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I couldn't possibly do that as I really don't have the patience to remake anything unless I really really really want to. Also there are a few things I don't like about RPGmaker vx compared to AGS. 1 being the way you set up character views.

That's a part of the learning experience. Wanna talk about horrible interfaces? I've tried 3D modeling many times, and have been discouraged by the interfaces of most programs, Blender being the main culprit.

Go to your Facebook app, to the grid where it says Messages, Wall, and all that. Hit the Menu button on your phone and go to Settings. Then under Sync Options, choose something else.

[anywhere]

"And my mom said I would never get anywhere with these games!  "

Haha, finally. Gamers getting credit for once.

Demo or no demo, still looks and sounds promising! 

You can't do anything with just a motherboard and case, so why not save the money until you have enough for all the required components? Computer parts invariably fall in price, so you'll be able to get the same motherboard cheaper in a few months, or get a better one for the same price. It's always best to wait to buy until the last minute. The case and PSU I guess you could buy at any time, if you really want to have a box to put in your room.

My experience with ATI cards has been that they are buggy and have poor configuration options, but I doubt they'd have survived as one half of a duopoly for so long if they were really that inferior in general, so I've probably just had bad luck. (Mind you, that's what I told myself last time I bought an ATI card, and I had nothing but trouble with it until I replaced it with an nVidia a couple of weeks ago.) But, yeah, I'm staying away from them.

I didn't plan on using the PC yet. Not until it's actually ready to go. But I get what you're saying though. I'll just save my money up for now and check the prices over the time to see if they drop, or if better options roll by. Good thinkin Snarky.

I've never owned an ATI card, so I can't say anything. I read some reviews on the PowerColor and they showed that it was pretty great for the price. Like I said though, I'm open to recommendations. 

I'm assuming that sticking with your current monitor and case are not a preferable option? That alone will knock 200 bucks off of the price. Also, if you can find a non-Black Edition processor, it might take it down ten or twenty bucks, though the BE does overclock better, if that's your thing. Always cannibalize what parts you can from your old computer wherever possible. You can always upgrade over the course of a few months, going one step at a time, if you have enough parts that will still work in the interim.

Nah, the OC ability isn't that important. But having it as an option is a plus.

And yes, I don't own a monitor or case anymore. My brother took them when he moved out. I wanted a new case though; I'm not putting all these parts in a Dell case. 

About my old PC, there was nothing really to save. My mom not being tech savvy or rich insisted on buying a bare bones model. Basically, enough to play flash games and do school work on. It only had 512 RAM, a 75 GB HDD, onboard graphics and sound, and that's basically it. Like I said, nothing to salvage.

I'm gonna start by buying the case, and then the components when I can afford them. So I'll probably buy the mother board first, then everything else when I get the money. I guess a plus about this is that I can get my parts when I want, instead of paying one lump sum. I'll have to wait a bit, but that's better than nothing.

I would never, ever, even at gunpoint buy a video card made by ATI.

Why? ATI offers pretty good price/performance from what I've seen.

If you look closely, you'll see that starting with the chin and going up to the nose, it's an almost unbroken stack of "fat pixels": four 2x1 blocks right on top of each other, then a row that is part of a bigger area of color, and then two more 2x1 blocks. (You could object that the first three of these are connected diagonally to more pixels of the same color, and form part of curves, but if I understood Helm's tutorial correctly they still count as fat pixels.) And still, to me this doesn't really seem like a problem; it reads as a nose, mouth and chin, not seven horizontal strips of color. And even if it's not ideal, how else would you do it without adding to the color count, and while preserving the childlike, innocent expression?

So I'm just worried that there's something I'm not getting, because according to "the rules" this should apparently be an abomination unto God, and I think it looks rather nice.

If it has a real purpose, do it. The tutorial just points out the cases when it's just clumsiness with the paintbrush.

He already said it.  :

If you're lucky You'll find have an open-ticket to London for less than $500 

But that's not as fun as playing PC games for 10+ hours a day!

thanks everyone  I read all your feedback links, made a better understanding of the project as well
I finished designing the player's ship, enemies, weapons and terrain.. and was looking for just the right engine to begin my geeky work. are there any game engines made precisely for such games?

Game Maker is probably the best, free engine. Or M.U.G.E.N., which was solely built for shoot em ups, even though it's used for making fighting games.

Well, after researching all these days for the above parts, and a good monitor and case, I've come to a grand total of $939.20, not counting shipping fees and taxes. Also, that doesn't include a copy of Windows 7.  

The case and monitor are the cheapest I could find.

I'm not satisfied with the total. If anyone wants to go through my list here and find alternatives or cheaper solutions, I'd be more than welcome.

Here's my list:

Motherboard
Processor
Power Supply
Graphics Card
RAM
Monitor
Case
1TB HDD

As you can see, I copied SPC's setup. I didn't really know what else to search for though. I tried looking for other motherboards that would be cheaper, and support all my components here, or ones that are similar, but I ended up with higher totals than what I have here.

I'm starting to think that this is only cheaper only if you know what you're doing.

Well how boring would a horror game be if you could just create light everywhere and keep the light on all the time? The way the light is created with overlays and such also limits what I can do with it.

What I meant to say was, once I was placing candles and the lighter icon was on the screen in the top left, I kept wanting to click it to light the candle, instead of going in the inventory, selecting the lighter, and then clicking the candle.

Also, I figured you were doing the lights in a way that wouldn't make that possible.

Anyway, great stuff anyway! And yes. very Silent Hill feeling, which if you didn't know, is my favorite franchise! Well, until they release the new one, which is online multiplayer only. I consider that blasphemous for any Silent Hill game.

@ R4L: Glad to hear you enjoyed the game! Be sure to also give feedback, unless you were too hasty to skip the credits, that is. 

I was not!

I really can't find any downsides yet, except maybe being able to walk with the lighter out.

You set the mood perfectly in this. The very little music is the perfect amount. Especially:

Spoiler

When I went to go to the second floor balcony, and saw the dark figure. The silence killed me, and I was just waiting for something terrible to happen.

[close]

Excellent demo Wham.

This reminds me of Earthbound on SNES. I like the style.

The only thing that stands out is that there is no background, so the house looks like it's on the edge of a cliff rather than being on a hill.

Here's a terrible reference to show what I mean. There's a nice contrast in the background to show distance.

You've been more than helpful mate! I'm sure with a little research I can figure out how to put this all together. If not, I can take it to a shop around here and they can do it for cheap. I'll probably end up doing the crossfire if I feel it's necessary. You already have the price much lower than what I had on that build in my first post. I'll probably pick all the parts up next paycheck.

Another question though, how noisy is your rig SPC? Also, does it get hot enough to be a problem? I'm just asking because I'll probably look for all the components you've listed or ones that are similar in price/performance.

Great replies so far!

I'm not sure about the availability outside Asia, but Asrock makes some great motherboards, including a low-cost board that supports crossfire for the GPU, which can be combined with a decent CPU - I use the AMD Phenom II X4 955.

I had to buy a new power supply, in my case I got a Corsair TX650W, bought a 1TB hard drive since my other drives were only 80 and 60 GB, respectively, and the PowerColor Radeon HD5770 for my video card, with the intent to pick up another one in the future to take advantage of the above-mentioned crossfire capability.

8GB of memory should do you just fine for an average gaming rig - I bought ADATA XPG Gaming Series DDR3 2000mhz memory for about 7,000 yen and haven't felt my computer sluggish in the least.

If you're relatively familiar with hardware, you'll note that none of these are brand-new, bleeding edge, but they're good enough that I probably won't need to upgrade again for a few years. That's kind of the level you want to go for if you're building a computer on a budget. Of course, the lower your expectations are, the better stuff you can get. If you really want to spend money on one thing, make it your motherboard/CPU - the rest of the stuff can be upgraded later on down the line.

Now, there are some issues with putting your computer together - foremost being that you have to know how to put a computer together. If you have a friend that's good with hardware, it can even be a bonding experience (One of my programmer buddies helped me put my rig together). I did about a week's worth of research making sure that all of my equipment was compatible (If you can get your hands on all of the hardware listed above, I can at least guarantee that it will work) and shopping around looking for the best deals, but in the end I got the equivalent of probably a thousand dollars' worth of hardware for about half that much.

I have a friend that works for Microsoft, so I managed to get a copy of 64bit Windows 7 Ultimate without needing to buy one in a store, but even if you have to pay for it, there are some stores that sell OEM copies of OSes, if you know where to look.

Edit: The US dollar just keeps dropping doesn't it? make that 500 USD.

I don't have a choice in buying Windows 7. It's a must. HP sent me a disc for it, but it's only for HP products. It was a free upgrade because I bought my laptop at a certain time when Vista was around and HP sent me a disc for Win 7 for free. Too bad I can't get the same.  

I really have no idea about hardware... well, I don't know much. I know I want a HDD with 7200 RPMs and at least 1 TB, at least 4 GB of RAM, a decent graphics card that will at least let me play Call of Duty: Black Ops on highest settings at 60 FPS, a decent case and power supply, a nice processor that I can overclock if needed, and some kind of cooling. Also, a decent sound card would be great, since I also record music, and watch movies. The trouble is I'm not sure about a motherboard. I've never had to look into those, so it's something I gotta research more.

That graphics card is amazing! Runs almost below 160 watts, and almost below 20 watts at idle! I can see why you only need a 650w power supply; my build on that website I listed earlier had me up to 800w minimum. With this, I can play almost any game at maxed settings, for around $160. That's pretty amazing. I'll have to look into that and see where I can acquire one.

SPC, I think that card isn't compatible with the Crossfire for that motherboard. I just read the support list for it on your link, and it lists the supported models and the PowerColor HD5770 isn't listed for Win 7 or XP. However, I don't know what that Crossfire thing is anyway. Is that like the dual SLI on geforce cards?

Also, I will be doing this myself. I don't know anyone who can do it. Everyone I know comes to me when they have computer problems. Ironic huh?

So I think I have a general idea now. I'll probably just buy those components you listed, and find a decent sound card to fit in there, and a nice case. Is there a rule to finding a case too? Or just find one that looks easy to manage?

I don't understand your problem - the most demanding AGS games should work fine even on 6 years old PCs.

Is there a possible thing? Probably not. I was referred to cyberpowerpc.com and so far I like what I see, particularly The MegaSpecial III for $775. The thing is, it's liquid cooled and I've never had a PC liquid cooled before, and not sure if it's something I would want to monitor over time.

I guess the question is, for $775 is that a good gaming PC? I don't plan on playing Crysis II at extreme settings or anything, but I'm getting sick of playing System Shock 2 and emulators on my laptop that I paid almost $600 for. :p

The website says that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 plays at a great 74 FPS on ultra settings on this machine. While that game is dated, that's still great. If I can play modern games for that price with maxed settings and have no stuttering, that's like godsend to me. The only thing that turns me off is the GPU, but if it will handle modern games, then it's not a huge concern. Just fanboy-ism on my part (go Intel!) because I have AMD now, and I seriously think my 2.1 GHz Dual Core is a lie; it's horrendously slow.

I want a PC because I'm sick of consoles, and I haven't had a great PC ever, so help me out people!  

I don't even own any current consoles; I did have a Wii that I hacked, but then I still played it to play emulators.

The name is a joke but the scarf was inspired by Halloween and darkness.

What exactly do you mean by variety?

The one-winged scarf was inspired by Halloween and darkness?

http://images.wikia.com/finalfantasy/images/e/e1/Kh-cloud.jpg


Sure about that? :p

And by variety, I mean not having the same exact face and hair... You can easily tell you copied the same sprite, I was just suggesting some variety to give those roles more personality.