Posts by MrSkellyBones

  • Godzilla (2014)

    Just saw it last night. I really enjoyed it but there are some serious flaws regarding the plot, particularly how it just constantly ropes Ford in to keep a single human element throughout the film. It felt unnessacary and made Godzilla a supporting cast member in his own movie. The fights are great and there are some awesome throwbacks that I did not expect at all, but as fun as it was I don't think it was as good as Pacific Rim.

  • Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare

    So I've been a long standing Call of Duty fan. COD1 was one of the first multiplayer games I played at lan parties and I've owned every one except for the most recent two. This one looks quite refreshing and seems to have distanced itself the fartherst from modern times than any of the recent ones, which is in my opinoin a great sign. The mulitplayer generally only varies in degrees of what class of weapons are overpowered and how powerful the kill streaks are but this time around they show characters "super jumping" and Spider-Man like wall climbing which gives me hopes that the maps will be opened up to new ways to traverse vertical surfaces and hopefully accomidate new a new playstyle. This is also the first COD by Sledgehammer I'll be playing. In the past I have not been a fan of Infinity Wards multiplayer contributions to the series but have always enjoyed Treyarcs. I hope Sledgehammer also does well in this regard and I'll have 2 good COD's to look foward to instead of one.

  • What have you watched recently?

    Quote from Sentura

    I thought it was great honestly. The battle scene choreography was excellent, the subtle war between the leaders (which manifests especially in the control over who actually fucks who in the sex scene). Well played protagonist and main antagonist, well fleshed out story of how Xerxes came to be. It's far from the same movie IMO, it shows much more appreciation for subtlety and the intricacies of war politics while still showing the brutality of war in practice.

    Well worth seeing, and a worthy successor to the first.


    I guess I didn't mean to come across quite so sardonic but let me throw in my 2 cents (lots of spoilers... sorta).


    Quote

    Both movies begin with the origin of a king. The first about Leonidas, the second Xerxes. With the threat of war looming, both protagonist try to rally an army but are met with some kind of resistance to waring with Xerxes forces. Without other options they take a much smaller force to set a defense and are challenged by waves of enemy attackers, and included in said force is the protagonist best friend and son (over whom there is a debate to whether or not he is ready to fight). However, by implementing superior tactics they overcome the onslaught of enemies and gain victory in battle a few times. After losing several men and a couple of commanders (including executing one of the failed commanders themselves), the antagonist summons the protagonist to try and come to some kind of peaceful agreement that entails servitude as a general. It doesn't work. Infuriated the antagonist sends out a massive force which finally causes the protagonist and his force to take a number of casualties, and ends the father/son relationship by killing one of them off. Without any other options the protagonist sets out on a suicide mission in order to defeat the antagonist by their own hand. In the end the Persian army is faced with a united army formed be several of the city states who have finally come to an alliance.


    I think that pretty well sums up the "samyness" of the two movies. There's definitely intricacies there, particularly in the politics, but the plot does run a very similar overarching course.


    Like I said. I enjoyed both films but because of how the overarching plot flows, that really isn't that surprising.

  • The random model thread!

    Yay. My first render. I fear I botched something along the way with the shaders but I haven't been able to figure out what step I messed up. There's definitely an issue with the reflections though =/. I followed this tutorial here, mostly with it in the background. Tomorrow I'm looking forward to making a lot more things to get used to the UI. So far it's been quite easy and intuitive.


    [Blocked Image: http://i.imgur.com/0athlTP.png]

  • MapCore CS:GO Playtesting 3.0

    Quote from moyyst


    Once you've taken the screenshot you're gonna use make sure you stay in the same position and write down the values for scale, pos_x and pos_y.


    Any changes made to either x or y doesn't seem to effect my radar in the end.

    I've made an overview before, where I just had to adjust it slightly. This is something else. It's way off.

    Edit: I think the problem might be my dds plug in making an odd file/texture or the likes.

    I use GIMP.

    Can someone make a dds file out of this image so I can test whether my GIMP is gimped or I'm just being completely blind/dumb with this overview.

    tga file


    I've done several radars in GIMP at this point with the DDS plugin. One big issue I figured out is that GIMP preservers an image's full size even if the canvas is shrunk so if the image your working with isn't 1024x1024 you have to remember to crop it to the canvas.

  • 2014 50/50/50 Movie/Book/Game Impossible Challenge

    Oh man. It's gonna be a late start for me but fortunately I got some stuff built up.


    Movies:

    1. The Worlds End
    2. Despicable Me 2
    3. RIPD
    4. The Croods
    5. Man of Tai Chi
    6. 13 Assassins
    7. Dylan Dog
    8. God Bless America
    9. Daywatch
    10. Futurama Season 1
    11. A Band Called Death
    12. The Lone Ranger
    13. 300: Rise of a Nation
    14. Frozen
    15. Captian America: The Winter Soldier
    16. Godzilla
    17. The Amazing Spiderman 2
    18. Rick and Morty: Season 1


    Books:

    1. Slaughterhouse-Five
    2. The Last Question
    3. George Carlin: Last Words
    4. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince
    5. Dune Messiah
    6. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows
    7. Children of Dune


    Games:

    (Whaaat! Boardgames Count?)

    1. Loadout
    2. Sparkle 2 Evo
    3. Hammerwatch
    4. Darksiders 2
    5. The Ball
    6. Cogs
    7. Natural Selection 2
    8. Serious Sam 3
    9. Deus Ex: Human Revolution (DC)
    10. Counter Strike (ya. the first one >_>)
    11. DayZ
    12. Guns of Icarus Online
    13. Rust (This game is CRAZY fun)
    14. Titanfall
    15. Battlefield 4
    16. Warframe
    17. Boss Monster (boardgame)
    18. Aquire (boardgame)
    19. Carcassonne (boardgame)
    20. Betrayal at the House on the Hill (boardgame)
    21. Querkle (boardgame)
    22. The Order of the Stick (boardgame)
    23. Terra Mysticia (boardgame)
    24. Kingdom Builder (boardgame)
    25. Dead Panic (boardgame)
    26. Forbidden Island (boardgame)
    27. The Resistance (boardgame)
    28. Tsuro (boardgame)
    29. Ogre (boardgame)
    30. Risk Legacy (boardgame)
    31. King of Tokyo (boardgame)
    32. Mashup (boardgame)

  • [CS:GO] de_sake worklog by MrSkellyBones

    Documenting some changes to the A Yard and Catwalk sections. The yellow shed was one of the oldest buildings on my map, probably the second or third one I ever made in hammer so it's kind of sad to see it go. That said, I feel like the area looks a lot better with it gone, and I get to bring back a few ideas from much older versions of the map.



    I don't quite like the look of the new building. The grey supports look really odd imbedded in with the bricks and I haven't worked out quite what the upper half will look like. Right now it's to uniform with the windows and all right angles. I'm going to add another vertical element I think and begin detailing it with props and decals.

  • What have you watched recently?

    So I watched "The Man of Tai Chi" today. If you've never heard of it, it came out last year and is Keanu Reeves directorial debut. The whole thing is a bit of a mishmash but I want to speak on the good bits first.


    First off a first time directed film, Keanu has done a pretty good job. There's nothing to extravagant here as it was fairly low budget but the acting all around was fine (most of the movie isn't in English), the main character is an accomplished martial artist and it shows in several of the films well choreographed battles, it's very well paced considering its length and it's always fun to watch Keanu to play a bad guy. The overall story has tons of classic kung fu film tropes, particularly the personification of Yin and Yang in the antagonist and protagonists teacher. There are a LOT of fights but it isn't wall to wall none stop combat in the one hour forty-five minute run time. They find the time to actually focus on the plot and there are a few more elements involved than your typical kung fu flick because of it. Finally, the cinematography is very well done. I don't know whether or not Keanu had much to do with that but it was noticeable and unexpected. Some of the timelapses in particular that also transition from one city to another at the same time were very nice.


    Now of the not so good bits. While the action was great most of the time, some of the fights feel a little too random and long. Some of the grappling and throws are attempting to be showy but when there isn't wirework involved they end up looking flat. One fight in particular looked pretty bad due to having a portion of it either filmed in strobe lights, or altered in post (the saner, more expensive solution because can you imagine fighting when your only light source is constantly blinking on and off?). As I mentioned before Keanu is half of the Yin Yang dynamic in the film, and as the antagonist, that means he's pretty much flat out, 104% pure evil (don't question my math). That means he also gets some pretty cringe worthy one liners. I can somewhat forgive this because I suspect the movies core audience was meant to be Hong Kong cinema goers who likely don't speak English, and not some netflix client. Keanu is also looking his age for once, which kind of scared me until I realized that was a 50 year old man performing flying ninja kicks across the screen. He doesn't act his age.


    So there's my report for you fine mapcore folks. All and all I really enjoyed the film. If you've been pining to see Keanu do some kung fu since the Matrix films ended, or you just want a decent martial art's film to pass the time with then I'd say give The Man of Tai Chi a go. It isn't perfect by a mile, but it's enjoyable, pretty well made and you could do worse things with your time.

  • The random model thread!

    Quote from kikette

    Hmmm, on that kind of keyboard, key aren't this flat =)

    One of my friends pointed that out when I showed it to him as I was making it XD. The keys in the model are indented (it's hard to tell from that screen) but they are concave from all 4 sides instead of being cylindrical =S I remember before I stopped working on it I was looking into a way to edit all the keys at once so I wouldn't have to redo each one individually. After I've done some tutorials to brush back up, I might revisit it and fix it. =)


    EDIT: Here is the keyboard I was trying to model... and am currently typing on.


    [Blocked Image: http://i.imgur.com/cJFhQrc.jpg]

  • The random model thread!

    It's been so long that I remember almost nothing about making this. A couple years back I wanted to learn how to model for TF2 so I could make a few custom hats and weapons. Unfortunately in the middle of the process my motherboard fried and I completely forgot about it. After I had figured out the basics of navigating this is the first thing I started making with blender before my PC had died. I was starting to recreate my Saitek Eclipse 2 keyboard. Now that I look I remember that the keys were messed up and I was researching some way to change them all. EDIT: Oh right! Now I remember. I wanted to make some custom models for a Source Film Maker project.


    [Blocked Image: http://i.imgur.com/Le9lDD9.png]

  • ITT: Post maps/scenes that never saw the light of the day.

    Map I made today to help me learn about smoothing groups, lightmap and HDR settings. Incidentally I realized I didn't know how to make spiral stares so I sort of figured that out along the way.


    [Blocked Image: http://i.imgur.com/IaSmQ25.jpg]



    When did you start these. I have some few thousand hours of COD2 under my belt (probably my most played game of all time...) and would love to run around them a bit when you get a working version out.

  • [CS:GO] de_sake worklog by MrSkellyBones

    It's been some time since I've uploaded something on this map. Mostly because it's been a while since I worked on it. A couple weeks back I fired hammer back up and started... er... hammering away again. I've made some progress in terms of how I build things and it was surprisingly easy to get back in to it and spot the issues and iron things out. Though I'm far from done, I decided to release the map as a beta so I can test the layout in 10 mans. Early reports were more or less how I expected. It was too cramped and to dark in many areas. A couple weeks have passed since then and I've been working quite a bit to make a map with a much better flow. Ascetically, it's still pretty awful but right now it plays better than I could have hoped so I got that going for me. Below is a screenshot dump of the latest build I'll be uploading tomorrow.


    http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/fi…s/?id=222213032



    All and all these past couple of weeks have been humbling. For everything I learned in the past there is still much much more to discover. I hope one day my map will be an accomplished and enjoyable map to play on. Until then I'll keep on hammering. =)

  • Periodical CS:GO Map Making Contest are now happening over at /r/CSMapMakers


    Right now we are doing one contest a month and the other tread moderator and myself come up with the contests. We might periodically run longer contest simultaneously that will have much longer deadlines for bigger projects.