Forum posts

Some of my macro shots:

^ That was my 2007 new years resolution (1920x1200).

It and Gimpshop are pretty decent freeware alternatives to Photoshop.

I assume you would have to adjust both the bones and the mesh.

tweaking? I only need some chinese flags in the middle ... I cant seem to make them good

By that I mean there a few small flaws that could be fixed. Like the grass texture could be scaled down a bit - looks a bit too blocky.

Love the theme. Looks great, just needs some tweaking.

nice guinea... um, why are you building a dam?

I've always wanted to map a dam, just never really got around to it. That and my other project is on hold until XSI Mod Tool is back up for download.

In-engine shots of my dam. It's running in CS right now because of the materials available, but I should have it running in HL2 by the time I release it.

I don't think that's true. If i hide the sky visgroup in my map the sky still compiles... I do think this is true in source mapping though?

My bad, I am thinking of Source. Haven't done much in GldSrc for a while.

Some more progress on my dam concept. It's compiling right now for a test run, but the damn thing is so huge it's taking forever. No pun intended

Reminds me of Bioshock.

Just an idea I was toying around with today. As massive as it is, the dam I'm modeling this after (John Martin Dam - Las Animas, Colorado) is about twice the size (16 floodgates vs the 8 in mine). I figure the full dam would be too far across for the engine to handle.

Did you edit the directory in the .vmt file to match the new location of the materials? For example:

[blue]"SDK_LightmappedGeneric"
{

$baseTexture brick/brickwall045a

}[/blue]

Here it shows that the "brickwall045a" texture is located in the "brick" folder.

Visgroups don't do anything in-game. The cordon tool lets you designate a little section of your map to compile in, and I believe it blocks off any leaks as well.

If you deselect (hide) a visgroup, it won't compile, and therefore won't be included in-game. It works great for bad brushes and problem entities. As for leaks, I prefer to use entity placement and the compiler log file to isolate it.

I never use the cordon tool. If I have a problem, I just use visgroups to isolate it.

RL graphics always pwn video game screenshots. Reminds me of Oblivion, except with better draw distances.

DX10 is mostly improvements to the hardware side of things. Most DX10 effects can be emulated via DX9 to some degree. It's certainly not the quantum leap we saw between DX7 and DX8 and again between DX8 and DX9.

That's funny, because on the occasion use my 19 inch Trinitron instead of my 19 inch widescreen, I think it's kind of refreshing.

My 24" LCD looks better than any CRT I've used. Well, that and it's 24" and a CRT that size would be a nightmare.

If all else fails, try making it as a model. The engine can handle far more e_polys than w_polys.

Let's just say I'm posting from my christmas present right now. (ipod touch)

The day anything in the Bill of Rights gets taken away will be dark day indeed.

America already is at the mercy of its government. Get used to it.

Complacency is what a corrupt government thrives off of.

There is a price to pay for liberal gun laws; just compare the US to most other western nations in terms of violent crime and you'll notice the difference.

Depends on where you are. Everyone has a gun where I live, but the violent crime rate here is comparable to foreign cities of the same size. There is very little gang violence here, while cities like LA, New Orleans and DC have severe gang-related violence and also very strict gun control laws (DC even had an outright ban until recently). Yet these cities all have very high murder rates. I'm not saying there aren't consequences to gun ownership, but there's a lot more to the picture than just that.

Death sentence makes everyone as guilty as the murderer.

Do we have to get all touchy-feely about criminals? They get what they deserve, it's called justice.

TL;DR countries with better gun control > the US.

Most countries also have a considerably less violent culture. You're making a very shortsighted comparison here. Sweden doesn't have the gang violence problem the US has. So as long as we have an issue with cultural violence, I'm gonna take measures to protect myself.

Also, an unarmed public is just asking for a corrupt government to walk all over them.

So what do we do to keep the dumb ones on their side? Build a giant Berlin wall or something?

School never really gave me any ambition until I tried some of the jobs out there. After finding myself stuffing 2000 envelopes a day at a mailing center for $8.25 an hour I basically said "screw this", quit and went to college to study electrical engineering. If anything, schools need to do a better job of inspiring students. One of the reasons I'm a believer in the space program.

PS: I might be wrong about the American high schools, because TV isn't always close to the truth. So I would appreciate an American to reply to that.

There are some really exceptional high schools here. Others tend to be fairly lousy. And I think it has to do with whether the school has enough funds to support extra-curricular activities.

The worst part of our education system, I believe, is our elementary schools. They've cut back on recess and PE classes, and don't encourage critical thinking. And when kids start getting fat, they blame it on food (neglecting the fact that they've cut recess and PE) and replace the cafeteria food with "health food", which is ridiculously high in starch and is probably even worse than so-called fatty foods. And to top it all off, they've begun sheltering kids from the word "fail".

We do have a ton of very smart people in the US. Problem is most lack any ambition, so the stupid people take their place and make us look bad. Probably because our education system seems to encourage mediocrity.

It's gotten to the point where some schools are dropping the "F" grade because they don't want people to feel bad. Our education system is fail. Oh wait, that's too harsh. Our education system "Needs Improvement".

And wow, very neat progress there, Hrny. What doesn't seem to come together though is the roof. Those wooden beams outside are way too dense (go for 3x less or so), also, you can't see them inside, which doesn't look too logical. And if it's a tile roof, it has to be somehow diagonal - never go for flat unless it's concrete.

I tried an angled roof with that building. Just didn't work. As for the beams, I took some rough measurements from some of the official CS maps. Also, the height of the ceiling is lower than the beams, so you wouldn't be able to see them inside anyway.

Another section of my map. This building is still incomplete and unfurnished, but is intended to have an Italian style exterior (stucco, tile roof) and a coastal style interior.

Oh yeah, don't mind the lone lamp, it's stuck in the middle just to light up the place.

Ok, so I've figured out what I'd need. For a 2 story elevator, I'd need at least 18 path_corners, 4 buttons, 3 sets of double doors, 1 elevator, 8 changetargets, and a ton of multisources and multimanagers.

Not very practical and an absolute entity nightmare; but it would be a fun challenge to get the whole system working.

I intend the design to be both for single and multiplayer. So that makes it rather tough. And if a button is pressed while the elevator is in motion, I want it to wait til the elevator has stopped at its destination, then call it back. In other words, very complex logic.

I know how it's done, just the control logic is a nightmare. I'm looking to build a foolproof design, so that if someone blocks a door or presses a button while the elevator is operating, it won't affect operation. But I'm an EE student so I'm familiar with the design process for digital logic.

I'm in the progress of making an elevator that does the following:

-When you press the button, and the elevator is not on that floor, it will be called to that floor.
-The elevator itself has doors that open and close and move with the elevator.

Now it sounds simple enough, but I was surprised when I got into it how much logic it required. I drew up a logic diagram and not even halfway through it has become ridiculously complex. I'm gonna try to implement it but I don't even know if it will work.

By your analogy, the people on the planes used in 9/11 should've fended off the hijackers too, but they couldn't because they had no weapons. So much for owning a gun.

That doesn't make sense. If someone had been armed on those planes, then they probably would not have been successfully hijacked. That's why they have air marshals now and why pilots are allowed to keep a sidearm in the cockpit.

So I don't know what you were getting at, but my analogy applies to this situation as well.

Without actually having an opinion on gun control, you can't really make a comparison between a car and a gun since the sole purpose of a gun is to shoot people.

Erm...hunting? Target shooting? Guns are used far more often for sporting purposes. Rifle shooting does happen to be an Olympic sport after all.

Kids who want to kill more should learn how to map. so then can kill as much as they want, how they want.

lol, like that kid who mapped his school and ended up getting arrested? Poor guy, we live in such a paranoid society

What? Guns don't contribute to crime? Even a single killing with a gun is by definition a "contribution to crime" so I don't get what you're trying to prove here. I seriously can't grasp why people (like you it seems) defend America's gun policy. And statistics can prove just about anything, do you think those gun related killings would be higher if guns were outlawed? I don't.

Okay, perhaps a better word choice would be "cause" rather than "contribute". If you were somehow to disarm the entire US (technically impossible), yes, murders would drop by some degree. However, other violent crime such as rape would likely rise. Even more so, crimes like burglar would certainly rise by removing a major deterrent factor. I wasn't trying to sway you, only saying that people are blaming the wrongs things, but you had to go there

What really strikes a nerve with me is how much some people want to take away guns. How fair is it to strip the law-abiding populace of a right just because a handful of psychopaths choose to abuse it? Are we just gonna get rid of everything even slightly dangerous? We live in enough of a shelter society as it is. Heck, cars kill far, far more people than guns. But people view cars as essential, and would not dream of taking them away. Yet guns seem less important, so some people are willing to get rid of a "nuisance" for a little extra peace of mind.

Not to mention the impossible act of disarming the US populace without resorting to brutally oppressive measures. And just because there is a law forbidding gun ownership doesn't mean criminals are gonna obey that. Drugs are banned, but they don't seem to be in short supply. India has a strict gun ban law, but that sure didn't stop a small group of terrorists from killing 179 people - basically unarmed sitting ducks. So yes, lets give up any ability of defending ourselves for a false sense of security. Virtually every shooting massacre has occurred where law-abiding citizens aren't allowed to carry guns.

Then there is the economic factor. The firearms industry employs millions of people, directly or indirectly. Cutting them out of the picture would be economic disaster. The job market is terrible here and the only source of reliable income I have found is running a rifle range during the summer. So yes, lets ban guns and screw people like me out the only job we can find. People make a living manufacturing guns, selling guns, hunting and other things.

Finally, an armed populace is a check against government oppression. Many brutal dictators throughout history would not have been able to maintain power if they had not disarmed their populace first. This country would not have even existed if it weren't for armed civilians. It's a part of our heritage, and taking it away carries the chance of sparking another civil war.

What works in your nation doesn't mean it will work in ours. So it would be nice, even if you don't agree, to at least respect our rights and beliefs.

Basically, the max you could go with RAM would be 4GB, but the OS won't allow you to utilize it all. As for graphics, the absolute fastest you can get is an X1950XT, but that may not be worth the price.

Give us a maximum price range, and we can suggest upgrades that will fit in your budget.

Not to mention you'll only attract fat chicks. And even then they just want to know where you're hiding all the burgers.

He said DDR-SDRAM, which is the first generation of DDR (DDR1) so DDR 400 would do fine. And not quite 10 years old. A system of that configuration would be no more than 6 years old as 2.66GHz P4 models first appeared in 2002.

is that of a real place you know?

Nope, just thought it up. Though I did draw some design inspiration from de_inferno.

I remember the DE from long ago. You still haven't skinned it?

Very nice animation BTW.

That's completely irrelevant. Yes there are brutal murders comitted without guns, but guns surely don't help as this incident clearly shows. And you can't know that the kid would use a kitchen knife instead. Psychologists have stated that stabbing someone and shooting someone is basically like night and day, stabbing is more personal. That's why you can't assume he'd whack his parents some other way if he didn't have the gun at his disposal. There is no "most likely".

You missed my point entirely. The point I'm trying to make is that people love to put the blame on whatever they can. Yes, firearms certainly make killing someone easier, however statistics clearly show that firearms do not contribute to crime. In fact, the FBI's latest crime report shows, that despite gun ownership in the US being at an all-time high, murders are down 43% since 1991, and violent crime has dropped 38%. Also, versus national average, right-to-carry states (states that allow you to carry a firearm in public) have a 28% lower murder rate, 50% fewer robbery incidents, and 24% lower overall violent crime rates.

I'm not trying to sway your opinion on firearm ownership necessarily, but mass media loves to paint an inaccurate picture of things. Let's not point the finger at guns or at violent games. There was something clearly wrong with this guy, and chances are he would have harmed someone in his lifetime, with or without a gun and without ever playing a violent game.

I'm not defending the kid, he's clearly got some issues, but you'd see a lot less of shit like that if everyone and everything wasn't packing heat.

That would be nice if it were the case, but there were plenty of brutal murders before guns. In absence of the gun, most likely he would have done something like taking a knife from the kitchen and slitting his parents' throats from behind. Psychopaths will use whatever they can get their hands on; be it a gun, knife, blunt object, even improvised explosives (IEDs).

What we really need to address is the mental health problem in this country. Too many lunatics here.

Here are some shots from my long-time CS:S project.