Posts by Rick_D

  • Gunman kills 32 on campus!

    Quote from D3ads

    Of course you'd think that as a result of such a horrendous incident that the authorities would finally question and debate America's rights to bare arms, but I doubt very much that anything will change in that respect.

    I used to believe that the right to bear arms was a questionable one at best, but when you actually look at the facts, you'll find that people who legally own guns and passed all the tests to get them are not the people going around shooting people all the time. It's not very often that a criminal legally buys a gun. The country is already flooded with weapons, and by taking away the guns from responsible gun owners who legally acquired their weapons all you're doing is disarming people who aren't doing anything wrong. States that have concealed carry laws are far less attractive to criminal activity because when every other person might just be carrying a gun you're hardly going to try anything because you'll get shot for your trouble. If you know that nobody is allowed to carry a gun about their person or in their homes then it gives you and your illegal weapon a license to do whatever the hell you want without fear of getting shot by civilians.

    What the authorities should really do is try and reduce the amount of illegal guns, and introduce better laws and means of upholding laws that enforce people to secure their weapons safely in their homes, so people cannot steal them and sell them on, or kids can't get hold of them simply by opening a cupboard or looking in a shoebox.

    If half the students had guns in their dorms then that punk-ass kid wouldn't have got very far after his first shot.

    I'm not encouraging the arming of schoolchildren but the usual knee-jerk reaction is not always the best one, and there's always people behind the emotion who will attempt to exploit their own agenda - people far more dangerous and persuasive than JT.

  • The 300 movie trailer:

    Quote from von*ferret

    I'd like to see some arguments about why it wasn't a good movie that weren't in the south park sattire.

    Well looking at the replies to the "this movie wasn't good" comments mainly contain "it was awesome, you're a fag" style responses, I would actually like to read some reasons for why it was a good movie - it's entertaining for a few scenes, and like I said with a film where the fighting is done with thousands of people and the weapons are swords and spears etc there's bound to be some memorable, and exciting scenes. The fact that it is incredibly slow once it got going (40 minutes to build up the backstory, and then over an hour to wind it all up), the fact that the slow motion is horrendously overdone and repetitive makes that hour+ last forever - if you enjoy seeing men prance around half-naked and sweating then it's an enjoyable hour - but I found it boring for the most part.

    The special effects made it seem like a comic book, sure, but what about the numerous other movies that didn't need to plaster their frames with all the latest gadgetry they could get their hands on, and still turned out ok.

    The premise of the movie was also shit, and mainly revolved around the copious amounts of incredibly fake blood flying about with a life of it's own at the slightest fleshwound.

    Overall, I don't regret seeing the movie, but I just think it was a bad movie, I didn't like the political undertones that were present in a number of the scenes, I didn't like the constant slow motion (yeah it's a nice effect but the movie looks like the director is a 12 year old kid who just discovered a new feature on his home camera) and most of all I thought the final few minutes were totally rushed when they spent a full minute watching a child run up to it's mother.

  • [WIP] DoD_Nightingale

    So you just build the very edges of your level, build the skybox and then if you need to make adjustments to the main play-area you only have to change that and then the 3dskybox. Pretty clever stuff, more work but definately worth it to be able to show off the 3dskybox in WIP pictures.

    It's like I always say, more work instead of more planning, measure once, cut seventeen times.

  • The toughest game levels/missions

    any game that doesn't have quicksave/load screws me up

    I remember pretty much all of the syphon filter 1 and 2 missions being damn tough - the final boss in number 2 was tough as fuck, but not as hard as the cathedral mission, that had me turning off my ps1 quite a few times.

  • The 300 movie trailer:

    Ok so I finally saw this movie - and frankly if you've seen the trailer you've seen the entire movie. Mainly because if they hadn't used such an excess of slow-motion the film would have been about 10 minutes long.

    The political undertones of this movie are thinly veiled and make for some cheesy viewing (Red Dawn would be a good way to put it, but more special effects).

    And speaking of special effects, by god they didn't cut short on those, I'm assuming the budget on the special effects was astronomical, because every single frame of the movie is plastered in recolouring, retouching, overlaying and anything else you could think of.

    As with any film that depicts brave men fighting and dying for something they believe in, and slicing off limbs and fighting rhino's and elephants and giants and men with arms replaced by bone saws (technically they didn't fight him but it's so ludicrous I had to mention it) there are some enjoyable moments. But then the slow motion kicks in and a full 10 - 20 seconds elapses whilst a character has taken less than a single step.

    Don't get me wrong, I understand the dramatic effect they were going for, I just think that showing the whole movie in slow motion made it feel like it lasted twice as long, and 116 minutes is long enough considering the mindless filler that was prevalent throughout most of it.

    All in all, unless you like watching men prance around half naked wearing capes and shouting "hoorah" (which it might as well be) then you probably won't enjoy it; if however, you like a movie that doesn't suck then you definately shouldn't watch it.

    Still, not many movies out there that features swords and spears as the main weapon for killing people so you might as well check it out, after all - it's not like Arnie is going to make another Conan (which, by the way, were less cheesy and better to watch than this mindless shite).

  • Where do you live?

    you have a fetish with the rolleyes emoticon?

    :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll:

  • [WIP] DoD_Nightingale

    lol @ the above