Messages

you don't have to be lying to be wrong.

the main problem with mystical and unexplained things are that people think "But I saw it with my own eyes!" and think that their eyes are infallible.

According to your eyes David Copperfield cuts a woman in half. But we know that he really didn't but it LOOKS just like it! "Are you telling me that I'm lying when I say he cut a woman in half?" obviously not. Your eyes and brain decieved you. You can very easily fool your eyes with simple optical illusions.

"for example I read in a reputable source  of UFO spotted both visually as well as on radar"

can I see?

Does anyone like comics?

Does anyone like pixel comics not ripped out of mario brothers and sonic games?

http://mrcolossal.livejournal.com

Hooray

I only played it once. I really wanted to unlock Uranus.

Must... Resist... Obvious... Joke!

But I just wanted to say that I play very few games, especially not puzzle games. But Tiltor is so cute and fun that I've played it for 3 hours now and am on The Sun. Hooray for you and congrats on the game!

MrColossal and Becky, i noticed an anger to your text

Any anger in my text is directed at people who lie and cheat and pretend they have special powers. From Sylvia Brown to Uri Geller [the slightest bit of research about Uri proves he is and has always been a fake, the best one being this link: http://youtube.com/watch?v=lH-6hMEdmfA ] to Peter Popoff to John of God ["psychic healer"] to homeopathic "medicine".

When anyone looks someone in the eye and says "If you put this crystal on your neck it will cure you of cancer." or picks you out of a crowd and says "Jesus has just healed you of your bone spurs." [as Peter Popoff and Pat Robertson do] or "I can speak with the dead, I'm getting a vision of the name John, is there a John in your life?" or anything like that, they should be beaten.

Not only because it's exploiting people's emotions to get money [99.9% of the time] but in many many cases it is killing them.

If there is anything magical or psychic that you're confused or interested in and would like to be directed to places where you can read objectively about what is happening, just PM me and I'll track something down and we'll have a chat about it.

As far as talking with the dead... There's mostly a concept known as cold reading. It's where you walk up to a person and you know nothing about them and start making a series of guesses that are carefully chosen.

For Example:

Two of the most popular names in the US are Michael and John. If someone were to ask me if there is a Michael or a John in my life I'd have to say my brother's name is Michael and my middle name is John. That's two hits in one family. If they asked anyone in my family, my friends or my girlfriend's family, they would know a Michael and a John because of me and my brother. Now all of the sudden they have a hit, they can continue on that. "I see a John..." and then you say "My middle name is John!" and you just told them something they did not know. Now they will direct everything at you and base it around you. If I just stood there passively and said, "And?" they'd have to flounder more and just make guesses. They'd probably say "Maybe a Johnathan or a Jerry or a J... Does a J mean anything to you?" J is the first letter of my girlfriend's name. If there was no John in my life there would be a J for my girlfriend. It's all about slowly breaking it down until you've got a hit and then you just make up a bunch of stuff and make more educated guesses. If I mentioned it was my girlfriend now they know that I am straight, have a girlfriend and her name begins with a J, chances are in my "astonishment" at the reader getting the "J" right I'd say "Her name is Jessica" and bam! There's another thing the pyschic didn't know before. And so on and so forth...

The other thing to remember and notice is that so called psychics will ask many many questions in a short amount of time. Take my "John" example and say my middle name wasn't John but my girlfriend was still Jessica. "I see a John... Or a Johnathan... Jerry... Maybe it's just a J..." That's 3 questions in maybe 3 seconds. I will forget the fact that the psychic asked me 2 questions that didn't mean a thing to me and remember that she said the letter J and I equated that to Jessica. I'm doing all the work for the psychic! They just had to say a letter and I put the peices together! They should be paying me!

So anyway, there you go... That's talking to the dead. Add in some spooky music, dark clothes, a crystal ball and people who WANT to believe that they can talk to the dead and you've got yourself a psychic. If you WANT to believe something [and especially if you're paying money for it, you will believe it because you don't want to feel suckered] you will believe it. Simple as that.

Eric

P.S. I'd love to see a psychic cold read someone fresh off a plane from Japan... "Is there a Yasunobu in your life?" now that would be impressive!

http://skepdic.com/

I recommend reading from this site if you want to learn many many things about various "magical/spiritual" things.

I don't think you should be taking the idea of white magic and saying "hmm so this is interesting but wait, I think this is actually DARK magic!" you should be taking the entire concept and saying "Is there any truth to any of this?" and if there is THEN you can go ahead and say "So there's the truth and there's the proof, but what category does it fit into?"

read up on cold reading if you want to learn how people "talk to the dead". You can do it too with no demons involved!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBNp1Y7fiwA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFNKsmwgw8w

also, just for fun, "psychic" Sylvia Browne messing up big time...

When you start thinking critically of things and read into the history of things, even just a little bit, your mind will be opened up wider than you thought. And then you'll be really sad that people regularly pay money to people who say they can talk to the dead, or read your fortune, or talk to god, or heal people or HEAL PEOPLE...

Congratu-fucking-lations dave!

I know the language is harsh but that's totally awesome. I've been going to IGDA meetings in upstate NY and they're pretty cool but I would have loved to be in the audience when you demoed The Shiva, woop-de-woop!

woop sorry, yes that's the level, I thought I wrote that, my bad

hmm erenan, I tried your solution but it didn't seem to work... unless I'm TEH STUPID

random single pixel white dots would be fine for camera flashes. 1 frame, no animation.

especially something big happens in the stadium like someone scores a point cameras would go CRAZY.

did you read this?

http://americangirlscouts.org/bbc.com/yabb/index.php?topic=28168.0

number 99... it's killing me... I see all the various paths I COULD take if only I could get to one of their starting points!

Any help, please oh please.

Cite your source please. How is this obvious? Do you know the family? Do you know the girl is not capable of writing a tribute to her father, probably with mother's help?

[my hero]

we shouldn't lable everyone who diesÃ,  and is famous, a hero.

we aren't, his daughter did.

also:

"Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin was remembered Wednesday by his eight-year-old daughter Bindi as "my hero" and a man working to change the world and help save endangered wildlife.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/TV/09/19/crocodile.hunter.service/index.html

and you can watch the 18 second clip here. Unless you ment someone else.

BB, I believe a language barrier/not reading his post correctly is making you interpret Typo's post differently.

By not wanting publicity I believe he means that he asked for the free version and telling him to buy it doesn't answer his question. Publicity in this instance meaning advertised to.

Also he said he'd quest for the game if he wanted to buy it. I believe he means that when he wants to buy a game he'll buy it. He never said he'd "quest" for the free version.

When you add money things get complicated but Typo has hardly gone all crazy with his comments.

Time Out is still being worked on.

End Transmission.

my suggestion is to force these things to happen. Your horoscope says you'll meet up with a long lost acquaintance so you track one down and meet up with them.

sitting around waiting for a horoscope to come true will make for a boring blog!

also don't open a 3d program and shoot for photoreal. Establish goals for yourself and meet them. Don't open 3d max and start messing with Reactor Coth and Shave and a Haircut.

Possible goals system:

Open a 3d program and try to recreate an early 90s 3d game character. Slowly work up the years learning things like modeling, UV unwrapping, texturing, adding polys here and there as you make more complex models, learn about specular maps and normal maps and then get into rigging.

I went back to wicked old school poly modeling so I could do just that. I made a bunch of no-texture Alone in the Dark looking dudes using only vertex colours and then I made a higher poly dude and textured him. Next I'm doing another higher poly dude and texturing him and after that I will get into an even higher poly dude with normal maps made from Zbrush, this will probably take me till December and I started in August. Granted I've been using 3d max for many years and am just reteaching myself but I think it's a good way to learn. Jumping into the deep end is overwhelming and discouraging.

Let's assume you choose 3d max since that is what I know.

Learning 3d max is easy if you have the help files. READ THEM. Open the help file and open max and follow the tutorials. They tell you how to do EVERYTHING max can do.

Best way to learn the program and a very good foundation in 3d.

It's a sprite Pablo. A sprite is just an image used in a game.

But I agree with everyone else, It's very blurred, did you draw this bigger and then resize it?

Also I'd try to cut in some darker lines in the interior of the body. The change between the poncho and the pants is nice. The hat and the face don't seperate well. I'd personally just shade the underside of the hat more. Also I'd define the fingers more after you've reduced the size of the sprite.

Some people reduce sprites to the size they'll be in game and just import it and be done. There is a lot of editing you should do before you're done.

Beta Testing at my work doesn't seem like it's all fun and games at all. At least on the GBA. Maybe Wii testing is more fun.

When we have a meeting and go over what we're going to do for the week the tester says "Basically testing collisions..."

In one game I worked on that meant just running into every wall in the game repeatedly from different directions and noting not only the clipping of the player character but also of the camera. On the current game he has to run into every wall and ceiling and floor in every level.

If the collision breaks he then has to bug it and send it to the correct person, when it's fixed they send the bug back and then he has to check it again to see if it's fixed, then he flags it as fixed. He has to do this for collision, sound, game play, art, menus, save/load, progression, and AI. Then he has to recheck them when the bugs are fixed. NO THANKS!