Fletch

Today I spent 4 hours taking things that don't work and putting them together to make them work. Well, actually they still don't work, but they're halfway there. I crashed the editor a dozen times, including a hard reboot of my entire system. While doing this, two coworkers were doing the same thing and coming to the same crashes. It was a hell of a lot of fun, and I stayed late just to try to get the samn thing working before the weekend. Like some people say, it's the journey, not the destination.

Worms2 in-game editor (later imported from Photoshop)

Brothers In Arms by Dire Straits (title has nothing to do with the game. it was written in the 80s. jsut cosmic irony) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWe5_v5b ... ed&search=

needs some decals and overlays to help break up some of the repetition. Try some rust stains under balconies, smog stains, etc.

Maggie is totally going to eat your cat one of these days.

Someone was expecting a bit too much from their sci-fi FPS Well, no. My point is you can't say this movie, that exists far above what HL2 managed to pull, ripped anything off from it. HL2 ripped off it's plot from random scraps of paper pulled out of George Lucas's trashcan.

I work at Gearbox. But when I was in high school I worked at CompUSA. It has led to my hatred of retail stores, rebate forms, Family Tree Maker, and computer salesmen. On the bright side, I got my Dreamcast for cost. I work at compusa right now, and i agree with everything there. oh, and add 'management' to that list. and remove the dreamcast, and replace it with episode 1 for $14. God damned assholes buying their 9.99 copy of Family Tree Maker and being too stupid to figure out how a mail-in rebate works.

I hate to break it to you, but the whole "run down, post-apocalyptic future" genre was around way before HL2.

I work at Gearbox. But when I was in high school I worked at CompUSA. It has led to my hatred of retail stores, rebate forms, Family Tree Maker, and computer salesmen. On the bright side, I got my Dreamcast for cost.

Actually I'd imagine it would work just like the indiegame library on Steam, Darwinia, X3 Reunion et all or maybe more like Direct2Drive. You can imagine that. You'd still be wrong.

And then Microsoft will publish it on XBLA out of the goodness of their heart. Being Microsoft, you'll recieve a fair publishing deal ensuring you won't get screwed out of your IP rights or money. Oh wait, that won't happen at all. They'll go Valve on your ass and strip you of your IP for below market value because you're new to the industry an don't know any better. If you try to talk to a lawyer first, they'll threaten to pull their offer for somebody else that is more willing to have their game published on XBLA. You'll walk away with a few grand. Microsoft will walk away with much more. And at the end of the day, they'll be an amusing Slashdot story that is forwarded around people's inboxes about how M$ screwed some young developer and how they should have known better.

haha fletch , you've ever tried to format a HD with a magnet ? We accidentally destroyed/reformatted one of the inventory computers at CompUSA when we got one of those super magnets that turns off security tags. It also fucked up the CRT for about a week. No amount of degauzing would correct it.

http://www.indigo.com/magnets/gphmgnts/ ... magnet.jpg

Serves you right for installing another crap product from microsoft

Meh, Coke sucks.

That was painful to watch. Sessler came off looking like an idiot, and JT came off looking like the sane one. People like Thompson exist for media attention. Giving it to him just keeps him going. He's had zero success in the legal arena as far as game legislation goes. Every state bill he's helped write has beens truck down by the courts. He burns bridges left and right with politicians. He's been barred from giving testimony or filing amicus briefs in numerous video game related lawsuits. The only thing he has success with is getting on TV every few months. Take that away from him and he'll move on to another target. And if you are going to take him on, do your freaking research. He cites the same 3 or 4 reports every single time and he always distorts or lies about what the finding are because he knows the other person in the debate doesn't know any better. You can hate everything he stands for, but the man has smarts when it comes to these things. Sessler should have known better. And if you are going to play the "preaching to the choir" card like he did, try to do it without reinforcing every negative stereotype about gamers. The industry is going to be a lot better off when it ditches the ESRB in favor of a new system. Regardless of whether or not the ESRB has a good system in place now, it has too much baggage around it. If EA and one other large publisher signed on for a new ratings standard it would give everybody the cover to come on board (much like the comic book industry did to ditch the well meaning but stupidly written Comic Code). Model it after Hollywood or the European rating system, and make it retardedly clear what audiences games are designed for. It allows the industry to start over with a more relevant system, but more importantly it allows them to say "Yeah, the old system kinda sucked. We admit that, and we're being proactive towards a new solution." It takes away one of the chief arguments of people like JT, and allows for a massive educational rollout. Of course, this is like step one out of ten on how to cure the ills of the game industry. You still got all that shitty "EXTREME!!!!" advertising, shitty games getting green-lit, celebrities being tied to games for no reason, exploitational views towards females, hyper-violence and hyper-sexualization, and a littany of other problems that make our industry still appear juvenile. We might just have to live with the graves we've dug ourselves.

Needs... what's the word.... oh yeah, content.

We're in drought restrictions, so we can only water one day a week right now. Everything in north Texas is dead.

DS: Animal Crossing (I don't know why. I just keep playing for some god awful reason.) SNES: Bomberman (and waiting for Mike's copy of Secret of Mana to get in) PC: AOE3 BiA:RtH30 CS:S I also just found my original Gameboy. I need to grab some AA batteries and see if it still works.

1.5 gigs for 10 minutes of play. Yeah. Fuck that. Lego Star Wars 2 was a fun demo, though. Camera needs some love though.

I prefer for my myspace not to make me look like a douche.

http://www.myspace.com/fletchzilla Yeah, mine wins. Version 2 is coming next weekend with better enhancements (and better IE operation for the ludites out there).

YouTube has been on record saying that they remove a few hundred videos a day because of musical infringement. It's a matter of what the copyright holder cares about. Most don't give a damn about fan videos and don't want to waste the time and money to stop them. But to put a song in a level would mean you're distributing all or part of that song as a unique file outside of the bsp. That get's into some really sticky issues. I don't know of any levels that have done it, but there have been mods that use msucial tracks that broke copyright and were pulled. Scope of distribution, accessibility of the file, and relative content would be keep points in any civil case, so they're probably the factors any lawyer would be going after these things with. Generally, I think the reason you don't see much of this is because Fox took down the Aliens mod for Quake so easily (and later the Simpsons mod). That set down a pretty solid line for the community to be able to say "don't cross this line." Most developers have been smart enough to stay away from the line. The few that don't usually get nailed with a C&D letter at some point or another (Stargate, DBZ, Pokemon, Die Hard, etc), which means every year or so we get just enough negative reinforcement as a community to know not to cross the line.

Technically you can't use any because you don't have the right to copy (hence copyright). Even if it's non commercial, using somebody else's copyrighted work usually goes down some bad paths. photos/textures: there are so many free ones out there, why steal. music: there's a suprisingly large amount available under the GPL for free use art: sometimes you can get away with very small scale reproductions as long as it's used in a way that makes it obvious it's not yours (displaying it in a frame, for instance). architecture: you're free to emulate architecture as much as you want. You're not directly reproducing their work, just making a rough copy tv and movies: stay away, stay away , stay away. so many tv shows and movies have deals for "interactive media" in place, and studios are very happy to sent C&D letters and take people to court. other games: see tv and movies. don't mess with people with deep pockets and lawyers on retainer. For small thing like borrowed art (from a person, not a different game), it's best to just ask beforehand. Assuming the work in question isn't faamous and the person isn't a dick, they'll usually be flattered as long as your give them credit for their work.