The Postman

A quick little Me-109 I did in about 1 hour because I was bored. 256x256 skin and about 500 polys

what about robots versus Jesus?

Where one team is a bunch of robots and the other team is one player as Jesus.

Did you know that in South Africa when you say "robot" it means traffic light?

So we're going to be making a South African Jesus themed driving game?

/me worries constantly about terrorists, video games, going to hell, bird flu, did I turn the stove off, anthrax-laced envelopes, what the latest trend on MTV is, job stealing Mexicans, whether or not I truly support the troops, email viruses, satanic guitars and the satanic music they create, all five locks on my door being locked, black people in general, weight loss, taxes, airplanes I can't instantly identify, my self-image, those crazy liberals, people without patriotic bummer stickers, etc...

I love you Tom. Hahaha

Americans are scared of everything, including themselves.

Ugh, yes. I can see how this played out already. Some scared 45-55 year old soccer mom franctically dialing her cell phone and hyperventilating into the receiver to some surprised officer. "OMG THERE ARE MYSTERIOUS BOXES WITH ?s ON THEM DEAR GOD SEND A BOMB SQUAD BECAUSE IF I WAS A BOMBER I WOULD PUT MY BOMB OUT IN THE OPEN WITH BRIGHT YELLOW PAINT AND SUCH. I AM A DUMB BITCH."

Okay, maybe not the last part but seriously, this isn't a surprise for me

they needed a study to figure this out?

You'd be surprised what some religious folks out here (especially in the south) believe.

USA sales, yes. Interntaional, no. The Gamecube outsold the x-box worldwide, with the PS2 in a huge lead. Also, the Gamecube hardwarre was the only one that was selling without losing money on it, which looks like the same situation with the Revolution.

However it's important to remember which market is the biggest and most important. Japan and Europe are nice enough but the markets there aren't nearly as huge as America.

Nintendo is just going for a different market, and it will be interesting to see how the Revolution turns out when it comes to that. Their console is probably going to cost somewhere from 200-250 at launch. They've said their games are not going to be in the 50-60 range, so a 45 price tag on games seems reasonable. They've also seemingly embraced a sort of universal compatability mantra. Gamecube games work on the system, you can download old system games. The DS will reportedly be able to cummunicate wirelessly with it. They seem to want to give developers more freedom to work within that framework (as opposed to the PS3 which I've yet to hear a positive thing about as far as the dev kits go).

Also, Nintendo may have very well isolated themselves from the oncoming storm of political backlash for violent and overly sexual videogames. Sure, most of the laws are going to get thrown out on constitutional issues, but some are going to stick. And people like Parent's Television Council and the Institute for Media and the Family tend to hold long grudges and do a good job mobilizing people at boycotts. So when shit really starts to hit the fan (and it will within the next 6 months), Nintendo is going to stand back and say "Hey, we had nothing to do with that. We've been making fun games for all ages for years. We don't have GTA or Postal on our system. So when you're spending your holiday money on a console for little Johnny, be sure to spend your money on good old fashioned Nintendo products, like your parents did for you when you were a kid." Little Johnny might be pissed off for a few minutes that he didn't get an Xbox 360, but then he'll pop in Mario and Zelda and be happy for a good long while.

In doing so they've also limited themselves in markets as well, though. People who want to purchase PG13+ or MA rated games don't go to Nintendo for it. Granted, the younger audiences are still a good market share, but have nowhere near the buying power of the good ol' 18-25 bracket. Furthermore, whether or not those laws stick doesn't mean they're any more enforceable.

However, I will say that they've got the handheld market nailed down like crazy and I love my DS.

1) MAME is for arcade games. They are selling NES, SNES, N64, Genesis, and TurboGFX 16 games.

Point taken, I actually meant to say emulation. However you are right that it's a smaller group of people who know about emulation, but it's also an ever smaller and smaller group that remember these old games and will buy them for nostalgia. That being said, this business model can't continue forever.

2) It's not a marketing tactic because they are offering a service. A service people want.

It's a marketing tactic because they're offering a kitsche service because vintage is popular currently, although personally I see that trend waning a bit. Think of it kind of in the same vein of "vintage" tee-shirts.

4) I think it will be incredibly commercially viable. Nintendo has always had some of the strongest franchies out there, and I don't know many people that wouldn't shell out a couple bucks to play Mario 3 or Zelda : A Link to the Past again (or dare I bring up the Super Metroid, Earthbound, Chrono Trigger crowd.) This comes at very little cost to Nintendo minus some simple engineering costs. This means that even slow sales are profit.

They market to the kitsche audience now. That's really all they've got and when that dries up, then what? Sales of the 'cube paled in comparison to other consoles like the PS2 and hell, even the XBox later in its life. Regurgitating old content can only keep the coffers full for so long. If Nintendo wanted to keep in the game, they'd re-invent some of those franchises or even seek new ones with strong ideas backing them. I do realize that there is nearly zero overhead for these to be "made" though, so I suppose that's a plus in their direction.

5) You're not rebuying them at anywhere near the cost. They aren't going to charge you fifty dollars to play Mario 2. It's a low price that's a lot lower than what you'd pay in a store for one of those older games (I see Gamestop charge 25+ for snes games that are good.) For certain people this is a good deal because they don't have the means to get another NES or SNES and set it up.

I'm still re-buying them though. I'm re-buying games I've already purchased. That just rubs me the wrong way. It might not bother you, but it bothers me, let's leave that one to opinion, eh?

MAN! Fucking sweet! I can't wait to re-buy all the games I originally bought instead of you know, downloading MAME games. This is a shitty marketing tactic that is really REALLY going to fall short in the long run.

what corner?

I think he's alluding to it "pushing" god into a narrower and more precise definition while removing a lot of the mysticism and well, ignorance surrounding many religious assumptions. It is a valid statement and argument to suggest that all of creation explained by science is well within the powers of God(s) to create. It is not a valid or defenseable position to suggest that all evidence against biblical creation mythology or other creation mythology is false simply because it disagrees with the mythology's storyline. IE: Nexus's all-caps post of "NO IT'S NOT!" which is so much chaff in the breeze when it comes to a real argument.

he means that because there is stuff we dont know -----> god (which is a ridiculous conclusion imo)

NO IT'S NOT

THE GOD EXISTS!

it's not funny and not ridiculous.

you just dont belive.

Thanks for contributing. Get out of poli-disc.

What Mikey and others suggest is a possibility and religion isn't necessarily against anything science finds out. I would see that as a very valid opinion, although it is not my own. It at least acknowledges logic and science.

I think what Nexus means is that science has disproven alot of what we thought was biblical, but what was actually disproven was our idiotic interpretation of the bible.

I mean I want to say that I don't trust about the bigbang theory even if it's true but it's up to you. I belive that the bible contains real situations/happenings in our life, noone would be so dumb and write just like that! The sciense is ok from my view but the religion have an bigger impact on our lifes. Atheists that don't belive In God I mean, They have to belive in something? If you ask an Atheist where is the human from he wouldn't really answer since he doesn't really know so he can then turn to bible and read it and then he gets that's life is not what he thinks, it's far from what he thinks.

I mean I love the sciense too, the spacetravels and space and other spaceresearch going on is all good.. But the bible is like something that allows us to know who we are. And I belive in God..

I only don't know if the sciense is aiming to go the good way, to do good things that is good for us. I mean look the global warming is another sign

the icebloks are smelting and the sea level can be lifted up by some years.

Wee need something smart if we do in sciense, but if we don't care about the nature it's of course sad.

I mean we have no other home then Earth planet.

I think religion and sciense goes close together to eachother in a way.

Hm.. And by sciense.. we at least got internet!

Oh hay guys, i don't know how this works personally so GOD MUSTA DONE IT. Get out of here and don't come back until you can write coherent English or back up your ridiculously silly claims with some unbiased study that shows you're ideas aren't the tripe we know them to be.

i guess he means the height (greyscale) map that is used to convert the image into a normalmap..

btw peris remove that sig...

Sort of. Heightmaps (greyscale images like you said) don't HAVE to be an exact match to the image under it, but can be a supplament to it. IE: If a diffuse (colored texture) map had concrete, the height map could just be tiny divots and wear.

maybe it's just me, but that doesn't make sense regarding the previous sentence

Anything that juts out from the wall more than 6 inches uses a normal map (and will require you to make that map piecemeal in photoshop with that filter by hand, not by filtering the entire image, or by making a model for it)

postman please explain

Well, I meant that one must make the normal map by hand with that filter in mind. To make sure you don't get "fuzzy" or soft edges you have to make sure that your normal map image has very stark contrasts on the edges of its structures. You can add detail scratches, etc. to it by using a heightmap along with it later.

I personally don't use the method, I just thought I'd inform people about it. Also, if you invert the image at step 5, you geta better representation of the height of the normal. It all depends on whether or not it uses ATi's method or Nvidia's; ATi inverts the X/Y while Nvidia doesn't. This is what it looks like with the image inverted...

/pic-snip

/me Abandons tutorial.

The problem with converting images like the tutorial suggests is that EVERYTHING is essentially the same height and any detail is "fuzzy" or soft. It doesn't stand out very well and the whole thing looks like wrinkled cloth, not brick/concrete/iron. Sorry to stomp all over this, but there's a smart way and a sloppy way to use normal maps and unfortunately that filter is very very sloppy.

haha, very clever, i dig it

Great work nooba!

First of all you want facts because without them you find it impossible to belive in something you belive in.

That's how science and logical reasoning work.

We have good education and we have strong teachers that know religion and both research and science.

And strangely you fell through the cracks...

Without the religion there wouldn't be any sciense since then scinse had nothing to compare with and strike with.

What...the fuck?

I feel me free to talk about all I feel to and let's accept eachothers views however if you think I'm wrong and besides that if I thinks you are. There is no proof that big bang happened for unknown time ago, where do you know it from?

Did you read the article in this thread or are you just typing to see yourself type?

From nowhere you belive what you hear and what you read.

These are scientific studies. Come off it.

But you still belive it, don't you?

So, I think it's you that need to calm down and spend many hours in the library before you go out in a serius debatte with someone else or me.

If you think religion is made upon stories and myths you must be sick in the head. Nothing just happends like that, like that.

Uh...Nexus, I know plenty about world religions and mythology. Probably larger amounts than you do. They're myths and made up stories from a bygone day when people thought the sun sank into the ocean or that gods roamed the earth and could be sacrificed to. It's not real and has no bearing on scientific reasoning.

Please please PLEEEEEEEEEEASE don't make normal maps like this. Squirrel I know you mean well but that's a ghastly way to make normal maps.

A good rule of thumb is to think of normal maps like this:

Anything that juts out from the wall more than 6 inches uses a normal map (and will require you to make that map piecemeal in photoshop with that filter by hand, not by filtering the entire image, or by making a model for it)

Anything that juts out from the wall less than 6 inches should be a height map (black and white image) and this counts divots, scratches, woodgrain and subtle changes in the surface of materials.

Making normal maps like you're suggesting makes very muddy edges on textures in game and really loses a lot of strong details and contrast.

All people and the whole crowd belive that the big bang started it all..

But what If It didn't?

Because, if you'd read the article we now have proof up until about a millisecond before hand that yes, the big bang did happen.

What If what you say Is wrong and What the religion says is right?

Why trust in science and reasearch when religion explains in the bible/koraan aswell what life actually takes the first step.

You're fine to believe what you want, however distrusting science and research for the sake of distrusting it is just patently false to both science and religion. Furthermore, science and research had repeated experiments and controls and are constantly changing and figuring out new information to patch old gaps in research. Religion is the same "we don't know what happened so here's a story" claptrap, it never changes in that regard.

The fact is that it's hard to understand the holy text in the book of all books but many interesting things can really help Us to get infront of the perspective and learn what life is.

That's not a fact, and no religion doesn't explain scientifically where life came from. It's an interesting tool for indepth philosophical musings on morality and such, but beyond that it has no merit in science.

Life explains to be a test and the 10 commandments are given to follow.

One more thing is that different people understand different the bible

and can get it wrong. For example Jihad what arabes can do is breaking against the laws if so told in the 10 commandments, don't kill, don't steal and et.c don't lie when they do jihad and kills other people being martrues and terrorists.

What in the fucking hell are you on about? What does this have to do with the big bang? Nexus... please read more books and make an effort to learn more about the world, please.

It's the human being that can be dangerous when he don't understands the bible wrong and the religion it's not the religion that says go and do it or you must do it because if not you gonna get it.

Seriously, what the fuck are you on about? This has nothing to do with the thread.

You knoww why do you belive more in sciense when you can belive in the religion too? The fact is how you understand what is being spoken and what is being said.

allright?

Because science has research and evidence backing it up. Quit speaking out your ass. Christ, I thought you guys had good education systems over there.

Western Civilization isn't that far off from this sort of behavior. A hundred years ago we were lynching black people for looking at white people. Two hundred years ago we were burning people for witchcraft. Five hundred years ago we were destroying entire civilizations based upon religious wars.

100 years ago? Try 5 years ago. This shit still happens, just not as much. Even 30 years ago there were still lots of lynchings and a new rise given to the KKK.

Sweeeeeeeet, more stuff to get a third mortgage on my tiny 1 bedroom hovel for! I can't wait to put these on my Neon.

lol skjalg, that video is from a documentary called "what the bleep do we know", which is made by some new age lunatics that want to use quantum mechanics to explain consciousness, how we are all part of god etc...

using string theory, it can be explained... however that is just hypothesis and yet impossible to observe

Oh man, that crap. It was actually from a local cult from right here in the good ol' US of A! It's tripe and has been repeatedly trounced.

I vote that we name it "Toilet Shark."

A locked subforum that mods can send posts to instead of deleting them, that way people who get their posts chopped can see what they did that wasn't kosher and the mods can still have control over their forums. Win-win, baby!

I do believe he's been acquitted.

http://news.yahoo.com/fc/world/afghanistan

My favorite series of patches for BF1942:

Pilots are too powerful, let's take 'em down a peg. Now you can shoot pilots. Oh snap, turns out that flak kills people with headshots like crazy now and the falling planes kill more people than the pilots do! Remove this feature and make it so that planes faster. :psyduck:

these aren't very funny.