Messages

For playing DVDs with that unskippable s**t, take a look at DVDIdle Pro. It also helps playing DVDs from other regions, if that's important to you (to me it is) without flashing the DVD drive itself. I've been using it qute some time and it's ok.

On the Sony thing, I just decided that I never ever buy anything from Sony again - this doesn't mean only me, but my company too, and I'll certainly tell this to all my friends.

You can rename an self-decompressing exe to zip/rar (whichever was used to compress it) and then open it by double-clicking it. If it's a zip, Winzip, if a rar, WinRar will open and display the file content. (Of course, you need Winzip/WinRar installed.)

I think this is a good idea; thanks for the links, I actually was looking for something like the manuscript link that you posted.

CJ fighting down the burger...



Next: The Moon is made of... cheese!

I think visually your website is very pleasing, nice. However, I think you should have some kind of a heading on the page to tell the visitor where (s)he is. When I went to your page, I thought it was the opening page and the links were menu items to sub-pages, when in reality it was the portfolio (with links to images only.)

If I didn't know it was your website, I would've left immediately, because I leave every website on general principle, where the menu items do not clearly depict the target (either by text/tooltip or by a clear pictogram.) I then realized that the menu is on the bottom and the page is not an opening page.

I don't have a problem with starting in the portfolio (after all, you want to show off your artwork), just make it a bit more clear that it's the portfolio.

Otherwise, I like it a lot.

I started playing this game and it looks really nice after the first look but I did notice that in the intro there are *lots* of spelling errors. It would be nice to see those fixed, so that they don't ruin the game.

Other thatn that it really looks like a nice game, good job!

Oneway,

Thanks for your ideas, they're quite helpful.

I'll try to play with the light setup that you suggested; right now I have only the Flamingo Sun object in place, but I agree, it's hard to get a nice lighting using that. I experimented for hours and never liked the result. (It's good for sunny, light scenes, though.) I also tried using a lightdome (of 5 point lights) but didn't really work out. Maybe it's good when using a ~100 of them, but then it's more for studio lighting.

You're right about the shooting holes; I'll see if I can modify them. (It takes a bit of work to do it I'm not sure I want to go through it again.  I already modeled the towers ~5 times from scratch...  )  I'll add a moat and a drawbridge, as that seems to be missing for everyone.

I don't think I'll enlarge the wall texture anymore, it's already big and I don't think it's that repetitive. What I WILL try though is adding some more color to it, because I think the all-around gray color makes it look repetitive. (In fact, the texture already has a bunch of procedural components, so if you look closely, it is actually not repetitve at all, because of little details. Some more colors there will help bring out these details.)

I'll also go with a darker environment and some torches. It seems that everyone would only consider this a threatening place if it was dark.

I'll post a new image in a day or so; for now thanks everyone for the ideas. 

Guys,

Thanks for all the replies.

InC: the grass is not done yet; what you commented on is just a ground plane that will serve as the basis for the grass, that'll be added later. I tried the grass that comes with Flamingo, but it's not that good and Flamingo doesn't give a lot of control over ground cover type plants, so I'll do it in Photoshop or Painter.

Bump mapping is used in the rendering but it's probably not apparent because the walls are quite far away from the camera. I'll see if I can do something. Maybe I have to add some more reflection to the walls to make them more realistic.

[lgm]: you're right, I never realized that the side towers were clipped. I worked so many hours on the model that I just don' t see these flaws anymore   Thanks for pointing out.

I wouldn't mind if someone did a quick sketch about lighting, though. I'm not very experienced in lighting, and it took quite a while for me to come up with the current lights. I'll see if turning the scene to dark (with a hint of purple) will do the trick.

I made a new version of this image; I added some details and changed the camera position and angle, so now there is no background in the distance.

This is not a finished image, I still want to add some "use" to the castle, as well as some grass and some structures (parts of a marketplace), but those will be done in Photoshop (or perhaps partly in Rhino), but before proceeding, I need someadvice in lighting the scene.

I'm relatively ok with the castle itself (unless someone points out something obviously wrong that I missed), but I want to finish lighting first so that detailing in Photoshop won't have to be redone if lighting changes.

The scene is supposed to be a cold, threatening place (not necessarily evil) just a source of power and will.



All ideas (paintovers especially) are welcome.

You're right, I never thought of that. I'll change it to be wider and more path-like.

Thanks for the ideas, guy, I'll try to make these changes and post it when it's done. (It may take a few days as just rendering itself takes ~15 minutes each time.)

Kiddie: the light is not a spotlight, but the Sun (Flamingo has a Sun object that shines perfectly parallel rays of light.) I'll try to use a lightdome to see if that changes how the image feels. I was thinking about doing it even for this rendering, but that will shoot rendering times through the roof. I'll also add some trees.

Janik: the buildings in the background are old buildings in some countryside. Unfortunetely, the image that I used has a bit too low quality and that works against the background. I wasn't sure how strongly they stick out, but apparently, they do.

Minimi,

Thanks for the ideas! The tower is modeled in Rhino3D and rendered in Flamingo; the grass and the background was added in Photoshop.

In one of the tower windows you can see the grass, as the tower windows don't have glass and they have a single interior (this is intended.)

I was thinking about adding more detail to the walls, but that's kind of  hard to do with textures only. I'll have to probably model corner stones so they can have a different texture. I'll try to get some plants creep up the walls, see how that would look like.

New image added at the end.

Use Photoshops' grass brush (112 pixel size), set the size to 1 pixel, select two grass-like greens (one light, one dark), set the brush to Dissolve, 20% and then paint over the grass. Then repeat this with other shades (like light brown for faded/dried grass, etc.)

That should help making it look more realistic, but I don't know if this is what you're looking for.

Esper,

Your manual paint-over is quite good, but here are a few things that I think would improve your background:

1. Use more structure inside the building. Buildings of this size usually have supports at set intervals to hold the roof; there are usually some kind of cross beams, too (not necessarily visible in other structures, but here they should be because we see the roof itself. Such a big wooden roof coudn't support itself.)

2. Windows usually have frames and depth. Your walls are just surfaces; I think it would help to add some depth. The same goes for the door. Also, windows are seldom such big panes of glass; usually they are divided into smaller parts by the frame.

3. You should place lights outside the building, so that light falls through the windows. This would give you more accented shadows/light spots, so it would be easier to paint over those.

4. Use less ambient light - judging by your image, your ambient setting must be around 75%-80%. Ambients tend to wash out the image and make shadows and contrast disappear. Using better direct lights and less ambients would create a much better atmoshpere to begin with which would be easier to modify. (If you don't have any ambients, use more intense lights.)

That's all, I think. The hand-drawn image is quite good.

Wow!  :o   You always amaze me with your use of color and mood setting. Is this a painting or a rendering?

Here is my first competition entry:

I like Neutron's image a lot, too, but I vote for Loominus.... his drawing is just mind-blowing.  :o

You bombed Serbia!!!!
Now GOD is bombing you!!!!

We are realy sorry for every innocent people esspecially kids.But you americans are only the dolls of the sistem.Once uppon a time there was one man who wanted to change your dirty society.HIS name was 2PAC.

And you KILLED HIM!!!! 

You wanted oil and you just make a diversion called WORLD TRADE CENTER tragedy.And after that your president announced WAR to Afganistan inside of CHURCH All your economy is based on a WAR

There was a war in Serbia (Yugoslavia) people die on the every side (Croatian, Bosnian, Serbian) But croatian people dislodge more than 300000 people from their home more then a 300000 refuges and what happened after that Serbia got embargo ???And who gave us an embargo AMERICA 8)

Enough about Serbia let's talk more serius.

*cough* Wasn't it Serbia started that war? *cough*

I happen to live in the US right now but I also happen to be from your general area of the world (Hungary, to be precise.) I remember fairly clearly that Serbia started the whole Yugoslavia-conflict. I'm not going to go into an argument with you on that, though, since you seem to speak with pure hate, rather than any kind of logic.

Your rant about the US deserving the hurricane hit was uncalled for, is insensitive and displays a great deal of ignorance in general about the world.

While the current US government is just a poor (but expensive and crude) joke, the US itself is a decent country - more or less. But that could be said about any country on Earth, with most of them more 'less' than 'more'.

With that said, I still choose to live here rather than in my own country, where deeply rotten politicians and the maffia is in the government and there is hardly any chance of making a decent living. In the US, people in general are much friendlier than in other countries I've been to (I admit, only about 6 or 7.) I could bring up a bunch of other positives (and quite a few negatives, too) of living here, but I won't. I'm sure, Serbia is a much better place to live, right?

As a final note, I refuse to talk to you until you apologise for your comments in front of this forum. Admins: please edit my comment if you deem it in any way unfitting. I don't mean to start a flame war on the forums.

Traveler

ProgZMax,

You did an awesome job on this game!   In my opinion, it's pretty much commercial quality, after the touch-ups you did for the enhanced version.

I'll play it again.