deanb

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/forums/showthread.php?3301-Kickstarter-et-alia&p=122329&viewfull=1#post122329

So many good lines. So what'd you think of Ruffallos Hulk/Bruce Banner? And his secret.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grz8S70oVdk (next weeks trailer) So yeah this weeks was a tad dull, the "put things into place before the end" one. Though obviously with the ending it was rather pivotal, wrapping up events of last season to, I assume, usher in the events for next season we glimpsed last week. Excitement. Good scene though.

Because they can. And attacking one of the most high profile high-sec areas and potentially crippling the entire economy of EVE would certainly put their name on the map. http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/04/28/nowhere-is-safe-in-eve-online-as-goonswarm-suicide-bombs-galactic-trade-hub/

Got Version 3.3.1 up and running. Mobile chat You can now access forum chat through your phone. (or change your theme below to see it in action on your dekstop) Shinier chat It looks a bit prettier, though I might revert it back, we'll see how the new "shinier" chat works out. Topic Descriptions You can now add "Topic Descriptions" to posts. This isn't a new feature, it's old. But it got removed in version 3.2. I added the hook while I was sorting out this. Did some personal tweaks to the hook myself so you can see them when viewing new content (if you were on at the time you might have seen the text jumping about a bit as I got it formatted correctly). Gonna be fun to duplicate it on any new skins. FURLs "Friendly URLs". Another "it went away and now it's back in" feature. Basically makes the URLs human readable. Though this may not always be around as it does at a bit of overhead. Misc Some tweaks to the moderator toolbox and how the forum interacts with the database (aka it should run a bit faster.)

It flashes very quickly. It's at the end when

Any packs. That'd make it newb friendly? maybe for lazy people? Not that I can think of. Also after a bit of discussion, and the doubt did cross my mind the moment I typed it here, hence the plan b, but I'm thinking a succession game might be a bit much and a bit soon.

Anyone up for a succession game? Or maybe getting a few newbs in and writing up our experiences n such while longer term players pass on nuggets of wisdom n what not (bear in mind I'm making no claim to be a longer term player, I've not played for so long I'm gonna have to be starting from scratch anyway )

The inevitable evolution.

wow it's taken a while.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5x7pFRXrj1c They changed out Cobra Commander, otherwise Bruce Willis n Gordon-Levitt would be in two films together this year.

Donations are 24/7/365/1000

I'm gonna give a bump on this. Also in both the interest of saving money on renewal fee and also server space and back up time n all that (95% of what is stored on the forum is from the gallery) I'll be dropping the Gallery come June(ish..I'm pretty sure it's June for renewal..yeah May is domain). It's a little used feature so kinda makes sense to drop it.

Nope PS3 of late has been LoveFilm game player, most of my MP is still as always on PC.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/25/mein-kampf-released-notes-hitler Mien Kampf to be released in Germany.

No. I posted both a picture of some balls with just a plain materiel, bump maps n displacement maps on it and in effect. Then I posted the actual textures (of walls) that'd be used to create that effect, referencing either balls or walls when necessary (though I'm pretty sure I call them spheres most of the time)

I'll let Thursday fill in. But we have have plenty of nationalised services so I'm pretty sure monopolies are fine. As long as they're not dicks. We have plenty of regulatory bodies too. Like the previosly mentioned OFCOM, which rule over TV/phone/interwebs. And especially BT. Though BT fall under phone/interwebs in a big way. They control most of the UKs phone lines n sell it on wholesale. So while we have plenty of ISPs and phone providers n all that, they all (except Virgin since they have their own lines) go through BT first. So there's an example of a big monopoly and how it's controlled.

Check the bottom left of the text editor. Should be a "Last auto saved: time". You can click it and load in the text if you end up refreshing the page.

vs Also since the topic cropped up: For TV we have: Analog - the current de facto of the past however many decades. It'll be dead by the end of the year. It has 5 channels: BBC 1, BBC2, ITV, Channel 4 and Five. Freeview - This is what's taking over once the digital switchover is complete. It's terrestrial, broadcast out towers. You might recognise a couple. As the name implies, it's free. As long as you have a digibox or your TV supports it. Virgin Media - Virgin as in Richard Branson. This is cable TV. You'll probably recognise a lot more of the channels. Sky/BSkyB - Satellite TV. Pretty popular, I think it's the top as far as premium TV goes, but Virgin may have closed the gap since. (Nope they're the top) YouView - The closest thing we'll have to Hulu once it takes off. But for now Ofcom are dicking about (mainly cos Virgin n Sky don't like it). It is the phoenix out the ashes of a previous service planned called (at the time) "Project Kangaroo". Until then we have iPlayer n such. So there you go. Want cable? Got Virgin. Want satellite? Got Sky. Want free TV? Well you can't have it! TV License motherfucker. (actually you can watch recorded TV after it's aired, so iPlayer is fine to watch free)

Wow. I have the blurring turned off and I'm glad I have. That looks total overkill there. Terrible.

So got into Warband over the past week or so after owning it for probably over a year. It took a few goes but I eventually "got it". It seems pretty dull and awfully clunky, but has somewhat addictive qualities to it I guess. I guess it'd be nice if it had a story to it to follow. I guess my main issue is the clunkiness and inconsistency of the UI/UX. You can only access certain things on the overworld, and much stuff is hidden. Like to upgrade a basic soldier they get a + on their name and you pick the upgrade after clicking on them. To upgrade a "hero" character you have to click on them, choose to talk with them (an option that generates only basic single line response on normal soldiers) then from there pick the option that lets you level their skills. For your leader, you, you get to the skill menu from the base menu on the bottom of the screen. To equip your heroes is much the same clunkiness of going into the Talk menu, but for your Leader it's a case of picking the equipment menu from the main menu bar. You can't equip your soldiers with anything at all, they just use default weaponry. Which sucks cos you end up after a battle with an extra half dozen swords n such you can't do anything with except sell on. Not all information in text logs is saved either; the game has a chat log thing of the past however many lines of text the game has done, but useful stuff like when you sort of eavesdrop for trading information isn't retained. So you either need to memorise trade item and town names, or write it down manually. Getting and completing quests is a PITA too. Some villages might have quests, some don't. Some might have quests, but you're not of enough "renown" so you can't accept them. So you're having to go around the world to each n every village trying to find quests. Then when you get them, say "kill the forest bandits around the area, you have 60 days to complete this"...the forest bandits then never appear no matter how much roving you do or if you go n sleep in towns, set up camps, check if they're in local villages(some get raided by bandits) etc. In fact the game either has next to no enemies on the map, or tons of them, as is the case with sea bandits around the coast that tear apart most armies because there's like 4 battles in a row. Or you flee which destroys morale and you lose soldiers anyway. So yeah, I guess I'm not a fan, but there's certainly something there. edit: wow I wrote a bit more than I thought.

It is "normal polygons" still. Tessellation is a technique applied to the polygon model. Basically it adds in more polygons that the model actually has, leading to a smoother model. Combine with displacement mapping and you can also make it come out a bit more too. The concrete block is a bit funny because it didn't need to have all those extra polygons added, it seems it was a by product of making the handle on the top pop out instead of just being a flat texture. This means that games can look better without the artists having to make a super high poly model, and if your PC can handle it make your games look better too without taking a huge hit to performance. (This is a bit of an extreme example mind, in order to show it off I guess.) edit: I should maybe expand upon the displacement mapping thing since I've got experience with 3D and most haven't and I've gone n thrown in an image of "normal/bump/displacement" that means something to me but I guess not to others. Now you've got your normal texture. A coloured image and the part you actually see. e.g a picture of a brick wall onto a plane to make a wall. It'd be pretty flat. You walk around this wall in a 3D game and it's gonna look a bit shitty n old-school. Now what folks can add to this is a bump map. A bump map, like most texture maps, is a black and white image that the computer understands and uses the grey scale values, eg black = low depth, white = high depth, to create the illusion that it's got some texture to it. If you look at the above ball it looks a bit bumpy, but it's still clear it's physically flat sphere. Now the displacement map can use the same black n white image file to directly manipulate the model itself. So the bricks don't just look like they're sticking out a bit, they actually are sticking out. See the above ball. The reason this requires tessellation though is because you can't displace the polygons that aren't there. If i had one single polygon making up my wall, all I could do is a bump map. But with tessellation it can throw in a few extra thousand polygons to my wall, which the displacement map can then pull out of the wall to make into 3D bricks. You could grab either Bryce(as in canyon) or Terragen (2), both free. They use black n white image files as height-maps to make terrain, so it'd let you see the above text descriptions in action. I suggest Bryce btw, though not used either for a few years. Bryce is just a nicer program, it's free cos they do micro-transactions for pre-built models.