Maximius

No I haven't yet hit that bathroom yet, sounds like I'm going to need to be using it myself. It does get too much sometimes, too much darkness everywhere, but then after about an hour I have to go back and do it. Its Doomitis, the last time I had it it was on two linked 486's and the Doom2 /FM box set. Hours upon hours, sun up to sundown to sunup. Break loading double barreled shotgun smoking like a chimney. Can't hang with that insanity anymore but I can feel its leathery grip on my mind none the less. I can see some incredible Mod maps in these Doom maps, Im looking at one robot arm swinging canisters around an assembly bay and I can see an enormous painted brass orrery swinging planets around strange orbits, vapors rising from tables of alembics and flasks, robed and cowled figures quietly gathering in the shadows underneath the mechanical planets and comets, muttering over a cracked mummy whose lips quiver slightly as the figures slouch past and whisper to it "Arise, awake!" The orrerys' spheres slowly glide into a triangular pattern as above in the howling, blistering starry sky an identical pattern forms. The Sycophant, rotted with age himself but upright and grasping a gnarled staff, croaks a short command. The figures form a triangle with the Sycophant at its Northward point. He mewls a few words nearly to himself and the mouth of the mummy gapes open. The Sycophant turns to the lectern behind him, hesitates, a shadow in the shadows?, nothing, no, and reads aloud from the wild, spidery script. The assembly begins to moan and sway, in the skies above the light of three bright planets falls into crystals placed within their mechanical counterparts below and is fed into a single watery beam which licks out and touches a ice pure gem dangling on a chain just above the lectern. The planets, the orrery, and the gathering have all come into some eldritch concordance and time itself seems to shudder to a stop. The gem, rather than scattering the silvery,squirming light, seems instead to be collecting it, slowly filling up. The Sycophant eyes light with a fierce joy at the sight, soon the gem will be filled and placed within the mouth of his dark, fallen Lord and there will be a reckoning, yes a righteous reckoning! He glances at the text again, speaks a few words aloud , then turns to lay hands upon the body of his Lord, to lend his miserable strength, to prepare the husk so that it can be filled again. Under his touch, the cable hard skin and bones begins to soften, flow, and the fingers of the mummy twitch and clutch slightly. Above their heads, the planets suddenly move on, the window has closed, the gate shut. The beam of light has vanished. The Sycophant wheezes with his building joy, the time has come friends!, the assembly throws back their hoods to reveal rotted cheeks, gaping holes, an assembly of lichs, vampires,necromancers and dark alchemists who have extended their lives far beyond their mortal roots. Now, the time to reclaim the world of the living for their own, to wreak a wild, furious war against life and light, to tread the world beneath their heels! The Sycophant turns to the pluck up the gem, brimming with darkling power, my Lord will rise, rise and lead us in a burning arc across the face of the world, across the mighty gulf of the.... But the gem is gone. The Sycophants face is for a brief moment empty, stunned, for the first time in five hundred and seventeen years he feels a spike of fear in his withered heart. The blankness is then suddenly contorted with a rage that cannot be contained in his worn flesh. He claws at his face, splitting his leathery cheeks, seeming to try to contain the single word that finally shrieks out past his dead lips.... "THIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEF!!!!!!! As the assembled monstrosities explode into a storm of wails and cries, the Sycophant, fallen to his knees in his torment, looks up past the chain, past the metal spheres, up to the banks of windows that border the half dome now opened to the night sky. There! A figure, a mortal, clad in all black, is halfway out an opened casement. It stops, glances back, and the eyes of the two meet. The Sycophants' right hand reaches out to grasp at the image, trembling with curdled rage and agony...and the window is empty.

I really think its the best Doom I've ever played, it is fucking freaking me out. But at the same time, its so exhilarating to go Bonzo and just start tearing into the bastards. I actually say aloud "get in there you wussy!" to goad myself. But the noises will get me first, I think, SD was right about the noises and earphones, its almost too much to bear. There are demon voices woven into the doors and machinery, in the EnPro core the doors made a sound almost identical to the screech of an imp as they opened and closed. In another section, as you pause on a platform over a red glowing pit far beneath, you can hear faint screams from below. The one scene a few levels back, one zombie feeding on a corpses guts, as you kill it the corpse gets to its feet and attacks as well. This beats almost any horror flick I've seen in years in terms of actually making me want to shut the game down at times. FarCry had a lot going for it, good firefights and all, but the monsters were goofy and it never developed any real immersion in a horror/sci fi sense.

Im probably confusing my terms somewhere, what I want is for the "panels" of hedgerow texture or material to be curved, so I can shape my hedge. But I don't want to use polys, I'm just drawing pixels here, at least I think I am. So can I bend the section of pixels that makes the image, without applying it to a polygon surface? The image of the hedge section I posted, can that , as a pixel map, be curved or warped or something or is it always going to appear as a flat plane? This game ThinkTanks I bought recently, lots of fun, has these toony little trees, but the leaves are pixel maps I think and they are gently curving palm type leaves. If I can do something similar, it will make things look a lot more organic.

Nice, thanks, do you happen to know if these are also in GIMP? I know desat and select color is, but I cannot find replace or match color. But they are probably there and I just haven't come across them yet. P.S. Thanks hawk for that link. Ooo, just remembered an important question too, can these maps be bent or curved without applying them to an actual models surface? Im trying to make these hedges using mostly or entirely alpha maps but they will look like shit if I cannot curve or bend them into more natural shapes.

If he is going to join, go coasties, they don't deploy to combat zones anywhere nearly as much as the other branches. And he can prepare for more than a year, with recruitment numbers down and AWOLs way up, they will cling to his ass like glue. Some units are on their third extension of duty over there.

Tell Tom to get his ass into school and stay there. Nothing will bring a better return on his investment. Cars depreciate. Frankly, speaking as an Army veteran, the military is going to get you killed really fast or maimed or mentally shattered and then dump your ass back on your home street. Returning veterans are facing shrinking Veterans Affairs budgets, record unemployment, increased chances of homelessness, our leaders have abandoned our servicemembers. The Chimpanzee in Chief recently slashed the VAs budget by several million, what a way to welcome home all the heroes he put in harms way. And the Marines, well he will CERTAINLY see action in the Marines, he may be all gung ho now about that but it will be a different story two years in when his tour is getting extended for another six months and he's lost one fifth of his platoon to roadside bombs.

argh, its still not linking though, unless its my puter or something. Ill try again when I get home. The last pic shows all those panels, layered like an onion but with more space in between and on the sides to let light/shadow pass through.

The last link got cut off, here it is

I'm joking man, as if to say you were implying my reflexes were deteriorating.

Ok, just some simple stuff here but I'm a'learnin: I used Color picker and the paintbrush on a fine setting to change this: into this: which I'm going to darken a bit with some forest green. I'll do this to about 8 different sections or so, then layer them after N-mapping to construct a bush or hedge. Heres a sketch of that: and here is a birdeye view of the thing, without a "cap" of hedge map on top. Its this kind of layering of panels that I hope creates a more realistic sense of depth, of actually looking into the bush a little.

Who are you calling old!?! umm, nm..

Nice!

I only intended to play it for scenery, thus Easy, but I got drawn in. But I just killed about 8 flying skulls, followed by 4 imps and then another squadron of skulls! I got crushed, I couldn't reload or switch fast enough, all weapons were in the red, I was shooting my pistol even. If this is Easy I cant imagine Normal. I always play on the hardest setting too but no way! Whats Normal, fifty skulls at once?

I used to call my wife in to see new stuff in the game, she won't come now after the scene where one of the two headed thingys chases after you down the wall pipes as your elevator goes by. She shrieked and ran when I blew it apart with the scatter-gun. I can feel the Doom-itis setting in, shutting off all the lights, playing until 3 A.M., willing yourself to just leap into that dark fucking room with only a few blinking consoles that you know is filled with insanity. I'm playing on Easy and already they are hitting me with 15 + spider demons at a pop. I cannot imagine the cacaodemons and viles up ahead...

I've made it as far as the Spider Lady with the Bald Dude Growing out of Her Ass type of Demon at the end of Alpha Labs 4 and I have to say my opinion of D3 is changing. Im actually having fun and getting the beejeebers scared out of me along the way. And boy, you got to love the combat shotgun in close quarters fighting, I had like 8 spider demons on me and I wasted half of them with one shotgun blast. But man, D3 really is the best choice for the Mod, its so freaking spooky and moody even with a sci fi setting. I actually find myself hiding in shadows, even though I know it doesn't do me any good. The constant squeaking and whining of machinery really starts to eat away at your sanity after a while too.

I think I got something that will work, select by color SHift O, then I can fill it with the pattern color, which gently reduces the highlights with a mixture of all of the colors present. Im trying to figure out how to fill it with a solid color next. Ill post some comparison shots.

Ill try the color picker and bright/contrast approach first. Also, the weather has been plenty overcast as of late, I wonder if I can get some photos that would work well. Everything I can find on the web is well lit with sunlight, as they are all hedge bush advertisements trying to look wonderful. Bastard hedge growers!

Can you post a link to these shows? Heres that Equal Time for Free Thought show from N. Jersey, it has a number of discussions on "faith free" moral/ethical arguments. http://www.njhn.org/etff_archives.html Especially check out the called Unto Others, about the evolutionary basis for altruism.

So I could for example select a section of hedgerow, of an appropriate color and shading, and then clone it and remake a section of hedgerow with only that selection as multiple clones? Then, if I use a suite of cloned selections, all different, can I reconstruct the face of a hedge? Is that clear? Im trying to figure out if I should do that, or I have another idea, to use "color select" to select one color, then >somehow< replace another inappropriate color with the better one. Basically tone down the "hotspots" of light but retain the original image. This seems quicker than redrawing the whole fucking thing for a diffuse map. I'd love to learn how to someday but I'd settle for a little quick and dirty right now. Does this make sense or is there a better way to do it?

Glad you liked it, its a good show in general.

I'm just doing this to repost the link. This show is really good, its a great overview of the current state of evolutionary genetics as well as a dismissal of the notion of "race." P.S. I've discovered the perfect combination, snow day off with cocoa and whiskey! Weeeee!

Please explain further, why is it only useful as a way to save work? Does clone already do what this does? Or does it do it automatically, with the implication of not looking very authentic or something when compared to the human touch?

Oh god don't tell me that, I thought sygate was the answer to my prayers.....

This reminds me of the work of one of my favorite scientists of all time, Carl Sagan. I know, he wasn't one of the theoretical giants nor did he discover anything major that I know of. But his show "Cosmos" was a really powerful influence in my childhood and his books, although popular in nature, kept my interest going as I got older. I would have to watch the shows again to reevaluate them but back then, those images of deep space, ancient maps and mythical creatures, long dead civilizations that built observatories in temples, man it was a real good trip for the alert seven year old! Now, back to the actual topic...

ok so i will probably have to make a diffuse map, i have a tutorial somewhere. thanks for the info