General Chat

I can verify that for you in a few weeks. I have an American friend whose sending me meteos and advance wars DS form the USA.. But I do believe there's no reason for it to have regions at all.

As for getting it.. if you don?t have friends in the country E-bay will be my best guess. I know EB-games America wont ship the new NEW games over to any country but there own.

Yes, the DS is region free.
Almost all my DS games are American as I can't be bothered waiting for the AUS release dates.
I'd recommend www.dvdcrave.com a small company based in SA.
I get most of my stuff from them as they use Bpay (comes in handy for someone like me without a credit card) and usually have $5-$10 off the Australian RR price.

Well if they are regoin free, Caroo, maybe you should look at a place like Amazon for ordering? I don't think Amazon would hold new releases....

*goes to fill up credit card at Amazon*

I believe Amazon doesn't ship games internationally either (only DVDs, CDs and books).

I would recommend looking at online import stores like [url="http://lik-sang.com/"]lik-sang.com[/url].

well I got my two imported DS games. Both Meteos and Advance wars DS.

Both very fun and very good games. I highly recommend them.

Meaning... that imported games work on any DS. So anyone with doubts can wash them away.

Thanks for the update :)

Damnit, I'm waiting eagerly for Advance Wars DS... it doesn't come out in shops here for another month! Stupid backwards country.

Scott.

yes, the DS is region independant, meaning games rom anywhere will work on the system, and accessories too should work though i've heared there may be issues with them, so buy them locally i guess.

so far i've been very dissapointed with the DS - i've bought more GBA games than DS games for it since i bought it. so much possibility, so few games...

i'm hanging out for Kirby and Nintendogs though, and although it dosnt look as though the interface will make much difference to the basic gameplay i'm looking forward to Advance Wars too.

Yeah I've found myself sticking to GBA games as well. I was very disappointed with "Yoshi's Touch'n'Go". It seems like a tech demo to me, not a game. The only DS game I've spent a good amount of time on has been Mr Driller. Feels like the DS is dying in the ass. The only place you can pick one up these days seems to be EB... the larger shops have taken them off the shelves.

I'm getting carried away with Streetfighter II Turbo Revival (GBA) now. Not bad for $30.

Scott.

i've been playing The Legend of Zelda (NES classic) - 20 years on and still better than Halo [:)].

also playing Metroid Zero Mission, which has been disscontinued apprently, but i found a copy - long live 2D platformers! Hazzar!

the DS.. In most worldly regions fell on its ass because it was wayyyyyyyyy to quick to release a product before anything good was made for it. Thanks to the PSP Nintendo got very paranoid

Good games are slowly coming out.. But 6 months after it's release? If it was a console system people would be rioting the streets.

Also.. Have to remember that. Economic wise Australia due to a small population falls flat when getting games. I can't get front mission 4 on the PS2 because it's NTSC only. And I refuse to chip my console.

Meteos is an awesome puzzle game though. Try to get it if you like that kind of stuff.

Just bought myself one with WarioWare Touched, as I've been a nut for WarioWare since it's inception. I'm really hoping there's a Katamari Damacy release for DS as rumoured, as I've heard so much about this damn game, but have no intention of chipping my PS2.

Played a demo of Nintendogs the other day. I'm impressed, and may be strayed to grab a copy.

I got mine for Nintendogs and Animal Crossing. Those two games are going to rule my DS.

For entertainment in the mean time I did pick up Sprung and Another Code. I didn't mind either of them. Sprung is just a dating sim and Another Code is a nice little puzzle game. The puzzles in Another Code are good and utilise the features of the DS very well.

Another game that I think looks interesting is Another Blue (or something like that). An RPG were you are stuck on an island, and you get to do stuff like cook! I loved some of the cooking in mmo's and hope the system will be similar.

Katamari Damacy would be really fun to play on the DS - I hope they do bring that out. I mean a game were you collect things in a big ball of garbage. What more fun from gameplay do you need ;)

Nice. 1 gig is plenty but 2 is sweet (especially on high poly stuff, normal mapping etc.). Make sure u get a good power supply, antec/themotake. The cheap ones lie about their output, and sometimes burn all the expensive components.

pop

Talking to a friend on the internet, in which I have decided to get the following......

- Gigabyte GA-K8NXP-SLI Motherboard and Gigabyte GV-3D1 Dual Geforce 6600GT video card bundle

- AMD ATHLON 64 3800+ (2.4GHZ, HYPERTRANSPORT, 64BIT, 512K CACHE SOCKET939) + RETAIL BOX

- OCZ PC-3200 Value Series Dual Channel DDR 1024mb Kit (2x 512mb) CL2.5

All up around $1308.

I've just bought something in the same ballpark:

MSI K8N SLI Platinum (Includes a Creative 5.1 Live onboard instead of the ubiquitous AC'97 chip)
AMD 3500+ (s939, 64bit)
1Gb mid-range "generic" RAM
Single 128Mb 6600GT (PCI-Express)

Also paid around 1300, but that also included the case+power supply, DVD burner, hard drive, keyboard and mouse. I found all the 'little bits' that make up a real computer took me above the original budget I'd set.

I'm stoked with it.

Looks like a great system codyalday, though if your planning on playing games like Battlefiled2, 1 gig of ram won't be enough. It uses 1gig + just to run of medium settings [V]

The 6600gt is a great GFX card but a warning for anyone thinking of picking up the AGP versions.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Make sure you motherboard doesn't have an !!!!!SiS chipset!!!!!. I've got a gigabyte(GA-8s648FX(-L) mother board and a gigabyte 6600gt, yet i can't play any direct x game with out significant graphic artifacts, memory looping and crashing.

The good news is that it can be fixed with some significant tweaking & patching, how ever you need to use ancient graphics drivers which have problems with newer games [:(]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

on another note Nvidia just released driver version: 78.01 http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp

Thankaz for that Djenx, going to check into it more now.

Uh...be a bit careful if you're going to go all out with Gigabyte stuff. The guys that built some of the PCs at my work made a point of telling us to steer clear of them, recommending ASUS and some other brand I can't recall at the moment. Now for all I know they're an ASUS reseller and just trying to drum up business, but from my limited experience, a number of friends and family have had constant, niggling problems with their PCs and invariably they've had Gigabyte kit in their machines. So it just seems to me that the only thing going for Gigabyte is that they're cheap.

Personally, I'd be investing in good quality parts even if it meant having to pay a bit more. But, hey, no doubt someone will have nothing but high praise for Gigabyte. Just something else to think about. [:)]

Thankaz for that Leto, I will sus that out soon.

I bought a brand new gigabyte mobo a couple of years ago- an NForce 2, which had been flashed with the bios for a slightly different model (mine is a 400L, it was flashed with the 400l1 bios), lead to all sorts of hassles before I finally figure it out. Been going absolutely fine ever since.

An important thing to realise, with regards to homebrew, is that you will need a PSP with a firmware version of 1.5 or less. I have been told the australian PSP will be v2.0, and will not allow you to run unauthorised code. You can however buy v1.5 PSPs from ebay and possibly importers.

i reckon it'll only be a matter of time before the haxors deal with v2.0 of the firmware though

There's Grover, who resides in Adelaide, who does homebrew PSP dev. I believe he imported some original v1.0 PSP's when they first came out overseas.

http://www.ausgamers.com/?commentsid=2348098

quote:Some of the word on the street is that the PSP is shipping with the older v1.52 version of the firmware out-of-the-box, but it includes a disk with the 2.0 firmware on it. Thanks to Dave who has sent word confirming this and clarifying that the homebrew stuff only works on v1.50 firmware, but there is apparently a patch in the works to downgrade to that version (if you're brave).

Anyone purchase a PSP yet? What version firmware was it?

quote:Originally posted by Souri
Anyone purchase a PSP yet? What version firmware was it?

We purchased a bunch. Seems that review units sent out a couple of weeks ago were 1.51, all our units are 1.52, and have seen some reports of units in Europe already being 2.0.

I checked out my friend's PSP which had v1.52 of the firmware. The demo disc that came with it had the 2.0 upgrade, but he's been wary of checking it out. [:)]

hey check it out. i got posted on www.pspupdates.com

I made a fireworks type simulator :)

Coded in lua

Nice work [:)]

Seems that firmware versions 1.51, 1.52, and 2.0 are no good for homebrew. I hope the JAP one I have ordered will come as a v1.5...

looks like version 2.0 of the firmware has been cracked!

http://www.megagames.com/news/html/console/psp-homebrewon200areality.sh…

Good 'ole buffer overflow [:D] Anyway, it seems a [url="http://www.psphacks.net/content/view/376/2/"]little limited[/url] at the moment, so I wouldn't go patching firmware just yet...quote:While it is correct that unsigned code is now running on 2.00 PSPs. However the code is running in USER mode not KERNEL mode...

Unsigned code can only be run in the area of memory exploited by the buffer overflow (64Kb).

I've seen some incredible demos done in 64kb's, so maybe some demo groups can start something here. [;)]

There is a working downgrade from version 2.0.
But be warned, Sony have released a 2.01 updater. So if you have a 1.51 or 1.52 then it will upgrade to 2.01 and thus you cannot downgrade bac to 1.5.

The good news, is that the 2.0 downgrade allows you to play games, and run homebrew (as per 1.5).
http://pspupdates.qj.net/2005/09/i-have-150-now-what.html

As for development on PSP.. its damn kool fun. Will be releasing some gear soon on it - a complete engine. Similar to LuaPlayer.. but I have been working on this on PC for over a year now, it has alot of goodies in it :)

Cheers,

There seems to be some dodgy firmware updates going around that will render your PSP useless. Why are people so unkind?

Yeah. As far as I know its not firmware as such. Its homebrew apps. They are being tagged pretty quickly by the homebrew devvers tho. There is even a checker app that makes sure a homebrew program isnt doing anything nasty to your psp.

pspupdates.com has all the latest on that gear.

[url="http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3144468"]Datel making 4 gig HDs for the PSP[/url].

How cool is that. Hopefully it'll be cheaper than having a few Sony memory cards which are pretty darn expensive.

in a way, that completely sucks. Ive been planning to get a PSP for christmas, which means that a new extremely better version will be coming out soon shortly after... jibbed.

edit: this may ease the pain a little if australia gets it before "the holiday season" aswell: http://www.gamespot.com/news/6136208.html?

EDIT: about that hardrive.. its an addon.

http://lik-sang.com/news.php?artc=3707
and an aussie place selling them:
http://www.mp4store.com.au/product333/product_info.html

thats $439.00... thats like more then youll pay for the PSP itself. ill probably just buy a 1gb stick down the track or something.

I'm into PSP homebrew now [:)]

2 screenshots from the project that I'm working on:

http://www.sumea.com.au/sprofilepic.asp?p=A&news=1760

Very nice Dr. Watson :)

I don't know why you'd buy a 4GB HDD for it for $439 when you can get a 2GB Sony memory card at the computer fair for $220 (picked one up a couple of weeks ago).

If you want a good homebrew handheld, I recommend the gp2x. Almost as powerful as the PSP (but no 3D chip) ... and it is opensource - it runs linux!!! It also uses standard SD cards instead of UMDs. I got mine on import a few weeks ago and it already runs quite a few games.

is the gp2x easy to use? Do u load ur games/movie/music on the sd via computer. Who did u use to import one?

Wow! How cool is that!

The only questions I can think of is his take on where the game industry is heading. A lot of contraversy has sparked in the media across the world about the "Hot Coffee" debarcle from Rockstar, and it would be interesting what Dr Capps take on this is, whether its a step back for developing games (especially as most by Epic are directed towards a mature audience) or whether it has been a good example of what responsibilities, if any, game companies have with the general public.

I also wouldn't mind seeing if a R18+ classification would be a good thing for Epic games in Australia :D

I've only just got home and I'm rushing to get some /research and questions done and trying to confirm an interview spot. I'm hoping to get some more questions. That one you have is great, Morphine. Should definately be included.

John Carmack recently commented that physics isn't easily scalable for level of detail, unlike graphics. An object in a game can react with another physics object or it can't. Carmack says this would mean physics accelerated titles enhancing trivial things like flowing water, and not affecting anythhing substantial to the core gameplay. How do you see physics taking part in games in the future, as Epic seems to be embracing Ageia and their Novodex physics engine and PhysX processing unit (the new physics card)..

The popularity of large scale battle games is pretty evident amongst PC gamers. Has Battlefield 2, or even the upcoming Quakewars: Enemy Territory influenced the design decisions for Unreal Tournament 2007? Whereas these latest games concentrate on class based team orientated gameplay, UT2007 sounds like it's heading towards its roots of close in-your-face fragging?

Will write some more. Need some questions on quality of life or next gen development costs (referring to Epics comments that next gen shouldn't be close to 2x the costs) and the Unreal Engine 3.

Ok, you know what, I think we should give the interview a miss. I prefer a bit of time to research some decent questions, and I don't wanna give him some half-assed stuff that he's probably answered/everyones read about multiple times before. The questions above are good, but I need another 13 more like that and within an hour or so, and the interview opportunity really came at a late notice. In anycase, I'm sure I can get an interview at a later date anyway.

Here is a few questions I can think of. Just things I have no idea about but hear when talking to others.

1)
Whilst the game industry continues to grow do you feel that the number of actuall positions within a company will actually fall with all the talk about keeping only a few core team members and shipping all other work overseas to be done cheaper. What impact do you think this will have on the industry as well as the quality of games produced.

2)
With games like Spore coming out next year and more and more demand on "open ended" game play will we see the end of scripted gameplay and linear stories in games?.

Semi-related, last night was a really good evening. Some great stuff shown of Unreal Editor 3 and what it can make (gasps from everyone in the crowd when "2 million polygon characters will be the standard" was said) and 3ds Max 8 will move thousands of copies for the new UV tools. Oh...my...god... Have you ever wanted a button that will just do all that painful UV mapping in one simple click? They've made one. And it's heavenly to watch (once it works properly, to the speaker's dismay *grin*) I can only find still images which do it no justice.

So yeah. Grouse night. Good to catch up with people I'd not seen in awhile, and to meet some new ones. Might see ya all at the max launch on the 27th @:-)

It was great wasnt it Chris! Although, I thought that the Max 8 Launch was on the 23rd? I am probablly wrong though ;/

20 something @:-) Know anywhere with further info on it? DBD and Autodesk's sites don't seem to have any info.

I was talking to Joe (one of the reps from Autodesk) and he said they were going to have it at the Griffith Southbank Conservatorium.

Did you end up doing the interview or give it a miss this time?

A bit off-topic now, but the comment about the pelting in max 8 I can attest to -- I've been playing around with the beta for a while now, and it is really good. However, most of the rest is a big disappointment. Customers of third party software I'll leave un-named will feel ripped off since it's now implemented into max, so your licence is kinda moot. The texporter "replacement" is fairly half-arsed. Really... the only good points that are well implemented is pelting and scene effect shader loader. The rest is feeling like another gaffa tape job, bandaiding problems and expected features.

my advice is be more specific, are you after game design? programming? building art related content in a particular program? if you have direction like that and you hit a store like borders youll turn up much better results. That being said theres two books that stand out as sort of general game development books "Game design: secrets of the sages" and "game creation and careers: insider secrets form industry experts" (allthough the second might be more of a revision of the first, not entirely sure on that one). They are rather design based, but do touch on other areas and have a absolute ton of industry big names talkin it up. Its also kinda nice to have it all clearly laid out in book form but ofcourse you can find all sorts of odds and ends all over the internet, http://www.gamasutra.com/ is the sort of game industry news hub.

I?ve found McGills in Brisbane to be a fantastic bookstore for game related topics. I?ve found some great programming texts in there, though I find the art stuff no overly useful. And they seem to have plenty of general game design books available also. But regardless of your interests they usually cover all bases.

God, I could easily spend thousands of dollars in that place if I had the cash.

Oh yeah, and you don't have to be in Brisbane, I'm pretty sure you can order things delivered.
[url]https://www.mcgills.com.au/cgi-bin/mcgills.storefront/[/url]

There aren't very many bookstores around with a decent game development library (McGills is good, Borders is pretty good as well).

However, I usually order books from amazon.com. If you've got a credit card, and you don't mind waiting 2 weeks or so for delivery, you can save a lot of money. I've bought about a dozen gamedev books from amazon.com collectively saving me hundreds of dollars. Most books that you find in Australian technical bookstores for $120 - $150 can be found at around USD$30 - USD$60 on amazon.com.

I usually get my game dev books from [url]http://www.bookware.com.au[/url]. They are an online computer bookstore and have a lot of game dev books as well.

I'm a programmer, and live in Melb. I usually go around the local bookshops like Dymocks, Techical Bookshop, etc. But the varieties of books are just very limited and they are expensive (around $100-$150). You're better off getting it from Amazon, but then you have to wait for so long, I'm so reluctant to order. There's just no easy way eh? [:(]

Yeah, waiting for international shipping is a pain, and I usually order two or three books at a time so that I only make a few orders in a year. I've ordered books by express shipping as well, which is about an extra USD$5 per book, arrives in about a week and a half, and is still much cheaper than shopping at dymocks.

The other great thing about amazon is that they often have bundle deals with related titles, so I sometimes save money on a pair of books that I was planning to buy together anyway.

if you know what you want try ordering it from Amazom - much cheeper than buying it here for full price.

Or if you have friends visiting US, ask them to pick up copies for you and hoik them back for you. Just got Betty Edwards' Colour thanks to family holidaying stateside @:-)

Q 4 the people that have ordered from Amazon, do you have to pay a customs/import fee on that stuff, and if so what sort of amount does that usually come to?

Cheers

You only have to pay it if you order several hundred dollars worth, probably about $500. I learnt the hard way that a PSP + 2 games will put you over. Then its something like 20% on the total, not just the amount by which you exceeded the limit.

pb

Thanks pb.

It?s anything under $A1000 coming into the country does not incur the wrath of customs. Oh, and weapons, drugs, pornography, piracy and lying on the declaration doesn?t go down well with them either?

No, that's not quite right. If you pay over $1000 then you have to get a "formal Customs Import Entry" and automatically have to pay duty.

However, if the duty+GST is going to be $50 or more you still have to pay. Duty is 5% and is applicable to the cost of the goods. The GST is 10% and is applicable to the cost of the goods plus the postage.

It's complicated but you can check out some examples here: [url]http://www.customs.gov.au/site/page.cfm?u=4376#e987[/url]

$200 worth of goods plus $50 postage is safe. Damn I wish I did this research before ordering...

Since I'm already typing I'd also add that however difficult or expensive it might be to get your hands on quality books these days it is a lot better than in years gone by. I remember, once upon a time, having to make a lot of phone calls and driving around a fair bit when I was after the Amiga reference manuals. [:)]

pb

For 3d books i usually visit two place .. i first goto www.getonce.com.au and do a search on the book i want if i know the title, most of the time i'm able to find a book from amazon here. If i don't know the title of the book i head to http://www.elx.com.au/cat/books/gimp, which is an australian online store with the biggest selection of 3d books i've seen in australia.

still on the subject but a bit more of a personal anecdote; i was in borders today to pick up a book because ive won the IT award at my school and you consequently get a free book on that subject (im in yr12 and yes its now apparently official that im the biggest IT nerd that the school has to offer) and going through the IT section i noticed there was sections for programming and sections for various multimedia software aswell as just a game theory section which included a few interesting topics beyond the typical like about two or three books that were devoted how to guides for console modding. Its expensive but it seems borders is the place to go if you actually want to walk into a store (as opposed to shopping online)

heh, one of the only "artist friendly" programmer sites out there is going under? Well crap, I'll miss all the pretty coder images and informative news and posts [:(]

Flipcode seemed to me to be the most university-level programmer and artist friendly site out there. A regular favourite, pity that it's coming to an end, but like all good things.

That's most unfortunate, I used to visit flipcode regularly.

I'm glad to see at least that they'll be keeping the articles and forums up as a reference; there's a lot of useful stuff in there that I never got around to reading.

1999-2005, 6 years is a darn long time. Kudos to the guys for going at it for so long. 6 years is a good chunk out of your life and maintaining a website can be quite consuming.

Sure Souri, I will be going to the event so if you want me to do it on behalf of Sumea I would be more than welcome to!

event? what? eh? i want details! how can one get in?

btw, if you have some questions you'd like answered, please do post it here.

oh right, the max launch type thing. i'll be at work, oh well, would have been nice to see some more UE3 workflow stuff. I'll be hiting you up for details at the pub afterwards Mick!

*warning, no facts, just opinions, and speculation... yay!*

well, I agree, the nintendo rumor mill churns, and they're giving their same not-denying-not-confirming answers... it does seem feasible however, given that they've squeezed the gba down to the micro size, wouldn't it be plausible to squeeze the gamecube down to gba size? [:)] something to mull over.
Then again, it's not like they really need to compete at all, being the masters of mass hysteria brands for the younger and female audience, and having next to no piracy in comparison to the competitors, so it would be a smart idea to keep production costs down while enjoying that market. Pokemon pinkishorange anyone? nintendogs with a pink DS (I shit you not)? how about another cycle of mario/zelda/mario[sport]/metroid/etc? chuck in a few exclusive mature titles that are just pure quality and you've got a damn strong console/handheld coverage.

i've heared the next gameboy rumor aswell. basically a handheld GC to compete with the PSP. while i havn't seen any info on this myself, several people i have spoken to about it say they read stuff about it somewhere, so the rumors are definatly out there somewhere.

quote:how about another cycle of mario/zelda/mario[sport]/metroid/etc? chuck in a few exclusive mature titles that are just pure quality and you've got a damn strong console/handheld coverage.
still waiting for those on my DS though - since i bought it i've bought more GBA games to play on it that DS games becuase there's simply not that many titles that intereste me. the PSP isn't even out here yet and there are already a greater range of titles lined up for it's launch than the total released for the DS! most might be PS/PS2 ports, but at least there is a range to choose from!

If that was fake i would say that is the coolest dog puppet ever, but its kind of sad that he is real. The poor thing must be suffering horribly, no wonder hes angry.

lol actually he has a cult following, he won the worlds ugliest dog contest something like 4 years in a row now, the only is funny and loves to laugh, they said when she set her dog down at the competition that the judges were still gasping and pulled back as she got a kiss from her beloved pup.

ive seen that pic before but god thats one evil looking dog... still creeps me out

Thats definately a monster from an rpg I've played.

Yesh I think its was called a "Plauged Dire Hellhound"

hes actually Paris Hilton's old dog....see how traumatized he is?

I'll steal rezn0r's joke and say it...

mmm KFC.

mcdrewski : ROFL [:D] [:D]

edit: He does remind me of kfc, totally. Reznor you sick, sick man for realising this.

Well I used to like KFC but that just killed it for me

I find it especially charming how the little tike seems to be picking his teeth with his back foot - great pose for the camera. ...Paris Hilton's old dog -- very funny!

On a side note: Paris Hiltons *OLD* dog. Seriously, who buys a pet and then gives it away or on-sells it to a new owner.

Well Paris always has to have the latest model.

The site this is from was originally shut down because of extreme popularity. Looks like the little fella has quite a fan base now. Apparently he?s got a great personality, it?s just that he looks like a monster out of Guild Wars or something - like what Anux said, "Plauged Dire Hellhound" [}:)]

Actually I reckon he could become the next dog movie star.

I'm sure Paris' pets die of 'misadventure' before she grows tired of them!
I had never though of on-selling a pet. Nobody really does that do they? ...OMG, the price of Chihuahua (sp?) has jumped, time to sell the faithful hound.

it looks like dog from resident evil...

Yeah it?s got those zombie eyes.
That second picture kind of reminds me of that little rat-like alien thing that sits by Jabba the Hutt in Return of the Jedi and laughs hysterically.

[img]http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/attached/palantir/2005820203229_Salacious…]

the great personality part doesn't really hold up... having seen a video interview on an opera-like tv show at work, it snarls, growls, and bares its teeth every time it hears anyones voice besides Lockheed's, to which it is quite affectionate. Don't blame it really, she does take good care of it, and I guess it isn't too comfortable being blind and around foriegn people.

Suddenly, I don't feel like lunch anymore after seeing those pictures.
Might just go get myself a bucket now ...

at least it's set on mars now

still looks like rubbish to me though (based not only on the trailer but interviews and orther info i've read about it)

but chances are i'll go see it anyway

[img]http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/attached/LiveWire/2005814192653_20041208l…]

Doom looks way to likely to be completely brainless and predictable IMO

That looks like a very ordinary movie.

Why couldn?t they have just based in on the game? Space marines in cool armour fighting inter-dimensional hell beasts. At least then the movie might actually appeal to someone.

Nerds on a global scale will eat it up, then ridicule it.

And the film company will be laughing at the non refund policy.

quote:And the film company will be laughing at the non refund policy.
...while the viewers simply laugh at 'The Rock'...

Seriously though, any movie starring a man named Dwayne who needs to go by the alias of 'The Rock' to feel special, and with the hype marketing phrase "...told in the hyper- kinetic, kamikaze style that made its gaming predecessor a global phenomenon..." has set out on a very dangerous path.

The mutation/gene idea has been done to death. It would've been more interesting if they stuck to the hell idea, I reckon. Something in the vibe of Event Horizon would be really cool. I really hope this movie offers a bit more in the cerebral department than a typcial brain dead action movie. The trailer doesn't offer any hope for that though.

Also, the sorta thing I usually look up first when coming across sci-fi movies are the set designs and other futuristic designs (vehicles etc), and this doesn't really do anything special or innovative in that department. Needs more cool stuff! There's nothing in that trailer which I thought was cool. [:(]

I agree to that Souri - Seems like a stock-standard sci-fi horror to me. Thats what I meant about one of my favorite James Cameron movies...Aliens. To me, it looks way to much like that!

And apparently, The Rock only plays a supporting role with the lead being Karl Urban (LOTR, The Chronicles of Riddick)

yes Urban plays the lead role - named "John Grimm" ohh, good name, that makes the standard of this movie sound even better... (btw there are also other lame names like this in the movie, but i foget what they are).

i said this when i firest heared that the movie was not set on mars (which has now been 'corrected') nor featured demons from hell:
mutant virus? that's done to death! why go down that path? is it an attempt to increase the realism or believeability? demons from and hell not credible enough? that's irrelevant, if you do it right then i'll believe anything - and at least demons and hell would have been a far more original plotline (at least for a movie, particually of this sort). they've played it safe by going witha virus - it's done before therefore 'it works', it's more believeable (i guess), and wont offend christian groups. and finaly? what the hell was wrong with mars? i see no reason what so ever o change it to 'generic planet A' mars is a unique setting , being all red and barren and all, certainly more interesting than another cliche, black sci-fi instalation, sure it worked in aliens - but that's been done now, move on! at least they fix up this part, though as far as i can see it's still a generic sci-fi installation on the inside, and i doubt that anything mars like will feature except the name.

if you're going to make a doom movie you should at least make it doom!

If they stuck to the actual Doom story, it could have at least been an enjoyable movie for the visual effects fest. It would be awesome to see some of the classic Doom monsters done really well in film CG! Bring on the flaming heads and the pink demons!! And it could lead to some massive battles LOTR style, with space marine armies trying to push back the forces of hell. Instead they went with this unoriginal piece of shit. Once again executive decisions take precedence over artistic direction. Playing it safe is a sure way to make a craptacular film.

It looks like its only redeeming feature is that is has Karl Urban in it.

I make a point of checking the director before i comment on a movie....but look at who it is: Andrzej Bartkowiak, the director of Romeo Must Die, Exit Wounds, and Cradle 2 the Grave....

As much as they both scream "Disturbing" to most people, I dont think Genetic Mutants would go well with a hip hop soundtrack! And where in gods name is rap/hip hop MEGAstar DMX! I guess this type of movie is below him now. It will be like a Paul Thomas Anderson movie without Philip Seymour Hoffman, or a Wes Anderson movie without Bill Murray, or a George Lucas movie without R2D2......it just wouldnt be the same.

http://www.gametrailers.com/player.php?id=7190&type=mov

Another preview - a CAM from Quakecon 2005 showing more movie footage including a 'First Person Shooter' style of camerawork.

I cant help laughing at the 'Predator Purr' sound effects!

All I can say is OMG this movie looks like teh suxors.

if using that rehashed scream at the end of the first trailer wasnt enough (i cant help thinking "IRON MAN FOOD" is about to fall down in big blocky letters when i heard it) now the predator sounds? Theres stealing movie ideas and plots and re-doing the same basic outline of a genre, but from the trailers we can allready complain about un-originality with the sound effects? thats not a good sign.

That fps style camera angles is about the best thing theyve done for this movie as far as i can see

Ill go see it without a doubt [:)]

Oh yeah, we?ll all go see it. We?ll hate it, we?ll bitch about it, but we?ll still hand over our 10 bucks to go check it out. [:P]

BUGGER THAT Ill wait for the DVD to come out.

quote:Originally posted by palantir
We?ll hate it, we?ll bitch about it, but we?ll still hand over our 10 bucks to go check it out. [:P]

bad publicity is still publicity [:P]

it looks just... a little.. like the 2nd Alien, Aliens.

http://www.gametrailers.com/player.php?id=7338&type=mov

- Direct feed of second trailer

You could try the FEAR demo. It's the first game to use virtual displacement mapping. However, they only seem to use it on decals from what I saw.

http://pouet.net/prod.php?which=18350

I remember a farcry 2 tech demo floating around.... at the time it reduced our machines to smouldering piles of metal and plastic when on high detail mode and 1600 x 1200 res, though ive lost track of it anyone share ?

quote:Originally posted by redwyre

http://pouet.net/prod.php?which=18350

Hehe.. I can't believe the Assembly party is still going. I used to download those demos all the time on the Amiga over 10 years ago (has it been that long ago!)

Anyways, I spotted this really cool tech demo. It's 20mbs and it's amazing [:)] [url="http://www.daionet.gr.jp/~masa/rthdribl/"]Real-Time High Dynamic Range Image-Based Lighting[/url]. (this demo is 2 years old [:0])

This one almost ground my machine to a halt: http://pouet.net/prod.php?which=18766

Very nive though

Thank god for demo parties!!.. may scene.org live forever. Those two demos are awesome :)

New ATI X1K tech demo HD video: http://www.ati.com/products/RadeonX1K/demos/toyshop.html

Download the HD 1280x720 zip for a better look. It would've been more impressive if it had better art direction. It looks like a badly rendered CGI movie from yester-year [;)]

That drivey demo has an interesting style to it.

An amazing achievement for a small (3 person) indie development is Live for Speed.
http://www.liveforspeed.net/

They've managed to turn some heads and earnt the respect some well known big production studios.

Drivey does look nice, but check out darwinia http://www.darwinia.co.uk/ and spheres of chaos http://www.spheresofchaos.com/

Both the links came from the selectparks archive btw http://selectparks.net

Waco Ressurection is pretty cool too http://waco.c-level.cc/

Speaking of amazing achievement for small teams:

http://www.projectoffset.com/game.html

They're a 3 man team as well, but they've got some huge ambitions...

Project Offset is amazing. Ive been following their progress for quite some time, what these guys have achieved really puts alot of things into perspective.

I hope everyone has checked out the two sneek peek videos of Project Offset:

http://www.gametrailers.com/player.php?id=6400&type=mov
http://www.gametrailers.com/player.php?id=7108&type=mov

Awesome stuff

that project offset is all kinds of cool! i hadnt heard about it before

impressive

Wow! project offset looks fantastic, + full motion blur.... i didn't think we would be seeing that feature in next gen

That ?Project Offset? does look interesting, but ? and it is a big but ? all they show is technology demos not gameplay, what little they do show is nothing more than very basic and contrived scripting ? based on my experienced eye at seeing past the bullshit.

The technology also is not exactly ?cutting-edge? in that it is only current generation (like normal mapping) and not next-generation (like virtual-displacement mapping).

It does make me wonder though, in that FPS RPG?s (like Deus Ex) are usually not as ?pretty? graphically and technology wise than a straight action FPS ? like Doom 3 ? therefore they can get by not having the best graphical features as they rely on story and gameplay to drive the experience ? my preference.

All they need is solid and innovative use of competitive technology, married to said gameplay ? which these guys currently lack completely.

Not as ?wow? for me but I am interested in learning more about their technology and licensing arrangements :).

For all you Quake 2 fans check out this little demo of an upcomming MOD for Doom3:

http://www.planetquake.com/meanarena/quake2_lostmarine/

These guys are apparently remaking Quake 2 for the Doom 3 engine - sweet...

Needless to say lots of people don't dare make comments about Waco Resurrection [:)] IMHO it makes Escape from Woomera look tame. I've never seen another game where you take out FBI agents... It was on display at acmi for several months (part of a political games exhibition), and those David Koresh helmets are bloody uncomfortable.

just watched the new project offset video. agreed, very iompressive what so ew people have done. though the only thing that really impressed me was the full sceen realtime motion blur and particles casting shoft shadows - nice addtions if i do say so myself. other than that it should be noted that the there was next to nothin the the sceens other than two scrippted characters, and small environment, and no backkground. so it's had to guage how much the enging can render. secondly it dosnt look any more ipresive than other next gen engines, so it's nothing strikling new - except of course for one fact: it's been done by only three people! that makes it stand out as an amazing personal achievement, if nothing else.

Yeah, the lack of showing what the engine can do in regards to its limits does tell a lot, but, without all the game code in like AI, any raw tech demo wouldn?t say much at all. I am guessing though, that as these guys have worked on at least one commercial project in the past that they have some experience, and have taken that into consideration when developing the tech to date, so it is probably a bit more robust than the material shows.

And I also think that even with the stated features that make it stand out, that these are still current generation. They may only be appearing at the end of this generation?s life-cycle ? like in the FEAR engine and game ? and will definitely be found at the start of the next generation?s life-cycle, they are still this generation. This will be apparent midway in the next generation?s life-cycle. Regardless, still looks great and is competitive for the reasons in my previous post ? it being an RPG.

But regardless, that is all just tech, I am more interested in gameplay ? one is harder than the other to achieve, much harder ;).

The guys from project offset were part of the team that did "Savage: battle for newerth" which had some interesting gameplay ideas (One person on the team was the commander who plays through an RTS interface, other players build & fight) Like with many online games, the few boneheaded players tended to get in the way of a good game for the other people on the server...

So I'm optimistic that Project Offset will come up with an interesting game even though they're just showing nice tech atm.

Yeh, it said on the site that Savage was a 7 man team. [:0]

btw, I saw this on [url="http://staff.it.uts.edu.au/~ypisan/blog/?p=72"]Yusuf's blog[/url]. This game was a 5 year collaboration and tried to do something new and hopefully groundbreaking. I'm kinda bored with FPS's and other generic genres at the moment, so I'm really looking forward to having a go at this. If it delivers what it's promising, I'm definately in for a treat:

Facade is an attempt to move beyond traditional branching or hyperlinked narrative to create a fully-realized, one-act interactive drama. Integrating an interdisciplinary set of artistic practices and artificial intelligence technologies, we have completed a five-year collaboration to engineer a novel architecture for supporting emotional, interactive character behavior and drama-managed plot. Within this architecture we have built a dramatically interesting, real-time 3D virtual world inhabited by computer-controlled characters, in which the player experiences a story from a first-person perspective. Facade was publicly released as a freeware download or cd-rom in July 2005.

You, the player, using your own name and gender, play the character of a longtime friend of Grace and Trip, an attractive and materially successful couple in their early thirties. During an evening get-together at their apartment that quickly turns ugly, you become entangled in the high-conflict dissolution of Grace and Trip's marriage. No one is safe as the accusations fly, sides are taken and irreversible decisions are forced to be made. By the end of this intense one-act play you will have changed the course of Grace and Trip's lives--motivating you to re-play the drama to find out how your interaction could make things turn out differently the next time.

[url="http://asia.cnet.com/downloads/pc/swinfo/0,39000587,39125605s,00.htm"]It's a 781mb download[/url].

i really want to give that a go, unfortunatly i'm not going to be downloading it at home on my dialup, might be time to hit up a mate or two with broadband...

Project Offset does looking very interesting, even though its short on media (as it would in the early stage of dev) however I am currently downloading the trailer from the site.

It feels LotR's ish to me, but that isn't giving this WIP justice. I'll be eagerly watching what comes of this, and will probably serve a great deal of encouragement for people with their own ideas to work on it and get it out there on show. [:D]

Hey, it seems things are going pretty good for Project Offset and the Offset team. Red 5 Studios (comprised of ex-Blizzard developers behind World of Warcraft) are licensing the Offset engine for their MMORPG.

http://www.projectoffset.com/press.html

I know fellow Sumean Rod Green had joined the Project Offset team a while ago, but I didn't know he's employee #4/5 and one of the directors of the company! Good stuff [:)]

http://www.projectoffset.com/team.html

I seem to remember a new studio established by ex-Blizzard team members licensing the Bigword technology for an MMORPG. I also seem to recall it being Red 5. Perhaps they dumped it in favour of Offset or are just using the back-end server technology for this.

Maybe I have it wrong, perhaps someone recalls which studio that was or is willing to do a little looking-into to find out?

Hey, this is as cool as hell. This team of four is working "Infinity", a MMO space game inspired by Elite. The universe (solar systems, planets and landscape etc) are all created procedurally. Sure, it's not an original or new idea, but there just haven't been many games in recent years to bother with it (Spore is one notable exception).
Check out the video where you get a fly by from a space station down to a planet and onto a ground fly-by. Really cool stuff. [:)]

[url="http://features.moddb.com/223/?fpage=0"]Interview with the graphics programmer[/url]
[url="http://files.moddb.com/1422/"]Download the video[/url]
[url="http://www.fl-tw.com/Infinity/"]Infinity website[/url]

quote:Originally posted by Souri

Yeh, it said on the site that Savage was a 7 man team. [:0]

btw, I saw this on [url="http://staff.it.uts.edu.au/~ypisan/blog/?p=72"]Yusuf's blog[/url]. This game was a 5 year collaboration and tried to do something new and hopefully groundbreaking. I'm kinda bored with FPS's and other generic genres at the moment, so I'm really looking forward to having a go at this. If it delivers what it's promising, I'm definately in for a treat:

Facade is an attempt to move beyond traditional branching or hyperlinked narrative to create a fully-realized, one-act interactive drama. Integrating an interdisciplinary set of artistic practices and artificial intelligence technologies, we have completed a five-year collaboration to engineer a novel architecture for supporting emotional, interactive character behavior and drama-managed plot. Within this architecture we have built a dramatically interesting, real-time 3D virtual world inhabited by computer-controlled characters, in which the player experiences a story from a first-person perspective. Facade was publicly released as a freeware download or cd-rom in July 2005.

You, the player, using your own name and gender, play the character of a longtime friend of Grace and Trip, an attractive and materially successful couple in their early thirties. During an evening get-together at their apartment that quickly turns ugly, you become entangled in the high-conflict dissolution of Grace and Trip's marriage. No one is safe as the accusations fly, sides are taken and irreversible decisions are forced to be made. By the end of this intense one-act play you will have changed the course of Grace and Trip's lives--motivating you to re-play the drama to find out how your interaction could make things turn out differently the next time.

[url="http://asia.cnet.com/downloads/pc/swinfo/0,39000587,39125605s,00.htm"]It's a 781mb download[/url].

I had a go at this, and it is quite interesting. Unfortunately, it's a little hard to get into because it's so different.. but after a few goes I think I might actually be able to get the results that I want :)

i find i'm always trying to split them up and hook up with the chick, havn't succeeded yet though.

Ok, it's another old thread which I'm bringing back up (I think some of the games in this list is still pretty inspirational stuff).

This platformer game is done by one person, and the guy who made it was influenced by some old classic games like Another World and Flashback. The art style of the game is simple, but it looks *fantastic*. The game looks like it's doing something different from your usual platformer as well, with the screen rotating around and objects falling / moving to reveal new paths.

The creator got a grant from the Danish goverment to continue to work on this game, so hopefully it he'll get it done and distributes it online I'd definately buy it!

Limbo website
CG Talk thread
Limbo - an early look

Hmm, I thought I was spending too much time playing warcraft 3 at the local net cafe. I've got nothing on this guy.

this news seems to be going around everywhere today!

here's a simular story, only this on survived (and without sleep or toilet breaks it seems!):

[url]http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3141114[/url]

quote:From 8:00 A.M. on May 16 until 2:10 P.M. two days later, 25-year-old Brandon Erickson of Portland, Oregon blew up the Death Star over 1,500 times, raised $800 for the Portland Schools Foundation and broke the arcade marathon time record for Star Wars Arcade on a single quarter.

There was almost no time to breathe for Erickson. "Star Wars only let's you rest for about 7 seconds between levels. The gameplay is absolutely relentless," he said. "If I had left the controls for even 30 seconds, it would have been over. It's the most mentally and physically exhausting thing I've ever done."

35 hours after he started playing, however, the machine's controls started malfunctioning, forcing Erickson to quickly adaptor his playing style or kiss his record goodbye. Despite his fear of imminent doom, Erickson managed to survive for another 20 hours.

The previous marathon arcade record was also for Star Wars Arcade. In 1984, Brooklyn's Robert Mruczek survived for 49-1/2 hours.

Online battle simulation? Battlefield 2, or perhaps Counterstrike? In any case, 50 hours is certainly pretty damn long. Does anyone feel the internet cafe is negligent in some way for letting him play 50 hours straight? Don't they have a problem with hygene/body odour etc that one person can amass after 2 days without showering?

Heh [:D]

Yeah there's also a bunch of hip-hop artists called Combat Wombat:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/Music/Rebel-rappers/2005/05/16/1116095902…

Didn't realise they were associated with the Jabiluka protests until now though... Cool.

While I possibly can't claim to be the first CombatWombat, I did come up with it in 2000 - but obviously others did too [:)]

well, you've got to expect more than one CombatWombat, all the other animal/word pairs just don't compare...

portaloo kangaroo,
menacin' pelican,
java koala,
and let's not say any more about paedophile crocodile.

uhh battle bat,
rakish snake,
evil weevil,
cultured vulture
ironic lion

oh, and disgruntled moose (disgruntled because it doesn't rhyme[}:)]).

A friend of mine uses "PeacePossum" for his nick when we're LAN'ning it up.

All quite ironic considering that he thinks violence in RL is sometimes justified, whereas I don't believe it ever is [:)]

That is a very good read, and I think most of everyone on Sumea will agree that none of what he said was very surprising.

We all know that video games can't drive a person to violence, it's just the people that don't understand video games and the people who want to make money out of anything and everything.

http://grumpygamer.com/9810069

Well that certainly shed some light on the previous post and I find his evidence much more convincing.

I am now inclined to agree that video games definately do cause low life psychos who were deranged before they had even layed eyes on a video game to commit acts of violence.

[:p]

I played an imported version of 'Restricted Area' recently
and had violent homicidal urges. I also bit my keyboard
in half playing 'Battlecruiser: Millenium' and 'Superpower'.

This also happens with a lot of recent Red Ant titles [xx(].

have a read of some of the links o that site too. dumb comments in some, scary stuff in others:

?We?re getting killings which are caused by the use of Nintendo-style games, such as the game Pok?mon, with children, and also with police and others."

"A disabled 14-year-old was charged as an adult with strong-armed robbery and jailed for six weeks. The boy, who had no criminal record, was accused of taking $2 from a classmate."

Here's another interesting read about the relationship between video games and childhood obesity, turns out there isn't one!

http://smh.com.au/articles/2005/07/23/1121539189035.html

I gotta say, there could be something more going on about violent video games and media...

I mean, this funkyj character seems to speak some truth [url]http://www.redassedbaboon.com/blog/?ct_id=344[/url]

:D

Seriously though, after a lengthy session playing Pac-Man, I was tempted to rummage through the medicine closet and find which pills would give me the super ability to eat ghosts.

Oh yeh, the game that has influenced me most is Frogger. I have many broken and/or munched on limbs because of that game.

The more things change?
I remember when table top RPGs where the ?Evil? instiller of the age. How, just by thumbing through the pages of a D & D manual you where being corrupted and would most likely start eating kittens.
?And remember kids you can?t get your sentence cut due to mitigating circumstances without citing that the media created scapegoat made you do it.?

Pantmonger

Heh, there was even a movie called 'Mazes and Monsters', starring Tom Hanks, made back in 1982, that was about a bunch of college students who got so into their tabletop RPG game that they started to believe that they were really their characters and ventured off into the local caverns for adventure. It ended badly for all. tut tut children, those games will warp your mind!

"Video Games are bad for you? That's what they said about rock 'n roll" said by none other then Shigeru Miyamoto. Back when i worked for gamebiz we put that one on stickers to hand out at events :P

yeaah that guy went to court for something erother if i remember correctly, anyone got a better long term memory then me?

If you mean these, I think you must have just scanned them ;)

http://www.bol.ucla.edu/~loco/msnbcninjanews1msnbcnewsother1.htm
http://www.bol.ucla.edu/~loco/msnbcninjanews3msnbcnewsother2.htm
http://www.bol.ucla.edu/~loco/msnbcninjanews2msnbcnewsother3.htm

LOL! did u read what he said in court??
However in response to the order, Hamburger ( the guy who owns the site) stated that the judge "couldn't even pop a boner if he really wanted to and should shut his frigg'n mouth before somebody pees in it."

As for the website, Hamburger plans on keeping it up and "spreading the truth about ninjas even if it means he'll have to pork more babes than is even possible. "

The guys is 10 years old...damn funny thou..

p{}p

What do you call a male cow that lives in a gully? [}:)][:p]

Those msnbc stories are funny, but I doubt that any of them are real.

Yes, the site is a parody [8D].

Just what DO you call a male cow (oxymoron) that lives in a gully?

quote:Originally posted by Wizenedoldman

Just what DO you call a male cow (oxymoron) that lives in a gully?

GULLY-BULL. hroh hroh. [;)]

Hmmm, Chocolate! I have like 4 Bars in the fridge!

Besides that, I'm obsessed with RPG's... heheh

Back in '98 I was obsessed with pokemon cards (they are still pretty cool, especially the shiny ones)I think I have a the completed base set for them at home somewhere in a folder. I haven't checked out how much they are :/.

I collect rare vinyl figures,(www.kidrobot.com)I like mad 1970's japanese ones the best, but they are really hard to find. I also hoarde adidas sneakers, rare t-shirts from underground artists, and mid century furniture and decorative arts. I wanted to collect classic arcade machines, but my small 3rd floor apartment said no. I think i collect old graphic cards aswell, cus i never seem to want to throw em away.

pop

Unfortunately my hobby is a rather expensive one, collecting Gibson Les Paul guitars and anything associated with them... we call it "GAS" (guitar acquisition syndrome) when we lust after these beauties and buy them on impulse.

Red 5 : What a coincidence... I wanted to go with the 1959 Lemon burst Vintage or the Florentine - but unfortunately at the time I didnt quite have the funds (it was at an auction) So I had to settle for a 68 Black Les Paul Custom, with Gold Trimmings and Pearl inlays. For some reason only a couple of people bid so i was home

Not really an obsession... I dont collect them thats for sure!

Wow, I seem pretty weird... not being apart of any fad, fanaticism, or obsession, I like to classify myself as a Junior Fad Member, trialling all the little quirks and oddities of obsessions and dabbling in what I think is cool...

soooooo, I have a few different figurines to punctuate my home and office desks, all from different series of different things ranging from plastic dinosaurs to a nice Ryu statuette; I have a few odd trinkets from different time periods, retro to now (including of course the obligatory desk lava lamp), but again, no set theme or trend; I have a whole (now count it) 1 collector card here; a smal lump of sculpey fashioned into what looks like a melting decapitated snoopy; a small number of unrelated comics and magazines ranging from hairbutt the hippo to cinefex to gothic lolita bible; ... etc etc

as you can see, I'm a hopeless obsession wannabe [:(] maybe I should start collecting stamps and get it over with.

I drove for two hours in the pouring rain and peak-hour traffic on Friday night to see a pre-release version of [url="http://www.serenitymovie.com/"]Serenity[/url]...

So I guess that's as close to my current obsession as possible. Except that I'm going through and putting all 1500 of my holiday photos into Google Earth. Maybe that's just plain nerdy though [:)]

CDs... I just hit 300 of the buggers :)

mcdrewski: Ooh where was the pre-release on? :) How did it compare with firefly? :)

Well, mine would be sound effects. As strange as it is, when ever I have a small amount of spare time I grab some recording equipment and heap out to record whatever I can. But, im not talking about simple rain or cars driving past - I like things that sound really strange even though these things happen everyday, eg, flicking fingers over a circut board, footsteps from another room, a cat purring (that one made it into Hotdogs Hotgals, but no one knows that).

Other than that I have heaps of Transformer, Alien, Predator and Terminator figures and heaps of movies posters (ebay - wicked). Games, I still have my Atari 2600 with Pitfall, Frogger, etc, a Sega Master System 2 with all the classics (Sonic, Alex Kidd), Sega Mega Drive, Super Nintendo and Nintendo 64.

quote:Unfortunately my hobby is a rather expensive one, collecting Gibson Les Paul guitars and anything associated with them... we call it "GAS" (guitar acquisition syndrome) when we lust after these beauties and buy them on impulse.

...dont get me started on the musical equipment!

It's not really an obsession, but I collect Dragonlance stuff. It's only a small collection at the moment, with about 20-ish books and the Dragonlance board game.

I also try to grab any Nintendo related stuff I can find. I managed to get a Bob-omb shaped sherbert container from some markets somewhere, and it's my most treasured item!

I have an odd fetish for Silver and have accrued more jewellery than most women!

My goal is to be the Silver Mr T.

Scott.

Red 5: It may be an expensive obsession/hobby but my god. You can't get much cooler then seeing a house with awesome guitars everywhere.

J.I styles: Collect transformers. Nothing cooler then 2 toys in one.. Unless your over toys like most adults.. <.< im still a avid toy lover.

Mick: Sound effects... now that?s USEFULL! I think as a game designer I should start collecting up sound samples as well. <.< you can draw inspiration form anything.

Kane: my friend just got an e-bay accrued original super metriod cartridge. I should kill him for it. I WANT IT!

Rezn0r: ... I PITY DA FOOL!! .. And why the hell not. That sounds pretty cool. Be a blast to see at a game conference.

quote:
68 Black Les Paul Custom, with Gold Trimmings and Pearl inlays.

*drools*
Now that?s cool! And here I thought the Epiphone was pretty cool. Eh, cheaper anyway.
Though I?m more of an Ibanaz man myself. Not very mainstream these days, but I love that floating bridge.
I?ve only got 3 guitars myself; I know some dudes with rooms full of music gear ? but then they are professionals.

I haven?t been obsessed with much in a while. I was a massive rings freak, but like most people I got over it when the final extended DVD came out.

Hundreds of CD?s and DVD?s, lots of novels, lots of old LOTR?s stuff, Star Trek stuff, Star Wars stuff, Star Gate stuff... I guess science fiction and music are my big obsessions, after games.

I also have a bit of surfboard collection growing in the garage.

Oh, and camping gear.

I collected hardcore dutch porn - until the police
arrived one day and conviscated it all (not rlly).

As a teen in the late 80s I used to collect 2000AD
comics (as far back as Prog 100) and old (70s)
computer magazines. Nowadays I tend to collect
original video games (for inspiration - I don't
line them up on the shelf and dust them [:p]).

Thats Mad! the police came and didn't confiscate your porn. I wasn't quite so lucky, and even got a fine.

Riight. *eyes the door*

Or, in even more summary:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php?date=2005-07-20

This is going to get pretty ranty so bear with me.

I've been following this story and I'm pretty shocked to see that it's been re-rated. Okay, R* was irresponsible for leaving the content on the disc, but really, its sexual content thats been left on the disc of a game thats rated M (that's 17+ in USA) bearing the descriptor, among others, "Strong Sexual Content". Interestingly enough, Leisure Suit Larry: Magna cum Laude is also rated M (in USA) for "Strong Sexual Content". To say that the Hot Coffee material is hugely more explicit than what's acceptable for an M rating is crazy; Remember, M in USA is roughly the equivalent of an R rated movie in Australia. Seriously, some of the shit I've seen in an R rated movie makes this whole debate seem like a total non-issue.

The basic argument is that the Hot Coffee material is pornography. Ergo, it must be placed in the AO category for sexual content (The USA film equivalent to this is the X rating, exclusively used by porn films). Sexually explicit? Sure. Pornography? No way.

quote: Dictionary.com says:
por?nog?ra?phy
n.
1. Sexually explicit pictures, writing, or other material whose primary purpose is to cause sexual arousal.

Don't know about you, but I can't believe that [url="http://elliottback.com/wp/wp-content/gta-san-andreas-sex-04.jpg"]this[/url] (Not Safe For Work) was ever intented primarily to arouse anyone who has the internet connection required to download the mod. Its a cartoonish parody and a joke made for a mature audience. It is not pornography.

It seems pretty likely that the OFLC will now ban, or "refuse classification" of GTA:SA.

Has anyone seen Sin City? Goddamnit, that film was given an MA15+ rating by the OFLC. Strong sexually-based violence including torture, sexual mutilation and dismemberment. What the fuck? A 15-year old can see that but can't play a game with some cartoony sex-scenes? Sure, right. We're being screwed.

Edit: Just for the record, I loved Sin City.

http://pc.ign.com/articles/635/635277p1.html

Great interview on IGN with Rockstar (doesn't say who from Rockstar, but the interviewee is just labelled as Rockstar [;)]). All the important questions asked like why the content was there, why wasn't it taken out, the official statement about hackers vs now admitting what they've done etc. Personally, I think Rockstar should be given a handslap over that last point. Definately a PR screwup.

Also an interesting read at gamecloud.com on some developer responses over the whole situation.. http://www.gamecloud.com/article.php?article_id=771

The aftermath of the whole situation:

quote:The AEMI group, which represents retail outlets including Blockbuster, Circuit City, CompUSA, Kmart, Toys R Us and Wal-Mart, amongst over 130 other retail outlets, comes on top of Best Buy announcing that it won't carry the title, in line with its policy not to carry Adult Only (AO) titles. Best Buy's move will see the game not sold in its stores or on its websites (bestbuy.com, bestbuy.ca, futureshop.ca).

Ouch. I would love to hear what's happening behind at Rockstar management. Someone's definately in a heap of trouble over all this. Unless they really expected no one from the modding community to tinker with their game. [:p] They're estimating this whole incident to cost them at least $45 million.:

The Company now expects $205 to $215 million in net sales and a net loss per share of $(0.05) to $(0.10) for the third quarter ending July 31, 2005.

As a result of the re-rating of the game, Take-Two is lowering guidance for the third fiscal quarter ending July 31, 2005 to $160 to $170 million in net sales

I wonder if the game have been rated AO (USA) if the content had been in there in the first place and not 'hidden'?

In Australia, though -

quote:OFLC

When a distributor applies for classification of a computer game in Australia, they are required by law to provide the Classification Board with access to all content within the game as well as particulars of contentious material and the means to gain access to such material.

Under Commonwealth Classification legislation the Classification Board is compelled to revoke a game?s classification if it is found to contain undisclosed contentious material, whether activated through use of a code or otherwise.

So don't be surprised - based on this - if the game's classification is revoked and new versions required. I guess ebay will be rife with 'old' versions soon enough though.

Interestingly, I'm not sure that (based on the screenshots and complete lack of knowledge I have) that the game would meet the test of "realistically simulated" sex which is the description for R18+. However I'm also not sure that it passes "sexual activity may be implied" (the test for MA15+).

Tough call. Something that will make the industry in general think carefully before just 'disabling' content...

Oh dear god. This whole GTA: San Andreas mod fiasco has opened up the floodgates for the "think of the children" people.

"Miami attorney Jack Thompson claims cheat codes make EA's life sim a pedophile's paradise by showing genitalia; calls for ban on T-rated game."

http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/07/22/news_6129609.html

Rediculous. [:(] It wont be long before all these old cronies are out of office and the gamer generation start to invade office. Until that point, we will just have to put up with the odd outburst every so often.

Next we will have an outburst regarding sharp objects, I can see it now....

" To arms men !.... To Arms!!! The orcs are invading! [:O]"

*Spearmen equip themselves and charge into battle... with marshmellows covering the pointy ends of their spears*

/sigh.

well yes. It's obvious really... in a game, or in movies, it's ok to commit any number of crime, be it homicide, arson, theft, etc. And of course to dismantle people limb from limb, with gouts of blood and gore inhumanly possible (unless say, people where pumped up with an extra gallon to maximum balloon-bursting pressure). But sex. Oh no... can't show the kids that. Just think! Their fragile impressionable minds may start to think people have sex for recreational pleasure, not just on their wedding night to have a child. Sacrilege.

This article is worth a mention. Consider this a must read! [:D] http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=ticket_to_hell

Great marketing, man they are smart..

pop

i dont know about great marketing. the game has shot back to the number 1 slot in the US becuase of this (with people buying them before they are pulled of the shelves or from retailers not taking them off), but rockstar still stands to lose a lot of money over this, well, not lose money but make less than they would have if this had not happened die to the cost of recalling the games then re-releasing a fixed version. it certainly created publicity though.

Well I myself went and bought it yesterday just in case it got pulled off the shelves. It was discounted to $60 at gamerush as well, maybe they are trying to get rid of as many as possible in case they do have to pull them off the shelves. I guess the clever marketing got to me lol.

Today, whilst on a game hunt looking for a new rpg for my partner to lose herself in, I noticed a price difference from $54 to $99 on GTA:SA. The $99 going up from the previous $89 charged earlier on in the week.

Jack Thompson just so happens to be the man who compared Douglas Lowenstein (ESA president) to Adolf Hitler:

"When Hitler invaded Russia, opening up an Eastern offensive on the eve of winter, Britain's Prime Minister Winston Churchill noted that "Hitler must have been rather loosely educated, not having learned the lesson of Napoleon's autumn advance on Moscow ."

Your Doug Lowenstein is similarly "loosely educated" about the United States Constitution. I have never, in my eighteen years of public interest law practice against the excesses of the entertainment industry, run into an individual more devoid of even an elementary understanding of the meaning and scope of the First Amendment."

Thats from a open letter to the ESA (availible here: http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/633/633763p1.html ) where he also makes other stupid remarks like how video games are designed to train children to kill (you might think americas army (the game) would be a prime example for that argument, he chose to go with DOOM) and personal remarks aimed at Douglas Lowenstein. I personally don't give a damn about anything he has to say.

85 year old Grandmother is [url="http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/050727/video_game_lawsuit.html?.v=2"]sueing Rockstar over GTA: San Andreas[/url] because the copy she bought for her 14 year old grandson contains a sex mini game. Said Grandmonther needs to realise what the "M" rating means. [:(!]

"She sought unspecified damages on behalf of herself and all consumers nationwide, saying the company should give up its profits from the game for what amounted to false advertising, consumer deception and unfair business practices."

hmm, asking a lot isn't she?

let's see:
> she bought the Mature rated game for her 14 year old grandson
> though the game contains the content, the child has no way to access it in normal circumstances, meaning there is no real 'deception' involved because when purchasing the game.
> where "unfair business practices" comes from i don't know.
> reading into the article it seems that the child has not seen or played the hidden material, and the grandmother has simply heard about it and is not happy it's in there, dispte what i've stated above
> and then we can go into parenting and watching what the child plays and downloads (since he would have had to download the mod to play it in the end, or search the web for the action replay codes to unlock it), but that's a whole nother area.

surly "giving up their profits" is a lot to ask for this. sounds like a money grab to me, dispite her annoyance at rockstar.

In other news - expect Rockstar to counter-sue the grandson for violating the EULA and modifying the game.

-d

Does anyone know of a case where mod makers were sued by the games creators? it seems to ring a bell but i cant think of anything specific.

[url]http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=4939[/url]

ooooh yeah, the nude mod. The big difference here is ofcourse that that was a Xbox game and this incident started with a PC mod. Then there's the action replay thing... which has been considered entirely legal untill now atleast.

i can see the whole mod comunity or games in general to come itno question here - i'm sure an overwhelming majority would be pro-modding, but no doubt there will be a few though, ol' Jack Thompson for one, that will want all modding to be made illegal and there to be laws expressily prohibitng devs to supply tools and resources with their games for modding purposes. i would hate to see that happen, and likewise i would hate to see devs do it themselves for fear of retibution brought about by explicid 3rd party mods. though i would consider such an occurance to be very unlikly.

GTA4 been pulled from sale in Australia:

http://www.theage.com.au/news/breaking/game-off-shelves/2005/07/29/1122…

If modding becomes taboo it could just swipe a whole chunk of the game industry out of existance, a modder myself i would hate to see that happen. Someone whom id actually like to hear their opinions on this (bad english, you get me) is cliffyb, being the huge supporter of mods that he is and being one of the few to actually release the tools that his company used to create the game with it (ofcourse this is not just his iniciative but rather that of the entire company, but cliffyb seems to be the vocal one at epic).

I can't see modding dying - after all, if no new moddable games were released ever again we'd still have a lot to mod with.

The issue has to be R* making the purely expedient business decision to 'disable' the content while still shipping it and not to notify rating organisations. That was greedy (meet their shipping date without rework or extra QA), and now they are paying the price.

I just wonder if [url="http://gtadomain.gtagaming.com/images/sa/secrets/wanker.jpg"]any[/url] of [url="http://gtadomain.gtagaming.com/images/sa/secrets/cokopops.jpg"]the other[/url] [url="http://gtadomain.gtagaming.com/images/sa/secrets/wanking.jpg"]easter eggs[/url] were mentioned...

an open letter to Senator Clinton from Steven Johnson is author of "Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter"

well worth you time to read it:

[url]http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/…]

Aside from the question of what might come from this event, something here confuses me a little.
GTA is a game where players are somewhat encouraged to steal cars, beat up padestrians and kill prostitutes with rocket propelled grenades (before gleefully dancing over to their corpse and looting them). I find it a little odd that the rating system considers that this is all ok for "M17+", but heaven forbid that the game contains a sexual scene.

Secondly, the thing I don't like that is all this game bashing stuff is flavor of the month again without a better argument than "it influences children". I'm dissapointed that despite using (nearly) the same rating system as for films, games made for adults and only sold to adults are being critisized for being "harmful to children".

quote:
I'm dissapointed that despite using (nearly) the same rating system as for films, games made for adults and only sold to adults are being critisized for being "harmful to children".

The game bashing crowd are of course not game players themselves and do not understand that games are to a large extent for adults. They associate computer games as entertainment for young children, so when they see a violent computer game they just think of children being exposed to the violence.

I think it?s a similar situation to when rock and roll came out and the parents didn?t understand it and so tried to ban it. The hypocritical thing is that those children that fought for their right to listen to rock and roll are the same people today fighting to ban violent computer games.

And I think the sexually explicit nature of the hot coffee mod is just an excuse to attack what some consider amoral. They aren?t really trying to stop the sexual content; they are just using it as an excuse to attack violent and immoral games.

Here?s an idea for the Americans leading this game bashing: if you want to stop violence, don?t worry about banning computer games, worry about banning firearms.

its been happening since the dawn of time or atleast since the dawn of civilization, the older generation dosent understand the younger. an article which tells you essentially what most of you would allready know but also spends a bit of time on that problem (has this been linked here allready?): http://economist.com/printedition/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=4246109

btw has anyone tried contacting jack thompson? because ive seen one or few make the attempt and well... its like IRC banter. He comes back with much of the same talk id expect from some public chatroom. Cartoonist Scott Ramsoomair of VG cats is talking rather infomally himself but ive seen other examples of Thompson acting the way he is here in response to other more formal emails if they come from essentially any member of the public talking against his views. linky: http://www.vgcats.com/jack.php

some examples of things thompson has said from that link:
"Get a name and a life"
" uh,no. i don't have time for twits"
"HOnestly, are all of you gamers on drugs, or what?"
"dear idiot:"

as i said i beleive this because ive seen multiple examples of him behaving much the same to other completely unrelated people. There was on example where he accidently emailed a letter for someone else to someone who was having a similar debate with him, anyone got the link for that?

build up stadium from training and regeneration facilities,youth school,cheerleadres,scouting department and marketing...just try it...

if u have some questions related to game just ask me or contact me via mail (el.ktulu@gmail.com)...

you play 4 leagues matches in one week-> Monday,Tuesday,Thursday,Friday...
cup mathces(national cup,world league)-> Wednesday
friendly matches->Saturday(national matches),Sunday

Can someone check this out
It looks to me like we've been spammed again.

quote:Originally posted by Kezza

Can someone check this out
It looks to me like we've been spammed again.

please dont take this as a spam...this game is free so we cannot afford payed advertise and we have to use forums to tell people that there is great game like this one...

I just wanna ask if somebody joined? if yes and u have some problems with the game, just tell me and I will help u to get trough basics of game...

Australians don't care much for Ice Hockey mate - I checked it out in the hope that it was field hockey :P

If anyone is genuinely having problems with the game send a private message to Ktulu.

Ktulu, whether you like it or not, your continual bumping of this thread can be considered spam. You've given it enough time for anyone interested to check it out. Time to let it fall mate.

I feel kind of bad for ktulu, I just want to expand a tiny bit on what SB said to explain the apparent lack of interest for ktulu. It?s true that most Aussies are generally sports mad, but Ice Hockey really isn?t on the scope at all over here. If it was rugby or AFL or cricket we?d probably be right into it, but Ice Hockey just isn?t our thing.

Sorry mate. I did check it out and give it a fair go, but I just couldn?t get into it.
Good luck.

I felt bad, then I realised he wasn't a contributing member of the forum.

I have to say I dont mind playing the odd sports game and Ice Hockey is one that I have tryed from time to time and had fun with it. But im not so sure about the ones that you have to play as a manager im sad to say that im not one of those people that can play a game that way I like to get in to the thick of it when it comes to that type of game. And being a manager in a game just to set up a team and manage it is like having one big setup screen that never gets to where you realy want to be, And thats getting in there and playing it.

But best of luck with it as im sure there are many people out there that will like to play a game
in that way.

But it's not for me.

I took a quick look, and it looked possibly interesting - if you're into ice hockey. I hate to say, but when I saw that you could pay for 'extra' features I decided that there was probably a catch that I was never going to spend the time to find out.

My gut feel is that a 'manager' game really needs you to love the idea of the underlying element. So loving the Civilisation and Simcity style thing means that I'm obviously a benevolent dictator at heart. I don't see myself as a sports team manager (for _any_ sport) though.

Best wishes to our slovakian visitor though - I hope he succeeds.

mcdrewski->thanks a lot, we have almost 2leagues full but not everyone is active...I know that ice hockey isnt so popular here in australia as cricket or AFL, but i have seen that australia have some ice hockey teams...
And that extra features which u mentioned are just "extra"-> for example if u have it you can add logo to your team,you can write longer personal message, automatic friendly schedule, better discussion but nothing that make advantage over your opponent...
I hope that some people will register.
And big big thanks that you havent deleted it, even thoug it looks like spam...
best regards ktulu

Hey guys, just givin Hockey Arena a lil plug. As one of the rare Aussies who are mad about Ice Hockey i have to say i enjoy playing the game and as for the Sponsor Pack which you can buy, all it does is make the game a lil more user friendly (team logo, automatic friendly scheduler....etc), mostly it's designed for people who want to help suport Hockey Arena (like servers n that kinda stuff). But yeah I understand that it's kinda hard to get into if your not a fan of Ice Hockey, but hey if you are a fan definatly give it a try and if you need any help email me at chris_t58@hotmail.com

Thanks guys.

The foul Necromancer Ktulu, having failed his task, retired back to the pit in which he came. Yet, he was merely biding his time, teaching dark secrets to his young apprentice Tomo707.
For two moons, master taught pupil, until the Apprentice was ready.
'Go, young student. Do what must be done.'
Tomo707 bowed low to his master, and journeyed forth.

Tomo707 arrived at his destination, a festering pit; layers of dead and dying piled up. Drawing upon all the dark powers at his disposal, he summoned forth a corpse, corpulent with flatulent gases.

'ARISE!' Said Tomo707 'Arise once more! Let there be suffering!'

Yet nobody cared.

Very well done. It will be great to see more machinema done with the source engine.
Good lip-synching.
Great choice in closing soundtrack also. Makes me want to watch LOTR again?

Oh and, what a great technology this is - finally we don?t have to look at Tom Cruise!

lol i actually picked up on this one the other day aswell and ive read a bit of a blurb by the guy who made it. He says its not entirely finished which i suppose you could say is true (i think the figure was 75% complete or something) but it really does show off the opportunities (curses self for learning matinee in unrealED instead of waiting for source :P ).

Cool movie. Makes me wanna see more adaptions, or even groups trying to improve on some old movies with it! (I wouldn't mind seeing Ninja Scroll redone like this for example [;)])

btw, Unreal Tournament has a similar technology for some time as well. They have a demo with the "Who's on first" sketch [url="http://www.3dexcellence.com/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=166"]available[/url].

Recent Javachat conversation:

A: there's this freakish bug crawling across my monitor
A: it follows the mouse caret when I move it
B: cool take a screenshot
A: ok
A: no, wait..that's retarded

I'm sure a lot of artists have done this before, but I was in a painting class and I made a bad stroke and my immediate reaction was to go for the "CTRL Z" command. [:X]

hahahaha. love it.

i've never done anything that bad but usually when i'm sketching or writing and i make a mistake my mind thinks "ctrl z" for a moment before i in clearer mine i think "dang it! why can't fixing a mistake be as easy in real life as it is on a pc?"

I sometimes accidently say stuff like Delete instead of Remove in real life.

Working in the garden... "Hey, lets delete those plants."

Mik is great fun to watch in action. I'm pretty sure he doesn't know what day it is right now. [:P]

My favourite stupid thing Mik has done lately would have to be when he got one of those emails with pictures of dogs wearing sunglasses at about the time he got a businessy email. He replied to everyone on the biz mail list saying "awww cuuute puppies!".

As for me, when I'm exhausted I sometimes talk at length without using real words. [:P]

Scott.

ill be out somewhere and someone will say something funny and I have to stop myself from saying 'LOL'

Watching rage in the early hours of the morning i kept having the impulse that i needed to knock the mouse before the screensaver kicked in. I blame it on watching music DVDs, downloaded videos and such on my computer. The worse part is i would be like "oh heh its the TV, how silly of me..." and then 5 minutes later id have the same impulse again.

The real worry is when, in a state of half asleep daze with a partner trying to seduce you, you start getting confused between what you do when using a computer, and what you do when having sex...

I've been guilty once, many, many years ago [:(] I'd been working 4pm to 9am for several months.

OHHH DEAR lorien!

That's pretty weird... but not as weird as screaming "STEVE BALMER!!! WOOO" in their face (which I don't recommend!).

Scott.

Drank for 10 hours on the weekend during Free Play. [:0] (not AT Free Play, btw. I wasn't blind drunk either, I was pacing pretty slow, but yeh..)

quote:Originally posted by Souri

Drank for 10 hours on the weekend during Free Play. [:0] (not AT Free Play, btw. I wasn't blind drunk either, I was pacing pretty slow, but yeh..)

ok souri where you there for the early friday sessions? if so remember.. If you buy a PSP your confroming to commusiem.

We had an old Subaru in the paddock for thrashing, and one day a mate, who is really into Battlefield Vietnam, was going up to try and get the car started.. He opened the door and some stray cat jumped out of the thing, taking him by surprise... He jumped back quick, and his hands came up into his FPS WSAD + Mouse position with his left finger clicking!

One of the funniest/saddest things I've ever seen!

I made a ctrl+z movement ( u know that flick of the wrist)whilst making a hot glass sculpture, burnt my fingers/hand on the hot steel rod holding the molten sculpture. Felt like a tard. Had to tell my assistants that it was an unvolentary movement cause by muscle stress, which was more believable. Thank god there where no CG people around.
Oh and sometimes i mutter "OWNED!" for lifes little achievements when combating social situation. eg. finding a great park, throwing paper in a bin from a distance. etc etc. try it, feels good.

pop

Ah, funny stuff.
I tend to do it with games a lot as well. Do something stupid and the impulse is to hit Ctrl Z to undo that bullet wound, or holding down the wheel button to try and rotate an in-game model around like I would if it was in Max.
Er, no, sorry, that isn?t my model in Half-life 2, I can?t select show wires and convert to edit poly to start playing with the mesh.
But then I guess I probably shouldn?t play games at 2 in the morning after modelling all night..

It gets scary when you play a lot of Grand Turismo (or any driving game), and you start to act like your in-game when your actually driving a real car. Must remember that in real life the cars can take damage, and you can?t bounce off railings.

I also tend to say "Powned" alot to non gaming friends and even my mother.

I fell asleep during Batman Begins last night. [:0]

Everything after the bit where you first see the batmobile is all a blur. [:X]

I have been playing World of Warcraft WAY too much lately, and have this strange habit of jumping over shadows, cracks in the floor etc.

It really hit me how much I'd been playing when I was DRIVING home from Uni, and I got the urge to jump my CAR over tree shadows on the road. Scary stuff...[:X]

you want stupid... I"LL GIVE YOU STUPID.. When i work at coles me and a friend who works with me goes in to the party section when no one is looking. finding the winne the pooh masks and while whearing it screaming the TICK battlecry out "SPOON!!!!"

heh heh I'm starting to look pretty darn smart standing next to you guys [8D]

You're not standing next to them - that's a pot plant Mick.

My "stupid" stories (or at least the ones I discuss in public) are typically computer based:

- Pulled apart a PC power supply to replace a fuse, then put it back together without a crucial bit of insulation. When I powered it up a firecracker went off (was a ceramic Cap blowing) and shut off power to the whole office.

- While uninstalling linux one day - deleted my whole windows partition and all my stored Uni projects instead of the old linux partition I'd carefully backed up to CD.

Once when I was at a LAN we ran out of chairs, so I had to sit on an exercise bike while I played. It was a relic of an exercise bike and had sharp edges all over. I unwittingly popped the bike on top of my power cable and it cut through it... sparks jumped off the bike, the power went out, and all while I was peddling furiously having scared the shit out of myself!

That was pretty dumb (but apparently pretty funny to watch).

Scott.

Don't worry Mcdrewski- deleting windows is good for the soul... Pity about your work though.

Hey, I think the Half Life 2 strips look very cool and shows some potential - you could get a real good following from it. You just need to polish it a bit more. Use Anti-aliased fonts and smooth out the speech bubbles (redo them in Illustrator and paste them in PS), and make the panels a bit more interesting in terms of placement, shape etc (take a look at some modern comics for inspiration).

Thanks kindly,Souri! I'm going to blush here, and confess to using ms paint for the editing, but I'll take your advice!

It's going to be a bit hard to do some of the scripts we have with the HL theme, as textures can be quite limited. Once we get a wacom or a scanner, we were considering doing a more comicy sketch type style. Any suggestions? As you can tell from the first two sketches (done in complete boredom) I have no talent with a mouse!

argh my eyes! they bluryness hurts my brain!

quote:argh my eyes! they bluryness hurts my brain!

This comming from a guy who has Bon Scott handing you a beer for his pic? [;)]

Mick Gordon
Lead Audio Engineer
Lava Injection Studios
www.lavainjection.com

that's a good kind of blury [:)]

(and it's Malcolm Young)

You need to make yourself known and get yourself out into the middle of it all. If you have a real passion for music then simply try to get onto a small indie title to do theirs. A decent music guy is in HIGH demand ( well we always needed one ) as they are simply in the minority in games dev.

Join the IGDA - Brisbane Chapter
The Forum
http://www.igda.org/Forums/forumdisplay.php?forumid=196

Make friends with Mick over at Lava Injection as he is an independant Music composer supplying music to games. He is also a key figure in the IGDA also. He would be a fantastic wealth of advice for someone in your field.

If you are serious, talanted and above all passionate then just get in amongst it so to speak and you will find that opportunaties will present themselves. When they do its just a matter of leaping on them and wrestling them to the ground the old Steve Irwin way... CRIKEY!

Hey Mik, glad you're still on the scene [:D]
This is Josh btw, remember Arena Battles in 2003?
Man that seems along time ago. Problem is my folio, its all over the place.

Over the next few months I'll be putting together a new folio, including my music compositions that need to be taken out of my head (the hard bit). I haven't seen Qantm guys in a while, how'd did Scootarama turn out after AGDC (and the award [:D]?

Oh Hi Josh [:)] Sure do remember Arena Battles.. still got a copy sitting around home somewhere.

Yep get that new folio sorted out. heh Scootarama is been placed on "Indefinate Hold" due to 90% of the team succesfully getting a job at varius games dev houses around brisbane. WOOT.

Glad your group got employed, great work!

Heard of any other ex-Qantm/Qantm students getting employed in the industry? I'll still interested in getting in, but I doubt it will be in the next year (I'm realistic! :D)

a lot of artists from the dip got work, and Mark and Brian (two of the coders on emissary) found work afterwards aswell. they are the only ones i know of though cos i was in that team.

No sniping at all from this inexperienced gutter dweller - I'm happy giving you the benefit of my (somewhat jaded) doubt.

Where can I download the game or demo? I'd like to see just how creative you've been!

Yes Please Do Show.

pffffft YOUR models are so low poly! Its you who are behind. Get with the times dude, my models are all 4million tris a piece. And its running on my uber Voodoo 3. All you have done is show how much of a n00b you really are bragging about such low specs. [:p]

What a joke, moderators - cull this fools babble.

/my two cents.

You did not show us what you preached in your last post and you still will not show us in this post. How will you expect us to belive you?

lame
here is a tip just for you........shut up

Well I suppose I should comment - I'm not going to get personal like some - pity to see someone who sponsors a site wanting to cut off debate.

On the more constructive side - yeah sure I can give a demo.
ALSO - I have a good idea - if you want to email me 40-50,000 poly models with some type of joint animation file I can convert to my format to test in my environment - this way you know I'm not cheating. Otherwise, how can I prove what I'm saying.

For my demo I will have to encrypt artistic content using crypto api first - everyone has property rights eh? Can expect a demo next month.

Anyway, sounds like some of you don't care and think that 4 million triangles on a Voodoo card is the appropriate standard at which to be technically impressed - interesting idea where do I get a Voodoo card from now days so I can prove the technical impossibility of this ridiculous suggestion.

But the point of what I was saying is LOW POLY is USELESS or should I say DEAD is good advice take it or leave it.

quote:Do not feed the troll...

http://members.aol.com/intwg/trolls.htm

Why everytime a debate is lost by you dominant group on this site do you finish with that childish comment?

This isnt a debate - your not asking for opinions your stating what you believe to be fact without any evidence to back up your reports.

In a nice way, put up - or shut up [:D]

You posted about a month ago with a similar post - touting polygonal goodness - I emplore you to make me look the fool and show us your masterpiece.

Until that happens - your just another one of the many *many* people who claim grand things and never deliver.

For the record, Ive never once stated you cannot do what you claim, but you must admit stating something like this:

"1000x1000 plus textures and the background with 3000x3000 plus"

Sounds to me like you have absolutely no idea what your talking about - that is nothing to be proud of at all - unless you told me you had that running on a PS2 I wouldnt bat an eyelid at those specs.

I have a couple of questions for you.

1) What exporter are you exporting your meshes into your engine with?
2) What raw texture format are you using ?

quote:so I can prove the technical impossibility of this ridiculous suggestion.

Forget that for the moment and focus on prooving what you speak of first, then afterward you can dazzle us with your technical prowess by solving Mdobele's very achievable challenge. [:)]

Also lastly - to answer your question that you have so thoroughly researched " What does low poly matter ? "

It matters threefold:

1)Why would anyone want to spend the time modelling, UVW mapping, texturing, weighting and animating such a high res model when I could build 5 other models in that time that would a) cost the same amount and b) look no different in silhouette from your 40,000 poly one?.

2) Rome total war I believe can handle hundreds - if not thousands of characters on screen, including dozens of unit types. This genre of game where the camera is a long way from the individual models thrives on budgets.

3) Investors and Publishers are smarter than you think - developers must develop a product that is financially feasible. Forget the rest. And simply stating " I can push more pollygons " is only going to drive development costs up. Why would any investor or publisher in his right mind pick up a project that takes advantage of your uber engine and massive polycounts, when a similar project is on offer that would cost less than half the amount and have an end reuslt that looks pretty much identical ?

If it is of any interest to anyone -

Animation Format -
bvh motion files which I believe are supported by
3dsmax, lightwave, lifeforms, motionbuilder and poser - not sure about Maya.

Texture format -
jpg / dds for transparent
(but can convert pretty much anything)

Model format -
not surprisingly I prefer .x but can convert from obj, 3ds and about 20 other formats - not maya though which probably annoys anyone from Krome reading this but hey who cares?

Why would you use a compressed texture format for your super super optimised engine? [:P]

Scott.

Well actually you make a good point rezn0r as directx expands jpg's to be the same size in memory whether you use bmp's or any other format. This is for speed of rendering in memory - I'm pretty sure the consoles work the same way. But hey why not save a few disk mb especially if you're trying to email or download stuff to people who don't have ADSL - yeah ADSL, so good to be able to download at 1.5 mega bits I don't have to wait anymore - yeah.

Wow you fellows can be mean when you want to be! It's
like poser jumped into a field of sheep and they all
turned out to be rams [:p].

I'd like to add another factor to Moore's equation; the
higher the processor/memory speed, the sloppier the next
version of Windows will be, clogging the system to a crawl.

For an objective opinion, try looking at the same title on
PC and XBox to see the difference in speed and quality
using what is essentially the same hardware.

hehe. well looking forward to the demo.

quote:
quote:Do not feed the trolls
http://members.aol.com/intwg/trolls.htm

Comment by poser

Why everytime a debate is lost by you dominant group on this site do you finish with that childish comment?

Okay, I'm trying not to take this off-topic... but since I was the original poster of that comment in your other thread, I figured I'd explain.

Firstly - despite the somewhat confrontational tone of your post, I was actually impressed. I recall that last time you posted you had a rendering/animation only rig, and no 'game' code. The fact that you've gone off and put in AI, collision, networking etc suggests that you're actually a pretty talented coder, and that you are listening to what people here say and are taking it on-board.

The reason why people might immediately [url="http://members.aol.com/intwg/trolls.htm"]dismiss your post as a troll[/url], however is that at first reading it simply looks like one.

To explain, imagine that you walked into a job interview and in response to a question, read your post word for word (lots of your potential employers DO read sumea). Do you think you'd get the job talking about "stupid inefficient engines", asking if anyone has ever heard of moore's law, or complaining that you got no thanks for something unrelated 14 years ago...

I certainly wouldn't employ you based on that. People here also won't welcome you with open arms for the same reasons. They'll more likely assume that you're trying to start a fight, ie: you're a Troll - even if you're not.

So - good luck - I'm really looking forward to seeing the demo - after all, you've made some pretty impressive claims!

There are a few things that really make me skeptical

1. His name is poser
2. The first topic was using obvious Poser models (bad ones at that)
3. Most importantly, if his engine is really that much further ahead of the pack, why is he spending his time arguing with people on a relatively small forum rather than working with a big company.

My opinion is that he is someone who actually does know what he is talking about and is just trying to piss us all off. The best example is using Poser models, if there is one thing that is sure to set off a game art froum its someone posting Poser models and claiming that they're great

i seriously do not buy it

Just send me a compiled demo Poser that backs up your claims and I'll hapily eat humble pie. Untill then I will simply not believe a word you say because my experience shows me otherwise.

For those interested in technical stuff.

More on the technical specs of what's being done - I have purposely left out discussion on the other most important part of 3D graphics performance ? shader throughput as this was not what the discussion was about - i.e. it was about low vs high poly counts...

Testing on NVidia 5200
Fill Rate (pixels/sec.) 0.5 billion
Vertices per Second 31.5

Achieved -
10 x 45,000 polygon character smooth animation with total texturing exceeding 2000x2000 each
1 x 110,000 polygon environment background model
15 frames per second.

Testing on NVidia 6600
Fill Rate (pixels/sec.) 4.0 billion
Vertices per Second 375 million

Achieved -
70 x 45,000 polygon character smooth animation with total texturing exceeding 2000x2000 each
1 x 1,000,000 polygon environment background model
20 frames per second.

It's very interesting that these two figures 1. verts per second and 2. fill rate are a great predictor of the throughput or should be if you're not using a slow engine. If you do a simple calculation you can see at (10x45,000 + 110,000) x 3 (verts per polygon) x 15 = approximately 25 million verts per second which is quite close to the raw limit quoted by Nvidia of 31.5 million. Similarly this seems to hold for the 6600 with (70 x 45,000 + 1,000,000) x 3(verts) x 20 = approximately 250 million verts per second.

The small extra loss (about 30%) is for operations of game environment, animation, blending, gravity, collision, networking, network play and user input and a giving up of some processor time for other programs (only required for fully windows games).

NVidia 7800 (ps3 and xbox 360 are similar)
Fill Rate (billion pixels/sec.) 10.32
Vertices/sec. (million) 860

Estimate -
200 x 45,000 polygon character smooth animation with total texturing exceeding 2000x2000 each
1 x 2,500,000 polygon environment background model
20 frames per second.

Other cards of interest for comparison
NVidia GeForce FX 5950 Ultra
Fill Rate (pixels/sec.) 3.8 billion
Vertices per Second 356 million

NVidia 6800
Fill Rate 6.4 billion pixels/sec.
Vertices per Second 600 Million

ATI RADEON X850 XT PLATINUM EDITION
Fill Rate 8.6 billion texels/sec.
Vertices per Second 810 Million

ATI RADEON X850 XT
Fill Rate 8.32 billion pixels/sec.
Vertices per Second 780 Million

ATI RADEON 9600 XT
Fill Rate 2.0 billion pixels/sec.
Vertices per Second 250 Million

Ps. I have been corrected the PS3 RSX is said to be...

Vertices Performance: 1.1 billion vertices per second

And a shader operation throughput from hell.

Definately looking forward to seeing the demo Poser [:)]

just out of interest why do you seem to be aiming for such a low framerate, i believe it needs to be at least up to 24 and probably 30 for it to be a reasonable speed for gameplay.

Sounds like a perfect world kind of scenario. How many textures does your 1 environment model have? Try this as a test, take your 1 high poly background environment model and chop it into about 200 different models with different textures on them and see how your engine preforms then. See how fast your code can deliever that info to the GPU. I think you'll find that the CPU spends more time on the model than the GPU does rendering the thing.

Poser: Hmm, a post full of specs....
Doesn't really mean much since you haven't show anyone a piece of practical or tangible proof.

I'm with Hazard, Show us a demo, its not really that hard is it??

Hi Rahnem,

what would be your reason(s) for breaking up the model?

Regards,
Mark

Ok Rahnem,

I asked you a loaded question so I won't wait for the answer as I know your reasons.

1. To animate the parts of the model so that you can blow things up destroy and generally create havoc on my peaceful scenery.
2. To selectively distance or field of view cull.

Well I really don't know why I keep sharing this pearl of wisdom but it is all in the materials. I.e. animate and change and hide / show the materials don't do separate models or skinning as these are slow and actually not even as flexible as working with materials. This is by far the fastest way based on at least the way directx does things and I suspect it is the same for the consoles. E.g. if you have a lamp post you want to knock down give it a separate material and rotate / animate that / then can even hide / show a broken / good lamp post material ? if you want to cull it just don?t show that material. Boy I shouldn't be telling everyone this - it's the unchained VGA mode all over again.

Higher poly models are (generally) much nicer to look at than the lower poly equivelents. However, more is not always better.

For a developer, low poly is simply more cost effective, with lower development times and expenses due to the relative speed in which low poly assets can be created. Add to this the fact that developers are trying to deliver their product to the widest possible consumer base. This means delivering a working product to people who haven't upgraded since 2000.
Why do you think valve did those surveys before half life 2 was released? It gave them a fair idea of what systems their target audience owned, and how they needed to scale their software.

Of course, with the next gen consoles coming out, scalability can be ignored somewhat; within the context of the budget anyhow. In a perfect world, no one would have to worry about things like meeting deadlines, or profit margins.

Also worth noting; which brings us back to Posers original post, is the shortage of game artists capable of creating quality high poly assets. I might be wrong, but artists that tend to focus on this area are generally more interested in working in the film industry. I think the pay and relative job security is more attractive.

So yeah, Low poly is not a waste of time and creativity. It's what games are made with, and therefore a skill any prospective game artist should be proficient in. The ability to create quality high poly assets is undoubtably desirable, but is not yet required to get a job with.

Personally, I believe everyone serious about getting into games should learn to work with high poly. It'll give you an edge over artists who have focused entirely on the low. Be versatile guys, and willing to embrace new techniques and technologies. Employers love people who can perform outside of their job description, and it gives them another reason not to sack you when it's time to 'trim the fat' ;).

Poser, I'm interested to know how your engine handles stuff like light, shadow and sparkly bits. Pushing that number of polies is impressive to people in the know. But for average schmucks like me, it's the 'oooh ahhh' factor that wins things over. Plus, how complex are the meshes you have in there? If there is lighting, could the surface area of a mesh create a variable in performance?
I mean say if you have two spheres of 50k polies, one is round and perfectly smooth, while the other is basically a gigantic demon turd, with spiny bits, chunks of corn and david hasslehoff hanging off it.

Err, lets see some screenshots!!

I believe the reason for Rahnems question, is that levels are simply not built in one huge chunk. It's simply not feasible.
Level designers aren't going to receive all their assets at once for starters, and once everything is in, they'll need to be able to adjust things to get the balance right.

quote:
Show us a demo, its not really that hard is it??

Nope - http://www.fraps.com/

quote:Originally posted by poser


[snip] don't do separate models or skinning as these are slow and actually not even as flexible as working with materials. [snip] if you have a lamp post you want to knock down give it a separate material and rotate / animate that / then can even hide / show a broken / good lamp post material ? if you want to cull it just don?t show that material. [snip]

I might be misunderstanding, but are you saying that the most 'efficient' way to animate a building falling over would be to build 50 models per second of stop-motion animated collapse, each with it's own material(s), and then cycle through them one by one?

You either need one hell of a tools programmer to automate this process from the artist's animations, or you're going to have an army of artists out for your blood.

Hi Sorceror Bob,

the lights don't really make much of a difference - using 3 but if wanted to use lots it might. For lighting effects - i.e. something in lower light in a scene most of the time a trick is to use different normals not to use different lights as this is faster / but mainly because it is less hastle than setting up lots of lights. (again more free knowledge ? I?ve really got to stop giving this away but on the other hand I?m not doing it for the money)

Hi mcdrewski, no that's not what I'm saying - but I'm sorry I'm really not willing to explain the implementation details in full.

EVERYONE,
Yes you will get a demo but it was just going to be character animation with backgrounds next month to prove the poly rates now it seems everyone wants more than that?

Ok so what I'm going to do is give some simple character animation this week and then for next month everyone can tell me what else they want me to prove. I.e.
Scenery / other object manipulation.
Volumetric special effects.
Shader effects.
Character Logic.

The simple demo already has collision detection, network play and things like gravity, panning, movement (mouse driven), clipping (for characters only).

Ps. I asked for but did not receive anyone else's models so I could prove I wasn't cheating - so now you will have to take my word on the poly counts. If when you see the models you disbelieve the poly counts then you will need to send me one of your own.

If anyone wants to then tell me what video cards you are running so I can tell you what to expect. I?m thinking of allowing you to specify the number of models to show simultaneously so you can test it on varying cards.