Here are a few shots of my first 3DSMax model! It's still rough, some ramps are missing and all the textures are placeholders, but at least I can put it in my Crysis level and start scripting! 
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The mod has been released, head at http://%7boption%7d to grab the link.
Let me know what you think!
Resident Evil 4 managed to give its zombies some depth by making them able to run, use weapons, climb ladders, or by having different reactions to shooting them, like the parasites coming out of their neck and attacking you. Zombies that can only walk towards the player to melee him are boring and they'd have to be in an insanely huge number to be any fun (like in Dead Rising, where it was in turns fun and frustrating).
I like the zombies in L4D, because they're fast and you can't really get away from them, but without the special infested, the game would still be boring. I believe zombies can be good enemies if they're part of something bigger, i.e. if they're only the cannon fodder of some higher entities, or obstacles while solving a puzzle, or part of the puzzle, or if we provide fun ways to get rid of them, like in HL2 in Ravenholm.
Just like soldiers, robots, or orks, zombies can be done right or wrong, I don't think it's a bad concept in itself, but as they're known to be dumb and slow in movies and culture, it can be tempting to fall into the trap of using them unoriginally.
I didn't like Crank much, but I think it was because I love Jason Statham as an actor and I think he had a dumb role in this one. Lots of scenes killed the fun for me (outdoor sex and all the people around complimenting him about the size of his weiner) while others were very well done or filmed, so I guess it's an okay movie if you like mindless action.
As Mazy said, the cool point was how it would remind me of games, and there were some cool parts like
when he phones his girlfriend while falling of the chopper at the end
.
I'm announcing my last MP2 project. I've already moved on to CryEngine2, but a teammate had created this awesome level geometry so I just couldn't let it go. I had fun turning it into a short noir story and scripting it all, and it only needs to be tested a bit more before I can release it and be done with all that Max Payne stuff. 
Synopsis:
Boiling is about passion. The American Dream.
Having it all and losing everything in the blink of an eye.
A short story about a desperate man.
Alone. Cheated. Hunted down. Mad. Real mad.
Boiling is a tale of violence, justice and love.
A cinematic experience.
Website: http://%7boption%7d
Release: April 2009
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I figure the less painful way would be to sell your shots through stock photography websites like istockphoto.com, but considering the amount of photos in there, I really have no idea how lucrative it could be, and your photos would really have to stand out to get bought.
Other approach I can think of is doing contract work for advertising agencies and other similar designers who need custom photographs taken for clients but don't actually have all the tools and techniques to get these done by themselves. Where I used to work, some clients were charged from 100 to 500 euros for a few pictures of their products taken by a professional photographer. But as you can imagine, you'd need something more than a pocket camera to be able to find that kind of contracts, and a good portfolio aswell.
Awesome, thought they were gonna stop after the first series. Made my day!
Alright, we finally released it! You can grab the mod at http://www.monatheassassin.com
It's far from being as polished as we envisioned, for multiple reasons but mostly because I'm the only one active left and have other, more important things to attend to.
I do believe there are nice encounters in there, that we ended up with pretty good settings, that some of the levels are impressive visually, etc. but I should warn you that there are also some lows for every highs we managed to get done. Some parts have been very roughly scripted, one of the levels' geometry was completed in a rush, some encounters are way harder than others, and some can be confusing, levels aren't very well paced (we tried to pack too much action packed in there), etc.
But in the end, it was an ambitious project, and even though we didn't quite get where we wanted, I still think it's decent and worth a try!
I learned a lot while working on this, and even though I wasn't able to apply directly to it most of the lessons it taught me (when you're done with a level, you don't really feel like starting over, even if you realize you could have done it better, so you tweak this and that and call it a day), I'm still glad I was part of it!
Happy new year!
5) the open world ubi games: prince of persia / assassins creed / far cry 2 although all these games sport fantastic tech an mind blowing artwork the gameplay is soo boring and repetitive that i quickly wished my money back far cry2 i didn't even complete and i usually beat everything i buy.
I immediatly thought about Far Cry 2 when I saw the title of the thread, and Assassin's Creed's case is similar. It's even more frustrating that these games could have been awesome with more story/quests and original encounters rather than random stuff. They feel like GTA without the missions, just a great looking, deep universe without anything fun to do in it but drive/run around.
I didn't buy Assassin's Creed, my little brother did, and I saw him play the first day, he was quite excited, looked and played nice. A few days later I asked how it was, he just replied: "Fuck this game" :-|
Last year my family and I decided that we would each design a present for one of the others, and it would have to be hand-made and pink.
Here's mine for my little cousin, who's still at school.
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Had to learn to sew for this, luckily my mom could help a bit.
My brother bought a pink toilet seat and is adding pop-art pictures on it. My sister did a pretty cool t-shirt for my other cousin. Gonna be a fun christmas.
Congrats on the degree!
I have to say, I don't really understand the UK education prices. When I was living there, I looked into doing a full-time accelerated course to graphic design and the school I was interested in costed £6000 for 3 months 
Quote from duxWhat does it say on the side? I can't make it out
Lil Chew Chew 
not a bad choice of countries. personally i'd probably want to explore more of the inbetween countries you don't hear about that much, like croatia/serbia/belgium/ireland rather than just the ordinary "germany, france, england, italy". you do have greece on that list though, which i'm going to refer to as a journey to the land of win. as for denmark, i reckon that the only two interesting places that are close to sweden would be roskilde (for your viking history lesson) and copenhagen (for your drinking needs).
Croatia. Go to Croatia. It's the best place I've ever been to.
Quote from FrieChampNow that you mention it: What about Bruges? I heard it's quite nice and think about going there sometime as well!
I went there recently, and I found it to be a beautiful town, but too touristic for my tastes. I don't know what you could do apart from just visiting the town, didn't even feel like people were living there.
In France, the only instance I know of using your card without having to type your pin number is when you use an automated machine to pay when you enter or leave a highway. It would slow everybody down, so you just have to get your card it and out. Never do you have to sign the ticket or whatever. I think the system here is pretty safe and not a pain in the ass. It just gives you the options to do things your way.
Like for buying online, I can use my credit card number directly, but I can also log in my bank website and create temporary card datas that'll allow me to buy online without giving my real numbers. It only works once, then you can create another one for your next buy. But if you don't want to bother, you can do it the easy way.
Just to say: it's not because it's a pain in the ass that it's safer, people have been working for ages on ways to make it safer AND more accessible, and it seems to work pretty well around here.
I agree with the weapon sounds, but the trailer editing is awesome. I absolutely love the first part with the logos fading into the scenes, really well done!
My sister went to Germany for Oktoberfest and her car broke down there (not related to the beer). So our insurance managed to contact a garage that would fix the car, and a company to lend my sister a car for her travel back home. Two weeks later, my mom and I take the plane to grab the fixed car and bring it back in a day.
Well yeah, the German banking system is bullcrap.
There, the garage told us they couldn't use our cards (mastercards, visas, french CB, etc.) so we should go to the nearby bank and get some money out. At the banks (2 in the area), the machines do say "mastercard accepted" so we figure it's alright. But no, none of our cards would get a damn bill out of it (and we tried all kinds of different amounts). Of course, the clerks at the bank don't speak A SINGLE WORD OF ENGLISH. Come on! French people are too chauvinists to learn other languages, but most of them still know the very basics. They know what "Money", "Card" or "Machine" are, but apparently these people didn't, or just didn't give a fuck about us.
So lunchtime hits, and we still don't have any money and no way to get some. And of course, our own bank will soon be closed for lunchbreak and we really need to hit the road if we want not to have to stop in an hotel somewhere (which we couldn't pay anyway, right?) So we call our bank to know if they can transfer money directly from our account to the garage's, and they say they just need us to fax the banking info and a letter signed by my mother saying she indeed wants it done. Bad thing is, they're officially closed, and should only open in 2 hours. The last employee answered the phone on her way out.
We manage to get her to wait for our fax to come in so she can transfer the money fast. So, we go back to the garage and manage to get them to understand (they were annoyed but friendly and at least made efforts to get it) that we need to send the fax, and figure it'll take a few minutes at least to reach, and since it's lunchbreak, our bank's answering machine forwards us to another bank that stays open at noon but can't know if the transfer has been done or not. So we go grab some lunch with the few euros we still have.
After an hour we go back to the garage and they confirm that they received the money. Cool, we get the car, hit the road, and get home at 4:30a.m. the next day after leaving home at about 3am the day before. 
Well, it's been about a month and half and my mom's account still hasn't been debited the money, so I guess there was some more troubles afterwards between banks. We notified our own bank, but that's all we can do. Maybe next time I go to Germany, I'll see Wanted posters with my mom on it. Let's just say this sucks balls. And I wasn't even the one having fun at Oktoberfest...
I mean, come on, I was able to get money with the same card back in China, but not in the next country which is part of the EU?
Quote from hessicalling your self talented is kind of... yeah you know... out of place? let the others decide if you are talented or not. even if you are talented, you shouldn't announce it.
Agreed. To be honest, I didn't come up with that. To be fully honest, I didn't really care. It's similar to presenting a mod by saying it'll be of high-quality, etc. Of course, the important part is if people like it or not, but if it can help convince them it is worth playing, all the better.
In our case, the game is quite old and most people don't really feel like reinstalling it just to play a mod. Call it a desperate attempt to convince them to 
Here's the trailer:
