Commented 15 years ago2008-07-08 20:45:50 UTC
in journal: #5182Comment #44249
hey look, it's a press release! in TWHL journals! no wait, it's an advertisement for gametrailers.
why are all the websites that have a live feed to E3 so crappy? IGN, gametrailers, gamespot...
for the last three years i've watched the three pre-E3 keynote things by the big three live on gamespot. (at 4 in the morning :D) the rest of E3 is boring. chrono trigger looks shit.
as for games: gears of war 4 (a remake of gears 1 in unreal engine 3.1) left 7 dead RIIIIDGE RAAAAAACERRRR HALO COOKING featuring MASTER CHEF wii fit 2 with wireless leotard
This comment was made on an article that has been deleted.
This comment was made on an article that has been deleted.
Commented 15 years ago2008-06-05 23:08:40 UTC
in news: New TutorialsComment #98523
because the judges have uni work to do, which is more important than compo results. that, and the compo results code isn't done yet, and i can't do it until july because i have exams.
Looking at the screenshots of this map, it looks good. Great, even. Which is probably why this map got MOTM. Unfortunately, when playing the map itself, it's not so great. I've seen this a few times before - screenshots only give you a fixed angle, they give you no sense of the general 'feel' of the map, and obviously you cannot experience the gameplay either. As you can probably glean from the numbers above, the amount of negative commentary I have on this map is rather astonishing, compared to the other reviews in the vault, and yes, in this MOTM feature itself. I'll break it up into the 5 sections, because it makes it much easier for me to write about it. Architecture in the map is rather bland, and many places are blocky and very much out of proportion. Indeed, in some places, any sense of realism is thrown out the window because the scale is ridiculously off. This is particularly noticable with stairs and other enclosed areas. Speaking of enclosed areas, the entire map is full of them. It's disturbingly cramped, and leaves snipers rather useless. The entire map is a maze of tiny corridors and pathways and it is very easy to get lost within the labyrinth of alleyways, stairs, and ladders. Displacement work is lacking at best, with lots of stretched textures and boring, pointy, unnatural-looking stuff littered all over the place. Giving credit where it is due, there are some places where the architecture is well done, and it's particularly noticable in the rooftops, which, for the most part, look rather nice. Taking a look at the 3D skybox shows that some of the higher towers and a small amount of other stuff was moved there for optimisation, but there's nothing else in the 3D skybox besides a terrible excuse for a custom 2D skybox, implemented in all the wrong ways. I realise that you can't PakRat custom skies (I think), but this is just a terrible way to try to get around it. The author has run a circle of sprites or something right around the 3D skybox. It looks horrible when you're playing it, and there's a perfectly good 3D skybox there that could be used instead. It's not just for optimisation of tower-like structures, you know! Texturing is nothing special, and is downright bad in some places, with some cases of misaligned and badly blended textures. There are some places that use the same texture over a large space, which gives it a monotonous, boring feel. There are several places where two textures are placed next to each other that clash, and don't tile or fit together in any way. Ambience is disappointingly over-the-top. There's a looping background sound of your typical DOD fare - guns firing and artillery going off, but it's much too loud - enough to be annoying after extended (read: 5 minutes) periods of play. There's also absolutely no variation in the volume of the background sounds throughout the entire map - some soundscapes could do a lot for it. The author tried to create a bit more ambience by inserting several sound loops that you can only hear when near a certain area - and fell flat. There's (at least) two places with random looping audio of people singing, and the sound is coming from nowhere in particular. In one case, I'm pretty sure there's a woman's singing voice coming out of a rather large slab of concrete. It's the kind of thing you'd expect from a crappy counterstrike map, not a MOTM winner. The mapper seems to have inserted every single vehicle model that DOD has into the map, which, I suppose, is their choice - but it reeks of over-compensation, and misuse of models. In fact, most of the models of the map are badly placed - almost "chucked in", because Source mapping is reasonably dependant on models. I think that this map might have been made by someone more used to the Goldsource way of mapping, which isn't a problem normally, but remember we're talking MOTM winner material here. Moving on to lighting, which is average at best. Lighting is present, but does little to add contrast or anything interesting to the map. Yellow and white light appear to be overused, making the map seem very boring, with no heavy contrasting areas at all. Also - the street light have an odd look to them as you get closer or further away from them. And why are street lights on anyway, it's the middle of the day! Finally, the all-important gameplay. Not much to say about this, really - the number says most of it, and the rest is explained above. The cramped style of the map makes it almost impossible for snipers to be effective, and doesn't really make the map fun at all. It's also a veritable maze of passageways, stairs, alleys, and the like, which makes it amazingly easy to get lost. A few times I was wandering around the map, rather lost, and suddenly I found myself on the other side of the map! Very confusing. Several times, playing as either team, I found myself running into clip brushes, or player team clips. It breaks an unspoken rule of DOD - players can walk back into their spawn after dropping down from their little ledges. Only the player team clips stop the allies walking into the axis spawn and spawnkilling the lot of them. Another unspoken rule of DOD, and all multiplayer maps in general - usable objects. I encountered at least two - a machine gun-type thing, and a mortar, both of which may or may not kill people in range of said objects (the former making them much, much, worse.) Again, this is the kind of thing I'd expect from some crappy TF2 achievement-whore map, not MOTM material. Yet another unspoken rule of DOD - balance the caps! Nuernberg has 5 caps, 3 of which are single-man caps. Get where I'm going with this? It's simply unbalanced! There's not much more to say about that, beside that it creates unbalanced gameplay, and unfair matches. One final thing - I was happily nazi-ing along with my MP5 (or whatever it is), and had just walked out of the spawn, approaching the centre of the map, when suddenly I fell down a hole! There's a craftily-placed manhole thingie just after a small ledge, which makes it pretty much impossible to see until you're falling down it. Mappers out there, reading this review: Please, put holes in a place where you can see them before you're dropping to your (possible) doom! Thankyou.
Bottom Line
A fairly disappointing map that needs serious improvement. Techniques used in the map makes it seem as if the author is used to Goldsource mapping. If so, perhaps it may be best to stay with Goldsource. Otherwise, please do some more research on Source mapping! From this, it seems that most TWHL members who actually bother to vote for MOTM judge mostly by the screenshot of the map, without actually playing it. I'd recommend that members play the map before voting in the future. Or maybe just more people need to vote.
Commented 15 years ago2008-05-29 00:09:57 UTC
in journal: #5106Comment #54836
Exactly what sprites are you talking about? Also, it's stupid to buy Quake Wars as a singleplayer game, because it's so obvious that it's a multiplayer game. Online multiplayer.
Commented 15 years ago2008-05-26 00:39:13 UTC
in journal: #5097Comment #54817
it's only recently coming out for consoles, ant. you know it's on linux and mac too? splash damage seem to want quake wars everywhere but no, good for them.
Commented 15 years ago2008-05-17 19:40:22 UTC
in journal: #5070Comment #42486
EXACTLY. I never sugar coat what I say, I just say exactly what I think. Because of that, I get nailed for it because I'm an admin. So mostly I just say nothing.
Commented 15 years ago2008-05-17 00:07:15 UTC
in journal: #5067Comment #58670
if that's the case, you don't need to overclock anything. you definately need a better graphics card to go with your quad core though, 8500 is disgustingly bad.
Commented 15 years ago2008-05-16 18:14:06 UTC
in journal: #5067Comment #58669
to overclock your CPU, go should through the BIOS. same with RAM timings. overclock your graphics card through your video drivers. for nvidia, their o/c program is called ntune. don't know about amd's drivers.
madcow is right, overclocking will make little-to-no difference to everyday performance, and voids any warranties on that particular part. best avoid it altogether and spend a few hundred on something that'll last a few years, and won't artifact on your screen
This comment was made on an article that has been deleted.
why are all the websites that have a live feed to E3 so crappy? IGN, gametrailers, gamespot...
for the last three years i've watched the three pre-E3 keynote things by the big three live on gamespot. (at 4 in the morning :D) the rest of E3 is boring. chrono trigger looks shit.
as for games:
gears of war 4 (a remake of gears 1 in unreal engine 3.1)
left 7 dead
RIIIIDGE RAAAAAACERRRR
HALO COOKING featuring MASTER CHEF
wii fit 2 with wireless leotard
....with firefox.
also depends where the new place is.
Texturing — 6
Ambience — 4
Lighting — 5
Gameplay — 2
Review
Looking at the screenshots of this map, it looks good. Great, even. Which is probably why this map got MOTM. Unfortunately, when playing the map itself, it's not so great. I've seen this a few times before - screenshots only give you a fixed angle, they give you no sense of the general 'feel' of the map, and obviously you cannot experience the gameplay either. As you can probably glean from the numbers above, the amount of negative commentary I have on this map is rather astonishing, compared to the other reviews in the vault, and yes, in this MOTM feature itself. I'll break it up into the 5 sections, because it makes it much easier for me to write about it. Architecture in the map is rather bland, and many places are blocky and very much out of proportion. Indeed, in some places, any sense of realism is thrown out the window because the scale is ridiculously off. This is particularly noticable with stairs and other enclosed areas. Speaking of enclosed areas, the entire map is full of them. It's disturbingly cramped, and leaves snipers rather useless. The entire map is a maze of tiny corridors and pathways and it is very easy to get lost within the labyrinth of alleyways, stairs, and ladders. Displacement work is lacking at best, with lots of stretched textures and boring, pointy, unnatural-looking stuff littered all over the place. Giving credit where it is due, there are some places where the architecture is well done, and it's particularly noticable in the rooftops, which, for the most part, look rather nice. Taking a look at the 3D skybox shows that some of the higher towers and a small amount of other stuff was moved there for optimisation, but there's nothing else in the 3D skybox besides a terrible excuse for a custom 2D skybox, implemented in all the wrong ways. I realise that you can't PakRat custom skies (I think), but this is just a terrible way to try to get around it. The author has run a circle of sprites or something right around the 3D skybox. It looks horrible when you're playing it, and there's a perfectly good 3D skybox there that could be used instead. It's not just for optimisation of tower-like structures, you know! Texturing is nothing special, and is downright bad in some places, with some cases of misaligned and badly blended textures. There are some places that use the same texture over a large space, which gives it a monotonous, boring feel. There are several places where two textures are placed next to each other that clash, and don't tile or fit together in any way. Ambience is disappointingly over-the-top. There's a looping background sound of your typical DOD fare - guns firing and artillery going off, but it's much too loud - enough to be annoying after extended (read: 5 minutes) periods of play. There's also absolutely no variation in the volume of the background sounds throughout the entire map - some soundscapes could do a lot for it. The author tried to create a bit more ambience by inserting several sound loops that you can only hear when near a certain area - and fell flat. There's (at least) two places with random looping audio of people singing, and the sound is coming from nowhere in particular. In one case, I'm pretty sure there's a woman's singing voice coming out of a rather large slab of concrete. It's the kind of thing you'd expect from a crappy counterstrike map, not a MOTM winner. The mapper seems to have inserted every single vehicle model that DOD has into the map, which, I suppose, is their choice - but it reeks of over-compensation, and misuse of models. In fact, most of the models of the map are badly placed - almost "chucked in", because Source mapping is reasonably dependant on models. I think that this map might have been made by someone more used to the Goldsource way of mapping, which isn't a problem normally, but remember we're talking MOTM winner material here. Moving on to lighting, which is average at best. Lighting is present, but does little to add contrast or anything interesting to the map. Yellow and white light appear to be overused, making the map seem very boring, with no heavy contrasting areas at all. Also - the street light have an odd look to them as you get closer or further away from them. And why are street lights on anyway, it's the middle of the day! Finally, the all-important gameplay. Not much to say about this, really - the number says most of it, and the rest is explained above. The cramped style of the map makes it almost impossible for snipers to be effective, and doesn't really make the map fun at all. It's also a veritable maze of passageways, stairs, alleys, and the like, which makes it amazingly easy to get lost. A few times I was wandering around the map, rather lost, and suddenly I found myself on the other side of the map! Very confusing. Several times, playing as either team, I found myself running into clip brushes, or player team clips. It breaks an unspoken rule of DOD - players can walk back into their spawn after dropping down from their little ledges. Only the player team clips stop the allies walking into the axis spawn and spawnkilling the lot of them. Another unspoken rule of DOD, and all multiplayer maps in general - usable objects. I encountered at least two - a machine gun-type thing, and a mortar, both of which may or may not kill people in range of said objects (the former making them much, much, worse.) Again, this is the kind of thing I'd expect from some crappy TF2 achievement-whore map, not MOTM material. Yet another unspoken rule of DOD - balance the caps! Nuernberg has 5 caps, 3 of which are single-man caps. Get where I'm going with this? It's simply unbalanced! There's not much more to say about that, beside that it creates unbalanced gameplay, and unfair matches. One final thing - I was happily nazi-ing along with my MP5 (or whatever it is), and had just walked out of the spawn, approaching the centre of the map, when suddenly I fell down a hole! There's a craftily-placed manhole thingie just after a small ledge, which makes it pretty much impossible to see until you're falling down it. Mappers out there, reading this review: Please, put holes in a place where you can see them before you're dropping to your (possible) doom! Thankyou.Bottom Line
A fairly disappointing map that needs serious improvement. Techniques used in the map makes it seem as if the author is used to Goldsource mapping. If so, perhaps it may be best to stay with Goldsource. Otherwise, please do some more research on Source mapping! From this, it seems that most TWHL members who actually bother to vote for MOTM judge mostly by the screenshot of the map, without actually playing it. I'd recommend that members play the map before voting in the future. Or maybe just more people need to vote.Also, it's stupid to buy Quake Wars as a singleplayer game, because it's so obvious that it's a multiplayer game. Online multiplayer.
Also, Dreamcast.
Awesome
but no, good for them.
Mature people can usually get their grammar correct...
overclock your graphics card through your video drivers. for nvidia, their o/c program is called ntune. don't know about amd's drivers.
madcow is right, overclocking will make little-to-no difference to everyday performance, and voids any warranties on that particular part. best avoid it altogether and spend a few hundred on something that'll last a few years, and won't artifact on your screen