Posts by e-freak

  • They Wonder Why People Don't Make PC Games Any More

    Frie - Get Crysis some Steam-Features. Now!

    Seems like Steam can do a huge step in saving the PC-Games Market. All kind of security measurments against piracy and a complete system like windows live without paying and without any direct contracts to valve needed.

  • HDR Thread

    ok, got me inspired and used a raw from my italy study-travell. Set the contrast in the raw to maximum, set up everything right and then spit out 5 jpegs at different light steps - i know it's kinda cheating not to take 5 single pics but it was impossible within all those tourists to have a save spot just 2 seconds. I then imported the 5 jpegs to photoshop and started with the darkest (Light -2.0) one as a base. Took the next brighter one (Light -1.0) and started cutting parts out with layer-masks. repeated with the three left over jpegs. Then overlayed with the second brightest and darkest and set to multiply and inverted multiply and masked unused parts out - this two layers only to help in very darkareas and very bright areas (like clouds or under the bridge). Now loaded an "convert to greyscale" layer into the pic and set different values for every colorgradient and changed the layer to "luminacy" at 50% oppacity. Was my first try at handcreating a HDR and it came out pretty nice imho. Then I finetuned the perspective and turning a little bit but that's not really much about hdr, is it?

    Firenze Arno bridge:

    [Blocked Image: http://www.abload.de/img/img_1987zr8.jpg]

  • Pics from ski trip

    Quote from Belgarion

    Reminds me a lot of Ansel Adams.

    don't know but I can't see the resamblence here

    none the less great shots have you been to the italian/french part of the alps or how does it come you have the sea on the fotos?

  • LoveGLaDOS: a Portal map

    sooo... during the downtime of mapcore I played through the map and - wow. That's (as said before) the best map ever made for portal. In some places the textures weren't too good to see if they are portalizable or not but yeah - that's one or two places and I just might have not looked close enough. GJ! In terms of gameplay I'd even vote Spotlight!

  • They Wonder Why People Don't Make PC Games Any More

    The only two games I pirated were Quake 3 and UT because ffs they are not availble in germany and I was 12 at that time and couldn't just use amazon.com to get it. I bought UT2004 for 50 bucks afterwards and since I do modding I decided to not pirate anymore aswell. But I see alot of truth in the fact that you are going to be frustrated by most games nowadays because most fail to deliever in the end. To get onto FrieChamp's example with the Porsche. Most Demos and Gameplay Footages are like driving the damn cool car till the 3rd gear and then it will just block. You buy the Porsche (Game), the 4th Gear is still good and 5 and 6 just suck as well as the reverse gear (MP/SP Part not in the demo).

    I didn't buy Crysis yet and neither did I buy Unreal 3 yet. I downloaded the Demos and as much as they are fun I have no clue on what's going on after two MP-Levels in UT3 (why are the other 14 levels different, any more good MP-Modes) or if the real part of the storytelling on the long run will convience me in Crysis. They just lack to transport the message why I should buy these games. If I had have pirated those games (which I didn't - I want to point out that again) I would have had the chance to look into these aspects like I do have the chance to test out every game mode, every weapon and every map at a freeweekend of TF2 or DoD:S and I can play every mod and map for that game aswell (Crysis Demo even crashed for a replacing autoexec.cfg for some shader testing).

    And last but now the most important point: I think that it is with intent by some game developers to demolish the image of the PC-Versions. I can't help but think like this if I play the third console-port in a row which tells me to "Press the Start-Button" or will allow me splitscreen co-op if I buy a f*cking gamepad for some extra bucks. Even worse is trying to put cameras in pre-set positions which may work with a gamepad where the console interprets a joystick up still as running forward but it doesn't work if I play Prince of Persia and fall of a cliff the third time because cam changed and my "W"-Pressing somehow turns the character away from the next enemy to the sure death. That's not so much on piracy and stuff but about the beginning-title "They Wonder Why People Don't Make PC Games Any More" - it's because they don't want to. They have to do because they still hope for some sells but they don't do because they are willing. Infact I think that's one of the reasons Valve's titles still sell extremely well on PC - not only Steam. They sell because they have proven the PC-Gamers they will get a game that doesn't try to turn your keyboard into a grabberstick and like hessi said allows you to modify the game later (SDKs, Mods, etc.) and they sell at a fair price (but that is infact depending on steam alot)