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Overall it doesn't look so bad. Only the blue light near the torch, in the last shot looks a bit strange and ouf of place to me.

An orgasm might only last for a few seconds, but everything up to that point feels good too!

That would be truly unrealistic, would it? So Oddity is the only person in the world that can just look at a screenshot and immediately see that the faces were created using this program? Now that would be really hard. So they have to download the mod, put the model in lightwave or whatever they want to use and take a look at it. How long does it take to do that? Less then five minutes excluding the download. Now this is REALLY a stupid argument. Did Electronic Arts bother to expand the legal costs, to take down a maod? Yes they did. What makes you think that other companies will NOT do the same to softwarepirates? Because that is what they will see in such a case. That would be the only legitimate point about it. I didn't say you should not use it, that's up to you anyway. And I know it will be a big timesaver.But you shouldn't think about this as blue-eyed as some apparently do. On the other hand. How likely do you think is this szenario? Someone grabs a copy of a GPL'ed code, puts it in his own software, compiles it and distributes it along with his own binary violating the GPL by NOT opening the source accordingly. Then someone else takes a look at the BINARY code, that has been generated by the compiler and is redistributed, and recognizes it to come from this GPL code? Do you think THIS likely? If not then I can show you a few cases even with the last year where exactly this happened. And I would say it would be MUCH easier to recognize some models, than identifiying some compiler generated code.

Actually it works like this. You try to cause a stack overflow. The overflow must be done in such a way that enough data is on the stack to match what was before there. The original function proceeds like normal. When it returns it will clear up the stack and discards all the data that you put there. The last value on the stack, before the function actually returns, is the address where it is originaly called from. Since you put enough data on the stack, of course the address doesn't point to the original caller, but to the new code that should be executed. So when the original function tries to return, it will not return to the original caller, but to the address that it is now pointing to. This code typically is rather small and will download additional stuff and run it. Any assembly programmer should be able to do this, and must know this, because knowledge of how the stack works should be naturally to them. In fact I used such a technique on the Commodore 64 because the CPU didn't have big jumptables. It was limited to 256 btyes, but with this technique you could create jumptables that were as big as you needed them. The technique itself is not anything new or sophisticated, it is simply applying assembly language programming knowledge.

I think the photo based texture makes a huge difference. But I can also see the difference in the shape of the face since last time, and I think that is also a decent improvement. It's looking great now.

Trying to artificially prop up a language is quite pointless as anything other than a hobby - languages are constantly mutating and evol ving, and all will inevitably become extinct and be replaced over time. Try to read something written in Old English - it is closer to modern Dutch than Modern English, and very few modern English speakers could read documents written in English a few hundred years ago without some difficulty. Forcing companies to duplicate signs and so forth in multiple languages won't save minority languages for long - they might persist for a while longer, but over a few generations, the language will either go extinct from lack of speakers, or it will incorporate so much of the dominant language (in this case English) that it will become unrecognisably different. In time even English will have mutated so much that the language we are writing these posts in now will be all but incomprehensible to all but a few lingusts - languages are not static things, but are ever changing. In fact, every speaker of a language speaks a slightly different version of that language - people don't technically learn to speak the language of their parents as such, rather they essentially invent a language that is very similar from scratch, based on the language they hear the people around them speaking. Every language has pros and cons - some things are more easily expressed in one language than another (for example, German is a very good language for expressing technical concepts, like instructuions for assembling an automobile, due to the way German syntax and word formation works, while French is very suited to discussing wishy washy things like philospohy or wine or cheese. English has some big problems, most seriously the way it is spelled (lots of archaic spellings that are totally different to the pronounciation of the word) and some wierd inconsistencies that people who learn English as a second language rarely master. English is rapidly being simplified by next generation speakers and non-native speakers, and there is a good chance that spellings of many words will change (for example, the way many people now write 'thru' instead of 'through' - the gh is redundant, as English speakers have long since stopped pronouncing this sound (which originally had a sound similar to the 'ch' in the German 'Bach' or Scottish 'Loch'). Many English speakers no longer conjugate the verb 'to be', the only verb in English that is conjugated. People are starting to drop the pluralised endings of words. In technical linguistic terms, English has changed over the last few hundred years from being an inflecting language to an isolating language - grammatically it is becoming similar to Mandarin, which incidentally has nearly as many words as English, and is likely to be the main conteder for Global language dominace

Huh? Last I heard, there were still a number of hurdles to overcome before we have a fully working grappling hook. Are you saying all the advanced rope and collision physics have been worked out?

THe Japanese aren't in a position to make such a demand, and never will be. I suspect the anglo/american culture will be at some point. Certainly the English language will become almost ubiqutous, not by force or any command, but it will continue to naturally flow through the world until it's simply common sense for everyone to learn it, just for the sake of having a global language. English already has a good head start, it's already more widely geographically dispersed than any other, and has huge financial backing. What the English started by force, the Americans are continuing. I think english is a good language. It isn't full of snobbery, like Spanish or French. They have grand meetings where they decide what should and shouldn't be part of their precious languages, whereas English constantly evolves naturally, no one can force words into it, or block them from entering. It developed from the confluence of half a doxen differnet languages and contiunes to take words from other languages. It's certianly the most cosmopolitan of all languages, and maybe that's why people have an easier time with it. You can communicate them in different ways in different languages. That's not the same as communicating completely different ideas. Whatever ideas you can communicate in welsh are obviously useless anyway, since you've never achieved anything noteworthy as a culture. At least Greek and Latin speakers achieved great things, and their languages deserve to be remembered, they have a decent case to argue, but you have none, apart from 'we want to keep Welsh alive simply becasue it exists' It isn't strong enough to survive. The very fact that people have to campaign to try and keep it alive, proves that it's dying. Big deal. THere are people who could construct a beautiful poem in Elvish, and that language was only invented 50 years ago. I could make up another language today and construct poems in it. What does that prove? Literature has nothing to do with it, the only relevant argument for keeping a language alive as genuine and officially recognised, is how many people want to speak it, and for welsh that number is very small. 60% of your population can't speak a word of it, and only 20% are fluent. What do you want to do - start forcing schoolkids to learn welsh? What kind of viewing figures does S4C get? I bet it isn't even financially viable, and is no doubt propped with subsidies. Nazi Gernamy wasn't a culture, it sprang up virtually overnight and was held together by fear.and lies. It was the work of a few individuals, and withiout them it wouldn't have happened. If it was, then you've just proven how nasty, dangerous and vicious nationalism is, so I've won either way. Also, everyone knows that you're automatically beaten in a forum argument as soon as you bring up the nazis. No one is actively campaigning to murder the welsh language and culture, it's dying a natural death. You and some others have it hooked up to a bunch of machines that keep it barely alive, but that can't last forever. You'll all die eventually and the people that follow won't bother. You can't hold back the tide of the modern world for long. Welsh culture and language are relics, they belongs in the past. Your grandchildren can read about them in history books, and visit museums to see them, but they shouldn't be forced to actually live it, when the modern world offers them so much more.

What you don’t realise is that you are part of a culture. The way you talk, the way you act from day to day, the way you cook, are all part of a culture. And any diversity you show is all within the confines of your culture. Would you write a barddoniaeth for the Bryddest in the Eisteddfod tomorrow? No, because you have no perception of what that means, and none of other cultures. Being stuck within one culture doesn’t make you free, it makes you captive. I’ve spent time in America, Africa and the Middle-East. Don’t tell me I’m somehow close-minded. All these different cultures represent different roots of thought, they’re all precious, and should all be maintained. A question; if the Japanese government were tomorrow to offer that all nations under the sun unite under the Japanese culture, that every culture speak Japanese and all eat Sushi, that all venerate the wrapping on a present almost as much as the present itself, that all compulsively bow even when on the phone, that all do those ‘strange’ things that are part of their culture, would you go out for lessons and start to cook raw fish? To hell you would, you’d want to keep on living as you had before, part of the Anglo-American culture. There’s no flag waving or moat construction here; I’m not a nationalist; I’d support the Welsh culture if it was located in the Bahamas. The country means nothing to me, but the culture that exists in it does. But it is strong enough to survive. The fact that thousands of Welsh people are up in arms and campaigning to keep our culture shows that it’s strong enough. It isn’t being artificially maintained; if anything it’s being under supported. The Labour Government is doing its best to kill it off, but it won’t go. You can communicate things in Welsh that you can’t communicate in English. You’re making statements based on inexperience and ignorance here. Anyone who speaks two languages would know that you can communicate ideas in one that you can’t communicate in another. Thousands of novels, short stories, songs, ecetra. are all written in Welsh. You can’t translate them. If everyone stopped speaking Welsh they’d be gone forever. You simply couldn’t say them in English. I can’t believe how it could be unexciting for any island not to have so many genuine Celtic cultures living and breathing under their very noses. Take the following: Ar fy nesg mae crair mwy sanctaidd na’r Groes Naid Fe’i cipiwyd o laid yr Annwfn o dan y cwm. Daw’n fyw liw nos fan y lamp. I fyny drwy ei siafftiau du daw golau all ddenu dynion dall. o wyll ei tai. O’i fewn mae aenonau’n ymegino; cywasgwyd bydoedd ynddo. O’i ddal at fy nghlust clywaf guro moroedd y cynfyd ar eu traethau coll, sgrechfeydd y creigiau wrth i’r gwres doddi tiroedd yn gyfandiroedd, wrth i dan eu chwythu’n ecstatig ar wahan drachefn. Ac yn ddwndwr parhaus o’i berfedd, swn y maen awyr yn agosau. That’d be exciting if it came from 2000 years ago, but it was composed last year, for fucks sake. If I erected a genuine medieval City in front of you you’d be impressed, but if I erect a genuine language from two thousand years ago in front of you, you want to burn it all down. Isn’t that exactly what you’re saying; that we should submit to your Anglo-American culture, rather than stick to Welsh culture? Those other cultures fought back because they were bloody well attacked by an invading army. Are you saying the British were wrong to fight against the Nazis because they didn’t want to be overrun by a generic aryan culture that’d destroy an hope of induviduality? If our British ‘lowly culture’ hadn’t fought back against the Nazis you’d be all in leather now marching up and down a street singing ‘hail Hitler’, and thinking it was all entirely normal and wondering how any lowly foreign culture could disagree with you. All the Nazis wanted was unity, after all! RE: 'them and us'. I repeat; the Welsh have never tried to invade anyone, we’re happy as we are, leave us the fuck alone. If the culture of Welsh people is such a boring topic for you, why bother yourself with it? Why do outsiders actively campaign for the extinction of Welsh culture? The fact is that it is of interest to you, you can’t sit back and watch a non-Anglo-American culture thrive on your own little Britain, so you have to yell and retch and fill multiple threads complaining about it. I repeat; the Welsh have never tried to invade anyone, we’re happy as we are, leave us the fuck alone.

yeah, you can't really win. One has good cards and excellent drivers, the other has great cards but buggy drivers. To tell you the truth i went with NVidia because my last card was an ATI which was fucking up from the beginning. I only found out it was the vid card when it died, a year later, 2 days after the warranty had expired, it pissed me off as hell. So yeah, ever since then i prefer NVidia. Anyways.

I got T3 re-installed last night and all the tweakers/Min. installed. Started playing Lord Raven's Mansion and damned if I didnt instantly notice all the places where backlighting dangers existed. There are shitloads of them, to put it mildly. I almost wish I hadnt got involved in this discussion because now I cant get it out of my game-head.

Too late for me, I'm afraid. Orgasms last a few seconds at most. But, damn, those are good seconds!

Orgasms last a few seconds at most.

This is pretty random, but I was thinking about how to make a continuous-output camera with steampunk technology, and was curious if anyone had some ideas. Perhaps the most obvious is an array of photoconducting pixels, where each one leads to some on/off/grayscale electronic output, like we have in some modern devices. They probably couldn't get the array that densely integrated though, so they might have to blow up the image with a diverging lens or something. To me though, it seems like steampunk is more about mechanical knowledge, clockwork, gears, quartz resonators, etc. We know that they're good at making watches, so they can probably deal with mechanical vibrations at small scales. So, maybe instead of photoconductors, they could use the Raman effect where a photon is absorbed and excites an electron to some higher energy level, then the electron in turn releases an optical phonon as it falls back down in energy. This would turn the incoming light into mechanical oscillations (that could be pretty low in frequency depending on the band structure of the material) that might be more easy to deal with in steampunk technology. [EDIT: Another idea: Photochemical reaction like the one that takes place in film, but much faster, etches into re-usable wax cyllinder. The reaction would be a photo-assisted etch of something like a wax cyllinder, so that the media would be re-usable. The cyllinder would spin, so that the cyllinder section behind the camera lens gets exposed to the incoming light and photochemically etched, then rotated on to the readout section, where a strip of tiny needles would drag over the etched image pixels and convert the image to an electronic output (just like a record player). Then, the imaged section of the cyllinder rotates on to a heater that re-melts and smoothes the wax. Finally it rotates all the way back around to the chemical bath and camera lens to get an updated image etched into it again. You would have to replace the chemical bath in the etching section after a while, but it could last for some time.] Any thoughts?

@Pak: I don't necessarily agree with being able to sell defaulted items, in general. I'd prefer not to make it a marketplace where you try to acquire as many items through a mission in order to sell them for money. Or rather, that you you sell off all your broadheads you're defaulted with just so you can buy a health potion, etc. Bartering and having a mini-economy sim is one thing that bothered me about Thief 3, and Diablo II. In Diablo II, I got obsessive compulsive about taking every last thing from all the battles just so I could teleport back to camp and get gold for every single item that I possibly could. By 'visual people', I mean those who learn and understand what to do based on visual communication. In school, teachers are learning how to communicate to students more effectively by understanding there are multiple sensory types out there: auditory, visual, kinesthetic, whatever. So the fact that your menu has a bigger graphic is not what I mean. In Thief 2's menu, every item has a small icon graphics showing in one glance what all the items are. Visual people would be able to tune into these graphics (more than the text) and more quickly and easily see what they want/need to do; and it would, therefore, be a more appealing interface for them (usability-wise), imo. Your menu has a lot of text on it and the only time you see the graphic icons are when you hover over an item. This may be more appealing to those who learn more through text and reading, but not those who like and understand better through pictures. Thief 2's menu tackles at least a couple different sensory types well, imo. I feel your menu only hits one user group and is why I feel it is going down the road of being less intuitive and usable.

I agree with obscurus completely on this issue. There are a number of interests here in the States that keep the racist, classist War on Drugs alive and keep idiotic laws on the books, prison guard unions, pharmecutical corporations, prison industry lobbys, politicians of every stripe, sectors of the military and police establishment as well. No one should think for a second that the government acts out of some sort of concern for citizenry with its actions, its a profitable war with no defined targets, opening up avenues of encroachment against privacy and property rights by law eforcement/government. I was in the National Guard with a DEA agent years ago, he laughed out loud at the points against the war on drugs I presented to him. "It has nothing to do with that. We couldnt care less about kids ODing in schools, whatever, we care about busting people and getting promoted." Then he tried to get me to sell all my buddies out. For cops, its a fast track, high profile career slalom run. Stumble on to one 50K bust and you will be getting that promotion for sure. For agencies its shitloads of cash. For politicians its political firewood, get the stick worshipers and LawNorder mooks out to the polls. For military types its a U.S. presence in Columbia and lots of orders for equiptment from boots to radar systems. For the media, its an ever flowing stream of scary racially slanted images to shock and awe. For citizens, its guns on the streets, arrogant cops, violence in schools, accidental shootings, tax dollars wasted, opportunity lost, fear and unrest, the normalization of living in a state of siege. For users, its all of the above plus crappy product and a culture that stigmatizes what is at best harmless and at worst a medical condition. Some political thinkers point to the war on drugs and its similarities to the war on terror, a faceless, non-white enemy that could be anywhere, that will never stop coming and attempting to hurt you and your loved ones, that is insidious and can be standing right next to you without you even knowing. For a fraction of the monies spent "fighting" drugs, (an idiotic notion in and of itself, how can you defeat the Hydra of Ten Zillion Heads) treatment centers could be opened up, offering the worst of drug users the treatment they need and counselling and support for those who do not. As obscurus has noted important medical research/treatments with herion have been stymied due to this idiocy. Marijuana is another such substance. Oh, I know, I know, but dont take my word for it, take the word of Dr. Robert J. Mellamede, a biochemical researcher at the Uni. of Colorado, Colorade Springs. http://www.uccs.edu/%7Ermelamed/ Note the last line. Then search around the site and listen to some of the interviews. Check out the links. I contacted this guy a few years ago and he confirmed most of what I had heard second hand, that pot has strong medicinal value, and specifically that THC seems to have an impact on tumor development in lab mice. I met a nurse from the Geisenger Medical Center in Central Pennsylvania. She worked in an experimental ward there where throat and neck cancer patients were inhaling marijuana vapor through face masks. She told me the effect was profound, tumors reduced in size, lifespans extended. BTW, if there are any marijuana junkies on the thread, although there is NO correlation between pot smoking and cancers its still not a very healthy thing to smoke it. Water pipes are NOT as effective as was once thought, too. Here is an easy alternative, one I recommend........highly. http://www.vaporgenie.com/

It takes up more than a line or two of space in that you have a section header/title, and however many items you purchase would go there. If you bought one (1) each of all the items (fire, water, moss, broadhead, noisemaker, health potion, note, etc.) you now have many more lines of items that would need to be listed. I'm still not convinced this book idea is the best approach to take, due to the negative implications to the more visual people and that it's not yet a better (enhanced usability) design than T2's. Regardless, here's another possible route to play with for the left-hand page: Menu Concept - Darkness Falls Altered It's just a quick mockup so pay no attention to the repeated items listed. Pretend those are all unique items there. (In a working example, no items would be listed more than once.) The item list on the page expands as more non-default items are purchased. The "Note from Malak" is the last 'default' item, so my list starts expanding there, when the lantern is purchased. The "Lantern" is the first item purchased that was not in the player's possession already, so it has an original inventory quantity of (0) next to it. PS: If items are dropped by the player by accident, we should have a way to recover those dropped items. Maybe have a tiny section called "Items Dropped" that would allow the player to pick them up again without having to buy them. We could make it a tiny section by making it a simple, comma-delimited list. Or add them to the "Items for Sale" list, but have no charge associated.

I tried to post this last night, but I think there was a problem with the server. Slow/non-responding pages. ------------- I'm not a big fan of scroll bars or buttons as it makes it harder to view everything as a quick summary. T3 introduced those scrolling mission texts, which I despised. I think that the object in the lower corner should indeed be a 3-D model, maybe with sepia tones as mentioned. It could still be a part of the paper by having the paper's texture applied on top of the model. Maybe even have it rotate, making it a more lively GUI. (Something like the full-motion video newspapers of Harry Potter come to mind. Just to help spice it up without going overboard.) I feel there's no true need for the "Items Purchased" section. I always thought it was strange that T1/T2 had it. (Eliminating the near-pointless "Items Purchased" section gives us more room to play with in the GUI.) If I buy something, it should just add to my equipment total. Conversely, if I get rid of something (and I should be able to get rid of stuff (even defaults) I don't want), it should just add to the "Items For Sale" list. Therefore, maybe just have two sections: "Items In Inventory" and "Items For Sale", or some similar titles. Then, when you buy an item, it adds to the total in inventory. I think this is a good starting point. But, in addition to the above, I feel there would be something nice and more intuitive (for visual people) about being able to see all the little item icons at once in the menu, like in T1/T2.

Just on a guess, how much has been done since I was last here? I need a good starting point here.

What? They can and do. And they can and do buy illegal substances today too. Not at the store, like cigarettes, but from friends or dealers. How does this prove anything for either side? My whole point is that it will likely change nothing, but if it does change anything, it certainly won't be for the better. Let's spell this out: 1. No one has (and no one can or will) logically proven that making drugs legal will discourage abuse. As I said above, the quasi-legalization of pot has only led to its widespread embracing in US society at least. 2. "There will always be drug abusers." Yup. 3. If you're not discouraging abuse, what are you making them legal for? To make it easier? If abuse is not discouraged, increased use (why not? it's legal now!) will only be encouraged. 4. The junkies that are around today will still need/want their fix. They won't just disappear. So unless they're suddenly in a hospital courtesy of YOUR money (which costs a lot more than prison, sorry), they're going to have to find a way to get it. And last time I checked, your average junkie is not wealthy enough to afford a $300 a day habit. So, he'll get it on the street, from the same crack dealer he dealt with before the legal business, only now it'll be cheaper. Maybe. Yippee! More high for your buck. The idea should be to stop abuse/use, not to support it, because it universally hurts users. Making it illegal is not the best way to do it perhaps, but putting it within everyone's casual reach is worse. Or should we micro-discuss a bit, and say, is heroin legal for adults, but illegal for children? Okay, what is a child? Don't make me point to the slippery slope again. I know that you guys all want a naive free happy hippy Utopian society/world, and hey, I hate the government too. Scum, the lot of them. Peace and love all around. But some things are just not good things to do. And sometimes societies do need some boundaries. We have plenty of bad apples making that a fact. Anyway, this is going nowhere apparently, so...

It's not a big deal because I have enough storage space and my disks in the server are mostly empty. But I have a daily backup running and keep the last seven versions, as well as additional backups in between which are not going to be overwritten, so this adds up over time. How do you think does CVS come up with an older revision when you want to take a look at what as been changed? Well, I was maintaining that we should have such a repository but we should ensure that they are in sync with each other. Not that we have textures in one and other textures in the other. Yeaht. The reason being that I fear that people who upload, will forget that they are in one repository and upload stuff that belongs in the other. If I implement a script, then you can upload only the hires version, and I can convert it and check in the lowres in the other repository. This would be the best approach, because this way I would prevent uploading textures to the lowres repository completly and only allow other files there. So maps, def, and such stuff would go in the lowres and textures would only go in the hires and are propagated to the lowres by the server. This would ensure that we always have the same textures in both repositories and users wont have to remember what to upload where, because after some time this wil happen and we have to clean it up, which I want to avoid. I wouldn't have put a JPG filter on the hires version. Maybe we were talked about different things with the same name. I was talking about a filter for CVS, not for textures. That filter would only ensure that you can't store maps or def, or other files in the hires repostory and vice versa for textures. That's a lot of work, because basically it means that I have to extract every single texture manually and check if a hires version exists for it and if so, then upload it to the other repository. I don't see how I could automate this process. You said you have your local copy of the hires version. How accurate is it? If people have to remember instructions they will forget or make errors. That's the nature of it. Disclaimer: I don't mean that users are stupid or what (for those ho might feel offended by that remark). But it's only logical that if something is not prevented by the software it will happen. That's why I think that it's better to implement the filters if possible.

Probably not. I had already picked out the ones I thought the best during the last restructure...but I am planning on doing things a little differently this go round. I've still gotta bang up the plan in my head, but when I get a good feel for exactly what I want to do I'll post it here.

Yes, and it can happen as well. Look at how much attitudes towards smoking have changed in the last 20 or so years, in the UK and US at least. It's become virtually criminal in some areas, and socially unacceptable at the very least in others. You see smokers standing outside their offices puffing away in the rain like naughty children, or they have designated special little areas in buildings that they're shunted into if they're allowed to smke at all. They'll all eventually just give up.

I've been considering coming at this completely fresh. It's been a good 5 months since I last did anything productive, and I could somehow turn this to my advantage by looking at everything with a new perspective. And since no one else has done a terrible amount this could make my job a little easier....but I still gotta find a good starting point. What I might do is go through another texture scouring. Also, since I have a nice digital camera now I can go and take photo sources myself...I can build entire themes myself now instead of having to hope other people's stuff goes well together. I've also been considering making textures out of procedurals inside of Lightwave...or using programs like Werkkzeug1 or Texture Creator. I've got alot of ideas I want to experiment with to see what gives me the best results. I'm also gonna let mapping take a backseat for the meantime. Other than texture tests I'm not gonna do any mapping til I have a complete enough set of textures to do a variety of different enviroments and have them look complicated, lived in, and realistic.

Not that I know of. But again, the last thing we need is another partially finished AI model.