Daeval

Well, I'm not a modeler or anything, but the blockiness of the character doesn't seem to lend itself well to inklines. Seems like it would look more like the cell shaded effect I assume you're going for if the character was done more rounded and cartoon-ish. You don't normally see really blocky characters in cell-shaded games. That, or maybe just use a different "line" object for different parts of the body. Like the legs don't look too bad as is, but that same (I'm assuming its the same) outline object doesn't work very well for the arms or the head. You might try using a serperate, "customized" outline object for those parts. And one more thing, the figure is missing "interior" lines, so it kind of breaks up the illusion. He has one accross the base of his shirt, but not at his sleeves, around his chin, or the ends of his pant legs, etc. It seems like the effect might work better if those were included, and this might tie in to the "seperate line objects" mentioned above. Again, I'm not a 3D modeler or even an artist really, but a little brainstorming never hurt, right? Good luck, let us know how it goes!

That collection is worth more than a woman who would make you get rid of it.

Was all this provoked? If K' started it and let Fatal finish it, that would be one thing, but if that happened I missed it. Assuming it came out of the blue, I don't see any dishonor in K's just ignoring it as he more or less has. It was mildly amusing for a little while, but I think anyone would get sick of it, having to put up with it for long enough. The relatively maturity level on this board is probably the #1 reason I'm here all the damn time. It would be no fun if we didn't screw around, but one gag, especially at someone's expense, only lasts so long.

Even people who work at game companies don't usually end up with collections like this. This is a very serious collector.

If you get fined for documenting someone's threats on your life, sue until you own the state, and then change the law.

I don't know that it's my favorite, but the "ate my balls" phenomenon was always an interesting social commentary.

*69 works for residential phones in my area, but you can have it blocked (so it can't be used to call your line). It's also recently started giving numbers, where before it would just auto-dial the last incoming line. Seeing as K' had a different take, it might work differently in different areas. I'd definately start recording the calls. I don't know where, but I know they sell these little suction-cup microphone things that stick onto a phone reciever. At least get one of those and log everything the son of a biatch says. I guess from there, if the police can't do anything, maybe talk to a lawyer or a PI and find out what your options are?

You should have given that thing hair.

Right, we can't know for sure without word from SNKs designers. But, I'm going to continue this debate because it's fun. Again, it doesn't matter if King was first in a video game, he wasn't first. It's nonsense to say that, just because he's in a video game, King is a more valid inspiration than another popular character (Tiger Mask) who's been around in various forms for over 30 years. Another Illustration: If a new game came out featuring a short asian guy with a bowl haircut and a yellow jumpsuit, would you say he was a rip off of Law? Assuming Law was the first Bruce Lee tribute in a video game (which he's not, but we'll assume for the sake of argument), you would be crazy to assume that the designers were more inspired by Law than by the established image of Bruce Lee. Similarly, it's silly to say that Tizoc is based on the animal-head image of King, when the animal-head image was established 30+ years ago with Tiger Mask. Again, their only similarity is something that was established long before King was around. The "most obvious" design inspiration of Tizoc seems to be a love for the masked wrestling mayhem of classic heroic characters like El Santo and Tiger Mask, combined with the bird-mask imagery of ancient south america and mexico.

I'm not really disagreeing with what you said but King IS original in the games field (you even said yourself that you didn't know of King's true inspiration, so to you he should have been considered mighty original). The problem is, after King, it's already been done, so you have to assume SNK got it from a rival game. King is a widely recognized character from an extremely popular, mainstream series. Garou is far more 'underground', why wouldn't SNK feel the need to copy some of the successful elements? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> But I DID know of King's true inspiriation: the "the whole phenomenon of ‘masked wrestlers'." I didn't know which specific one he was based on, but that character was only one of many. King was obviously borrowed from the large, relatively well known group of actual masked wrestlers. He owes his character design entirely to the actual masked wrestlers. Tizoc, aside from being a "masked wrestler," bears entirely no resemblance to King. The mask is dramatically different and done in a different style, his body and movements are much more exaggerated, and his background is that of the mexican masked wrestler El Santo, rather than King's tekken-intwined plot. Seeing as the "masked wrestler" schtick is the only real similarity, and SNKs designers were likely exposed to that long before King, the credit for Tizoc most obviously goes to the actual masked wrestlers. Also consider Ramon, borrowed from the same scene that produced El Santo. When something appears in a video game, it doesn't separate it from the rest of the entertainment world. Just because Namco put a masked wrestler in a game doesn't mean that all future masked wrestlers are based on that one. We don't attribute every video game barbarian or wizard to Gauntlet or some other old title. When an image is well established outside of the video game medium, people can draw from those other sources independently of each other. As long as the resulting images are not overly similar, as clearly King and Tizoc are not, there's no reason to assume the latter one is based on the former, when a much larger body of inspiration exists outside of the video game world.

Smaller doesn't mean no HD these days (Except for PSTwo, the retards). The XBOX was HUGE, even for its time and features. They could have fit it into a much smaller shell, and the controllers were just ridiculous. I couldn't help but compare it to the American SUV-style "big is cool" mentality. The same thing that happened to our trucks happened to our consoles. We went from the "it all fits in here, it's functional" of the compact truck to "You can actually fit your car in the bed, and the wheel wells extend a good three feet out from the wheels" of the Ford F series and other stupidly large trucks that are so cool, but that only 1 in 10 owners actually makes use of.

Civ III rocks! Reading this has made me want to play it again... It's been a while, but my earliest successful strategy was to play as the French, advance as fast as I could to the mounted rifleman unit, and then dominate everyone else on the freaking map before anyone made anything comparable. But yeah, who are you trying to use and how are you trying to win?

Best way to do it would probably be to edit the individual frames in something like Paint Shop Pro or GIMP (or Photoshop if you have it), and then get a little program that turns all your frames into an animated GIF. You'll have to keep transparency in mind when you make your frames, but that should just be a matter of using a single color for the background.

Looks good. I never "got" your name before. I'd say rip the "jump" sprite with NeoRAGE's frame advance thing just to polish it off.

LOL, ok, we have "Filler Episodes" until further notice.

It took me a long time to reply to this, I've been wanting to reply but I just couldn’t be bothered to type it up. Anyway, the whole history of this is rather convoluted but the fact remains, Tizoc is nothing BUT a copy of King. Namco based the King character on a few things, most obviously on the legendary Japanese wrestler, Satoru Sayama, whose character was called 'Tiger Mask'. King is a straight up reference to this wrestler. Sayama, in turn, had based his wrestling creation on a Japanese wrestling themed cartoon by Ikki Kajiwara titled (appropriately enough) Tiger Mask. The character created for this cartoon was Kajiwara’s (genius) take on the whole phenomenon of ‘masked wrestlers’. Although I think there’s a Japanese legend/myth accountable somewhere along the way. Believe it or not, Capcom’s original character design concept for Blanka was a muscular shirtless man with a Tiger’s face. I believe this was based on the same Japanese legend (of a half man/half tiger) that spawned the garbage MK character Kintaro. Tizoc looks more like the stylised cartoon creation in Tiger Mask (with the massive muscles and flowing feathers (in the cartoon’s case, a cape). Whereas King looks more like Sayama’s version. (as he would, being in a semi realistic game and as Sayama’s wrestler was the sole inspiration for King, not the cartoon) Tizoc might look cool, compared to the vaguely humorous looking King (what with the choice of animal for the mask he wears being better overall) but it still doesn’t change the fact that he's a poorly disguised rip-off and that you can’t get much more of an idea than King, whether he himself was blatantly influenced by something else or not. King was still the ‘inspiration’ for the ‘not very inspired’ Tizoc. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> You realize you just totally backed me up, right? My whole point was that King was not original enough to get credit for Tizoc's design. What you've said illustrates this perfectly: King was based very heavily on an existing character. Since the "masked wrestler" existed before King, in the form of "Tiger Mask" and "the whole phenomenon of ‘masked wrestlers’," Tizoc's design should rightfully be attributed to THEM, the original Masked Wrestlers. NOT to King, who was just borrowed from those earlier designs. BTW, out of curiosity, who do you work for as a designer? And what schooling/experience helped you land the job? I'm working towards that myself and am interested in how others broke into the rather difficult field..

Ok, here's a little trivia for you Naruto fans... I found an episode guide that breaks down the first 98 episodes by what looks like plot arc. Something like this: Introduction Episodes (#s 1-5) Country of the Wave Mission (#s 6-19) Chuunin Exam 1 - The Paper Test (#s 20-25) etc etc... Having not yet seen very much of the series, I like this as a way to organize my files. But the guide ends at #98, like so: The 3 Legendary Sennis (#s 86-96) Return To The Leaf (#s 97-98) My question is, using this system, how would you organize episodes 99-103?

New Memory Cards = Not cool. If they were going to screw current memory card owners, they should have just gone full-bore and eliminated the slots altogether, opting for the integrated harddrive (and whatever it would take to emulate that as a giant memory card) instead. They could make their money on a USB adapter for old cards. Wait, that might still be in the plan. :\ That review pointed out another important flaw, which is that the flip-top drive, while not inherently annoying, pretty much eliminates half the advantage of such a tiny device. What's the point of making it 2.8cm thick when you still need a good 5 or 6 inches of clearance to swap a game?

Still have to take some time and go over the new features, but the new look is great! Edit: Ooh, except it messes with my avatar.. I'll have to fix that...

Where the heck is the boob-girl earthquake from?

Naw, it's not all that bad, but when the alternative is a PC Upgrade, and Doom 3 and Half Life 2 are important to you, the PC upgrade is probably going to be the more popular option. (at least on a web-board full of people who probably spend too much time online, myself included, on their PCs ) I DO prefer my cube to an XBox though, since I already have a PS2 and a PC. Between my PC and my PS2, I already have 95% percent of the good XBox titles (that extra 5% being Ninja Gaiden). The Cube, however, has a lot of its own good stuff.

That wasn't pre-built, I put that together from parts on that site. I've never seen a pre-built comp come that well configured. Oh ok...you are forgiven. But the statement still stands, pre-built computers are teh suck. If I didn't agree wholeheartedly, I wouldn't have defended myself.

That wasn't pre-built, I put that together from parts on that site. I've never seen a pre-built comp come that well configured.

There's no one way to get better, but practice is definately best. In leiu of a good opponent, Godlike bots are best. A few pointers: Learn the "routes" for each map. Most tournament-level players know where all the good stuff is on a map, and roughly how long it will take to respawn if they nab it. The bots even simulate this to a degree. Find a path that quickly takes you through some good weapons, health, armor, and a super item if you can manage it. Also know how to adapt this path if an item isn't there, or if you suddenly need health right away, etc. He who has the most toys, as they say.. Keep moving, preferably along said route. In a deathmatch, pretty much the only time you should be standing still is when you know exactly where the opponent is and you are sure that he doesn't know where you are. Otherwise, standing still just makes you that much easier to hit. This fits well with the first tip. Once you find a decent set of routes, and you get in the groove of moving along them, you should be continually gaining strength (ammo/health/armor/etc) as you move around the map. I would also suggest a high-ish mouse sensitivity. If you learn to control your view with subtle movement, you'll have the option of pulling a quick 180 when you need it, with just a flick of the wrist. This is obviously one of the tougher things to master, but practice with this subtlety can also improve your aim on reflexive shots. Don't go overboard, but don't let a low mouse speed slow you down either. If you're using a ball-mouse, also make sure the ball and rollers are clean. That's a given, but I thought I'd throw it in just for the heck of it.

Eh, an exaggeration. You could build a pretty awesome PC from the ground up (as long as you had a monitor) for under $1000. Here's one now, from Directron.com: Antec Sonata Case Asus P4P800-E Deluxe Mobo (Onboard GHz LAN and 8-Channel Audio) 1 Gig of Kingston 400MHz DDR RAM Pentium 4 3.0 GHz (800MHz FSB) Vantec AeroFlow 2 CPU Cooler Seagate 120GB Serial-ATA Hard Drive ATI Radeon 9800 Pro Total Price: $996.23 before shipping (probably another $20-30) And those are all top-of-the-line parts, pretty much. It's more than enough to play the latest round of games (Doom3, HL2, etc). You could throw in a top-brand DVD burner for another hundred bucks. If you were willing to compromise the top-of-the-line parts, you could probably cut that down a LOT.