The addition of grooves barely affects the overall geometry, but the shading effect is quite noticeable and, I believe, justifies nearly increasing the polycount tenfold.
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Bassrath-Kata Longbow - Update
I managed to trim the number of polygons down to around 8.5k. It'll be the highest poly weapon model I've made, but I'm not going to reduce it further. There are still some areas with really small polygons that look essential but I'm not sure should stay, so there may be more work done on this front. For now, I'm working on coloring in the texture's shapes. No details, just color. I still have to make a string for this.
The addition of grooves barely affects the overall geometry, but the shading effect is quite noticeable and, I believe, justifies nearly increasing the polycount tenfold.
The addition of grooves barely affects the overall geometry, but the shading effect is quite noticeable and, I believe, justifies nearly increasing the polycount tenfold.
Sunday, July 29, 2012
Bassrath-Kata Longbow Progress
Considering how I've only remade melee weapons from Dragon Age 2, I figured I'd give ranged a shot (no pun intended at time of writing. Now, though, I intend it.) So, I started with what looked to be the easiest bow to make: Bassrath-Kata/Cynoeswr Sain.
I got the basic geometry down and was at about 950 polys. "Not bad," I thought. "I have some room for more detail." Then I looked at the normal map of the original weapon. 3 hours later and I was up to 12.5k polys. Yeah...I'd better trim that down. Curse you MeshSmooth!
So, now I'm going through and removing unnecessary edges and trying to fix all the smoothing errors (some are quite stubborn). Once I finish that, I have to make the bowstring, the texture, and rig the mesh to Skyrim's bow skeleton.
I got the basic geometry down and was at about 950 polys. "Not bad," I thought. "I have some room for more detail." Then I looked at the normal map of the original weapon. 3 hours later and I was up to 12.5k polys. Yeah...I'd better trim that down. Curse you MeshSmooth!
So, now I'm going through and removing unnecessary edges and trying to fix all the smoothing errors (some are quite stubborn). Once I finish that, I have to make the bowstring, the texture, and rig the mesh to Skyrim's bow skeleton.
Saturday, July 28, 2012
Commenting issues
Since I've never posted a comment on blogger/blogspot before, I just spent an hour trying to reply to one. I even fired up a linux vm to try it. I didn't do the obvious "try another browser" because I found the solution before I summoned Internet Explorer.
Apparently, I had to enable accepting thirdparty cookies which added about 8 cookies total from productforums.google.com, groups.google.com, and plusone.google.com. I don't know why any of those are relevant to posting a comment when they aren't required to make a post.
It's like they took the comment system and broke it into pieces. Each piece can view comments (i.e. blogger), but you need all the pieces to make a comment. I don't understand why you'd do that. Authentication perhaps? But why can't a blog owner write a comment on his own blog when he's clearly authorized? This is why I'm not qualified to work for Google besides the laundry list of qualifications.
What was the phrase? "Low coupling, high cohesion"
Apparently, I had to enable accepting thirdparty cookies which added about 8 cookies total from productforums.google.com, groups.google.com, and plusone.google.com. I don't know why any of those are relevant to posting a comment when they aren't required to make a post.
It's like they took the comment system and broke it into pieces. Each piece can view comments (i.e. blogger), but you need all the pieces to make a comment. I don't understand why you'd do that. Authentication perhaps? But why can't a blog owner write a comment on his own blog when he's clearly authorized? This is why I'm not qualified to work for Google besides the laundry list of qualifications.
What was the phrase? "Low coupling, high cohesion"
Friday, July 27, 2012
Just another post
I picked up Dead Island during the Steam Summer Sale after watching the GameTrailers review. I have an odd feeling that they played the console version because, well, the PC version is terrible. I'm noticing a trend where I say "Game X is screaming console port!" and I think it's because, well, I keep playing games that are console ports...but anyways, this one is definitely in that category.
The following is a list of things that I...noticed while playing the game:
Fortunately, a few key issues were addressed using Dead Island Helper and I've been enjoying the game. However, I've been running into the "No mic = ban" groups. Yes, yes, voice chat is very useful for coordination, but I've had enough people abusing it in the past to a) turn it off and b) not bother finding out what is wrong with my mic (bass boost/constant hum).
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Anyways, I'm thinking about releasing my black leather duster clothes model for Skyrim. It's still giving me this weird stretched polygon issue. I'll have to start it from scratch to ensure all vertices keep their numbers. This does annoy me because, as I've said before, the heavy model was the original scaled up in places to accommodate a thicker body. Nothing else was changed, even the weightmaps are the same.
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I tried getting another Portal 2 map fleshed out, but wound up starting yet another one and tweaking my Backstock map. And now, I've forgotten to work on any of them because I've been running around in Dead Island ("Get money's worth" *grumble grumble*).
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2k Games has put up their, what seems to be, quarterly "QA Testers needed" posting on Craigslist. I've applied in the past, but never got a response, not even an automated one. Now, I'm not sure I even want to drive 45 miles and pass LAX twice a day. I think I once calculated that the money the job paid was not enough to cover the cost of driving to and from their general location. Making negative income, brilliant! Of course, whatever I concluded from that is void because the vehicle I drove then had its transmission die (100mi from home no less) and I now have a more fuel efficient car (No, I didn't buy it. It was a gift and I can't even cover the insurance or car wash. My parents have to.).
I really want to get a job in which I either fix PCs or work on some aspect of Game Development (or both!), but about 75% of the applications I've sent out never received a response of any kind. The 25% that did were mainly for programming positions where I bombed the phone interviews because my vocabulary was terrible. I know what I'm doing (mostly), but can't express it in the exact textbook technical terms they want. I'm only applying for entry level positions, mind you.
I did have an interview with a game publisher last year, but they misread my resume and thought I ran focus testing instead of being a focus tester. So, when that came up a quarter of the way through the interview, they just went through the motions to humor me. When I followed up saying thank you, I got no response back. When I knew I didn't get the job a month later (how could I not know from the get-go?), still no messages.
I'm finding that if I get an interview, I don't get responses back and any further attempts at contact are met with silence. I've been at it for almost a year and a half. I hate my job (i.e. job hunting) so much that I don't do it. I'm tired of these oneway conversations. At this point, my CS degree is worthless ("Oh, a degree. What else ya got?") and the only thing I've programmed in that time was a couple weeks ago. 10 lines of code to brute force calculate a number whose right edge on a number line would match the left edge of another number. Thrilling. Better slap that on the resume.
What really gets on my nerves are all the postings that are blatant "We want to exploit those of you who have lost your jobs because of the recession" positions. What I mean is for a part-time PC technician position, I had to have 5-10 years experience and previously worked on enterprise-level hardware and/or ran an IT department for a big company. The job paid $15/hr and was for some local PC repair shop (of course, they didn't say who they were, so I couldn't bike over and shove my resume in their face). The job was basic PC troubleshooting, some network troubleshooting, assembly, some part swapping, and the occasional house call.
I did apply for idTech camps as an instructor, but after blowing the bully question ("I'd ask him to stop and move him from his target. If repeated, I'd call him out. If continued, I'd put him outside."), I didn't get the job, much to my relief; I'm a terrible teacher. This was the "Oh fine, why not?" application. Of course, now I can mark "familiar with 3ds max". *sigh*
The following is a list of things that I...noticed while playing the game:
- Rebinding the Use key doesn't completely work. There are instances where I had to press the originally bound key to do anything.
- No quickslot keys. I have to use the middle mouse button to pull up a radial menu.
- The camera moves a little until the mouse moves past a threshold wherein the radial menu completely redirects input. So, the radial arrow AND the camera both move for a little bit.
- Switching weapons into radial slots takes a second before it registers. So, if you exit the menu too quick, your weapon won't switch spots.
- You have to sell stacks of items one, at, a, time.
- Inventory is categorized and placed in one huge list.
- Not sortable.
- I can carry bottles of bleach, several cans of food, bottles of water, nails, batteries, large batteries, a dozen bottles of champagne, and several engine parts, but can't carry more than 16 tonfas, 75 pistol bullets, 90 rifle bullets, and 30 shotgun shells.
- I get it. The tonfas are weapons and the rest are misc/crafting materials, but I raised my eyebrow at this several times because, if you're going to be somewhat realistic about ammo, why stop there?
- Skill descriptions persist instead of only appearing when the mouse hovers over them.
- They also obscure everything underneath them, so you have to click around in order to reveal the skill tree.
- Some descriptions are a bit...weird.
- If I alt+tab, vsync turns off.
- I've lost audio for everything but cutscenes once. No idea why.
- No FOV slider
- Shotguns or assault rifles at point blank range tend to do no damage to npcs, but npcs can shoot you at the same range.
- If I aim at an enemy and fire, it'll miss when the second shot from the same position hits. Yes, guns sway, but when the sway never takes you off the target (at around 20ft), shouldn't I hit?
- Gun specialist with no guns for the first quarter of the game.
- Except for her Fury.
- Mouse acceleration dramatically different between the menu and ingame.
- Too low and your camera is perfect, but your mouse has to run the length of a football field in order to get anywhere in the menus.
- The blood effect I had on screen has become a white, textureless blur. <-- I'm a bit concerned about this one. Better retest my graphics card.
- I got killed by a car door as I exited a vehicle while it pulled to a stop.
- My checkpoints are always where the main quest is, not where it says "checkpoint saved" or whatnot.
- Cars disappear if you venture more than 100 yards away from them. "Why yes, I wanted to trek across the entire island to turn in this quest."
- In one quest, you can't leave a key character in the SAFE ZONE without failing a quest and being forced to restart. However, you can leave said character in the middle of nowhere with no defenses whatsoever.
- If I have a stack of medkits, but my inventory slots are full. I cannot pickup another medkit and add it to the stack until I drop a weapon, pickup the kit, and then pickup the weapon I dropped.
- One cutscene sequence at a police station has no sky and reminds me of the hall-of-mirrors from the Source engine. Repeatable and only this cutscene, not the others.
Fortunately, a few key issues were addressed using Dead Island Helper and I've been enjoying the game. However, I've been running into the "No mic = ban" groups. Yes, yes, voice chat is very useful for coordination, but I've had enough people abusing it in the past to a) turn it off and b) not bother finding out what is wrong with my mic (bass boost/constant hum).
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Anyways, I'm thinking about releasing my black leather duster clothes model for Skyrim. It's still giving me this weird stretched polygon issue. I'll have to start it from scratch to ensure all vertices keep their numbers. This does annoy me because, as I've said before, the heavy model was the original scaled up in places to accommodate a thicker body. Nothing else was changed, even the weightmaps are the same.
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I tried getting another Portal 2 map fleshed out, but wound up starting yet another one and tweaking my Backstock map. And now, I've forgotten to work on any of them because I've been running around in Dead Island ("Get money's worth" *grumble grumble*).
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2k Games has put up their, what seems to be, quarterly "QA Testers needed" posting on Craigslist. I've applied in the past, but never got a response, not even an automated one. Now, I'm not sure I even want to drive 45 miles and pass LAX twice a day. I think I once calculated that the money the job paid was not enough to cover the cost of driving to and from their general location. Making negative income, brilliant! Of course, whatever I concluded from that is void because the vehicle I drove then had its transmission die (100mi from home no less) and I now have a more fuel efficient car (No, I didn't buy it. It was a gift and I can't even cover the insurance or car wash. My parents have to.).
I really want to get a job in which I either fix PCs or work on some aspect of Game Development (or both!), but about 75% of the applications I've sent out never received a response of any kind. The 25% that did were mainly for programming positions where I bombed the phone interviews because my vocabulary was terrible. I know what I'm doing (mostly), but can't express it in the exact textbook technical terms they want. I'm only applying for entry level positions, mind you.
I did have an interview with a game publisher last year, but they misread my resume and thought I ran focus testing instead of being a focus tester. So, when that came up a quarter of the way through the interview, they just went through the motions to humor me. When I followed up saying thank you, I got no response back. When I knew I didn't get the job a month later (how could I not know from the get-go?), still no messages.
I'm finding that if I get an interview, I don't get responses back and any further attempts at contact are met with silence. I've been at it for almost a year and a half. I hate my job (i.e. job hunting) so much that I don't do it. I'm tired of these oneway conversations. At this point, my CS degree is worthless ("Oh, a degree. What else ya got?") and the only thing I've programmed in that time was a couple weeks ago. 10 lines of code to brute force calculate a number whose right edge on a number line would match the left edge of another number. Thrilling. Better slap that on the resume.
What really gets on my nerves are all the postings that are blatant "We want to exploit those of you who have lost your jobs because of the recession" positions. What I mean is for a part-time PC technician position, I had to have 5-10 years experience and previously worked on enterprise-level hardware and/or ran an IT department for a big company. The job paid $15/hr and was for some local PC repair shop (of course, they didn't say who they were, so I couldn't bike over and shove my resume in their face). The job was basic PC troubleshooting, some network troubleshooting, assembly, some part swapping, and the occasional house call.
I did apply for idTech camps as an instructor, but after blowing the bully question ("I'd ask him to stop and move him from his target. If repeated, I'd call him out. If continued, I'd put him outside."), I didn't get the job, much to my relief; I'm a terrible teacher. This was the "Oh fine, why not?" application. Of course, now I can mark "familiar with 3ds max". *sigh*
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Mihi displiceat Hydrophobia: prophetia
The following will devolve into a stream of consciousness:
Hydrophobia was back on sale yet again for 75% off on Steam. So, this time around, I figured I'd pick it up. C'mon, $1.24. I might as well.
I knew full well that I'd be aiming for every single achievement possible, but I went for it anyways. From the beginning, the controls were good and I learned fairly quickly that MLAA is a terrible idea as it turns the screen into a mess of tie-dyed blurs with solid cores. Okay. Fine. I'll turn that off and it removed that and the resulting image proved it wasn't needed in the first place what with all the bloom everywhere.
So, I'll continue on. Scoot rather likes his dirty jokes and both he and the player character do enjoy cursing. Then again, that seems to be the norm for real conversations these days. Odd knick-knacks hidden here and there, secret messages, cool. Stuff to search for. The water is amazing! Okay, turn down particle effects to salvage fps. And....fps is now, worse? How can turning down particle effect quality worsen my fps? Ugh...
Forging on. Single shots to the head with Sonic ammo = insta kill. Got it. Shoot this, shoot that. Boom. Fzzt. CRACK! WATERFALL!!! WEEEEEE! Alright, that was fun. Wait, now I need an air pocket. Whoops. You know what, I kind of like this game. The water simulations are awesome, I'm getting decent fps most of the time, and I'm only dying because I did something stupid. Cool. :D
*skipping ahead*
And now, the final act. "Make your way through the burning shuttle area with a conveniently placed wall, multiple hazards, and enemies popping up out of nowhere for no reason." Great.
Attempt 1: Death by guy who came out of area I just cleared.
Attempt 2: Death by his buddy who was across the map.
Attempt 3: Cleared both groups. Death by guy who spawned behind a sign AFTER I passed it. Seriously?
Attempt 4: Death because the game didn't want to process my trigger finger until 2 seconds after I let go. Meaning I was standing out of cover against 2 enemies for 3 seconds.
Attempt 8: Cleared all the guys, but apparently there's a medal called Gravity. Hmm...
Attempt 16: Well, that sucked. 5 guys to kill, their bodies flying over, under, or through the railing and landing in the pit below don't register. Fine. Continue onwards and climb up. Time to make that jump...and my character stops moving halfway through. I fall to my death.
Attempt 17: The landing is what'll kill you.
Attempt 21: Same cutscene for the umpteenth time. Faceplant. Here we go again...
Attempt 22: Okay. Turn camera 180 degrees. Look straight at vent. Meditate. Breathe. Hold back while facing backwards. And...JUMP! MADE IT! Finally.
*skipping ahead*
Ooo. I can make water towers now. About time. It's over halfway through this act and only now do I get to play with physics. Probably was a doozy to code. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.
Okay, moving the mouse forward/back controls how far/close the tower is and ALSO changes my aim? What person thought of that? I can see what I'm doing because my view is flying around like a ragdoll with rockets attached to each limb. Good will is dropping...
Final Boss:
Dead in 10 seconds THEN it tells me what to do before the game cuts it off before I can read it (2 seconds and zip!).
Attempt 2: Dead in 15 seconds. Hey hey! Improvement! Still don't know what I should be doing.
Attempt 3: Here we go again. I no longer want to be more than friends. Can I change this to easy? I'm afraid I won't beat it this time.
Attempt 4: Okay. Shoot energy pellet then use water tower to hurl object at boss. Got it. Death by henchman that spawned 6ft away with a shotgun.
Attempt 6: Done one boss hit cycle. Guys popping up out of nowhere, boss is shooting with perfect accuracy with...grenades? Death.
Attempt 8: Oh come on!
Attempt 10: You know what. Using clunky, awkward controls, requiring energy pellets when I was doing a "sonic-only" playthrough without knowing I was, forgetting to switch back before I kill someone, having the water power take over aiming, no quicksaves whatsoever so I don't have to keep repeating the same 30-70 seconds over and over again not including cutscenes, swapping to cutscenes for no apparent reason (I don't need to see the boss dock itself cinematically. The camera was fine the way it was.), and getting shot at from 4 directions with my view spinning like a merry-go-round, I'm done.
I don't think I'm going to bother finishing it. It started great and in the final act drove itself into the ground. I was getting quite animated and frustrated with the game. (Then again, it is 5am and I've been at it for a couple hours.) So, that's it. I can't take it anymore. There's a "Let's Play" for this game on YouTube, so I'm going to watch the end of the game there. I don't care if it is 360p, I'm going to see the ending(s), and that's that.
I was thinking about putting screenshots in this post, but since I killed the game and immediately started writing this, I'm not going to. It is too much hassle (stupid checkpoint system...) and I don't want to replay the game just to get the right shots.
And another thing. This game screams console port. I've seen "Press [Insert Button Here]" prompts in place of my actual mapped keys, the main menu moves around (annoying when you are trying to click on something), the player character's power controls were ripped straight from an analog stick and slapped onto the mouse, and jumping does not perform as expected (No! I did not mean hang on the side of the box. Jump to the other one!). There's probably other things I've forgotten, but it's probably better that way.
In short, the water physics were awesome at the start, but the end turned them into a novelty. Nothing of importance. Is it cool? Yes. But it's implementation sucked. So, I'd recommend it only for the tech.
*And seriously? Breast physics? Her bosom isn't even large enough to move that way. Let alone in her clothing. It's not even noticeable unless you turn the character around to backtrack right before the camera inevitably forces you to face forward again. I only found it on the only puzzle involving your water powers at the end of the game....when what I wanted to do and what the character did were completely different things.
*All hail translation services!
Hydrophobia was back on sale yet again for 75% off on Steam. So, this time around, I figured I'd pick it up. C'mon, $1.24. I might as well.
I knew full well that I'd be aiming for every single achievement possible, but I went for it anyways. From the beginning, the controls were good and I learned fairly quickly that MLAA is a terrible idea as it turns the screen into a mess of tie-dyed blurs with solid cores. Okay. Fine. I'll turn that off and it removed that and the resulting image proved it wasn't needed in the first place what with all the bloom everywhere.
So, I'll continue on. Scoot rather likes his dirty jokes and both he and the player character do enjoy cursing. Then again, that seems to be the norm for real conversations these days. Odd knick-knacks hidden here and there, secret messages, cool. Stuff to search for. The water is amazing! Okay, turn down particle effects to salvage fps. And....fps is now, worse? How can turning down particle effect quality worsen my fps? Ugh...
Forging on. Single shots to the head with Sonic ammo = insta kill. Got it. Shoot this, shoot that. Boom. Fzzt. CRACK! WATERFALL!!! WEEEEEE! Alright, that was fun. Wait, now I need an air pocket. Whoops. You know what, I kind of like this game. The water simulations are awesome, I'm getting decent fps most of the time, and I'm only dying because I did something stupid. Cool. :D
*skipping ahead*
And now, the final act. "Make your way through the burning shuttle area with a conveniently placed wall, multiple hazards, and enemies popping up out of nowhere for no reason." Great.
Attempt 1: Death by guy who came out of area I just cleared.
Attempt 2: Death by his buddy who was across the map.
Attempt 3: Cleared both groups. Death by guy who spawned behind a sign AFTER I passed it. Seriously?
Attempt 4: Death because the game didn't want to process my trigger finger until 2 seconds after I let go. Meaning I was standing out of cover against 2 enemies for 3 seconds.
Attempt 8: Cleared all the guys, but apparently there's a medal called Gravity. Hmm...
Attempt 16: Well, that sucked. 5 guys to kill, their bodies flying over, under, or through the railing and landing in the pit below don't register. Fine. Continue onwards and climb up. Time to make that jump...and my character stops moving halfway through. I fall to my death.
Attempt 17: The landing is what'll kill you.
Attempt 21: Same cutscene for the umpteenth time. Faceplant. Here we go again...
Attempt 22: Okay. Turn camera 180 degrees. Look straight at vent. Meditate. Breathe. Hold back while facing backwards. And...JUMP! MADE IT! Finally.
*skipping ahead*
Ooo. I can make water towers now. About time. It's over halfway through this act and only now do I get to play with physics. Probably was a doozy to code. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.
Okay, moving the mouse forward/back controls how far/close the tower is and ALSO changes my aim? What person thought of that? I can see what I'm doing because my view is flying around like a ragdoll with rockets attached to each limb. Good will is dropping...
Final Boss:
Dead in 10 seconds THEN it tells me what to do before the game cuts it off before I can read it (2 seconds and zip!).
Attempt 2: Dead in 15 seconds. Hey hey! Improvement! Still don't know what I should be doing.
Attempt 3: Here we go again. I no longer want to be more than friends. Can I change this to easy? I'm afraid I won't beat it this time.
Attempt 4: Okay. Shoot energy pellet then use water tower to hurl object at boss. Got it. Death by henchman that spawned 6ft away with a shotgun.
Attempt 6: Done one boss hit cycle. Guys popping up out of nowhere, boss is shooting with perfect accuracy with...grenades? Death.
Attempt 8: Oh come on!
Attempt 10: You know what. Using clunky, awkward controls, requiring energy pellets when I was doing a "sonic-only" playthrough without knowing I was, forgetting to switch back before I kill someone, having the water power take over aiming, no quicksaves whatsoever so I don't have to keep repeating the same 30-70 seconds over and over again not including cutscenes, swapping to cutscenes for no apparent reason (I don't need to see the boss dock itself cinematically. The camera was fine the way it was.), and getting shot at from 4 directions with my view spinning like a merry-go-round, I'm done.
I don't think I'm going to bother finishing it. It started great and in the final act drove itself into the ground. I was getting quite animated and frustrated with the game. (Then again, it is 5am and I've been at it for a couple hours.) So, that's it. I can't take it anymore. There's a "Let's Play" for this game on YouTube, so I'm going to watch the end of the game there. I don't care if it is 360p, I'm going to see the ending(s), and that's that.
I was thinking about putting screenshots in this post, but since I killed the game and immediately started writing this, I'm not going to. It is too much hassle (stupid checkpoint system...) and I don't want to replay the game just to get the right shots.
And another thing. This game screams console port. I've seen "Press [Insert Button Here]" prompts in place of my actual mapped keys, the main menu moves around (annoying when you are trying to click on something), the player character's power controls were ripped straight from an analog stick and slapped onto the mouse, and jumping does not perform as expected (No! I did not mean hang on the side of the box. Jump to the other one!). There's probably other things I've forgotten, but it's probably better that way.
In short, the water physics were awesome at the start, but the end turned them into a novelty. Nothing of importance. Is it cool? Yes. But it's implementation sucked. So, I'd recommend it only for the tech.
*And seriously? Breast physics? Her bosom isn't even large enough to move that way. Let alone in her clothing. It's not even noticeable unless you turn the character around to backtrack right before the camera inevitably forces you to face forward again. I only found it on the only puzzle involving your water powers at the end of the game....when what I wanted to do and what the character did were completely different things.
*All hail translation services!
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Sleep? HAH!
I hate when people cut down trees on my street. Why? I grew up with them there. Also, they started at 7 in the morning and have been at it for 2 hours. That's 2 glorious hours of a wood chipper, chainsaw, and diesel truck engine going off as an alarm. Considering I had trouble getting to sleep, let alone staying asleep, I am none too thrilled about it.
I'd love to shut the windows and insulate myself from the NOISE, but they are within spitting distance with a good wind.
Update:
They kept at it for another 3 hours, so 5 hours total. Yeah, no getting back to sleep. I'm up.
I'd love to shut the windows and insulate myself from the NOISE, but they are within spitting distance with a good wind.
Update:
They kept at it for another 3 hours, so 5 hours total. Yeah, no getting back to sleep. I'm up.
Saturday, July 7, 2012
Hiatus
I've been taking some time off from doing, well, anything. Switched from producer to consumer you could say. I was running myself into the ground again; constantly working from one project to the next. Sometimes, with several in tandem. So, I had a mini vacation last weekend after not having a proper getaway for close to a decade.
After consolidating and posting my Dragon Age Series weapons pack on the Skyrim Workshop and Nexus, I started feeling it. Upload, then work on new weapons, fix bugs, release new version with new weapons, get myself back into gear on Backstock, and procrastinate instead of job hunting. That's something I've been noticing. If there's something I should be doing, whether it's something I enjoy or not, I just stop doing it, pick up something else, and bounce them around the backburner. I suppose this is true for a lot of people and isn't unique to myself and I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this before along with mentioning I've mentioned this before...
Now, I'm getting back to well, everything, again. I'm finally putting work into a map for Backstock, picked up my own map to hopefully kick off Test Map Pack 5, picking a new weapon to start the second Dragon Age Series weapons pack (I'm too close to the 100MB upload limit on Steam and compressing .bsa's fails every single time), looking into another mapping tutorial for the Source engine or Portal 2, getting my Leather Duster back into Skyrim (there's an annoying issue of random polys extending to infinity despite not changing vertex counts or numberings as far as I can tell), and finishing off my frying pan weapons for Skyrim.
Speaking of frying pans, I pan fried my first steaks today. Thin ones, but they came out great. It's amazing how good they can taste with only salt and pepper. I cooked them over medium heat and, thus, took about 5x as long as the recipe said it would take. Not bad though.
I finally beat Dungeon Siege 3. I put the game aside after I bought it because I was really getting into remaking Dragon Age's weapons for Skyrim. Gaming as a whole was taking too much time. I'm a little sad that the game died out so fast and there's no one hosting multiplayer games, but it is what it is. I snagged all the single playthrough achievements I could/knew of. It took me about 27 hours to get through on Reinhart and I spent several hours trying to get the achievements for the final parts of the game.
After looking at the models in the game, I've been toying with bringing those weapons to Skyrim. However, I don't really know how I'd do that. You can really zoom in and I don't have the tools to pry open whatever proprietary formats the content is veiled behind. There were tools out there last I checked, but that was months ago.
About the camera in DS3, I have a strong dislike for it. I remember the DS3 demo not having strafe. I was thinking to myself "why cut this out?" Another annoyance was the restrictive camera angles. I have "close to my back and can't see much else" and "far from my back and can't see ahead of me". The story was good and the gameplay was alright. Not a fan of the camera though. Glad they put strafing in, but I really hated not being able to see in front of myself.
"Expectation of privacy" just crossed my mind. Literally. Am I doing myself any favors by putting all this information out there? I'm making myself appear more human, but at what cost? All the job hunting sites, books, pamphlets, and seminars/talks I've read/attended say to be careful what you post online. And with all this "We demand your facebook password" nonsense going on, should I put even heavier filters down on what I write? Or should I give a giant "screw you" and not compromise myself for the sake of finding a job? This blog was made for my modding work, not me. Can I separate myself from my work and not come off as some faceless entity on the Net? I don't have a website, so if employers look me up, this is what they'll see.
If I get asked "What's your Facebook password?", I'm going to reply "Don't you need an account for those?"
After consolidating and posting my Dragon Age Series weapons pack on the Skyrim Workshop and Nexus, I started feeling it. Upload, then work on new weapons, fix bugs, release new version with new weapons, get myself back into gear on Backstock, and procrastinate instead of job hunting. That's something I've been noticing. If there's something I should be doing, whether it's something I enjoy or not, I just stop doing it, pick up something else, and bounce them around the backburner. I suppose this is true for a lot of people and isn't unique to myself and I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this before along with mentioning I've mentioned this before...
Now, I'm getting back to well, everything, again. I'm finally putting work into a map for Backstock, picked up my own map to hopefully kick off Test Map Pack 5, picking a new weapon to start the second Dragon Age Series weapons pack (I'm too close to the 100MB upload limit on Steam and compressing .bsa's fails every single time), looking into another mapping tutorial for the Source engine or Portal 2, getting my Leather Duster back into Skyrim (there's an annoying issue of random polys extending to infinity despite not changing vertex counts or numberings as far as I can tell), and finishing off my frying pan weapons for Skyrim.
Speaking of frying pans, I pan fried my first steaks today. Thin ones, but they came out great. It's amazing how good they can taste with only salt and pepper. I cooked them over medium heat and, thus, took about 5x as long as the recipe said it would take. Not bad though.
I finally beat Dungeon Siege 3. I put the game aside after I bought it because I was really getting into remaking Dragon Age's weapons for Skyrim. Gaming as a whole was taking too much time. I'm a little sad that the game died out so fast and there's no one hosting multiplayer games, but it is what it is. I snagged all the single playthrough achievements I could/knew of. It took me about 27 hours to get through on Reinhart and I spent several hours trying to get the achievements for the final parts of the game.
After looking at the models in the game, I've been toying with bringing those weapons to Skyrim. However, I don't really know how I'd do that. You can really zoom in and I don't have the tools to pry open whatever proprietary formats the content is veiled behind. There were tools out there last I checked, but that was months ago.
About the camera in DS3, I have a strong dislike for it. I remember the DS3 demo not having strafe. I was thinking to myself "why cut this out?" Another annoyance was the restrictive camera angles. I have "close to my back and can't see much else" and "far from my back and can't see ahead of me". The story was good and the gameplay was alright. Not a fan of the camera though. Glad they put strafing in, but I really hated not being able to see in front of myself.
"Expectation of privacy" just crossed my mind. Literally. Am I doing myself any favors by putting all this information out there? I'm making myself appear more human, but at what cost? All the job hunting sites, books, pamphlets, and seminars/talks I've read/attended say to be careful what you post online. And with all this "We demand your facebook password" nonsense going on, should I put even heavier filters down on what I write? Or should I give a giant "screw you" and not compromise myself for the sake of finding a job? This blog was made for my modding work, not me. Can I separate myself from my work and not come off as some faceless entity on the Net? I don't have a website, so if employers look me up, this is what they'll see.
If I get asked "What's your Facebook password?", I'm going to reply "Don't you need an account for those?"
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