Messages

Inability to detect a video signal is a sign of hardware conflict, dying hardware, or improperly installed hardware. 

If it's getting a signal out of range (like 1024x768x32bx80 hz on a screen that supports only 70hz at that res), that'd be the most likely culprit if it happened after the OS/game is loaded.

I believe the recommendation to "reset all the cards/ram" is to re-seat them.  Provided you feel comfortable with doing so, it's an excellent suggestion.  In particular, pulling the video card out and re-seating that has a good chance of helping.  If the RAMs clips are retaining it well, then it's probably best to leave those along unless the video card re-seating doesn't work.   You're down to just basic hardware troubleshooting here, so it depends upon how much time/effort you want to expend and how deep you want to dig. 

My instinct says that Yutzster's a friggin' nutcase and she psychotically bent the pins on her videocard.  She should probably check the card's output and make sure all pins are 1) present and 2) parallel.

I really like the way you've got lots of overlapping detail with good perspective.  It's just a background without sprites and such but I still want to stare at it checking out the details. 

One place where some perspective & shapes gets a little confused is on the couch (those are throw-pillows on the couch, Nikolas).  I saw it as half-open for the briefest moment too. 

I'd rather see it with colored lines vs. black lines but that's a personal preference.  The photo inter-mixed with a drawing is just a bad idea in any background that's not 3d-rendered or digital capture.  Maybe if you used a posterizing filter to drop the color depth down, it would match a little better. 

This is much more friendly on the eyes than the first picture was. 

I really don't see how that's applicable as I certainly wasn't planning on eating KQIX.  I'll thank you to keep your arbitrary comments to yourself, BB.

Phlpppt is what I say to you.  A whole lot of Ppphhhllllppppttt with my tongue spraying wonderful juices, droplets spattering your cheek.   There's a physics demonstration for you.

Granted, physics can add a lot to the gameplay, but there comes a point where their usage is so heavy-handed that ruins the immersion more than the lack of physics.  I found them very engrossing in Half-Life 2 but only one more slap across the face from the steaming pile that was Deus Ex: Invisible War.   

Physical approximation is only one small aspect of the experience.  We actually need a whole new chunk of hardware for this?  Another item that'll need constant expensive upgrading like Video cards and sound cards.  Recall, please, that sound cards were on the verge of dying simply because it was easier to offload the calculations to the CPU. The CPU usage of a dedicated sound card isn't much lower than that off an onboard solution using CPU calculations.

The more specialized our add-ons get, the less useful they become.  We need a physics card about as much as we need an AI-specific card. 

Tests utilizing ATI's newest card for physics calculations (similar calculations to applying pixel-shaders due to the calcs performed as functions in matrices) showed it performing far better when dedicated to this task than modern CPUs, partially due to its speedy memory controller.  So, why would we want another add-in card rather than utilizing the greater resources available to us on our current upgrade paths?  The only real reason I'd want a physic's card to handle a portion of calculations would be so I'd have some damned use for those extra PCI-e slots.

ps/2 and paralell?  Not serial?   I'm using a Serial Intuos 12x18 in WinXP SP2 with no problems.  In fact, it's less finicky about being detected than my USB tablet was.   The only real difference is in delay, which seems more due to how bogged the computer is and the tablet's limitation than the interfacing option.  Can't say I've had any worse response with a Serial port tablet than USB.

Tilt's a lot of fun, but I don't ever use it since I've never used media in real life that tilting makes much difference with.  My real media tends to be mechanical pencils or inks.

They are looking to change the draft age so that it's 35.  The 40-whatever recruiting age is supposed to relax restrictions for volunteers, not change the maximum draft age.  For now, Squinky, you're in the clear.  I so have one up on you though since I'm a year older and have already done my time. 

More-so on subject, congrats on the birthday Rags, nice to see you still hanging about.

It can be done.  Ideally, you'd get a replacement cable and open up the CRT's housing.  There will likely be solder-points where the new cables contacts need to be connected.  Some models use a screw-down retention system which is (of course) quite a lot less hassle.

If you just wanted to make the repair with minimal expense, you can splice the cables.  Just make sure you do it right, CRTs are pretty sensitive to interference and varying resistances.  See if you can either solder the wires together (by "tinning" them, winding, then flowing solder over) or use a splicing kit (available at electronic stores and some home improvement places).  As far as the cable end (since the pins fell out), it might be cheapest to find an adapter of some sort rather than finding an entirely new cable for the monitor. 

Commodore 64 was my first jump into it.  Though, not getting much further in Basic at that point than the flying birds tutorial, I stuck with making ANSI-style animations using basic print/goto commands.   I attempted a zork-style game (complete with Inventory and ANSI-graphic map) on my 8086, but had to give up after I couldn't find some coding glitches that destroyed the whole parser system.

I actually gave up on the idea for some time (apart from Wolfenstein graphics/levels and Doom .WADs) until finding AGS in '99 or '00, I forget when.  I leapt into a project, made design documents, realized that I was naive and untalented and promptly scrapped everything.  'twas my first foray into the Critic's section on the EZBoard site, and a pretty decent experience at that, prompting me to start & ditch my own projects on a regular basis.  I really need a manager or lead designer to keep me honest & working. 

And the first segment was due to be released in Q4 of this year, right?  It would've been better had Vivendi stopped it awhile ago.  In either case, alongside their FAQ and pictures, they said that if Vivendi stopped them, they could just change character names, graphics and a couple plot points.  It's odd that the announcement doesn't mention anything about potentially releasing a modified KQIX.   

Vivendi weren't really being dicks, they were protecting an intellectual property that an amateur team seemed to be better at adding to than Sierra was (for KQ8 and IMO KQ7).  It would've provided competition with any attempts at sequels or re-releasing KQ Collections.  As the holders of the IP, it was within their rights and probably best interests.  The fact that Vivendi is a company comprised of dicks and doesn't actually generate a damned thing or have any useful creative input doesn't change the fact that they are no more dickish now than they were prior to September 30th.

Damn.. that's impressive.  Is it frame-locked at 40fps?  Can physical attributes be assigned such as friction & mass?  I thought it was cool enough when I hit the cylinder but the boxes rebounding from each other, that's cool-looking (even if they are obviously empty boxes).  The cylinder rolling is a nifty touch.   So, is the physics module a plug-in? 

Just a note on Elements.  I'm using Elements 1 and it'll export a .gif animation.  Using layers with transparency and .gif exporting, it's *almost* decent.  Damn, I need to go to something a little higher-end.

If you need help, just Ask Jeeves or something.

I vote Loominous.   I was actually thinking that Traveler's fortress fit more with the competition description - grand, unconquerable, whereas Loominous's entry was less unconquerable and more just plain frightening. 
I think it's the photo backdrop of Traveler's.. it tends to make the castle look out of place sort of like a lego mock-up.  And I'm pretty sure I could conquer legos..  pretty sure.   Loominous's environment fits the fortress like a glove. 

Loominous, with the amount of ass your pictures kick, I'm beginning to think there needs to be a handicap system. 

You're concerned about posting potential spam? You've been around forever (name's vaguely familar from ezboard, yes?).

So, it's more of a MUD than anything, right?  I used to kill many hours in those, just don't have the time nowadays.

I think it could've been a quite interesting topic.  Unfortunately, Fluke failed to make it a topic worth reading.  If it were more story-like, had interesting unusual happenings or just a general "It's not nearly as cool as I thought it'd be" or "It was twice as much fun as I thought someone my age could have on a cruise" then it'd be pretty damned interesting.  As it was, there was minimal information.  Any chance the thread had of being good was pretty much killed by the fact that FB can only update so often and you pirahnas have already devoured all the meat.  Just my take.

It's looking very CMI.  There are two things in your work-in-progress that seem non-CMI to me:

- The black outlines (not that I dislike them, they just make it more outlined and less painting-like)
- The perspective (I like the picture's perspective, but CMI probably wouldn't utilize one so straight-forward)

Elaboration: There are many straight lines, those are avoided in CMI backgrounds.  You're using a warped 1-point perspective and CMI almost always uses 2-point (occasionally an "eyeballed" 3-point). 
If you warped some of those straight lines in accordance with the fisheye look you've got, it'd add to the consistency.  Also, the candles look a bit out of place since they're pretty much straight up and down.  If the bases were larger (more towards the viewer) with the tips receding slightly, it might match your perspective more. 

I had to try to be picky.  It's a very good mimicry of style and would make an excellent background after it's finished. 

I'm only fixing/coloring a hand-drawn page-flip animation done by someone else.  When I do animate, it's often in Gif Animator 4.  It's free if you can find it (versus 5 which is trialware) and has various little tweaks, very basic imaging tools and onion-skinning. 

Moho's highly recommended but a bit of a learning curve if you aren't used to vector-drawing and managing separate objects.

This is kind of the wrong forum, since there's no actual product to critique.  The forum pickiness seems arbitrary until you get used to it.

It does appear as though the camera's upping the ISO level to compensate.  The aperature adjustment might work wonders.  Excellent framing of the shots, by the way.  There's certainly a different look to the shots than mere candid people capturing delivers.  You've got an eye, all that's left is the equipment (or tweaking what you have).  As a cheap, decent night cam, you might consider the Canon A75 or A85.  Really, I've yet to find an inexpensive night cam that does dim lighting very well. 

Zor's list isn't one of bad recommendations, but I'm assuming Mr. T would need something that he hadn't heard of before.  I don't know that I could come up with any that most everyone hadn't heard of but:

-If I want something raucous, Dropkick Murphys

-Something background-y, God Speed Ye Black Emperor (some would say it should be actively listened to.. when doing that, it bores the hell out of me) or Bela Fleck and the Flecktones.

-Into it for guitar licks? Jack Johnson's not a bad rec, Luther Vandros is pretty fun.

-Easy listening type? The Postal Service is a little too feel-goody for my taste, the Darkness *is* fun until it's not, Jet's cool if you can ignore pretentiousness, The Vines are halfway good though it varies between crapola and genius.  If I want something easy, semi-retro & not taking it too seriously, The Smoking Popes is the epitome of mandatory drunken, grinning karaoke.

-NiN's newest isn't too bad if you're into industrial, but I still prefer their old-to-middle stuff.

-If I want to listen to music merely as inspiration to look up the band's address and bitch-slap every last one of them, it'd have to be Maroon 5.

[*]

*!!!

Adventure game-wise, it reminds me of the maze screens where you exit one side only to reappear at the bottom, until you get the sequence right and progress to the next room.