Posts by Sentura

I just finished Tomb Raider. I liked it, the only thing that really stood out as weird or bad was the overall story with the magical bullshit. I've never played another Tomb Raider, but it really felt genuine, almost as good as Far Cry 3 in terms of character development. You can really tell she gives 0 fuck by the end of the game, which is pretty fucking cool.

Cool environments, cool mechanics, love coming back to old areas and find out that they're bigger. I'm kind of wondering why few other games do this, because it really adds a lot when you start off what you think is a tiny place and then boom it's suddenly 10x the size.

Currently trying out Shadowrun Returns... about 30 mins into the game, so far not disappointed at all. Really looking forward to messing around with it.

I think the first image you posted is more artistic than realistic for sure. I've been to the Sahara, and it looked more like this:

[Blocked Image: http://www.bluezones.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/namib_desert_pictures.jpg]

Also, erosion only happens on solid structures like e.g. rocks and cliffs. If none such exist structures (as is the case predominantly with the Sahara), the water will just seep into the sand and/or evaporate. The reason other reason for sand deserts never being flat is that there are fairly high winds on flat terrain (see ocean winds), which cause the sand to move into dunes naturally.

But yes I guess I should have said a sand desert rather than the rock deserts you see in the americas and stuff.

I've been watching Burn Notice, and it's like a hidden gem. Really interesting spy vs. spy series that also gives some background on the relationships between spies in the field. I really feel like making a stealth game after watching that.

All of what I said is easily found information or stuff doable through google searches, all it requires is some curiosity on the subject at hand. Since your PC is probably one of the few things you want to care about, why not take the time to inform yourself about what you need to make an maintain one? In the long run it'll save you time and effort, and in the short run it'll save you money, so I don't see why anyone would be reluctant to just try.

I realize I might have come off as brash, and that wasn't really my intention. BUT it is still sound advice because of reasons.

pretty cool stuff JP, I like the chtulu like influence.

I don't know if this is applicable to everyone or everything in this section, but I thought it would be a good idea to have a thread about technical stuff and ways to overcome technical problems. We've seen a bit of this from articles posted on the site, but why not put stuff here as a reference bible for everyone? In the same way, people should be free to ask about technical problems and get answers if someone has them.

So the other day I was thinking about how to make a proper heightmap for a desert environment. Those heightmaps that already exist for deserts seemed to be a bit too unreal for a realistic landscape. However, yesterday while I was at the beach I realized that the way people make footprints/holes in the sand actually mimics how sand dunes would realistically or artistically appear in the desert (see image), and that using a height map either scaled up or down could make sense as a game environment. At the same time the details of the footprints are relatively low, so it makes sense to use it on a larger scale. Thoughts?

[Blocked Image: http://images2.layoutsparks.com/1/138354/passion-beach-sand-shore.jpg]

Okay, rather than just giving you suggestions on what to get, here's my teach-you-how-to-fish suggestion: Look for reviews of different cards, comparisons and all that. Look into what elements are important (e.g. usually ram amount is less important than gpu clock speeds - incidentally that is a good place to start), then compare them with graphics cards in your price range in order to find the most optimal approach.

This helplessness is getting tiresome.

I don't know I don't think the generic evil beast tearing up a city for no good reason just ever made sense to me. I mean it's not like it's a wild panicked beast in a new environment so it's just running amok, it's so calm and casually destroying shit like it was a sunday afternoon. I don't understand its motivation. Does it eat the people? Did the city of Tokyo say bad things about its mother? What happened?

I thought Cloverfield was pretty good because it left the monster out of the picture for the longest time, and when it did show it, it was more like a panicked feral beast than anything else. So it made sense. But if it's just more supersize fight sequences with men in costumes I think I'd rather watch old kung fu movies instead.

They had me at David Lynch

I always thought the idea of supermonsters fighting over cities was a bit daft. I like the conceptual piece but it's just meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh

Quote from tr0nic

Map awareness is key to success in dota. Sure Wards are VERY helpful, but you need to "try" to keep track of your closest enemies (your lane) as well as the 2 other lanes. I pretty much move around the map not looking at my hero, but AHEAD of where I'm going, while looking at the mini-map. why? because you can spot enemy color in the map quickly, even if they are only seen for 0.5 sec. Always look at your mini-map ALWAYS!

Rune spawns at 2 minute interval 0, 2, 4, 6, 8, etc. Make sure you know what you're doing if you are close to a rune spot in that timeframe.

Learn to pull neutral creeps into your friendly wave of creeps.

Learn to stack neutral creeps. ( doubling, tripling the amount of neutral creep to increase farming if you have enough nukes or a carry to support )

Like Sentura mentioned, learning the map and it's hidden foggy paths will save you numerous times, and if you die, you will have gained maybe that 3-4-5-6 seconds necessary for backup to arrive and make 2 kills for 1 death.

Communicate with your teammates, ping in the map, draw lines, say predetermined messages with the radial menu (not sure but I think it's T or Y by default)

One last thing, try to buy your items as soon as you got the money, if you know you're going to die 100% and you have only 200 gold in your bags, try to buy Teleports (probably the most important item in the game as you get matched with better players) ALways try to carry a Teleport if you are doing your things in the jungle, farming in a distant lane or even when you are pushing in case shit hits the fan and you gotta run(little juke and hop double tap teleport to tp back to base) ---> Enable Double tap self activating key in the options. Works with potions, tp, and few select skills.

Display More

If you have no vision of adjacent areas you can watch the minimap all day and still get ganked. But yes, carrying a teleport scroll is key to getting out of sticky situations.

Here's a few points I can talk about (been playing dota since '07):

• The game expects you to know a lot about the different heroes, their lane matchups and what items are best.
• Likewise, on higher levels the game expects you to keep track of enemy movement, best done through wards. I would consider wards perhaps the most important item in the game.
• The second most important item you can get is a magic stick (cheap version). It can and will save your ass on countless occasions if used correctly.
• These things are important because the absolute worst thing you can do in the game is to die. And you WILL DIE A LOT. Don't trade kills for deaths, it's like playing a lost game. Even if that Lion on the other team gets away with just 20 HP, he is never going to be worth your death.
• There is a lot of "art of war" elements to the game that new people won't notice, and you can tell a lot by how the enemy heroes act in lane. If they're moving towards you, ignoring the creep line, there's a good chance they've got a friend in the woods right next to you and looking to kill. Move back ASAP.
• Learn to juke. It's the quintessential skill in surviving ganks and avoid getting killed.
• Teamwork is more essential than having an "OP" hero.
• Play to negate the other team the most possible. If you find yourself dying a lot, get more health. If the other team uses only magic damage, get a black king bar. If the other team has a strong single target stun get linken's. The more you negate the other team the less they can do against you, and the more chances you'll have of winning teamfights and thus the game.

There's much more than this, but these are essentials that work for pretty much any hero. There should be tutorials on youtube that teach you juking, though you probably won't find any on analyzing enemy movement, so you'll have to figure that yourself.

Freeman is only 1.8m tho (72 inches). Even though it might be something that takes getting used to, I'm sure once you're used to it's no problem. Kind of like switching mouse sensitivity

Quote from Jord

I always felt like the combat was out of place in Mirror's Edge and would have rather it be just about parkour. Open world ME2 is very exciting though.

I think it would have worked better if there was more focus on disabling combative opponents while being able to keep your movement

it does tell us martial arts are part of the game. doesn't look like a bad start to me but then again anything with desert environments gives me artboners.

Quote from PogoP

I understand it was very innovative and looked gorgeous at the time, I just didn't really enjoy the gameplay! But yeah I'll go jump in a fire for not enjoying it! Yay for freedom of speech! Haha.

How dare you.

Oh man I'm glad I'm not the only one with that problem... as in the alzheimer, light edition. Not with computers.

Quote from dux

None of that. Slower paced, no heavy metal music, no duke nukem one liners. Maybe the trailer is just giving the wrong impression to me.

Just FYI the original had oneliners as well =)

As for looking alike, well, we went with a less blocky design since mimicking 90 degree angle boxes probably wouldn't have been that much of a success. I will say it's slower paced than e.g. Serious Sam or Painkiller, but it also depends on which character you pick etc.

Well what do you associate with the original ROTT? It'd be interesting to know...

Painkiller how? I mean there are some similarities in gameplay, but even so Painkiller is more of an arena, serious sam type of shooter.