Messages

Sun must be really warm down there.

But there are crimes that require death penalty, I think.

Like serial rapists, kid abusers, etc monsters. Not free housing on taxpayer money.
Europe is being a wuss, as always, with DP banned in most countries, including mine.

This cries for a ban.

I was SOLD. With every cell and piece of hair.
Especially since demo version had a bit different storyline/locations than full version and ended just when... when...
when you actually noticed that soliders DO flank you, flush you out of cover with a grenade and pump your sorry ass full of lead when you run out. And they were so cool, cursing through comms in a crackling voice, with heavy boots and "I'm gonna f- you up" attitude.

Half-Life 1 was awesome. Still is.

Movie.
Live play has no special effects, cheaper set and limited milieu. It's so... medieval.

Also, it's really not that comparable. Movies are somewhat easy on delivering part - they try to give you everything, done over and over, polished to perfection. Actors are dedicated to their story/character in the movie and delivering it.

Live shows go more towards art and emphasis is more on acting itself than the acted character. People watch more how well actor acts than at character (s)he's playing. They don't critic the play, but how it was played. If live show actor makes a mistake, it will be forgiven quicker. If acting is good, people watch whatever. Like Lord of the Dance. If there was a movie with that name, cinemas would be (relatively) empty.

Movies are different here. If actor(s) don't act well, it's bad. But if story itsself sucks, no amount of good acting will save it.

Maybe I sound like "uncultured savage" but for me, time for live plays ended about hundred years ago. One actor holding a wooden gun, saying "bang"  and other falling down is simply stupid. Atleast, without 3D rendered CGI muzzle flash and blood to alteast trying to make me believe a gun was shot. Etc.

I cannot even start to compare thrills that for example - Saving Private Ryan gave me when watching movie and how stupid and not thrilling it would feel on live stage. It's simply not comparable.

I had my share of theater-going when I was younger and I've never missed it.

Maybe you'd want to use more dramatic lights here?

Like going from here

more towards here


Maybe not so heavily and contrasty, but still?

What I did: In photoshop - duplicated image layer, cranked contrast and and brightness up, gaussian blur 5,7px, set layer mode to overlay at 100%(or was it hard light? can't remember, either one works a bit differently) and with a soft eraser, erased areas around lights ot make some artificial glow.

It's a bit extreme (and too dark, just to show difference better), but still, looks far more mysterious and interesting. Gray is most dull color of them all, and I usually try to avoid it or use high contrast lights to drag viewer away from it. Now if those door numbers would also be brighter orange, like glowing in darkness on my image, it would look really atmospheric.

Of course, many here disagree with blurry edit and prefer cleaner, safe-saturated looks of the original.

Bring eyes together, seriously.

[not]

I suggest not to do the previous.
Unless you like slow computer and long loading times.
Who puts on 10 condoms?

You don't need all this crap.

Simply, learn some common sense, use safer browser and avoid cracks/serials/porn sites. It's that simple.
Unless you're some kind of idiotic american housewife or really green computer user, to whom (I think) all the adware and viruses are targetted at.

[uncreative]

"Creative Studio(s)" is by far most uncreative name, ever. I bet there's hunderds of Creative Studios out there...
Simple Google search brought 74 results-!

Also, don't call yourself Studios. Studios go usually with movies, rarely with games.

I'm not that against calling your games under some kind of fake organization name - because they are way more memorable than your real name. Infact, very little of game developers in the world are really known by their real name, like John Romero or Roberta Williams, etc. And you probably aren't - and never will be - one of those.

Mostly, it's still the dev team name, company or etc.  I

Pick a name that's short enough and easy to remember. And by easy, make it special. "Creative" is so common, that no one will really remember or distinguish it from hundred others. Also, all kind of "entertainment(s)" and so on.

For example, Bullfrog, Valve or Activision are simple, yet memorable ones. It pays off in the long run, because I'm sure anyone has heard or remembers those.

Flashy, long names tend to go unknown. Even better is to pick yourself a new e-name, memorable as I described and release with it. It doubles the effect - both you and your games will be known in the internet.

It's too long.

i haven't used an antivirus program in 5 years...

Me neither. Mozilla & Noscript add-on keeps heavy majority of adware away Also, I Spybot: Search & Destroy in every 3 or 4 months and mop up what got through. It results in 3-4 titles of annoying, but invisible and harmless viruses/whateverware.
Destructive viruses went outta fashion long time ago and actually, about 95% of security comes from surfing habits, link clicking and program execution. It's also good to sometimes check your msconfig: to ensure nothing starts on reboot that shouldn't.

I haven't had any virus trouble LONG time.

It's sooooooo awesome and powerful to put down other people's beliefs!! 

I know it sure makes me feel better!!

[same sarcasm]Me too[/same sarcasm]
[no sarcasm]Me too![/nod]

Motivational poster rocks, btw.
Does christianity disapprove humor?

Politically-correct-to-a-point-of-no-sense nazi watchdogs are what makes reg-debates so awful in this forum.
So let's not.

Get it working
Back everything up
Nuke windows
Reinstall all

That's your one, coherent answer.

For me, only at work, /yabb gives me "session expired" messages when I try to edit my posts. When I refresh page, session seems to be fine. Same browser (FF2), but no such problem at home.

Mystery!

Tools for manual dithering, maybe something like predefined masks where you just paint over.

I second this. Or rather - ability to make that dithered gradient DeluxePaint and old LucasArts games have.

Actually, I think I can make my own isometric painter - inspiration ahoy!
I think Game Maker is probably enough for such project.
Then again, it's quite a CPU hog...

[useful]

The thing is - I want to make it free and as useful for all of us here.

...useful...
I can help in that department!!!

* Isometric grid + optional 1-pixel grid
* Quick isometric wall
* Quick isometric box, maybe some other shapes too, like pyramids and cones. Good circle algorithm.
* Isometric snap for line tool. I mean, holding down something would make your lines isometric, like holding shift in mspaint would make them straight.

This could work by combining straight and 2-1 isometric theme to lines, according to direction you drag. Like - in mspaint, if you hold shift and move mouse vertically or horizontally, you get straight line. In-between, perfectly diagonal. Iso-snap could include 8 extra directions, adding those 2 for each direction (shown ones are for upper-left)


This simple addition alone will make a HUGE impact bringing all MSPaint-using isometric artists from MSPaint to your program.

* Isometric cropper (If you can get your hands on a SimCity2000 (try abandonware sites), check out the editor. Year 2009 still doesn't have any alternates to such powerful isometric drawing tools). By cropper I mean that you define isometric rectangle bounds as drawing are and cannot cross them. SC2000 editor has it - you pick the base (ground) size and can draw only in its boundaries.

Why so much isometric suggestions? Simply because modern world lacks any good isometric drawing programs. And considerably heavy portion of pixel art is isometric today.

For extra ideas,
* as simple and good-working select-copy-paste system as MSPaint has. Otherwise, you won't win over paint. Because for simple pixel-making, its system is definitely best.
EDIT:

* Ability to change between real pixel and image pixel selection box frame. I mean, in MSPaint, if you draw selection box, even if your image is zoomed 10x (how to do that is a neat trick), you still have 1-pixel frame depending on your desktop resolution. In many other programs - selection box frame is as big as pixel on your image - this might be hell when you want to select really small area and zoomed everything to do this - selection box rectangle actually covers that area so you cannot see what you select very well. Both ways have their benefits and problems. So ability to select proper one might be best.

* For pixelart program in the era of super-high desktop resolutions, flexible and powerful zooming is extremely important. Zoom-to-fit-window/screen etc stuff is highly recommended.

* Replace color tool. You eyedrop a color, pick another and click. It should be that simple. Even cooler if we could apply this to selection only and it would self-detect if something IS selected so there's no need to select all to use it.

* Brighten/darken processors for a tool. NOT that horror that is in Adobe Photoshop!! I cannot stress importance of such simple thing enough.

* Manual Anti-alias tool? Something that by clicking detects nearest pixel colors and interpolates clicked pixel using those? Not sure how it would really work.

* Pan/center image part under cursor, preferably via simple keyboard key. Especially useful when zoomed up on a larger image.

* Hotkeys based on keyboard/mouse/tablet/etc input. I mean, if I want to assign a hotkey to pen tool, and have 5-button mouse, pressing any of them while assigning the key should be so paint program actually understands the input. So if someone has 40 button mouse or some other technological wonder, he could still use all of those. Mouse wheel support is elementary too.

I think I'll edit this post forever.
Instead of reading/relying on this forum thread, start a feature list early and mark down what you like and what will be likely to actually happen in program.

[without]

offtopic:
Interesting, ArtiosCAD actually does have one, but it's well hidden.

But not saving too much is because of trying out things that might or might not work.
For example, I make some changes. I have to cut a sample to ensure this does actually work. Unless I do so, there's no much point in saving - I might replace last working version with incomplete one. Going downstairs to a plotting machine to make sample takes about 10 minutes, enough for Windows to sabotage my work. Or for a smoke after hard battle with difficult design problem.

And making 10+ different save versions will simply get me lost in those. Later it could happen that one of incomplete versions goes to print and then, hell arises.
If you have 10 almost identical drawings with 0,2 - 2mm difference in this or that line, it's almost impossible to figure out which one was correct. Even file dates do not work that well.

well, it's not as I wouldn't save in 4 hours, but even 14 minutes might make important changes in design which could be hard to backtrack and remember later. Take your game, save with 4 names, and let someone change a line or two of random code in three. Then try to find original. It's something like this.
I have my own methods with dealing saving, but Windows Update-rape doesn't isn't very cooperative with this.

EDIT: Amazing. This crap can be actually disabled without turning off auto-updates!!! And it's simple and logical and doesn't require any hacking.

Peace with windows AND our IT-admin.
http://www.aeonity.com/frost/remove-automatic-restart-after-windows-updates

Not captcha nor fun, but this is for real. I cannot curse enough. And still it happens all time!



Apparently, Windows Update doesn't give two shits if you have worked half a day on a CAD drawing and you're past deadline already. RESTART?

Oh hell yes you will.

Major leading  3d modelling software is four programs: 3ds Max, Maya, Lightwave(don't know if many still use it) and Cinema4D. With a cult-like following, and totally free - Blender too, though many hate it, including myself.
They are what all the 3D cartoons and maybe 90% of games are made.

Your pick is also based on what do you want. Just model stuff for a game or render complex scenes with good lights and shadows. For modelling, simple things work. For rendering, not so much.

Now, even though you want something simple, to jump into world of 3D, picking one of those I named will pay off well in a long run, Especially 3ds max. Of course, they cost hell and a bit extra. For modelling only, and really dumbed-down version of max, try GMax. It's free, but there's no complex rendering and lighting to speak of, unless you trick it with a plugin or something.

Picking something like Anim8or or similar will show you the basics in a simple interface, but there's nowhere to go after you "grow out" of the progam. Also, with most "simple" programs, interface and comfortability is actually under zero. While "elite" programs are really hard to get into, it pays off big time later and you realize that their user interface is actually the best thing for doing what you do.

Long story short, 3d? There's no easy way out. Trust me on this.

Liked toy fruit and pokemon songs. Genius lies in simplicity: he didn't sing and there was no lyrics to speak of, yet it felt like new Daft Punk-like electronic renaissance at some moments. Like he invented a new genre or something. Lollipop kiddie gamecore electronica? This is how most unexplainably popular hits happen!

meh most of everything else I watched (about 20 videos out of... hundred?), and hated puppet show.
Youtube humor is hit (1%) and miss (99%) thing anyway. Even 1% of 54 million is a load of laughs. And it wasn't that bad anyways. Just lame.

With character, looks and enthusiasm like this, Youtube videos are a waste. He should try something more serious.