Posts by ReNo

That is hardly surprising though. I mean, a lot of places have strict uniform regulations, so banning hoodies is about as tame as it comes I guess if the majority of people were wearing hoodies to school though, that it would be a hard one to enforce.

Closest example to this that I had in my school days, was a mate who had a piercing below their bottom lip was forced to replace the spike thing he had in it with something smaller. Hardly in the same league as this example though. I can't believe that they truly thought her hair colour was distracting. For what, the first 10 seconds of seeing it? After that, its not like people would be staring at her hair instead of doing work. Unless they meant it as "with that hairstyle you are too hot and the boys are staring - make it uglier"

Thats really cool stolve, I like it. Its inspiring me to have a shot at a humanoid figure

I've some ideas for games I'd like to make, but the only mod I've really got in mind is Research Project: ELVA, which I started up just before HL2 was announced (bad timing). It is far from creative though, what with effectively being a rip off of Phantom Crash for the Xbox I still reckon it could be awesome though.

While I don't mind sharing map ideas and the like, the game designs I'd rather keep to myself for now. I don't think any of you guys are likely to steal them, but I'd still like to keep them under my hat for the time being. There are two I'm particularly proud of, and both are in tried and tested game genres, but they each have a few changes that are the focus of the gameplay. Either would be familiar to play, yet hopefully have those killer hooks that reel people in.

/secretive, paranoid mindset

I've seen that photo in here before haven't I?

I came across exactly the same problem when I made a CTF map Defrag, so I can appreciate the limitations. Hope you can come up with a solution - I never did and the map suffered for it. At least in this case it appears to be a purely cosmetic limitation - when I made Outland I ran out of grid space and it forced me to make layout sacrifices

As for the job fair, well Fat Sams isn't exactly the best venue in the world, but a better choice than Mardi I'd say I swear I got stuck to the carpet about 5 times anyway though! I'm a bit pissed off I was "done" with it so early though - they weren't giving out the free beers until 6.30 or whatever and I had nothing to do (other than waste time in the pointless lectures about DTBD and opportunities for international students) past 4pm so just left. Got some advice and encouraging comments from some of the staff there though, so it was worth a trip. Outerlight seems like a great opportunity in particular, what with them working with the Source engine and being based so near my home.

Love that second shot man, looks hot.

The first one I'm not so impressed by, mostly due to the rockwork along the top. Reminds me a bit of HL1 style rockwork - just a big, long, continuous cliff and the displacements aren't too believable or natural looking. Maybe try and spice that up a little with some towering outcrops or something. The big flat concrete wall between the cliff and the rest of the building is also pretty bland and doesn't help matters. The building itself is quite cool but has some awkward looking angles about it. The bit with the window on the left hand side for instance, doesn't look quite right to me.

By the way, did you go to that games industry job fair yesterday? I did but didn't stay for long - just walked around a few of the companies, chatted a bit, and forced my CV down their throats Shame there weren't more traditional games developers there, the only ones that were particularly well known were Real Time Worlds (upcoming games "Crackdown" and "All Points Bulletin") and DC Studios ("State of Emergency 2"), though a couple of lesser known ones were worth a look such as Outerlight (made "The Ship" mod for HL1 as a prototype for their Source engine version of the game due out next month) and Cohort Studios (lots of the now-closed Visual Science team started this one up).

Whats shit about the BF2 engine?

Only times I've been mildly tempted are when I see something hugely reduced, like Akira or Ghost in the Shell for £7 or something. Even then though, I've yet to actually buy one.

I have a PSP (though rarely used ) but have yet to buy a UMD movie for it. As with most people, the big turn off is having to buy a second copy for portable viewing after owning a home copy on DVD. I heard rumours of bundle deals for £5 or so over the retail price for UMD/DVD alone, and that would have been something that would tempt me, but there have been no signs of it actually happening. It doesn't really surprise me that they are gonna disappear at all - selling films on a format that can ONLY be used on one device at prices normally OVER the price of the standard DVDs doesnt make much sense to me. That and I tend to buy DVDs for the sake of collecting rather than frequent watching, so I doubt I'd ever really use UMD movies much.

Yeah, gameplay better than graphics, but graphics don't hurt either. I really hope that they can make good with this new controller and ensure third party support, because with those specs there is no way in hell they are likely to be getting many cross platform titles that aren't severely toned down/reworked, and that will scare off some publishers.

One thing that should be interesting about this generation is the (probable) wide range of price points. The Revolution is undoubtedly going to be the cheapest - it has to be to compete I imagine - and could be what, around £150 or less? The 360 is currently up at £280 but will probably be dropped to nearer £200 by the time the PS3 hits. The PS3 is almost certainly going to be the highest priced of the lot, I imagine going for over £300. That means we could see three consoles in the same generation with significant price differences at the same time. I wonder how much that will play a part in the relative success stories?

Resident Evil 4 is indeed visually amazing, but then it came out for a system that is smack bang in the middle of its class that generation. If the GC was techinically crippled compared to the other two of the generation, would RE4 have looked so awesome? I doubt it. Same goes for SoTC. You might say screw normal mapping and fancy shaders, but WITHOUT those things, you wouldn't be getting effects that contribute to the art style - be it the fur of the colossi, or cel-shading of Jet Set Radio, or crazy and beautiful particle effects of Otogi, or whatever else. Lifelike animation isn't divorced from a system's power either - dedicated CPUs for physics calculations such as inverse kinematics can help make them more realistic and specialised to suit the scenario, while lesser equiped systems will have to sacrifice these things for simpler, more generic animation.

In short, the technical prowess of a system helps empower developers to realise the art style they are going for.

Love the great outdoors areas - the snowy setting gives it a nice fresh feeling. Belgarion, I think the building in the last shot is bland because it isn't a building per se - looks to me like a road tunnel.

I'm sure I read an article about MS wanting amateur developers to get in touch about putting out their games on Live, but I can't remember where.

Map is looking really nice. Pillar in the first pic looks a bit wierd or out of place to me though.

Staircase is sexy, very Silent Hill esque

Mullet? How is peri's hair a mullet?!

I'm back on Chaos Legion on the PS2. Not a particularly noteworthy game, and generally regarded as a poor mans Devil May Cry, but for some reason I feel the need to finish it. I got it ages ago and put it to one side as its so damn hard, but I'm getting by ok since I've started again. I'm gonna be so proud when I'm done with it

I think its a nice feature, but one that people are putting too much hype on.

Ahahaha Spirals, the Fibonacci sequence, the Holy Gift?! This guy is completely crazy! Either that or Tool ar fucking crazy. Either way, get calling the psyche ward

Nexus - the sharpen tool should only be used when it is needed. I don't know how those shots looked when they came straight out of the game (I've never taken screenshots in BF2), but you have gone too far with the sharpening here. Far too far. I'm sure you can notice the artifacts that oversharpening has introduced to the images - just look at the trees and it is hard to miss.

If you want to do your best in presenting your work, then try turning off all of the interfering screen clutter such as weapon models and the HUD. Its an easy step, but one that helps out quite a bit. If you do feel that the captured screenshots are too blurry or bland, then you can do little touch ups in photoshop with contrast/brightness tweaks or a very small amount of sharpening, but going too far doesn't do your work any favours.

Quote from PS_Mouse

I'm sure dissonance will be pleased to know that all the lighting in this map was done purely with point lights (I don't think I even used light_spot)

So that explains why the lighting looks so bland Sorry, couldn't resist. Honestly though I do think the lighting is pretty poor in the earlier shots - I appreciate you wanted to get away from the typical high-contrast style of most NS maps, but it just comes across as featureless and lazy to me. The darker areas look far nicer to me, but then I am a sucker for orange

I like KT Tunstall too, but I'm also slightly biased because she comes from just over the river from me Also, a band I like (and my mate is the cousin of the lead singer in) called "Amplifico" support her quite a bit and their lead singer recently did some backing vocals for her. Check out Amplifico if you like KT Tunstall - they are just a small band but they are a nice sort of jazz pop mix along a similar vein to KT.

http://www.amplifico.net/