I got GTA4

Finally, after three years of waiting I finally got myself a copy of Grand Theft Auto 4. I've been awaiting for a sequel to GTA: San Andreas after I've completed the game multiple times. I'm posting in this blog post what I like and don't like about GTA4, and here goes:

What I like:

• The phone feature. Now you can call people instead of waiting them to call you.
• The new modern setting. The setting of GTA4 is probably the times today.
• Better combat interface and interactions. Now you can hide behind cover, blind fire, disarm people's weapons, etc.
• The protagonist's nationality. I'm quite tired of always having Americans as protagonists in GTA.
• You can now ride on taxis! You can take a break blasting them with RPGs now!
• You can now hangout with male friends too, not always girls.
• The graphics are extremely improved.
• Realism aspects. You'll fly out of a car when you crash at high speed now.
  

What I didn't like.

• Having to decide outcomes in missions. I'm not quite a good decision maker (in games).
• No more RPG elements (stamina, health, fat, etc.)
• Lesser weapons.
• Camera is wonky.
• You easily get wasted and busted here.

Been playing non stop since I got the game, can't say I'm not enjoying it.

It begins

After posting a blog post about the Sci Fi competition, I went and have fun for a long time before beginning work on this huge project. Now, after a long strech of fun, I'm going back to work, and I'm starting to turn concepts I have thought over weeks into written pages of screenplay.

I have at least a month to finish this piece and I'm going to be gathering my voice overs. After the voice samples are sent and processed, I'll going to be producing the scenes one by one.

I'm going to use Moviestorm, Antics 3D and Second Life for production. Hopefully with the addition of SL to my machinima tools I might be able to make something really good.

Leave of absence

I'm supposed to have written this long time ago, but I just had the idea of writing it now.

Since I am too busy with Second Life and GTA4, I'd like to announce a short leave of absence (or also known as vacation to layman terms) since I am not able to divide my time equally on three different stuff. I'll be back approximately on early June, where my free time will be shared fully to machinima.

Moviestorm Sci Fi Competition

Hello readers. I have not been writing or even checking into the blog for quite a long time, mainly because I am pretty busy in Second Life. At last, a problem in the asset server which restricted access to the grid made me publish thoughts once more on my blog.

Anyways just checked out the Moviestorm web site and I found this very interesting news article:

Moviestorm's First SciFi Film Competition is Go!
9 May 2008
Today we launch the biggest competition we've run thus far. We want you to create some blockbuster quality SciFi movies that will show the world just what Moviestorm and Machinima can do. To encourage you to really push the spaceship out on this one, we're dangling a shiny futuristic carrot in the form of an exclusive screening at the prestigious Cambridge Film Festival.
The Cambridge Film Festival is one of the UK's most respected film festivals and they are keen to showcase Machinima and other new forms of filmmaking. We're very excited to be involved with the festival and hope you will be too.
Check out the competition page for more details about this fantastic opportunity for Moviestorm directors.

The prizes to be given away are cash, Moviestorm points and a screening at the Sci-Fi Film Festival in London for the overall winner. With all the prizes, I do not hesitate joining this competition.

Deadline for entries is early September, so I have lots of time to work.

What's going on recently?

Sorry if I haven't been posting for such a long time, but I have been very busy over past few days.

A little overview of what's been going on with me (and some machinima news) recently:

1. I have signed up as a resident in Second Life.

One of the main headlines this week in Sponge Team Aldo. I have joined Second Life primarily to use it as my fourth machinima tool, creating other kinds of content, earn money, and of course, socialize and have fun.

Interested in adding me as a friend in SL? Add me, my SL name is Spong3y Wynikow.

2. Moviestorm releases its Early Access 1.0.4 update.

Short Fuze is proud to announce its fourth update to Moviestorm Early Access, EA 1.0.4, it contains a lot of fixes and interface changes. It's main goal is to make the User Interface (UI) for intutuitive yet making it easy to understand.

Here's a description of the updates from Short Fuze themselves:

1.0.4 Released!
18 April 2008


With all the broad functional requirements now in place, we are currently focussing on the user experience. This build is the first that demonstrates significant progress towards those enhancements.

Most notable are a new launcher for updates and add-on downloads, sharper and more intuitive set navigation and camera movement and further improvements to character movement with smoother start and stop transitions. We've also started to attend to some of the UI issues - in particular, the timeline is much clearer to read and manipulate and the Gesturiser has been re-worked to assist users in selecting the right animations for a much smoother performance.

In addition, we've included a new range of female actresses with improved hair and accessory coordination. You'll also notice that close-up rendering is vastly improved. We'll be attending to the male actors in the next release.

Other releases include the new Sci-Fi pack. Upcoming releases are the Crime Pack and 1.0.5 update which, sources say, will be estimated to be release

3. Antics 3D releases Antics 3.1

Antics Technologies unveils a new version of Antics 3D, Antics 3.1. Its main new feature is the importation of 3D models from Google's 3D Warehouse, a simple 3D model tool made by Google. It sure rocked the competition for easy importing of 3D models.

More news coming up - and more posts - stay tuned!

Quake 2 Evolved - Awesome

I just installed Quake 2 Evolved, a large scale modification to Quake 2 that adds shaders, shadows and other graphical features of today to the first FPS shooter that enables free mouse look. The change was fantastic. The tracers of blasters and hyperblasters all changed from rough pixels to smooth particles. The flashes on the screen are replaced by shaders such as blood splats. Motion blur is added and reflections can be seen in the water.

Unfortunately, even with these modern innovations of the high definition age added to a 1997 FPS, there are still some stuff lacking: textures and models.

The textures are still the same. They are still 128x128 tgas glued to 200 vertices (averaged) models. Now that doesn't quite seem to be realistic when you have shadows, shaders and motion blur to go with it. Quake 2 Evolved is now developing new models and textures for the game to use but it would take a whole lot of time. Drawing is already time-consuming enough, but applying it to a 3D model takes triple time.

It's not complete yet - it's still on a BETA phase. Yet they seem to be making quick progress, they already unveiled two weapon mods - a new blaster and shotgun. They are also developing computer graphics innovations such as realtime reflections, Depth of Field and more.

Links:
www.quake2evolved.com

ARGH! PC TOO WEAK!

Yes, and the title speaks it all.

I wanted to "test" if my PC can run today's HD games, so I downloaded a demo of Lost Planet: Extreme Condition from Steam. When I looked at the requirements, I was stunned that I require at least a Intel Pentium 4 that is compatible with HT (Which I have), 1 GB of RAM (I have also), and at least a NviDia GeForce 6600 (my Radeon 9600 is an equivalent of a NviDia 5500). Also, my graphics card must support Shader Model 3.0, but I can only support 2.0. Also I need to be able to run DirectX 10 for optimal graphics.

See!? I can't run any HD games. So I'm stuck playing nothing good on my PC. Its parts' warranties are all gone in a time period of five years and I'm yearning for an upgrade. Thing is, I'm not sure if I'm going to get an upgrade early this year, and I'll have to wait.

But on the bright side: When I upgrade I'll be getting the best I can buy. So I won't be buying any more [major] upgrades the following five years.

When will that upgrade come?