different countries all the time while passing earth? Also... so we technically own everything (except for space covered by extension of independent areas such as oceans)?

This is driving me crazy.

www.tranceaddict.com, register to forums.

They have a whole subforum for ID-ing tracks.
And there's loads of odd stuff identified, very much like yours.

You might have recorded this in 1995, but by the sound, I'd say this music is definitely older.

Some tracks sound like something you could find from those cheap Ibiza Trance / (or house) CDs. But some sound much, much more underground to make onto such stick-into-your-car-stereo compilations.

Awesome tracks though. Still listening-

Still, AC-130 level was that made COD: MW so special for me.
It was just like random gunner-tv-operator video from liveleak.com, but INTERACTIVE.

Well, and if anything in MW1 was anti-war in some way, then that's probably this level. After seeing that, all hopes of "we'll go to partisan/forest/cellar/etc when war breaks out and survive" become zero. WWII was horrible, but it's nothing compared to thought of such steel beast floating in clouds and gunner counting my eyelashes with 130x zoom and guns big enough to level a tenement while it's pitch dark and I'm inside some building... it's quite remarkably shocking.

That's why I like such stuff too. And MW2 did not deliver!  :'( :'( :'(

Unless you're buying a new one, skip the BMW.

It's tempting car yeah, but not only to you. Used ones are usually raced and broken to strips and scrap metal, even if it's polished a bit before sale.

I wouldn't choose Passat though. Corolla sounds like a foolproof thing... or if it smells too much like senior citizen's car, pick a well-kept Audi instead.

Imagine that there's a computer game. Quite arcade-ish and generic shooter really.
And yet, it has some levels that'll blow your mind.

Imagine there's a sequel to this game.
And in this sequel, you encounter a screen like this! (okay, maybe not so rage-modded)

Damn it! Superrealistic levels like AC-130 shooter level in first Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is exactly why I dished out â,¬49.
And now, the main campaign has none of those cool sequences original had AND for no reason whatsoever, this last cool thing, this last barricade before total suckage needs TWO players to even try. I know very clearly that I chose "SOLO PLAY" option from main menu of Special Forces campaign. SOLO.

ALSO, there's no way to start a server and hope anyone joins. You have to INVITE a FRIEND from steam friends list or something. It's a computer game, ffs. How did they even come to an idea that players actually have social life, let alone friends???

I've played Steam-supported games from the day Half-Life 2 was released, have plenty of them which I play online. Even had counter-strike disease! Over 5 years, number of friends in steam list is ZERO.

Q: Where do I acquire a friend?
A: Go outside

Q: But a friend who wants to play instead of being outside?
A: umm...

Since you've been looking around these engines, what do you think about UDK?

Unreal Dev Kit? No clue, to be honest. I made a wide tryout and search for available engines a bit before I heard about UDK. I've fiddled with irrlicht, 3d Rad, A4/A5/A6 gamestudio, etc etc. Unreal kind of got skipped.

Actually, learning any 3D engine is a frightening world with very low ratio of success.
And if you cannot code in some popular language, such as C# (like myself), there is no ratio.

NeoAxis, on the other hand, actually has a watermark on the images if you don't pay the 95$ indie license (http://www.neoaxisgroup.com/services/licensing#comparison)

What images? All it does is display NA logo when you start up the game - like any commercial game does, i think. There's no additional watermarks or logos. It's not the watermark that limits non-commercial license, but the fact that you are not allowed to sell games.

Also, for $95, a full-powered 3D engine is actually rare find.

But to be honest, shadows and lights are not up to mainstream engines yet. Even though they will be as engine reaches version 1.0. I've been fiddling with this engine since v0.54 (it's at 0.82 right now) and it's developing quite rapidly. But making anything by your own reveals its true potential because default demo game(s) have programmer's art-look, quite horrid really.

If I'd make leading affordable (yet modern) 3D-engines top 3, it would go like this:

1) NeoAxis
2) C4 Engine
3) Unity3D

Even though NA and C4 are about same, simply with different strengths. C4 has way better water shader and shadow & light, NeoAxis has better system for making maps and interactive geometry. Also, whole BSP-like level editor in C4 is VERY approachable to anyone ever made maps for commercial games, BUT this system will be outdated quickly, if not already.