ManSh00ter

Reply to The best of Glenn Beck in Politics Sins Forums

Just a minor point - DrJBHL mentioned USA having an Advanced Democracy; in fact representative democracy shouldn't even have the d-word there, because its more akin to oligarchy than anything to do with the rule of the people. When each voter gets a unique ID token which can be used from a home computer to vote on day-to-day matters, then you can talk about democracy. As it stands, no country in the world can claim to be a democratic one. Of course, the current system is in pl

Reply to 2012 in Everything Else Sins Forums

[quote who="CaptainAanderson" reply="238" id="2359082"] There's no coming back from the inside of a star, when the sun goes nova, the planet goes bye bye [/quote] That's due in some four to five billion years, a lot longer than it took for us to evolve from fish. So if we're not flying around in spaceships by then I say we deserve to be slowly roasted.

Reply to 2012 in Everything Else Sins Forums

You know how the world will really end? Ok, here goes: a giant asteroid will be detected on a collision course with Earth. Being stupid hairless monkeys that we are, we decide to construct hundreds of nuclear missiles in the hopes that if we nuke it, it will go away. It worked before, why not now? Only when the missiles reach the asteroid, they fail to detonate because we used cheap parts from China to cut costs and just get embedded in the rock. That rock then falls on our he

Reply to The Best Of PirateBay in Everything Else Sins Forums

Literature and word of mouth. Being such an honest person that I am, I have had no experience with any justice system, as it were, from the inside. ;) I did not say that the panel of judges is infallible. I simply state that a group of professionals, educated in the relevant field beyond the level of a common lawyer and certainly beyond the level of an average person, is better suited to pass judgements than a group of laymen who come from all strata of society and are certainly not i

Reply to The Best Of PirateBay in Everything Else Sins Forums

On the contrary, a lot of poor schmucks were railroaded to jail or worse simply because the jury was prejudiced. Need I mention how many black americans ended up wrongly sentenced because they were black, back in the inglorious days? A layman does not understand the practicalities and nuances of law. He or she is not trained to be an objective thinker, and are thus susceptible to a whole range of manipulations, the fact often exploited by legal teams on both sides. Often, a juror does

Reply to [MOD] Bailknight`s Graphic Mod for Entrenchment ver 1.02 Fixed 1 in Sins Modding Sins Forums

[quote who="EadTaes" reply="704" id="2356451"]For me playign ti online without the mesh and gameinfo folders I can play 5v5 be watching a fleet battle with 6 people fightign in it and it runs fines. But I ahve a powerfull cpu. But I thinka firend has tested it and said his performance increased. But if you ahve the gameinfo and mesh files then it miht lag more as that will add dedris witch used up game resorces. [/quote] I stress-tested the Volumetric Explosions mini-mod, and hav

Reply to The Best Of PirateBay in Everything Else Sins Forums

And I'm against a company charging, say 49.99$ for a game in an online store for US, Canada and Mexico, and then charging 49.99€ for that same game in Europe. Given that euro is stronger than the dollar, I call that unfair. I've seen this practice many times and I say, any company which does things like that deserves all the pirates they get. And now something completely different! @Willythemailboy: [quote]And I fully agree that the US is actively undermining the

Reply to The Best Of PirateBay in Everything Else Sins Forums

[quote who="WIllythemailboy" reply="39" id="2356985"]Not true, at least in this case. Sweden (or where ever they moved the servers to) is intentionally harboring TPB, with the intent to undermine US (and other) copyright law. Private US companies cannot retaliate in kind without violating US law, so the government would need to be involved from day one. It is literally state-sponsored piracy, and the last time we had to deal with it in a systemic way it gave us the US Marine Corps anthem (alt

Reply to The Best Of PirateBay in Everything Else Sins Forums

@Willythemailboy: [quote]Really, the most just solution to the problem would be the US government giving away any and all patents held by Swedish companies, publishing all books penned by Swedish authors, giving away any software made by Swedish companies, etc until they change their laws. That is essentially the current position of the Swedish government regarding our intellectual property, why should we feel obligated to respect their IP?[/quote] Not really the same, BUT I s

Reply to The Best Of PirateBay in Everything Else Sins Forums

[quote]Ah, yes, the old "the industry is getting it's just deserts" uneducated bullshit. Tell me, why are all the good, hyped games being pirated so heavily, such as Demigod, and the unpopular games not being pirated to the same degree? If your argument were true wouldn't it, in fact, be the other way around?[/quote] No, my argument is that overbudgeted, shiny-wrapping-but-no-substance games feel the impact of piracy a lot more than games which were produced on a modest budget and whi

Reply to The Best Of PirateBay in Everything Else Sins Forums

[quote who="pseudomelon" reply="18" id="2356375"] You aren't doing those same people who try to be original and inventive by pirating things, buddy. I think I may explode the next time someone says "Oh, I just pirate things because people put DRM on their software and I don't approve." or "I only pirate the things I wouldn't buy anyways". Because I'll tell you what, I could see myself never buying a single piece of software again in my life if I was going to be a thief. And civil disobed

Reply to The Best Of PirateBay in Everything Else Sins Forums

Well, if the industry was not so bent on exploiting their customers and ruining originality and inventiveness in the name of profit, then I'd say we could talk about morals. As it is, its more a case of thieves stealing from thieves.

Reply to The Best Of PirateBay in Everything Else Sins Forums

And even if the PirateBay is taken down, I can guarantee you that there'll be TPB2 coming online within a week. You just can't shut down peer-to-peer networks, not without installing hardwired controls on every computer or having state control over every ISP, and even then modern encryption methods make it impossible to actually monitor the nature of data being transferred between individual users. The sooner the copyright holders wake up to the fact that it is the nature of their bus

Reply to My Modded Ship Flies Backwards or Sideways in Sins Modding Sins Forums

You can try exporting the model out of XSI in .obj format, then re-importing it into a new scene. Then rotate it correctly, freeze it etc. That should fix any strange bugs happening during export in .xsi format.

Reply to [MOD] Sins of a Solar Empire: INVASION (new screenshots, May 28th, 2012.) in Sins Modding Sins Forums

RipsterUK, I've never worked in Maya, only 3DSMax, but XSI is by far the best tool of the two in my opinion. It simply has an easy and intuitive workflow which allows me to focus more on actual creative parts of making a model, and less on wrestling with the interface. As for the Last Stand, episode I is more or less nearing the end of production as far as model making is concerned, but I may be interested in taking on team members for episodes II and III... though if I do it'll be a somewhat

Reply to [MOD] Sins of a Solar Empire: INVASION (new screenshots, May 28th, 2012.) in Sins Modding Sins Forums

RipsterUK, I've never worked in Maya, only 3DSMax, but XSI is by far the best tool of the two in my opinion. It simply has an easy and intuitive workflow which allows me to focus more on actual creative parts of making a model, and less on wrestling with the interface. As for the Last Stand, episode I is more or less nearing the end of production as far as model making is concerned, but I may be interested in taking on team members for episodes II and III... though if I do it'll be a somewhat

Reply to Optical Camouflage in Sins Modding Sins Forums

If you want to make a highly reflective, but relatively non-shiny texture, then you will have to up the reflection color (blue) in the data texture to the max, while keeping the diffuse color in the color texture completely black. This will give you a sort of "dark mirror" effect. However, I have to tell you that the game engine does not actually reflect other objects from the reflective surfaces - things like that are very processor intensive and are usually only used for water and s

Reply to [MOD] Bailknight`s Graphic Mod for Entrenchment ver 1.02 Fixed 1 in Sins Modding Sins Forums

[quote who="Annatar11" reply="701" id="2324802"]Try deleting the xin_flotsam files from the Mesh folder. As long as you have showErrors FALSE (the default) in your settings file it shouldn't complain. There are 4 of them in that folder. [/quote] No, no, that's the nifty fragments, delete that and all you get is fireballs, which are boring without shrapnel! ;) If you want to get rid of the corpses, delete the body_mangled1.mesh and body_mangled2.mesh from the /mesh folder.

Reply to [MOD] Sins of a Solar Empire: INVASION (new screenshots, May 28th, 2012.) in Sins Modding Sins Forums

I use XSI. When making game models, indeed the normal maps will remove the faceted look you see on the screenshot above, as long as the angling between faces is gradual enough. The only thing you have to worry about is the silhouette of your model. Normal maps do nothing with actual geometry, so if your sphere is a low poly approximation, it will be relatively smooth towards the centre, but the silhouette will look broken up. However, you don't have to worry about making it look perfectly smo

Reply to [MOD] Sins of a Solar Empire: INVASION (new screenshots, May 28th, 2012.) in Sins Modding Sins Forums

Currently the Vortex cruiser, not shown yet, around 8000 polygons. Most of my models are less than 4000 polygons though. P.S. Here's a wireframe shot of the model for illustration purposes. ;)

Reply to [NEW RELEASE] Volumetric Explosions&Damage Effects ver. 1.41 Entrenchment compatible in Sins Modding Sins Forums

And the official word from the maker of the mod - yes it does work with the latest versions of the game. :)

Reply to HELP NEEDED FOR TEXTURING IN XSI6.01 in Sins Modding Sins Forums

Thanks! Yes, I use ZBrush to polypaint the colors and deformations on my models, then export the resulting images into Photoshop, for compositing. I also use Zbrush's Cavity Mapping feature to accentuate the deformations, and XSI's Occlusion Shader to bake a simulated global illumination effect onto the model. Works wonders with shadows, you don't have to do them by hand in Photoshop.

Reply to HELP NEEDED FOR TEXTURING IN XSI6.01 in Sins Modding Sins Forums

Thanks Grendels! :) zRazor, you can try assigning a material (Ctrl-7 to open material manager), which has that black picture assigned to Diffuse. That should also port to the Texture editor so you can stamp the UV mesh. Don't forget to make the black picture the same or higher resolution than your texture.

Reply to HELP NEEDED FOR TEXTURING IN XSI6.01 in Sins Modding Sins Forums

Yes, your sins models need to be a single object. To merge objects in XSI, go to the Create->Polygon Mesh->Merge while having both objects selected. You will likely need to dial the distance setting down to avoid distortion. A better way is to prep your mesh objects prior to merging, by deleting selected faces on both objects and then snapping (press and hold Ctrl-M) the egde vertices together before you merge the objects. That way you get one tidy, continuous mesh.

Reply to [RELEASE - BETA] Dynamic Battle System (compatible with the 1.041 Entrenchment) in Sins Modding Sins Forums

I also reccomend using this excellent utility to enable your copy of the Dynamic mod for the latest version of Entrenchment, until I come round to releasing the official version. I'm tied up with more pressing RL stuff right now, so it will be a little while before I can sit down and make the gameplay changes for the next version.