Aractain

Reply to Gamers: Are we getting soft? in PC Gaming Sins Forums

You lot seem to be totaly missing the point about this hardcore/casual label stuff - its not very complicated. There are those who play WoW more than me, or they play it deeper than me - both are more hardcore than me. Then there are those who play less than me (just played 7 hours actualy - great fun) - these people are more casual then me. A hardcore player is not some absolutle designation, its realtive to the context. A hardcore Turn Based Str

Reply to Gamers: Are we getting soft? in PC Gaming Sins Forums

So my earlier pointless ramble can be summed up like this: Difficulty is not absolute and is only important when the player enjoys it (otherwise its called torture). The rise of easier games to us hardcore'er' gamers is because the market has found a load of gamers whos idea of difficulty is remembering the button to press. :P (Dhara O'brien on Charlie Brooker's Gameswipe proves that point!) Real gamers (anyone who played Diablo 1 is considered by the ca

Reply to Gamers: Are we getting soft? in PC Gaming Sins Forums

[quote who="DraekAlmasy" reply="55" id="2388632"]Other than that, I stand by my point: puzzles should be left for adventure and puzzle games, leave FPSs to the one thing they do best: shooting stuff. Which is why I'd recommend all of you, puzzle-lovers, to check out the Penumbra series (*another* game that should be sold here, it even has a freakin' Linux version yet it's not on Impulse!?) which can be best described as a first-person adventure/horror game which you'll probably love. Me, I go

Reply to Gamers: Are we getting soft? in PC Gaming Sins Forums

Didn't think this would go this far. Many games may have been utterly dumbed down for console but that dosn't mean pc games of old were perfect. Its not about difficulty. Games never had to be difficult. I and many others enjoy games that make us think, or force us to learn. Challange us at timing, or tactics or stratergy or design or knowladge, or memory or whatever. The things I liked about games when I started 'gaming' remain the same, my tastes might be more refined as I d

Reply to HD 5XXX versus GTX 300 Predictions in PC Gaming Sins Forums

This is the big one for me... Been ATi (It might say AMD but its still red to me) since a my TNT2 Ultra turned into a 9700 OMGCARD . Now its up in the air, the other components of my full phase upgrade are pretty obvious or already chosen (like, new case, keyboard, amount of ram, SSD etc). 5000 or 300 only benchmarks and feature lists can help now. I get the feeling Nvidia is going with pure speed (sounds familiar) but ATi looks

Reply to just delete this in Sins Modding Sins Forums

[quote who="Whiskey144" reply="2" id="2385726"]The only way to find out that I can think of is if we start bombarding them with Q's about whether or not the will.[/quote] Seems IC's idea of 'bombarding' is one forum post before they crack and give info... :P

Reply to Unnecessary Accuracy in Sins Modding Sins Forums

1 - Dons't seem so from my testing a text mesh thingy, it even accepts scientfic notation at least on mesh values as you would expect (as its just converting it to a float or something). 2 - Depends on the field, I don't think "NumWeapons" is going to work with 2.345 ;) but if it makes sense it probably uses a float, especialy if it output as one so usualy

Reply to Model Glossiness/White Dots in Sins Modding Sins Forums

[quote who="Mystic Angel" reply="3" id="2380615"]Many instances are texture and mesh seams, like the phaser arrays. Since they're edges, there obviously isn't a way around this. Is there some kind of problem with the UV Map, do you think?[/quote] I dont think so. Conflicting UVs can cause lighting issues but that dosn't look like your problem. (is the bottom left ship supposed to be that dark? It dosn't seem to have much lighting on it

Reply to Model Glossiness/White Dots in Sins Modding Sins Forums

screen shots are very helpfull :P are they just light parts of the model next to dark parts or actual 'white dots'? Do they happen along texture seam lines by any chance? Do you have a texture on the model atm?

Reply to Various Q's in Sins Modding Sins Forums

Do you mean normal maps? That is a texture (in this case tangent space) that defines depth on a falt surface. This is the -nm.dds mentioned in all those lovely tutorials. There is also something that could be called a tangent map that is the set of pervertex tagent vectors (tangent realtive to the normal vectors) on a mesh - I doubt you mean this.

Reply to creating ship models in Sins Modding Sins Forums

NM.... lol

Reply to creating ship models in Sins Modding Sins Forums

People all have thier favourite apps. If you'r already used to one you don't want to move but if your just starting out then its less of an issue. I prefer Max (I started out using Milkshape 3D) personaly. I've also been trying to learn maxscript heh.

Reply to (Another) Texturing, Rigging, and 3DSMAX Mesh Exporting Guide in Sins Modding Sins Forums

[quote who="StCobalt" reply="30" id="2375293"]kinda surprised that even the good tutorials get burried after a while though. its a pitty really since people look for em and its usualy rather heard to find unless you sort through like 70 pages of post.[/quote] Its true, most modding forums have stickys with all the tutorials in them... Old but Im not sure why he resized his points in the orignal tutorial here though... umm dummys, not points I forg

Reply to Costs of doing business that are still surprising in Personal Computing Sins Forums

[quote who="Kitkun" reply="3" id="2371224"]I once heard a customer threaten to sue because we wouldn't sell him dead flowers. It was so hard not to laugh at him... Then later, my supervisor asked us about it so they could deal with his lawyer. Oh yeah, my very first job. Not yet the first day on the job; the first of training. I fall ill and pass out. I don't remember a thing about the training that day. Never experienced anything like it before. Lucky

Reply to What war game on PC has best AI in your opinion? Any genre in PC Gaming Sins Forums

OFP and Arma 2! When it works, it really puts the fear into you. Unfortunatly it dosn't always work perfectly but what do you expect from a super hard core developer with a niche product? Certainly not CoD style scriptlols. (Not OFP2:Console Rising though, which is an acceseable CM cash in built around the concept of OFP) :P

Reply to Mesh Smoothing in Sins Modding Sins Forums

On the editable mesh, it has vertex, edge, face, polygon and element. Elements are in the same 'mesh' but are totaly seperate. If you use 'attach' on a bunch of new primitive boxs they all become elements in the same mesh object. You can use 'detach' on a selection of faces to acomplish the same thing. A dialog box will come up, select detach to element and do it. It will create a seperate element you can select as a whole (in element mode). The parts to do it o

Reply to Mesh Smoothing in Sins Modding Sins Forums

[quote who="Mystic Angel" reply="11" id="2370689"]How do I make sure they aren't averaged during exporting?[/quote] make them seperate objects in the same editable mesh, that should do it. Heres why: local vertFaces = meshOp.getFacesUsingVert mesh vTri[i] thats the maxscript to get the faces a vert is attached to, this is how the code knows which faces to use. If they are not touching, they can't be

Reply to Mesh Smoothing in Sins Modding Sins Forums

I did a picture! (NOTE: this was created with a... modded version of version 2.0) The green lines are normals (pretty crap ones, ignore that its an example). The one on the left has 2 smoothing groups for the top and bottom. The one on the left has a single SG. Two normals on the same vert location like that creates a hard edge in sins. (That reminds me about somet

Reply to Mesh Smoothing in Sins Modding Sins Forums

Its not the smoothing groups, its the way vertex normals/tangents are generated, they use the normal/tangent of the face they touch added together and averaged down. So with angled faces you get a normal that is between them, that smooths the lighting values in game etc. Using smoothing groups you could tell the export program (assuming it supported this) to not average the faces outside the smoothing group, crated a hard edge. That sins max tool dosn't support that in

Reply to Mesh Smoothing in Sins Modding Sins Forums

The smooth modifers actualy creates new geometery, the smoothing groups just do lighting stuff. Not sure how much into 3d you are yet. :P Heres something to try, make the 'hard edge' a seperate element in the mesh (not weled together). See if it still has bad lighting.

Reply to Mesh Smoothing in Sins Modding Sins Forums

Iv'e been trench deep in this stuff for a while, so maybe its going over my head. Maybe you mean you want a faceted style look on a mesh and its giving it a smoothed style look? If you defiantly mean "Jan Van Der Weg's Sins of a solar empire maxtool", when he creates the normals/tangents he uses the faces surounding it - smoothing the lighting (and that is standard, thats where smoothing groups come in but he only did that in 2.0).

Reply to Mesh Smoothing in Sins Modding Sins Forums

Im not really getting you. Does the model LOOK diffrent in sins? (screenshots?) The duplicate verts are nessesary , its entirely intended. Ironclads stuff is the same. Also version 1 of That tool dosn't even support smoothing groups.

Reply to Mesh Smoothing in Sins Modding Sins Forums

Umm its actualy 'smoothed' in sins? Like the modifier 'smooth' (or turbosmooth)? You have to typicaly incrase the vert count by like 30%ish it seems when exporting to formats like this because it needs to duplicate texture seam verts. What version are you using?

Reply to Sins of a Solar Empire: Diplomacy in PC Gaming Sins Forums

Kol Needs horse armour TBH

Reply to Adding ability points to meshes. in Sins Modding Sins Forums

Im suprised no one has made a standalone .mesh converter to other types (including UVs etc). You only have to know the file types and the sins one is pretty easy.