Messages

Sorry to say, I totally hate what you did with good-looking sketch.
I don't like that "scratch shading" at all!

It looks terrible and could be used only in some kind of dark horror game, and then too only with appropriate spooky lighting...

Also, how do you use character in a room with so strong perspective? Sounds like alot of zooming to me.

This way or another, you have to shade the picture. I mean, bed columns have same color on different sides, doesn't look like there's any light source or shadows at all. But going horror here, strong shadows are a must!

But I wouldn't be at all surprised (very sad and disappointed, but not surprised) that if Barack Obama becomes the new president, he'll be assassinated within a year...

As would be assassinated anyone who has power and will to crusade against CEOs and oil import, white or black, beggar or president. You can checkmate, but never capture the king.

In this world, kings do not reside in White House or Kremlin.
I think that they reside in banks and oil companies. Drug and weapon factories.

[still]

New Dune movie, IMO, should lend more from RTS games (Dune 2 and latter) than 60's book. I mean look'n'feel. Music and design choices. Without "under construction" or "robotix" the image is incomplete.

Westwood somehow managed to turn poetic, maybe a bit overdone sci-fi meditation into an awesome techno-thriller.

And this is how *I* imagine Dune. Humans after millennias of warfare, progress and science. Conquering universes but still powerless against nature and need for natural resources. This is what makes Dune immortal, timeless and perfectly believable hundreds of years after us.

Dune 2, 2000 and Emperor: Battle for Dune capture that moment pretty well.

I wonder why Command & Conquer 3 engine isn't used for another Dune game release yet? Maybe after Red Alert 3 it will...

I'd say being black is as good reason as any. In a situation when this is a reason at all.
There are people who vote for his person and politics overall. Very little amount of people.

And then there's loads of people who vote for a single thing. A promise here or there, because he's black, because he has likeable voice, because some housewife finds him sexy, because he studied law, because this and that and that too. To a such list, skin color can be easily added.

Just like Obama will have probably votes for being black...
...McCain gets some for NOT being black.

And vice versa.
All this talk makes me feel like people really believe that being black is some kind of unfair advantage of his.
In democracy, people choose whoever they like. Even if it's only skin color...

Amazing background! Truly, it is.

Crits too:

* upper part of the image is badly done. I mean, boxes on top of shelves, all the detail there, it looks too bland and blurry, doesn't stand out from background thus won't contribute much detail. Brighter colors and better defined edges, maybe even stronger shadows are a must.

* I would turn up light/shadow contrast a bit. Super lighted parts like desktop light and window - and yet everything's so ambient-lighted?

* floor would use a bit more details.

* Tiny increase in contrast and saturation overall is something I would definitely try.

Religion, IMO, is beautiful add-on to governing the nation.
I mean like when president addresses nations with "let us pray for our soliders/people in crisis right now/whatever"
And military burials and christmas wishes and so on.

It's simply an unifying gesture, nothing serious. A beautiful thing to do.

But ducking behind God to justify some evil act or having religion as deciding variable in ANY of important decisions, no.
--agreeing ozzie here, he said better.

about racism too...
I find it somewhat strange how afraid (american) people are of that word. It's not like when slavery ended, blacks enslaved whites for revenge and taught them a lesson.

The phobia has crossed the line of ignorance long ago.
Haha, I guess it's a matter of time - in this crazy, sick civilization of political correctness - when racists turn the tables and people will call them "differently opinioned people about color pigment in humanoid skin" because someone finds "racist" offensive word

Obama's skin color still - as much it feels from the media - is an issue to very large amount of people.

I think that in place of such responsibility, skin color or religion shouldn't really be an issue.
But whether man IS religious (NOT what's his religion), that's a considerable variable.
But that's ideal version. Life is simpler and more idiotic.

Well you conveniently didn't mention that any one would consider voting for Obama because they genuinely agree with his political positions, I think that's possibly a big factor in why people might potentially vote for him?

You realise that saying:

a lot of black people are simply going to vote for him 'cause he's black

is the same thing as saying:

a lot of women are simply going to vote for Sarah Palin 'cause she's female

which is a ridiculous statement to make.  You cannot reduce the political agency of a whole sector of society into such black and white terms without coming across as bigoted.  And suggesting that because you said "a lot of people" rather than "every person" somehow removes you from the responsibility of the words you said is a cop out.

It is ridiculous if you assume that people are intelligent.
Truth is, most (or atleast, seriously influential portion) of them are not. And low IQ doesn't deny voting.
And it's, ehm-- what country was it again?

And Obama is NOT a Muslim! He's always been a Christian. God, the rumors and myths going around about Obama are just laughable.

Aw. I even knew it - checked his bio from wiki before getting into thing -- but forget it. Rumors and myths and of course, his NAME always mislead. Nothing to see here, just another victim of media, move along--

But I don't really see how next biggest mass murderer and liferuiner (there are wars, there are bad environmental decisions, and there are bad decisions) of the world could face any God after his death.
Plus, I don't find religious people perfectly sane (though i know that it's saying "shoot me" in this forum).

[Obama]

I used to ignore all the choose-the-president circus. US is directly on opposite side of the earth...

But those three debates, I watched them on youtube.
Methinks:

Obama

..."I will make world a better place"
Even though he's old enough to be president, to me he feels like an ambitious high-school kid, with "innovative" tattooed onto his arse. Head full of ideas, and empty of experience. I'm TERRIBLY sorry if this goes over someone's line defining "racism", but US is a country of white people always led by white people. All the presidents before, through short history of this country are usually old, clever white men. And well imaginable in historical cotton plantation, smoking cigars and whipping people like Obama. Simply... White House feels like totally wrong place for Obama. Like a chicken in a nest of foxes. Even though world has changed much and thinking too... but it still feels somewhat... wrong. Or exciting?

He being a muslim is another strange piece of irony in this bizarre picture. And a treehugger. Also, he doesn't leave strong image at all. Hippie to be a most influential man on earth? From this side of globe, it looks like a circus.

If he would win, it would be helluva interesting reign. I believe his character would stand out in history books to come. Judging from his debates, probably as an active education/health care/environment care reformer and author of numerous (failed, though ambitious) projects on same area, which next rulers would probably cancel.

He would lead US like a log raft over an ocean, being optimistic against all odds and realizing that it's mission impossible... probably too late.

You cannot change world much in only 4 years. Unless your first name is Adolf...

McCain

...the oldschool populist...
is definitely more president material. In historic sense. White man with white hair, white teeth and snake-like smile. Old fox who knows mass manipulation and media tricks, hungers for power and has no "fix-the-world" mentality. He would result most likely in boring, stable and un-progressive reign. Maybe start a war with Iran or sink the economy even lower. Upset masses with some gestapo'ish decisions, similar Patriot Act and people would soon get bored of him.

He would probably rule US like his personal company, plantation or farm. Or army? Kill some good projects and maybe succeed on some too. US would probably get more aggressive image in the world, military-wise. Teachers and doctors will probably hate this man. Even if country gets worse, HIS life will surely improve over those 4 years.

But he has the  smile. I don't know if it's me or some coincidence, but all US presidents I've seen have the smile. There's a voting, and the man with the smile wins. Bill Clinton? A man with potato nose and rat eyes. But smile, it made him the president. Obama does not possess the smile. 

This is how those 2 men make me feel about them.
To be honest, my sleep would be better with McCain on the throne - with armed men in his fist -- and morning newspaper would be better with Obama ruling -- to see what did he got into this time. Obama seems more interesting because of his ambitious and somewhat more intelligent approach.

But either way, candidates suck somehow. Then again, neither of them is Truman, the shame of the world, and that's best about them.

Or maybe I'm totally wrong here. But this is how it looks from this end.
All americans here, wish you luck with your next leader.

As a forinstance, take David Lynch's Dune (Edit: Nice coincidence, Andail!). I'm a great fan of the book, but the film is a mess on pretty much every level (Lynch tends to agree). But it doesn't make sense to blame him (as the main screenwriter and the director) for deviating from the book. The truth is, Dune almost certainly couldn't be filmed as-is (for a whole bunch of reasons), and if someone tried, the result would be stiff, boring, confusing, and drag on for hours (which is how the film ended up in any case, but never mind that). So Lynch made changes.

I disagree.
Dune was a damn disaster.
Disaster.

Infact, every moment when Lynch used the book it was watchable.
Almost every change he made was a disaster. Turning Baron Harkonnen into some kind of acne monster?! I kept my eyes closed when he was on screen. It was simply too disgusting, both the idea and rape of the story with such a "change". Making spice navigators into aliens? Eyebrows of mentat? Today (re-watched few months ago - atleast tried to), it seems like unreachable goal for "Jackass" show in terms of shock effect and defining word "gross".

No era excuses here. You don't need 3D graphics to keep popping acne off the characters face or reduce gas blowing holes on space/spice navigator. Or NOT paint walls of harkonnen castle with some sickly-ugly hospital green.

It wasn't even the "changes" but interpretations of the elements.
Sure, he tried to follow novel, even way too much, leaving elements unexplained and untied, focusing often on things he could simply leave out because they didn't really have carrying role in book, yet he kept forgetting the carrying roles...

To be honest, "twist" ending of the original book sucked too, IMO.
But no point to repeat it on screen and making it look like something important.

And only thing I liked at all was Bioshock'ish design choices for architecture. Steampunk?
Then again, there were things that I find unimaginable without help of 3D graphics. Personal shields, krys knives, ornithopters for example. Going retro on such hardcore sci-fi elements does not work. Not if your name is David Lynch, atleast.
Well, it was the year I was born... some points for effort are still given.

Dune would still be superior material in 2008, in some great director's hands, and supported by heavy CGI.
The original I mean. Not much into sequels by other people.

I think that best thing about Dune IS the environment setup. Introduction to totally fictional world. Once you got through introduction of things in book (pretty much 80% of the book?), story started to suck and picked up uncomfortable pace.

Got totally offtopic here.
Off to see Max Payne: The movie!

What a shame!

Any changes will be accepted ONLY if they really add something to the story, make things better. Surprise even original creators of that fictional world/character/etc.

I so said it before.

But some shit-movie creator (BollBollBoll) coming and thinking that story of a good game is too lousy for his crappy movie, no thanks.

[is]

Are there any good games that are true to the movie it's based on?

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (PC-adventure)...
and...

strange. I cannot recall any others, though there's hundreds.

But change of rules. Game rules don't apply to a movie.
What I meant by rules is definition of the protagonist, era, and specifics what make this person/alien/world/whatever stand out and known as this specific person/alien/world/whatever. This is something - a movie bearing same name - SHOULD follow.

Hitman is bald, tattooed with barcode, a clone, a silent assassin, white and a professional.
There might be thousand bald and tattooed men in the world, but other named specifics or so-called-rules define that particular fictional man. This is Agent 47.

Movie-shitman was not silent, was not professional. Was he a clone? I don't remember really... guess not.
Rules broken, movie ruined. Gamers give director a finger.
Simple.
And however much we could go into philosophy/ethics/law/etc and make up theories about "rights and reasons to change rules", fact stands: movie was terrible, as was it's adaption of a popular video game.

Any changes will be accepted ONLY if they really add something to the story, make things better. Surprise even original creators of that fictional world/character/etc.

Somehow, still sticking to hitman example, I have this terrible feeling that movie director/crew went over game and said "clone? how cliche, we won't use this crap". And thought they actually make something better. And messed everything up, because creators of the game based a game around the cliche and made a great game... which is not what happened with movie.

With major game studios as big and advanced as they are nowadays, I'm wondering why do we need Uwe-Boll-like party shitters at all? Bigger game studios should have even more budget, experience and know-how to make movies out of their franchise. I'm quite sure Eidos, instead of selling Tomb Raider rights, could simply hire a director and camera crew of their own liking and let their game-storywriters make a true script for Tomb Raider- the movie?

Or maybe it IS the future?

[Especially if there's absolutely no need to change them.]

I'd say that this is one big missing-the-point here.

The expectations of gamers are just too high.

To "not miss" with a movie based on game, you have to stay on game character(s) and rules.
What is a game? A set of rules.
All games have rules. Movies have no right to replace or change the rules.
They are the basis of the game. Movie isn't a game, indeed, but if it doesn't reflect game rules, it's not about that particular game.

Nobody expects "Saving Private Ryan"-ish load of Oscars and star actors from game movie. Nobody expects same budget or profit. Or hype. Or level of epic-ness. Or whatever makes the most memorable movies.

What I - as a gamer - do EXPECT, is that movie is about game and not something else - if it is announced as a movie about game. That, as I stated, means staying true to game rules. Especially if there's absolutely no need to change them.

Expectations too high?

FFS, do not give Hitman a sword! By rules of the game, Hitman is a silent killer. He is not a pirate.
NO, sword will NOT make movie appeal to wider audience. It's stupid and pointless. If you skipped the sword, you might had guaranteed game fans' appeal. Now you have shitty, ruined movie with bad ratings. Even game fans turn away. You need blazing gunfights? Oh well. This game CAN be played like this. Fine. But for other parts, stay true to the silent killer theme. We have fuckloads of movies about silent killers. Much-much more silent. Why cannot do it again THIS particular time?

Was it really necessary to put static zombies (shoot me!) into Doom movie fps scene? Was it really hard for actors to pretend they're actually attacking the protagonist? Look, the CGI monster was able do it! It bite an charge protagonist! Why couldn't real dressed up actors? It's a movie about fighting monsters. Why didn't any of monsters fight, then? Isn't this fundamentally screwed up?

And standard action movie hero carries a truckload of weapons. Every Rambo and Terminator has a rocket launcher in his pocket. Why did Doom star only a shitty machine gun for most part? Isn't game about shotgun and rocket launcher? You had like $60,000,000 to spend. And you couldn't buy few weapon props. Even plastic toys... ?!

Is that too much to ask?
Is that too high to expect?
Does it have any ACTUAL reason to be wrong?

"Wider, not-game-fan audience" enjoys Rambo with rocket launcher and silent killers of various movies really well. So this overused "excuse" is pure bullshit.

Dammit, am I wrong?
And Mark Wahlberg is no Max Payne. Period.

This is still strange. Very few movies do hit the mark or atleast stay on the theme?

Tomb Raider, Silent Hill...

What's Max Payne? Drug, conspiracy, depressive protagonist, revenge, dead wife, Italian mob, gunfights.
Hollywood has done it like million times, how can they do it decently and so far and when GAME is involved, fail?

All they had to do was take one of those terrible movies by Steven Seagal or Chuck Norris, remove bone breaking, face kicks,  and replace main character with Max Payne instead of fat and sweating muscular man (with or without dirty red beard/ponytail) jumping onto people.

Awful. Why did Doom end with fistfight? Why did Hitman wield a sword?
It doesn't even make sense! It's feels more like intentional spit into fans' faces.

They can't make decent movies out of books neither. I really loved book "Day of the Jackal". Anyone seen the movie adaption (starring Bruce Willis)? How in the world could somebody make something better by replacing hardcore French president with a !black !FBI !director and witty French police detective with !russian !woman with !scar on her face?!
Bah.

Then again, USA  has over 700,000 Russian language speakers, and I've seen only 3 movies (out of hundreds) where spoken Russian actually sounds like one. Like there wasn't anyone who could go to a director and teach them to speak right. Another Hollywood mystery for me. Guess they're stubborn and that also applies to game movies.

Went offtopic here... or did I?

Virus.
byXRjgGv.dll...
nobody would name a datalink library with such nonsense unless it's randomly generated filename for a virus backup.
And even less should some shit like this run on startup.

I suggest using some antivirus software. Your mouse still works, right?
If not, there's all kinds of emergency disks and usb solutions to boot computer straight into virus scan.

Also, you could try external USB keyboard, maybe it'll trick the virus?

And there's safe mode... I think. Does it still exist on vista?

Dammit. We all chanted doom upon this movie and what's sad is that it actually turned out to be true.

I still don't understand why. Why does game movies suck so bad? Is that a rule or something?

Well, for me it stunk the moment I heard "Wahlberg"...
I doubt I will go and see this movie. My heart was already broken when sword-wielding smiling kid tried to pose as 47.
Not gonna ruin my second favourite game because of incompetent directors.

Easy.
If given many options, like 5 maybe (fps games like Doom or COD), second one.

I'm not the quickloading type (anymore) and don't think that I would go through long process of mastering a difficult game, like I did so often with NES, arcade, and other old games in the past. Modern games are rarely worth time and effort to really master...

This day, I like it easy and enjoyable, with all my hair intact after ending credits.

Then again, my favourite games are one of the most difficult games ever, like Jagged Alliance series, Stronghold Crusader, Samurai Shodown series...

Ooh, yo-yos...
Back in - what? - 1996? There was hardcore yoyo craze, those coca-cola yoyos everywhere, school was full of them.
I hated them, but then again, you had to have one.
I still have mine under loads of dust somewhere... I never learned any decent tricks though, wasn't my thing.

Hm, maybe I'll look for it now--

Wait, 40 EUR for a yoyo? Crazy.
I would never pay so much for such a boring toy. Okay, you spin it for a day or two, similar rubik's cube fun or something, but then it goes back to drawer. And stays there.

...so the Great Observers from another galaxy decided that this little experiment has gone too far and prepared to step in...