Journals6
Newest
It's Been a While...
1 min read
Mood: Sleepy
Currently Listening To: Nothing
Currently Reading: The Meaning of Night - Michael Cox
Currently Watching: Lost Season 2
Currently Playing: Red Steel - Wii
Currently Obsessed With: Sleeping
(Yes, I know there's a box for these, but it doesn't let you have hyperlinks, so I'm putting them here instead)
So, Yay, I'm back. not that anyone reads any of this stuff anyway, but hey, what'll you do. Apparently Martin has read this, so maybe one person will read this.
Anyway, I may add random reviews on here as time passes, as they're much easier to do than actual art, as all I have to do is moan about stuff (except Zelda, precious Zelda.......)
I'll probably add more to this at some point, but for the minute, I'll just upload some ridiculously high quality pictures of my cats asleep, as that's all I have to hand, and at some point, I really want to get some of the stuff that's currently on my front page, off it.
Hope you all have fun, anyone who read this.
Currently Listening To: Nothing
Currently Reading: The Meaning of Night - Michael Cox
Currently Watching: Lost Season 2
Currently Playing: Red Steel - Wii
Currently Obsessed With: Sleeping
(Yes, I know there's a box for these, but it doesn't let you have hyperlinks, so I'm putting them here instead)
So, Yay, I'm back. not that anyone reads any of this stuff anyway, but hey, what'll you do. Apparently Martin has read this, so maybe one person will read this.
Anyway, I may add random reviews on here as time passes, as they're much easier to do than actual art, as all I have to do is moan about stuff (except Zelda, precious Zelda.......)
I'll probably add more to this at some point, but for the minute, I'll just upload some ridiculously high quality pictures of my cats asleep, as that's all I have to hand, and at some point, I really want to get some of the stuff that's currently on my front page, off it.
Hope you all have fun, anyone who read this.
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
Lost on the Lost Coast
4 min read
I've just finished playing this, and let me tell you that it ranks TOP of the worst feature preview level I have ever seen.
O.K. so I admit that if they HAD have let me turn HDR lighting on, then my computer would probably have lagged like hell for the whole of the duration of the level. I understand that, and if the point of the level had been different, I would have accepted it. However, the level was made to SHOW OFF HDR LIGHTING! As I instelled it it told me that it woud lag on my computer. I clicked the option that said that I didn't care. It's not as if they gave me the option to turn it on again either. Noooooo, the box was greyed out. After discovering that the point of the level was ruined, I still decided to play through it anyway.
Admittedly, the level itself looks beautiful, however, there are many things in it that seem to have used up my bandwidth for absolutely no reason whatsoever. O.K. so the fisherman is funny for about 20 seconds, but the ammount of time he takes to walk the 100 metres that he's required to walk in the game is extortionate. He opens a gate, and then tells me to "destroy the gun".
What gun? Is it the supression field gun from Follow Freeman. Nope, because that was in the citadel. In fact, it appears to be the gun that's been firing headcrab rockets at you for the whole of Half Life 2. I have yet more problems with this.
1) Why is it in what appears to be Italy, if the main force of the Combine is in Russia?
2) If it can fling headcrab rockets to Russia, how come it can be stopped by a rather flimsy candle-holder (although I was inpressed by the fact that they had bothered to use clipping for a puzzle, which Valve usually seem to refuse to do).
3) It's gotta be important, so why is it protected by one helicopter and a few bog-standard combine soldiers?
The levels design is also very wierd. Yes, indeed, the wooden stairs are fully destructable. Indeed that is nice, however, making millions of cliff paths so that I have to walk up them all to get up the cliffs is not fun. The level design is very Linear, and as I've been playing FEAR for the past few days (review coming soon) I don't appreciate Linear Levels very much.
After that disappointment, I faced some more. Once you have disabled the headcrab-chucking maching (or "gun") you go outside. After killing some combine and a hellicopter, you are standing on a ledge in peace. If you happen to say, look over the edge of the ledge, you can actually see, VERY clearly, where the level ends and where the skybox begins. (At another point in the level, you can see the water change from proper water to cheap water. Methinks that someone wasn't conscentrating properly when they looked at a) the kind of water that they used for the skybox, and b) the distances that they needed to use to change that water type.
I will admit that the combine absailing down the rocks were very cool. The Church was quite cool, although, as I said earlier, it seems a very random place to put a headcrab-rocket-gun, and the asthetics were good.
It just missed the mark on everything else.
O.K. so I admit that if they HAD have let me turn HDR lighting on, then my computer would probably have lagged like hell for the whole of the duration of the level. I understand that, and if the point of the level had been different, I would have accepted it. However, the level was made to SHOW OFF HDR LIGHTING! As I instelled it it told me that it woud lag on my computer. I clicked the option that said that I didn't care. It's not as if they gave me the option to turn it on again either. Noooooo, the box was greyed out. After discovering that the point of the level was ruined, I still decided to play through it anyway.
Admittedly, the level itself looks beautiful, however, there are many things in it that seem to have used up my bandwidth for absolutely no reason whatsoever. O.K. so the fisherman is funny for about 20 seconds, but the ammount of time he takes to walk the 100 metres that he's required to walk in the game is extortionate. He opens a gate, and then tells me to "destroy the gun".
What gun? Is it the supression field gun from Follow Freeman. Nope, because that was in the citadel. In fact, it appears to be the gun that's been firing headcrab rockets at you for the whole of Half Life 2. I have yet more problems with this.
1) Why is it in what appears to be Italy, if the main force of the Combine is in Russia?
2) If it can fling headcrab rockets to Russia, how come it can be stopped by a rather flimsy candle-holder (although I was inpressed by the fact that they had bothered to use clipping for a puzzle, which Valve usually seem to refuse to do).
3) It's gotta be important, so why is it protected by one helicopter and a few bog-standard combine soldiers?
The levels design is also very wierd. Yes, indeed, the wooden stairs are fully destructable. Indeed that is nice, however, making millions of cliff paths so that I have to walk up them all to get up the cliffs is not fun. The level design is very Linear, and as I've been playing FEAR for the past few days (review coming soon) I don't appreciate Linear Levels very much.
After that disappointment, I faced some more. Once you have disabled the headcrab-chucking maching (or "gun") you go outside. After killing some combine and a hellicopter, you are standing on a ledge in peace. If you happen to say, look over the edge of the ledge, you can actually see, VERY clearly, where the level ends and where the skybox begins. (At another point in the level, you can see the water change from proper water to cheap water. Methinks that someone wasn't conscentrating properly when they looked at a) the kind of water that they used for the skybox, and b) the distances that they needed to use to change that water type.
I will admit that the combine absailing down the rocks were very cool. The Church was quite cool, although, as I said earlier, it seems a very random place to put a headcrab-rocket-gun, and the asthetics were good.
It just missed the mark on everything else.
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
Ph34r the F.E.A.R.
6 min read
Mood: Happy
Currently Listening To: Nothing
Currently Reading: .hack//legend of the twilight bracelet vol. 3
Currently Watching: Red Dwarf Series 6
Currently Obcessed With: F.E.A.R.
Recently, I downloaded the F.E.A.R. demo, and although there are a few criticisms I have with it, it is probably still the most impressive demo I have played for quite a long while.
After spending just under an hour downloading it, and another 5-10 minutes installing it, I opened it. THEN, after yet another few minutes stareing at a sign saying "Analysing System Performance", I was finally able to watch the (rather laggy considering it had "optomised for my system") intro cutscene. This is quite good, and contains the standard "reflections in people's eyes" "evil wet footprints on the floor" and "scary little girls". I was then briefed that I was to be going and killing this wierd posessed psychic soldier.
Unfortunately, things then took a bit of a turn for the worse, as my graphics card, which hadn't had it's drivers updated decided that it wasn't having this, and died, crashing the game. One re-start and installation of graphics carsd drivers later, everything I was raring to go again. Even though my graphics card now had shiny new drivers, it still wouldn't run if I turned ANY of the graphics options above medium, and I still had to turn all of the shadows off, and in fact, even with every single option turned down or off, the game STILL lagged. However, these problems still did little to marr one of the best things I have played recently.
Everything starts of in a rather Splinter-Cell like fashion, you're driven into an alleyway and have to infiltrate a building through the water system (which, in a rather strange feat or archetecture, seems to take up half of the building. Anyway, archetecture aside, you climb down some ladders (which, by the way, probably have a realy good syatem for climbing, if your aim isn't jumping about because of lag). Anyway, you get down there, and start recieving radio signals from and "anonymous source" (just like you used to do in Doom3, in fact, quite a lot of this demo is similar to Doom3, but enough about that. You soon find out that the source of these "anonymous" radio signals appears to be a small girl in a red dress, who appears walking past the ends of coridoors. Theyy did this rather well. To maintain the effect of her walking past the coridoor and then disappearing, once you near the end of the coridoor, the game slows your movement down so that she reaches the other end of the coridoor before you reach her. This happens twice, and then you arrive in the building, and get to fight some enemies.
The game uses a strange first person version of the bullet time from Max Payne, except it refreshes itself, rather than you having to kill enemies to restore it. I'm not sure how useful this would be if the game didn't lag, but I found it quite useful to compensate for the lag. The weapon system seems to have been stolen from GTA:SA. There appear to be several groups of weapons, and you may only carry one of each group, however, this does not stop you from carrying millions of weapons.
The Demo carrys on in a similar caste up until the point where you walk into a coridoor with some very wierd lighting, you almost reach the end and the door slams closed. When you turn round, the girl is standing there. When you walk towards her, you are teleported into a coridoor which resembles the interview room from "The Ring". You run along this coridoor towards the door, behing which appears a dark figutre that looks rather like the imps from Doom3 breaking the window in the door and teleporting you into another coridoor, which is exactly the same except for the door, which no longer has a window. When you approach this door, you are teleported back to the room with the dodgey lighting. After this, you get to see the bloke you're meant to be killing trying to kill someone before he disappears. The demo ends at this point.
The only realy jumpy part is in a VERY laggy room, where you climb down a ladder, and the girl appears at the top, laughs and disintergrates, the small pieces falling down through the floor. When you arrive at the bottom of the ladder, the guy you're meant to be killing appears suddenly in front of you, and slowly disintergrates, whilst his echoey voics insists that "They all had to die". However, the rest of the level was prety similar to any other FPS.
I still have a few other niggles to deal with though. With your "amazing reflexes" and skills, how come enemies can jump through windows and you can't. What happened to crouch jumps? Also, it's a nice touch that when you look down you can see your feet, however, when I look down, I can see my body as well, and it's quite creepy thinking of yourself as either a hunchback or as a pair of legas and a floating gun.
The level also seems to have stolen a lot from other similar games and films fron it's genre. There's the scary little appearing girl (The Ring) voices (Doom3) random medical looking things (The Ring again) and some others. Also, I'm hoping that this is NOT the first level of the game. Although it works well as a demo, and is paced as such, it is not paced for the first level of a horror game, and if they want different wierd things to keep happening at that rate throughout the game, they're soon going to run out of ideas.
It is also the only demo I have ever played that took me longer to download than to complete.
However, I still think that the benefits outweigh the disadvantages of this. It DID manage to make me jump, which, in a five minuite demo is quite impressive, the graphics, although a little Doom3ish and laggy are very impressive. The enemy AI is great, and the level design and lighting is superb. I'm definately going to buy this, even if I need to buy some more RAM before it'll work properly.
Currently Listening To: Nothing
Currently Reading: .hack//legend of the twilight bracelet vol. 3
Currently Watching: Red Dwarf Series 6
Currently Obcessed With: F.E.A.R.
Recently, I downloaded the F.E.A.R. demo, and although there are a few criticisms I have with it, it is probably still the most impressive demo I have played for quite a long while.
After spending just under an hour downloading it, and another 5-10 minutes installing it, I opened it. THEN, after yet another few minutes stareing at a sign saying "Analysing System Performance", I was finally able to watch the (rather laggy considering it had "optomised for my system") intro cutscene. This is quite good, and contains the standard "reflections in people's eyes" "evil wet footprints on the floor" and "scary little girls". I was then briefed that I was to be going and killing this wierd posessed psychic soldier.
Unfortunately, things then took a bit of a turn for the worse, as my graphics card, which hadn't had it's drivers updated decided that it wasn't having this, and died, crashing the game. One re-start and installation of graphics carsd drivers later, everything I was raring to go again. Even though my graphics card now had shiny new drivers, it still wouldn't run if I turned ANY of the graphics options above medium, and I still had to turn all of the shadows off, and in fact, even with every single option turned down or off, the game STILL lagged. However, these problems still did little to marr one of the best things I have played recently.
Everything starts of in a rather Splinter-Cell like fashion, you're driven into an alleyway and have to infiltrate a building through the water system (which, in a rather strange feat or archetecture, seems to take up half of the building. Anyway, archetecture aside, you climb down some ladders (which, by the way, probably have a realy good syatem for climbing, if your aim isn't jumping about because of lag). Anyway, you get down there, and start recieving radio signals from and "anonymous source" (just like you used to do in Doom3, in fact, quite a lot of this demo is similar to Doom3, but enough about that. You soon find out that the source of these "anonymous" radio signals appears to be a small girl in a red dress, who appears walking past the ends of coridoors. Theyy did this rather well. To maintain the effect of her walking past the coridoor and then disappearing, once you near the end of the coridoor, the game slows your movement down so that she reaches the other end of the coridoor before you reach her. This happens twice, and then you arrive in the building, and get to fight some enemies.
The game uses a strange first person version of the bullet time from Max Payne, except it refreshes itself, rather than you having to kill enemies to restore it. I'm not sure how useful this would be if the game didn't lag, but I found it quite useful to compensate for the lag. The weapon system seems to have been stolen from GTA:SA. There appear to be several groups of weapons, and you may only carry one of each group, however, this does not stop you from carrying millions of weapons.
The Demo carrys on in a similar caste up until the point where you walk into a coridoor with some very wierd lighting, you almost reach the end and the door slams closed. When you turn round, the girl is standing there. When you walk towards her, you are teleported into a coridoor which resembles the interview room from "The Ring". You run along this coridoor towards the door, behing which appears a dark figutre that looks rather like the imps from Doom3 breaking the window in the door and teleporting you into another coridoor, which is exactly the same except for the door, which no longer has a window. When you approach this door, you are teleported back to the room with the dodgey lighting. After this, you get to see the bloke you're meant to be killing trying to kill someone before he disappears. The demo ends at this point.
The only realy jumpy part is in a VERY laggy room, where you climb down a ladder, and the girl appears at the top, laughs and disintergrates, the small pieces falling down through the floor. When you arrive at the bottom of the ladder, the guy you're meant to be killing appears suddenly in front of you, and slowly disintergrates, whilst his echoey voics insists that "They all had to die". However, the rest of the level was prety similar to any other FPS.
I still have a few other niggles to deal with though. With your "amazing reflexes" and skills, how come enemies can jump through windows and you can't. What happened to crouch jumps? Also, it's a nice touch that when you look down you can see your feet, however, when I look down, I can see my body as well, and it's quite creepy thinking of yourself as either a hunchback or as a pair of legas and a floating gun.
The level also seems to have stolen a lot from other similar games and films fron it's genre. There's the scary little appearing girl (The Ring) voices (Doom3) random medical looking things (The Ring again) and some others. Also, I'm hoping that this is NOT the first level of the game. Although it works well as a demo, and is paced as such, it is not paced for the first level of a horror game, and if they want different wierd things to keep happening at that rate throughout the game, they're soon going to run out of ideas.
It is also the only demo I have ever played that took me longer to download than to complete.
However, I still think that the benefits outweigh the disadvantages of this. It DID manage to make me jump, which, in a five minuite demo is quite impressive, the graphics, although a little Doom3ish and laggy are very impressive. The enemy AI is great, and the level design and lighting is superb. I'm definately going to buy this, even if I need to buy some more RAM before it'll work properly.
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
I'm going to show you how to kill a god.
2 min read
Mood: Annoyed
Currently Listening to: Cradle of Forest - Silent Hill 4
Currently Reading: Hide & Seek - Ian Rankin
Currently Watching: Princess Mononoke
Currently Obcessed With: Megatokyo/Project Zero II: Director's Cut
I bought Princess Mononoke on DVD yesterday, as, for once, a shop had it in stock and I had enough money.
Although I can't spell it, and some of the beginning scenes were spoilt by some wierd out of context translations of Jigo's lines (and the fact that I didn't like his or Toki's accents) it was a realy good film. They managed to make a rare thing these days, a fantasy storyline with a message which is conveyed subttly (Unlike say, His Dark Materials). Brilliant Fim. Anyone who hasn't seen this yet realy should.
My sister has a friend from her horse camp over for the weekend, and I am forced to say that she is one of the most annoying people it has ever been my misfortune to encounter. She makes random comments in the middle of conversations, totally unrelated to the subject. She is almost completely tactless, is far too corky for her own good and has so large an ego I'l surprised ger neck hasn't broken with the weight by now.
And my sister was askin if she could come round every other weekend. NO SHE CAN'T! I MAY HAVE TO KILL YOU!
Anyway, on an art related note, I'm trying to teach myself to draw again. I'm not doing too badly, I still have a bit of a problem getting perspective right, and I still find it hard to draw people, but I'm getting better, and I'm going to start trying to use Maya again, if I can persuade my computer that it's still installed (my computer died recently, and it took me quite a while to get everything installed again).
Ah well, thank-you to those of you who bothered to read this far down. I hope it wasn't too boring for you.
Hope you're having mre fun than me.
Currently Listening to: Cradle of Forest - Silent Hill 4
Currently Reading: Hide & Seek - Ian Rankin
Currently Watching: Princess Mononoke
Currently Obcessed With: Megatokyo/Project Zero II: Director's Cut
I bought Princess Mononoke on DVD yesterday, as, for once, a shop had it in stock and I had enough money.
Although I can't spell it, and some of the beginning scenes were spoilt by some wierd out of context translations of Jigo's lines (and the fact that I didn't like his or Toki's accents) it was a realy good film. They managed to make a rare thing these days, a fantasy storyline with a message which is conveyed subttly (Unlike say, His Dark Materials). Brilliant Fim. Anyone who hasn't seen this yet realy should.
My sister has a friend from her horse camp over for the weekend, and I am forced to say that she is one of the most annoying people it has ever been my misfortune to encounter. She makes random comments in the middle of conversations, totally unrelated to the subject. She is almost completely tactless, is far too corky for her own good and has so large an ego I'l surprised ger neck hasn't broken with the weight by now.
And my sister was askin if she could come round every other weekend. NO SHE CAN'T! I MAY HAVE TO KILL YOU!
Anyway, on an art related note, I'm trying to teach myself to draw again. I'm not doing too badly, I still have a bit of a problem getting perspective right, and I still find it hard to draw people, but I'm getting better, and I'm going to start trying to use Maya again, if I can persuade my computer that it's still installed (my computer died recently, and it took me quite a while to get everything installed again).
Ah well, thank-you to those of you who bothered to read this far down. I hope it wasn't too boring for you.
Hope you're having mre fun than me.
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
And into the fire....
2 min read
Right:
WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF
Please do this for me.
» I committed suicide:
» I said I liked you:
» I kissed you:
» I lived next door to you:
» I started smoking:
» I stole something:
» I was hospitalized:
» I ran away from home:
» I got into a fight and you weren't there:
WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT MY:
» Personality:
» Eyes:
» Face:
» Hair:
» Clothes:
» Mannerisms:
[1] Who are you?
[2] Are we friends?
[3] When and how did we meet?
[4] How have I affected you?
[5] What do you think of me?
[6] What's the fondest memory you have of me?
[7] How long do you think we will be friends or enemies?
[8] Do you love me?
[9] Have I ever hurt you?
[10] Would you hug me?
[11] Would you kiss me?
[12] Would you fuck me?
[13] Are we close?
[14] Emotionally, what stands out?
[15] Do you wish I was cooler?
[16] On a scale of 1-10, how nice am I?
[17] Give me a nickname and explain why you picked it.
[18] Am I loveable?
[19] How long have you known me?
[20] Describe me in one word.
[21] What was your first impression?
[22] Do you still think that way about me now?
[23] What do you think my weakness is?
[24] Do you think I'll get married?
[25] What about me makes you happy?
[26] What about me makes you sad?
[27] What reminds you of me?
[28] What's something you would change about me?
[29] How well do you know me?
[30] Ever wanted to tell me something but couldn't?
[31] Do you think I would kill someone?
[32] Are you going to put this on your journal and see what I say about you?
Yep, I'm feeling bored and unimaginative.
WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF
Please do this for me.» I committed suicide:
» I said I liked you:
» I kissed you:
» I lived next door to you:
» I started smoking:
» I stole something:
» I was hospitalized:
» I ran away from home:
» I got into a fight and you weren't there:
WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT MY:
» Personality:
» Eyes:
» Face:
» Hair:
» Clothes:
» Mannerisms:
[1] Who are you?
[2] Are we friends?
[3] When and how did we meet?
[4] How have I affected you?
[5] What do you think of me?
[6] What's the fondest memory you have of me?
[7] How long do you think we will be friends or enemies?
[8] Do you love me?
[9] Have I ever hurt you?
[10] Would you hug me?
[11] Would you kiss me?
[12] Would you fuck me?
[13] Are we close?
[14] Emotionally, what stands out?
[15] Do you wish I was cooler?
[16] On a scale of 1-10, how nice am I?
[17] Give me a nickname and explain why you picked it.
[18] Am I loveable?
[19] How long have you known me?
[20] Describe me in one word.
[21] What was your first impression?
[22] Do you still think that way about me now?
[23] What do you think my weakness is?
[24] Do you think I'll get married?
[25] What about me makes you happy?
[26] What about me makes you sad?
[27] What reminds you of me?
[28] What's something you would change about me?
[29] How well do you know me?
[30] Ever wanted to tell me something but couldn't?
[31] Do you think I would kill someone?
[32] Are you going to put this on your journal and see what I say about you?
Yep, I'm feeling bored and unimaginative.
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In