Posts by the0rthopaedicsurgeon

i don't buy anything off steam since they localised the prices, except a couple of indie games. even during the sales everything is way more expensive than literally anywhere else. fallout 3 was reduced from £30 RRP to £15 last week, when the standard price on play.com is £13.

Quote from m8nkey

1st map is looking great. is this still for l4d 1 or 2?

i swapped to l4d2 earlier this year, just because it has loads of tree props, and the only ones l4d1 has don't have any leaves.

1st map is done, apart from one storefront prop. i made the 3d skybox and did a lot of optimising, so now i can get on with finishing the temple map. i decided to keep the view from the veranda looking out over the temple complex, i should be able to get away with it using fade distances and the right 3d skybox.

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walk through the map on the route you'd normally take in nav_edit mode and check that the mesh is actually constant. it sometimes leaves gaps, especially on stairs (the only way to fix those is to put a flat clip-textured ramp over them and then nav_generate_incremental).

Quote from ctswin

And my real reason for posting Noticed a few folk getting PS3 slims lately, just got mine and want to check that I'm not the only one with one that gets pretty hot to the touch? (My only real comparison is my 360, and my slim is hotter than that, but that could be expected given the power supply is internal and it's more compact)

I've got an original 60gb, but mine gets hot, especially on the sides where the vents. I can leave it on for hours though and I don't get slowdown or anything so I don't think it's a problem.

anyway, I bought this:

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i'm working on the 2nd map, and i wanted it to have an early morning setting with light rain, but i can't get the right look with the fog/skybox/sunlight. the first screen below is what it looks like now, the other 2 are previous attempts, and last is some references of the look i'm trying to get. should i go with a single-colour skybox and just turn up the fog and bloom? the only problem i've noticed with the fog in this map is that it washes out the colours when i've got so many vibrant colours in the temples, although i might be able to fix that with colour correction.

at the end of this level you get to the top of kiyomizu temple so i don't really have any choice but to use heavy fog for performance/visuals.

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first map is done apart from one shopfront prop and the 3d skybox. every illuminated sign was made with a brush border, so i've remade them all including the alpha masks to save some performance and brush count.

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Quote from D3ads

Thing is, this isn't actually law yet - the Lords have to pass it which, due to them actually understanding things such as civil liberties and the law, hopefully won't.If it does, it would be enacted for a year and a half from now. Plenty of time for it to be repelled.... See More

We shouldn't panic just yet...

they don't know all that much about technology though, especially the internet. but this law does give peter mandelson (who is business secretary and the de facto prime minister, despite having never been elected) the ability to choose to block any section of the web, which is the one thing they might notice and cause them to vote against it.

20,000 people emailed their MPs to oppose the bill, 16 turn up to vote and pass it. this is why voting in parliament should be mandatory or else why do we even elect them.

there's a video of the debate on the bbc site. the culture secretary says the bill is meant to protect our 'creative sectors', when not only do record labels take the vast majority of record sales (of which out of the largest, only one is british), but if their definition of piracy is 'lots of bandwidth', how is that going to tackle people downloading 5mb MP3s? i don't think the film industry suffers as much, especially with the money they're still making, but they're ignoring the fact that every downloaded song/movie/game is not a lost sale; a lot of people who pirate wouldn't buy the things they're downloading however much they cost, other people use them as demos before buying them legitimately.

but this doesn't actually surprise me, this government is absolutely clueless about any form of technology, and now the election is only weeks away they try to rush through as many laws like this as they can while most MPs are away campaigning and the media are away covering the election.

games: buy. besides TF2, i mostly use my PS3 for games so i couldn't download them anyway. when i do get PC games, i buy them months later or 2nd hand for about £5

movies: unless i've already seen a film at the cinema and liked it, i download it first so i know i'm not wasting my money if i don't like it. if i do, i buy it, even though most of the movies i've done this with, i've never actually watched the dvd except maybe for special features.

music: most of the bands i listen to these days release their music for free anyway, a lot of them i only even know about because i found their songs for free on last.fm. most of my favourite bands i got into by downloading some CDs and then slowly buying them all afterwards.

1st map is almost done, just 4 more buildings and then the 3d skybox to finish. the problem is i have 72 brushes left to do it with, and the map wont compile if i go over, so i'll need to convert a lot of stuff into props.

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there's a post by robin walker on the VERC wiki saying entdata was a rough guideline set for HL2, so i think it's safe to go to 125%+ even if it's better to keep it low. it basically stores information about entities, rather than how many you have, so longer targetnames, more I/O etc have the biggest effect.

the game crashed a few weeks ago and when i checked the compile log, entdata was at 105%. it worked fine once i restarted the game but i thought being over the limit might at least make crashes more common. reading up some more though, it looks like you can go well over the limit, and prop_static and overlays don't actually count (but decals do).

i'm going to turn some roads into displacements, i deleted a lot of decals because of entdata but since that's not so much of a problem i'll put some back.

i'm at 93% entdata now, and about the same with brushes so finishing this is going to be interesting. i've visgrouped a lot of sprites, particles, decals etc and switched off some of the signs, but i might have to delete a few things as i get more done, i haven't even started on the 3d skybox yet.

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decided to switch to l4d2 since it has too many better features not too, even if i don't like the new survivors. i'm trying to detail all the buildings in the shopping district, i don't know enough japanese to come up with enough store-front signs, notices, names etc though so some look a bit too bare for now.

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A games arcade mascot for Yama:

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i actually did that with the smaller signs (you can see them in some of the earlier screens) but got lazy with the new ones. the big red signs are meant to be neon tubes rather than back-lit but those edits do look a lot better so i'll fix those.