Posts by Defrag

  • Lets talk about circumcision shall we?

    Quote

    I personally think it's completely wrong to cut part of a person's genitals off until they're old enough to make the decision themselves. It might hurt a bit more when you're older, but then maybe that'll encourage you to take the decision seriously rather than bullshit social compliance. And of course CUTTING PART OF YOUR DICK OFF is then your own decision. Ah Yeah

    I 100% agree with Thrik. It seems circumcision's popularity in some countries (including the states) is more down to ignorance and social pressure rather than any kind of benefit. If it was meant to be chopped off by default, we wouldn't have it in the first place.

  • TFT vs CRT

    I've got a fairly old 20" TFT (second hand Viewsonic VP201B) and, other than the murky colours at the lower brightness levels and slight ghosting, I much prefer it to my old 21" Trinitron CRT with the exception of gaming. This is quite an old monitor model so I'd imagine the newest TFTs are a lot better

    Afaik some of the TN panels still have fairly dodgy viewing angles (to the extent where colours will change when you move your head) so you might have to watch for that. The best advice when buying a monitor is, if possible, go check it out in person. What is great for one person may be unacceptable for another.

    As for the refresh rate question: The two things (CRT & TFT refresh rates) aren't directly comparable, really. CRTs scan lines down the screen which gives the flicker, whereas TFTs simply change state when needed (so once a pixel is 'on' it doesn't change again until it has to display a different colour). I run this TFT at 60hz and it just looks solid. A 60hz CRT gives me a headache inside about an hour.

  • dm_walkway

    Some of those stone walls look a bit too thin. They're big stone blocks, not prefab concrete breeze blocks Also, the lighting is a bit flat / dull in the first shot -- a few torches would've made it more interesting.

    Looks like a nice theme (though as Zombie pointed out, it ain't aztec) and stuff but it also looks like you could've done a lot more with it with some more work

  • The random model thread!

    It looks very organic and interesting as ever, JonM.

    Here's something I started messing around with tonight -- it's Space Ghost! Alrighty! Doubt I'll have much time to work on this due to mod stuff & trying to touch up my portfolio:

    I don't have any side references (apparently space ghost both fought villains and interviewed guests front-on at all times) and the legs on the model sheet are the most wonky looking pieces of anatomy I've seen in ages, but it should be fun to try and muddle through. I wanted to make Moltar too, but there's only a handful of decent pics around.

    Maybe I'll stick a comedy beard on him for the 'new' grandpa model, too. OH YEAAAAAAH! (click).

    [Blocked Image: http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~msimp2k2/mode…ost_rough01.jpg][Blocked Image: http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~msimp2k2/mode…ost_rough02.jpg]

  • University paper

    6 is important (gamasutra has papers on this) as it is used a lot. It encompasses a lot things when it comes to networking games.

    I'm not sure how much multicasting is used or whether it was one of my lecturer's pet subjects or something. AFAIK it is used in some MMORPGs. Basically, it's a feature (built into the TCP/IP protocol) that lets a single computer send one packet to an entire group. A group contains one or more IP addresses. In effect, what it lets you do is reduce bandwidth usage on servers as the outgoing packets are then duplicated at the next router & sent on (as opposed to sent out manually one by one by the server). If you haven't been told about it or you're not writing on MMORPGs, then it's probably safe to ignore it.

  • University paper

    Check out gamasutra, it has a lot of good resources on those kinds of things (challenges faced when designing networking stuff for online gaming) amongst others.

    Off the top of my head, here's some issues to ponder:

    [*][*:2knplo3w]UDP versus TSP
    [*:2knplo3w]Reliability mechanisms with UDP -- when to use it and when to not bother (e.g. you need to make sure certain game events [chat messages, deaths, item pickups] get delivered reliably, whereas other events [player position] in most games can be unreliable as they get updated 20+ times per second regardless)
    [*:2knplo3w]Game architecture. Client/Server, peer to peer etc. Security.
    [*:2knplo3w]Absolute updates versus incremental (i.e. giving absolute position versus saying "the dude moved 5 units forward").
    [*:2knplo3w]Client prediction. Works great for some stuff (general movement), but can be dodgy for others (response to collisions etc. on a laggy connection). This also extends to the 'shot around corners' issue when unlagging client shots with hitscan weapons. How far do you unlag before certain users start to think it's really noticeable?
    [*:2knplo3w]Dead reckoning (very broad topic).
    [*:2knplo3w]What's the best balance when it comes to CPU usage and bandwidth? E.g. do you send 50 updates per second and require very little processing, or do you send 5 updates and have the client perform more local simulation?
    [*:2knplo3w]Multicasting. More for MMORPGs than anything at the moment.
    [*:2knplo3w]Smoothing algorithms such as cubic splines when updating object positions. Accuracy versus smoothness? If something stops updating in a game (say a player stops updating for a second) then do you 'rush' him back into place (teleport), or do you use a smoothing algorithm to slide him back into place (not so accurate, but less jarring to view).
    [*:2knplo3w]Reducing server resources. How do you make it so that your server and client runs at independent framerates? The server has a lot of processing to do usually, so it's important the server can run at a lower framerate (e.g. default tickrate for most servers is usually something like 33, but most clients will run at 30-100 fps) Interpolation, extrapolation etc. all come in here for the client, but then you have to take these into account when performing calculations.[/list]There's loads more but that's all I can remember off the top of my head.

    In particular, there's a great paper that describes UT's networking & how people perceive the game's responsiveness etc. when playing with both a good and bad quality connection. Also, the HL2 documentation (wiki stuff) on their networking will give you some ideas.

    As for technology: I think most games developers just write their own network stuff from scratch. Raknet(sp) is used for the mod & non-commercial community quite a bit.

    *edit - I'm uploading some of the papers I collected, so I'll post the link in a sec.

    Download: Rar file of papers I collected. Most of the good ones are .doc (particularly "The Internet Sucks.doc")

  • Do the dew, bitch!

    I got put off PA at uni because, being on a games course, there was always some gormless twat that would go around going "LOL PA FTW, this strip today had this bit where..." Yeah if I wanted to read PA I'd read PA, not have you describe it to me, FUCKER. You'd think I was intolerant or something.

    It can be quite funny the odd time, but I'm not a regular reader

    I like that comic someone pasted.

    This is me all over, haha: http://xkcd.com/302/

  • Fortress Forever is out

    I agree with some of your criticisms (e,g, HW's needs to feel more heavy duty), however, if you play a bit more you'll see that some of your impressions will change.

    E.g. Pyro. You say that it takes forever to burn someone to death; this is not the case! The pyro absolutely ruins people now. By ruins, I mean he dominates. We're probably going to tone down the pyro rather than tune up. Burn damage stacks; you have to hit people with all of your weapons while cyling (i.e. hit them with the cannon as you come in, then switch to flamethrower while throwing a napalm gren). If you stack burn damage, the person starts howling like a banshee and then dies very very quickly. The flamethrower in particular is very useful & disorientating now.

    The HW's AC has a heat meter to stop HWs standing & spraying everything without thinking. To get the best power, you need to get it up to the top speed and then keep it there without overheating. Personally, I'm not 100% happy with the mechanics of this, but I find it preferable to TFC style HW where it's just point and click with no other thought going into playing other than positioning.

    As for melee weapons and stuff like that, that's just .. different. We're not trying to be TF2, so the melee weapons are quite weak. We had toyed with a few ideas in the past (particularly giving the scout a stun stick so he could move blocking enemies out of the way) but in general melee weapons are either utility (wrench), desperation or humilation (crowbar). The scout is best suited for running flags, that's why his weapons are weak and he has concussion grenades. The scout doesn't die with one single shotgun shot, either and I've been killed by plenty of scouts on servers (the nailgun is pretty irritating and a good scout is fast).

    We're working on technical issues right now (crashes, bugs etc.) but we will be altering the gameplay & balance in future, so hopefully we can take care of some of the things you find disagreeable.

  • Fortress Forever is out

    The rocket launcher thing is down to the engine's interpolation. It uses past samples to smooth the projectile but, since when you fire a rocket it has no past samples, it has to wait a fraction of a second. You see the same problem in some of the TF2 videos. Mirv reduced its effect but it's still there :/

    Hopefully we can fix it in future because it annoys me, too.

  • Fortress Forever is out

    Thanks guys! Glad you gave it a chance

    Btw if anyone is having any crash issues, be sure to stop by our forum and post the mdmp files (instructions on the forums). There's been quite a lot of crashes that are in engine code, or the person also crashes when running other source games and/or mods, so there's a decent chance that some of the crashes aren't our fault.

    Also, get mapping! Need mo' maps, preferably new gameplay modes & attack & defend.