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How can you complain atleast 2 years without pause and compress that into 2 words?

Star Wars.

Not bad really. HTML version would be friendlier though.

Do you have any new webcomics left?
Sorry, we only have mspainted, pointless, unfunny one.
Wow, that's my favourite!

[could]

Poverty Class scenario: I am unemployed because I can't hold a job. I live off of welfare, food stamps, and I get cable TV (most basic package.)  I don't want to go back to work because the government is paying for all that I need and want. (If I were to get a job, I would lose all that government assistance.)

This applies to countries where you actually could live off welfare.

For example, where I live, average rent/apartment/etc cost per month is $200-300, food & basic stuff - about $200, and human needs a bit more than food and shelter to live, so add everything else.
Also, it's quite unlikely to find anyone who has less than $100 of monthly loan or lease payment. So, survival starts at about $500. Seniors get $400 of pension monthly and somehow survive too.

Average wage is $700-800.

Welfare for unemployed is... $60!
Yup, that's it. sixty lousy dollars. Nothing else.

Have fun trying to survive with this. It won't cover even monthly toilet paper.

EDIT: corrected numbers a bit.

Loss of HOTU is big. Not as a place to download games but as PC gaming history museum & database.
Such place should have kept intact at all costs!

I bet many of those titles are lost forever now, atleast for public.

[please do!]

I truly miss isometric graphics and tycoon games.

Last one I played and loved was Rollecoaster tycoon... ages ago. Well, SimCity 4000 was about okay too. Nothing great but better than the last leftovers of genre and style.
Nothing playable after this. Tried this and that, and no, nothing.

Also, where's deep technical turn-based strategies?

Jagged Alliance 2 + half-assed expansions, that 3D game about WWII with robots that started to suck quickly - Silent Storm - and... end of the genre?
Russian enthusiasts, keepers of the genre - pump out Jagged Alliance inspired games all the time (including mentioned Silent Storm), but they rarely reach quality of western ones and translations are almost always terrible.

For example, how come no one hasn't made decent XCOM sequel yet? Microprose, releasing that awful UFO 3 (XCom: Apocalypse) seems to have killed its own franchise or cursed it... even though I know that there's LOADS of hardcore fans for this insult of a game too.

If someone can prove me wrong and name some gems, please do!

* Spend all my earthly belongings to fill this week with enjoyment.
* Borrow money from hell and earth to fund my crazy week.
If that's not enough, * Break law. In every imaginable way. If possible, make my loved ones rich.
* Do some really extreme things, like parachute jumping or bungee.
* Do that thing where you're tied to a parachute and tied it drags you flying over sea. Parasurfing/kitesurfing! I've always wanted to do that, but never got to.
* Make ton of youtube videos giving out everything I can contribute as analyzing, thinking individual.
* Do something to get myself known in public.
* Do everything I won't do in fear of regret. To find out if I should have risked before.
* Improve social standing with other people. Open myself to them. Let them know what they missed. Make em' cry on my grave later.

And I'm not kidding.

  Some people will just buy anything without a shred of personal or practical evidence.

Woo! Now what?

A superb song choice! I enjoyed song more than rest of the video.

Thinking about possibility of second sun makes my hair rise though. Most of the theories about something happening of planetary scale in our universe usually end with extinction of humankind.

So, instead of light & love such videos make me think about doom and BBQ.

* Change font to something readable
* Reduce saturation. Maybe make background darker so stuff from book would feel less of a mess
* Hand-drawn page corners? They look messy compared to cleaner lines everywhere else. I'd use vectors/nice bezier curves here.
* Light from book could be intensified. It's quite weak right now-
* Don't like flying yellow stuff. I wouldn't use it at all.
* Green stuff looks strange too. If roots would turn into leaf ends without those fat bulges, it would look better... see link below. I'd also play with color a bit, try neon yellow/green or something.

www.increator.pri.ee/i/critshelp/bookstuff.swf

Overall, it looks quite messy right now and it's hard to figure out what's going on. Just like with spiked leaves, everything could use a bit smoother, curving, creative... athletic! lines. It's simply not very expressive yet.

I liked pre-C&C version actually better, it looked more like sand.

For crits, lightest sand feels a bit too light somehow. I can see ocean reflecting so much light but not (nighttime?) sand... Maybe it's realistic - not a light expert - but there's a choice between eye pleasing and realism. And darker sand might look better.

Probably because 2d is much easier to think in.

Producing 2D is much cheaper. To make a decent 2D game with beautiful animations and backgrounds, all you need is a talented artist and a program.

To make same in 3D, you expenses vary from texturer to moddeller to live actors & motion capture equipment (COSTLY!!!) or multiple animators to studio to photographer to different programs to keep it all together etc

Of course this is graphics only. Both would also need sound effects, live actors for speech, music, programmers, testers, etc. So before this huge load of expenses, going 2D is a considerable save on budget.

a. Why do cyclists' magazines claim that it is safer for a cyclist to go through a red light than to wait? If you're waiting alongside a juggernaut that's about to turn in front of you, then yes, you are in a dangerous spot, but getting hit side-on from traffic crossing your path is just as dangerous, surely?

Huh? By our traffic laws a driver does not have to stop car if bicyclist rides when it's red light. Also, no need to stop if bicyclist rides on a crossing without lights (such as single zebra). When he walks and the cycle is with him, car must stop. When he's on the bike, he's not considered pedestrian and must obey same traffic laws as cars.

It was quite strange when a bicyclist rode over crossing and my driving instructor told me not to slow down.

But I think that suggestion means that if you cross on bike, it's probably safer to maintain speed than stop and try to start gathering speed while on crossing. I've fallen badly off the bike in the center of intersection and stoplights for cars turned green... it was quite terrifying. Exactly because I could not achieve enough speed to balance bike and rode down a walkway curb, which made bike bump and me fall.

That's just a theory though.

[What is the difference between normal maps and bump maps?]

A question:

What is the difference between normal maps and bump maps?

I know that normalmap uses 3 channels color instead of grayscale (bump map).
But does it make difference visually? Is normalmapped brick wall better than bumpmapped? Is rendering faster?

Another one:

How do cubemaps work?

I know that cubemap entities should be placed near reflective (cubemap using) materials. But why? What does entity do? Does it "photograph" surroundings and project reflections onto material? Or what? (I know that this wide topic and methods may vary, but I mean "classical" cubemapping (entity + materials), like Source engine does)

Ugh, it proved to be more difficult than to say I would...
But okay, here:

Example!

Viewing this requires Flash/shockwave player plugin installed on your browser, but I cannot imagine one without...

Both are freehanded, one in MSpaint + antialias (much like your comic), other freehanded in Flash. Notice the difference in line widths and shapes! Paint looks jagged and weird, Flash freehand curves look artsy and thinner/fatter as I drew them. A bit better example lies in labels below, notice that text drawn in flash looks considerably better even though I did not use any font and freehanded just like other one.

Posting a .swf is a bit of cheating: Right now, the image should be as big as your browser window is a and vector stickman/text never loses its quality in any size (you can resize browser to check), but when this image is converted to casual image format, such as PNG, this magic would not work. Still, I find freehand drawing, especially so simple figures, to turn out much better in Flash, Illustrator or any other vector-based/well supported brush system paint program.

Sorry if I failed to explain exactly what I meant, but I do not have willpower to give a bit more detailed example. If you can get your hands on something like/or Flash, you would simply see yourself.

Nah, I don't mean you're crap artist.

Simply, when you drew your comic, you had anti-aliasing turned on. It kind of turned out to look poor.

Seriously, to make this comic look better, drawing your stickmen in something similar to Flash would make gread difference, mainly because how freehanded lines are handled there. I believe many other programs can make such nice-looking strokes too, instead of semi-jagged semi-antialiased lines you have right now.

If I can find my Macromedia Flash CD somewhere, I might draw an example.

But yes, 3D assets are great since you don't have to redraw that lamp-post 18 times, you just import your pre-made lamp-post model. But the time to model, unwrap, texture, normal map and spec map and whatever other maps your engine uses, you would spend a looooot more time on that lamp-post than you would if you had to draw that lamp-post 38 times.

So we never agree on this. What if you have 30 lamps? What if the light they get is all different? Shade & color 30 times? Or simply duplicate 30 times and get automatic light & shadow?

I'm a personally able to model this lamp with all needed maps quicker than draw some.

XFader tiles your photo texture in 2 clicks. NVidiaNormalMap plugin creates nice-looking fake normalmap in 2 clicks also. Specular maps is a bit of desaturation and adjustment in photoshop. It's not THAT time-consuming! Even if you make normals out of high-poly models (normal way), check out on videos on Zbrush. It takes minutes to make heavy stuff. Taken you have a company and ten modellers / artists under command, in pure 8 hours, I believe progress would be noticeable and probably bigger than giving em' tablets and forcing to draw.

Ever made heightmaps? A whole land (area) from World of Warcraft can be made in hour or two.

Unless you're making some sick artistic billion-poly stuff that you cannot even render in real-time. But we're talking about games, aren't we?

Ugh! Your drawing is dirty!

I take PNG suggestion back - with such bad aliasing, there's no difference really. And I blamed it all on JPGs at first...

How about using Flash/any other vector-drawing thingy to draw? I think it would benefit both in style and looks. AND you could alias your lines to seventh layer or hell and it would look good.

As for that decond part- 3D being easier and so on, have you ever thought how much time you need to model, texture and animate even a simple 3D character? I daresay a spriter could achieve great results in pretty much the same time and on a lower budget!

It is not comparable. For example, giving 2D character all animations typical 3D character has would take LOT more time.

And what if you after animating decide to change something? Or simply put other clothes on character?

It is not comparable. 3D has it's own ups and they seem to be huge pretty often.
For another example, 3D levels. You can draw few days a high-res background and decide that no, that tree or house won't go there and light is all wrong.

In 3D, you simply move house to new location and change light.
In 2D, you hang yourself from mouse cable.

Again, it's not that simply comparable.
I'd love to see a 2D renaissance though. With modern high resolution and much more powerful tools, it would be wonderful.

Interesting, I feel that modern big question is not 2D vs 3D, but in programming: new games suck, no matter what graphics.
Nobody is able to remember what made games actually fun and how little of graphics did it really need.