Latest game I was part of. Endless Evil. Pretty fun game, check it out here. Endless Evil on Kongregate
 

 
Dang, Doppleganger.  As impressive as ever.  Envious.
 
Good to see these kinds of threads still getting some love.

There's always Graal and a new one -- The Mana World Online.  They modeled Mana World after Seiken Dentesu, supposedly.  It's supposedly open-source as well.  I think to get the source, though, you need to have GIT and go from there.

What bothers me is that a lot of people are talking about "doing research."  Science Fiction was originally about basically having strange science without much explanation.  One of the first Science Fiction authors (Short Stories from the late 1800's) actually wrote about a dog.  It was about a kid who kept wondering why his parents protected all the spare "rations" into a giant metal container.  There were several hints along the way that the "parents" weren't the same as the "kid."  At the end, it switches perspectives to the parents who pet "rover" on the head, while taking the garbage out to a compost heap.

A good Science Fiction (or even writer) is usually well-read themselves.  Personally, if you're looking for ideas, a good thing to do would be to hit up a sci-fi blog (I enjoy io9.com) and read the summaries/news of the latest short stories, novels, movies, etc.  And a good sci-fi writer doesn't need to explain everything.  It's easy to use a "black box" design on some things.  Why are the characters in space?  Because the era is set in space.  Because the characters are curious teenagers and went in.  Because the characters are abducted.  Sometimes, it's best to keep things as simple as possible and focus on the truly important themes and messages or stories that you wish to tell.  If your characters all fight in space with swords in the future (a cliche a lot of people hate) maybe its because guns are outlawed.  Maybe they have magnetic shields that repel high-velocity metal?  Maybe their culture defines guns as cowardly or ineffective?  Maybe because everyone's in a dense atmosphere (similar to water) where bullets won't do much of anything?  It is a cliche, but unless you  decide to invent a new type of weapon class, then you'll always have traditional melee/ranged weapons, albeit with changes.  Think of the practicality and the scenario.  There are plausible reasons and thoughts.

Popular thoughts (in the past, at least) were always to consider up-and-coming technologies and then zoom into a time where this is common.  Nanotechnology is very limited and new right now.  In another 60 years, how does it alter daily life?  In the 40's and 50's, Arthur C. Clarke started to write a short story called "The Sentinel" that then went on to be expanded into 2001: A Space Odyssey.  When you think about it, the 60's were the space race.  He wanted to go into depth of these themes and used up-and-coming thoughts.  Our plagues and illnesses and the unknown have greatly influenced the release of zombie films, games, and comics.

Just a few things for consideration.

These are awesome.  Sadly, this is the kind of humor that my friends and I make over IMs at work...

You know, funny about Kang.  She's not only a gamer, but was also a Business-person, last I checked, so unfortunately she's going to be like most other business people and do whatever they want and can.

If work sucks, I'd tell her that you want a fulltime/better position, given the nature of your work.  I'd also confront her.  Even though she's such a "big shot" and could blacklist you, I don't think she would, given that:

1) It's a waste of time.
2) I don't think anyone will care who she is.

People respect and know her husband.  That's a reference worth having.  But Anna Kang?  What has she done for gaming...?  Oh, she married John.  What else?

In addition, I wouldn't worry about the entire "job" thing, if you're doing pixel art.  Most pixel art is done on other applications where people won't care what id Software says.  If you went to go work on an iPhone game, etc, you could make some money.  If I'm not mistaken, our own Doppleganger is working on Flash games for a company and making an alright living.  I'm sure you could find someone who would appreciate your skills and make use of it.

Or sign on with a startup company/project if you can afford it.  Would be a quick and easy way (albeit risky) way to jump into things...

Also, that being said, Houston (just south of you by 200 or so miles) has a lot of game companies that need Pixel Art.  I believe the two most well-known down here are Pi Studios and TimeGate.  Friend actually worked for TimeGate, and another almost worked at Pi, but backed out for a consulting gig.

--Terin

Sorry to hear that Steel.

I've said it a billion times -- my friend did the entire bone-marrow transplant shit after fighting a losing battle -- and that's what ended up finally working for her.  Best of luck.  Keep fighting.

--Terin

Hope that you get some good news soon, Steel.  Try to stay positive.  People who fight cancer do so continuously.  I know I brought up my friend who had brain cancer/leukemia earlier in this thread.  She fought it for like 3 years.  Lots of mixed results -- there were several close-calls when she could have been negative (there was a point where her parents were about to pull her home on hospice and were short on money -- her older brothers stepped up and picked up a job at a grocery store when they were 13/14 to help support the family [had ][/had]).  She kept fighting, kept staying positive.  So hang in there, man.  You'll knock it out, dude!  Keep fighting and stay positive!

--Terin

I technically work for Microsoft, so I got the beta (build 6800 or something -- upgrade to 7000 this past Friday) like a month or so ago.  Right now, I have it dual-booting with Vista.  If you have Vista, you can resize partitions and choose to "shrink" a volume.  It makes installing it easier.  In any case, yeah, been playing around with it off and on.  As much as I like a lot of the pieces in it, I'm going to miss the classic Windows 95 through Vista interface.  The tasks at the bottom and the system tray being expanded, although I know you can customize them to match the old look -- but I want to try to get on board with the new interface.

Overall, very impressed with everything.  It's still technically Vista -- the only difference is that the Kernel is upgrade from 6.0 to 6.1 internally.  i.e. It's Vista remade/polished.  That being said, a lot of the features they wanted to put in, but couldn't because they rushed Vista, were finally added.  That's why you're seeing a drastically different UI in some cases -- in some cases, you'll notice the UI and theme just "fits" everything better.  To me, Vista felt a little...  Like they were stepping in a direction, but didn't go all the way.

As far as performance -- you'll notice (if you were on Vista) most of your scores on performance will increase a bit.  Some of my 5's jumped to low 6's.  A huge difference in HDD will be obvious, though, since they're kind of keeping in mind the chance of future SSD's.  My only issue is that software claims to run on a Windows Experience Rating of <x>.  Well, if your other scores are high, i.e. 5-6, and your HDD is a 2, and a program says it runs best on a 3, most people will say, "Crap, I can't run this on my computer!"  Might be good to rework some logic behind it -- I was thinking maybe they botched the code somewhere, but I don't have access to the code -- just the builds when they release them internally.

A big thing to get used to was the ribbon bar -- I don't play around with Office much, so I haven't had time to adjust to it.  However, I was pleased that they still give you options for the menus when you hit alt -- just the way the normal menus used to work.  And in addition to the pretty interface and icons, letters usually show up on the icons to let you know which to press for what.  Pretty cool.

Most importantly, you'll notice a drastically smaller footprint in your memory and CPU cycles from Windows alone -- the only downside (I've discovered...) is that Windows eats up about 10GB of space on its own.  Not sure if there's a lot of stuff dumped in the OS or if part of that is necessary to run it so quickly (I doubt it -- but it's possible they make some weird cache's on the disk).

Looking forward to switching when it becomes affordable/within reason.

--Terin

Steel,

A friend of mine growing up had high-dose chemo (from Leukemia and a brain tumor) and survived.  She was I think 6 or 7 when she had it and actually had to have a marrow donor afterward.  However, the important part is that she survived and she's living a great life right now.  To this day, she actually does the art for the holiday cards for Memorial Children's Hospital (may be M.D. Anderson now -- this crap changes so quick down here) Cancer Center for Kids, here in Houston.

It's ugly, it sucks, and it can be painful as hell -- but keep in mind that a 6 year-old girl can go through it and pull through fine.  I'm sure you'll be able to do it.  Best of luck!

--Terin

I don't think Windows is the culprit -- I'd be more inclined that all your dilly-dallying caused you to accidentally install something that shouldn't be on your machine and is slowing it the hell down.

What I would suggest is to open the run menu (ala Start -> Run), and then type in msconfig.  When you load msconfig, click the Startup tab and disable EVERYTHING under it.  Under the Services tab, disable all of the non-Microsoft ones, except for your virus scanner (which you had better have) (you can hide all the Microsoft services with a checkbox on it).

If that doesn't give you significant speed improvements, then I would agree that it's something with the new files you downloaded/installed.  But I seriously would try this route first.

--Terin

It sounds like D&D just got really easy.  I guess a bunch of angry people wrote letters to WotC saying, "My DM is cheating!  He keeps winning!  I stepped on a trigger and it fatally wounded me!  I pressed the red button that said, 'Do not press' and it killed me.  Will you make it so it's like a much better game -- World of Warcraft?  That's my favorite game.  Thanks!!!" or something to that extent.

Traditional D&D is the way to go.  I'll take my books to the grave with me.

--Terin

While this is a pretty interesting troll-topic, maybe we can actually save it...

I'm actually looking for a good low-maintenance low-resource Linux that would be GREAT for running servers on it.  The idea would be to have a robust system that I could compile things on (Mono) and run a database server on...  I'm somewhat new to Linux, but not entirely.  I know a little bit around the bash shell; enough to be as fluent as I am in DOS (ugh).

Any ideas?

--Terin

I'd seriously like to see Gin go off and do his own thing against Aizen, ala a Starscream to Megatron allusion.  Would be a very interesting way to introduce a "new" villain.  Also, I find it interesting that Gin kind of always seemed like the bad guy and that at the end of the episodes, he's the one explaining Shinigami/Quincy/Vaizard powers/quirks/"clothes."

That would potentially elongate the series more and they could toss in more interesting things.  I don't want Bleach to end, but at the same time...  I guess I can understand that it'd be better for it to end early than for it to end late and really crappy.

--Terin

I'm studying for the GRE right now, for going after a PhD.  I'm scoring great on the quantitative questions, but the stupid associations in verbal screw me up bad.  If it weren't for them, I might score pretty high without having to study.  Alas...  More and more studying to do!

--Terin

I salute our new crime-fighting legion...  the Twin White Tigers...

--Terin

Alienware's are notorious for getting VERY hot.  I know a few people who got them as gaming laptops and they constantly shut off automatically from overheating.

Most of what you want to do can be done with any Core 2 and a good/reasonable graphics card.  I was looking at a Dell Studio 17" (with the 1080p built in) and maxing out the processor, screen, and video card, and tossing in a few other widgets and it set my price at about $1500.  Toss in an employee/student discount and a coupon and you may be in business for closer to just $1000.

I don't think we're going to get more for buying an Alienware vs. a Dell, other than fwapping rights.  If you really want a crazy-ass machine, go to ibuypower.com; you can easily drop a lot of money there.  Their highest end gaming laptop IS probably worth the money and a SHITLOAD better than an Alienware, just for the sake that it has things like a Quad Core in it, 2x graphics cards, 2x HDD blocks, 1080p resolution, etc, etc.  Sad fact, though: it probably only has 15 minutes of battery life.

Check this puppy out and drop your jaw: http://www.ibuypower.com/ibp/store/configurator.aspx?mid=293

Just my few cents, though.
--Terin

Go figure, I live in Texas, so I have to drive a truck...  well, not really, but anyway...



2006 White Nissan Frontier King Cab Edition (Straight-4)

Not a picture of my car, but the correct color/configuration.  And I get anywhere from 20-30 mpg depending on how well I drive.  Yes.  30mpg in a truck.  Hyper-miling for the win.

--Terin

I'm doing an interesting set of regiments for a workout and have seen some pretty quick results.  I also replaced all the beef I ate with turkey, so that may have helped too...

But for stomach workout, I do a little number where I raise my feet about 6" off the ground, and my head 6" off the ground and move torso + legs off the ground together, working lower and upper abs.  After this burns enough, I do another exercise on each side of my abs.

On your side, lift the topmost leg up and your torso off the ground and just try to do a sideways crunch.  You'll feel it burn pretty quick if you're not used to it.  I'm at about 30 or so right now, and it's been doing wonders for my love handles.

A doctor-friend of mine who's doing residency also said this: You can eat anything you want, just have a salad first.  This is the best "diet."  "Want a huge slice of cake?  The entire thing?  Fried chicken with fried vegetables, 18 pounds of sugar, and anything else?  Salad first."  Supposedly the salad helps digest everything.  And no salad dressing on this -- he was running this test on some patients (since Houston, where I am, is one of the fatter cities in the US), and he's seen some remarkable results...  A little over half his patients (just with this diet) started to lose a few pounds in a healthy manner -- not anything that will happen like 20 pounds in 2 weeks...  but yeah, totally can lose 1-3 pounds per week.

--Terin

Note that if you get into an accident with this, you're probably dead.  The chassis is glued together and made of fiberglass and foam...  And aluminum rods.  I'm all for light-weight, but this thing is basically a giant coffin from what I gather.  Would be nice if it were moderately safer, because this kind of fuel economy would be awesome.

--Terin

This is really bad.  More wars make it more likely we could enter some kind of World War 3.  I mean, from what I recall, wasn't there basically economic issues/multiple conflicts and people basically kept fighting with each other in micro-wars until everyone started allying and shit?  I mean, Iraq isn't necessarily a conflict -- it really is a war -- and it's doubtful it'd end anytime soon.  With all of the sides and shit, I have no doubt that the US will involve itself, which will just add more crap to the list.  Hell, we just need North Korea and Iran to join into the mix and then we'll have a good ol' set of Axis and Allies and then we're going to all go to hell in another huge war.

And for the record, not all of us in the US are stupid.  My first question (when I heard this) was "Is it the state or the country...?"  (headline was "Russians Invade Georgia")  Of course, better thought might have been to say, "Must be the country, since they're on the same continent...," but I guess it was wishful thinking that we'd actually have some kind of conflict on our soil again to distract us from all the shit going on here lately (sick of me in a way, sorry).

--Terin