Merry Christmas post!

I know it's not Christmas yet, still 4 days away. But I wanted to make sure to say Merry Christmas in my next post, because I probably won't make another one before Christmas! I'll be too busy doing family stuff!!!!
So, last time I made a post, I said I was in the middle of reading Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell novel... Well I finished that. Then I went and picked up the next book in the series, Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Operation Barracuda, and I finished that last night. Operation Barracuda was even better than the first book, I loved it! I'd talk about it but I don't want to give anything away, in case anyone ever wants to read the books =/.
The next book in the series is Splinter Cell: Checkmate. I don't have a clue what its about, but who cares? It's Splinter Cell and Sam Fisher is the star. That's all that matters!
Although I have seen on the internet, (specifically the Amazon reader reviews) that the book has some serious typos and grammatical errors all over the place, especially in the beginning. I have no doubt about this, since the author was allegedly given only 2 months to write the book! I don't know how those guys do it! Errors or not, I'm a huge fan of not just Splinter Cell games, but now the novel series, and I am getting this book and reading it, regardless of errors. I'll just power read my way through them and ignore the mistakes :).
It's actually pretty confusing about the authors; The writer's name is labeled on the front of the books as David Michaels, but this is just pseudonym. The author's actual name of the first two Splinter Cell books was Raymond Benson. Benson is best known as the last official author of the 007 series novels. Well, I read his Splinter Cell work and I must say, I'm impressed and I am now a fan. But the last two books of Splinter Cell, Checkmate, and Fallout was written by another author, so far unknown, going by the same pseudonym, David Michaels.
And the first two Splinter Cell books were written in the first person (which is the writing style I enjoy most), while the latest two books are in the third person (not written by Raymond Benson). Due to some of these changes in the books since the switch in authors, I am worried about the quality! I'm sure I'll enjoy the next books though.
I'm going to wait on Christmas, see if anyone got me the books. If not then I have to buy them :(.

Next up in my update... Duke isn't dead!!! After quite a while, 3DRealms has released a Teaser of Duke Nukem Forever... I think the last big news I saw on Duke Nukem was in 2001.
When I was a kid, the Duke Nukem was one of my first games ever. I played and loved the side-scrollers, and I really loved Duke Nukem 3D. So I was excited about Duke Nukem Forever... At least for the first 4 years it was in development, but since then the game has been under development for 10 years. After a while I forgot, then people started realizing that it hadn't come out yet and started laughing at it.
It looks interesting, but it's only a teaser and doesn't show much. I'm not really super excited for Duke anymore, but I am looking forward to it's release if it ever comes out. Heh, I was wondering if they were going to delay the teaser before it released :).

I've been continuing work on the modification for Doom 3, Ruiner. Everything is looking good and our work is really progressing! I can't wait to release this baby and see people's reaction!

A new book and a new game.

As much as I hate to push down the post that reveals my awesome work on the mod (the Icon of Sin), I must make a new post!
Quite some time ago, maybe 2004 or so I picked up a Tom Clancy novel called Splinter Cell, the first in the series of, so far, four books. I probably read the first chapter or so and decided I didn't like the slow paced style of writing, and I put it down.
For some reason, for quite some time the only style of writing I could enjoy was Dean Koontz books, he writes in a fast paced style keeping every corner of the page intense, it's always been exciting. But recently I found my Splinter Cell book again, and I decided to give it another shot.
I'm on page 235, I think. I've only got about 120 or so pages left and I can't wait to see what happens! I think after I finish this book I will get the next novel in the series.

I remember I got the book because I loved the games, of course. I've been playing the Splinter Cell games since the very first one, and I especially loved Chaos Theory. But for a while I did not pick up their latest Splinter Cell game, Double Agent. I played the demo some time ago on my older computer, which had an AMD x2 64 4400+, 7800 GTX, and a gig of ram; at the time that was an awesome computer. But even so, the demo had serious problems on that computer, it ran at probably 2 frames per second at any time and just was UNPLAYABLE.
Eventually I upgraded with another computer, right now my gaming computer has an Intel Core 2 Duo e6600, 8800 GTX, and 2 gigs of RAM. I played the demo on it, and it ran smooth as silk, but I still didn't buy Double Agent. I had heard all over the internet that the game was pretty buggy, especially the PC version. As much as I loved Splinter Cell, I know how to stifle myself when something looks to be an obvious disappointment because of technical flaws.
But just recently I noticed Double Agent was only 20 bucks on Direct2Drive.com, so I decided to get it. And thankfully, there haven't been any major issues for me so far. I have ran into a few bugs, one of them I recorded with FRAPs and posted it at YouTube (see below for the video).
The game is actually pretty good, but I'm not finished with it. I'm at the Cruise Ship mission (in case you've played the game), and I plan on going further today once I get a chance to play. But, I think Chaos Theory is still my favorite game in the series. Not just because of all the technical issues Double Agent has (ok well 80% because of that), but just because I liked the feel of it more. Another thing I dislike about Double Agent is the fact, that in the beginning of the game (it's no spoiler), it's revealed to the player that Sarah, Sam Fisher's daughter had been killed. WTF!?!?!? Why did they need to do that! That's ridiculous! If Tom Clancy approved this then, DUDE!! WTF!? Seriously, she's a great character in the book and shouldn't have come to an end. I'm not sure if the books and the games live in different dimensions, though I would assume so, that would mean that his daughter is still alive in the novel series.... Unless she dies in one of the books I haven't read yet... Oh what a world, what a world.

Here's that YouTube video (Btw, I play the PC version. I played the PC version of the entire series.):

Well, I think that's all the news I have for now. I have to get to work on the Ruiner mod now, I've been neglecting it for the past couple of days unfortunately, I've been topsy turvy :(.

Modding mod mod!!!

If you want to know what I've been up to, there's your answer. (Plus some schoolwork tossed in there.) I've been working with my fellow mod team on the awesome looking mod, Ruiner, for Doom 3. And we have recently released a shot of what the Icon of Sin looks like so far in-game, and you can see it right now only at our Moddb page! (And here's a link directly to the image.)

EDIT: I can't believe I didn't add a thumbnail for this!



I just recently finished another Dean Koontz book. This one was Life Expectancy, a thrilling story about a man named James Tock who was born with 5 terrible days predicted to his future. I purchased the hardback copy when the book came out, read halfway through the book and something in real life must've hit me, because I had to stop reading it. But I just picked it up again about 2 days ago and finished it.
It was definitely a good Dean Koontz book, very much so intense, keeping me going at every corner of the page. It had some minor predictability in some tiny events around the ending of the book, but other than that it really was an awesome book and I recommend picking it up if you're looking for something to read; I'll pretty much recommend anything that is written by Dean Koontz, his books are ub3r.

I, as well as the rest of the world are still waiting for the new Will Smith movie, I am Legend to release. If I had the spare cash, I would go out and buy the novel which shares the same title. The novel sounds better than the movie to some extent, but only digging deeper and watching the movie and reading the film could tell this. I advise you not to go to Wikipedia to get information on the book, or anywhere else unless you just plan on ruining the twist in the movie and the book for yourself.

But I think that's all for now! As I part I leave you with these moving pictures from YouTube to view!!

Busy...

Been quite busy, so I'm absent. But, because of my business, I leave you with a lazy post - but a good one no less!!!

Crysis Demo

The one of the most anticipated games in quite a while has just released a single-player demo! After I played the demo many times over I have to say, this single-player experience definitely makes up for Crysis's lackluster multi-player experience.

This single-player demo for Crysis is supposedly the first level in the game, and it's extremely cinematic, action packed and fun. I'd say more, but I'm incredibly tired, so instead I'll just leave you with a weak slide-show and a link to my imageshack account which has screenshots uploaded!

My computer is packing an Intel Core 2 Duo e6600, 2 gigs of RAM, and an 8800GTX. The only thing that I am lacking for Crysis is DirectX 10, but I don't want Windows Vista anytime soon, so I don't expect to have DX10 for a while. I am running the game at highest settings on DX9 in these screen-shots though. So pucker-up and take a gander!

http://profile.imageshack.us/user/dinkyveneration/images

Mr. Lucas, Finally, I Must Say! (Kudos to Yoda.)

So, George Lucas announced that they have finally begun work on the live-action series which is planned to hit your TV sets... Well who knows when, probably a long time from now, in a galaxy far far away.

This is a topic I've been watching as George Lucas doesn't seem to care about Star Wars anymore, because he knows it'll make money no matter how crappy it is, and it seems he just takes forever to do everything because he has to do it himself, why? Because his ego is larger than his head! You may have known about this if you read my previous blog post about this.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/tv/la-et-starwars17oct17,1,862651.story?coll=la-entnews-tv&ctrack=1&cset=true

And if you don't believe my comment about his overgrown ego, check out this excerpt from the above story:

"Lucas is confident he can find a home for his droids and Jedi, but he also knows the projects are unorthodox enough to give network executives pause.

"They are having a hard time," Lucas said. "They're saying, 'This doesn't fit into our little square boxes,' and I say, 'Well, yeah, but it's "Star Wars." And "Star Wars" doesn't fit into that box.' ""

The Ruiner website is open!

The Doom 3 Modification that I have been working on has a website that has just launched tonight!

Check it out at: http://www.theruiner.com/

Tell your friends!

Been a while...

There are some new things going on in my world, I just can't talk about them yet.

Meanwhile, make sure and check my mod's website to see when the full website launches!!

http://www.theruiner.com/

Star Wars continuing...

So, like most folks, I'm a Star Wars fan. And quite a while ago (maybe a couple of years), when George Lucas was talking about continuing the Clone Wars in an animated series, I was a little excited. I saw that coming though, the Clone Wars was a popular series on Cartoon Network. But this time, the Clone Wars was coming back as a 3D animated series, so then I got really excited as I love 3D.
But what really made me excited was the promised Live-Action series. What I had heard about it at the time was that it was going to continue on from the films, after Episode 6 (Return of the Jedi). So supposedly, the series was supposed to continue on from Episode 6 which took place during a time called the Rebellion Era. But after the Empire had been destroyed, the New Republic forms, and of course the story continues.
Though in a recent interview with TV Guide, George Lucas said that the live-action series was to take place between Episode 3 and 4. WTF!?!? Who wants to see more of this? The saga was great, it was fun to watch, but move on! All the actors from Star Wars episodes 4-6 are at a perfect age for a continuation on to more Episodes (like Episodes 7-?), as their characters live on to be parents and so on.
So why doesn't Lucas continue the saga? 'Cause he sucks. He's a crappy director and a horrible screenwriter. He needs to pick Star Wars out of his pocket and let somebody else handle it, because, as the last 3 movies obviously show, he doesn't know what he's doing.
But this interview didn't bring all bad news. He said that the purpose of the series was to tell the stories of the side characters, instead of focusing on the main characters (like the Skywalkers). This is great news, that means more focus on the characters that I really care about, like Boba Fett, Dengar, Bib Fortuna and Jabba the Hutt, Greedo, Aurra Sing, IG-88, and Bossk. (Ok, so those are mostly bounty hunters, but what can I say.) Focus on the side characters who have more interesting stories than the Jedi is fantastic and I love it. But Lucas is livin' in the past man! I would prefer very much some movies/tv series' based on the Old Republic, the New Republic, the New Jedi Order, or the Legacy eras.
I don't know, I'm sure the show will be fun to watch and everything. But only time will tell whether or not I would rather watch Scrubs than a new live-action Star Wars series based on the same crap we've been seeing in the freaking movies for the past 30 years.

Quick sketch...

So I did a quick, rough sculpt in ZBrush. Why? Because I was bored :(.

(Click the image for a higher resolution.)

All I did was create a sphere within ZBrush and start sculpting a hand coming out of it. I was inspired by many artists that were doing this at ZBrush Central forums far before I ever thought about doing it. It's really neat, having people, creatures or whatever you want, sort of trying to escape from a sphere like this, or maybe it's apart of it? Either way, it looks really cool and it's fun to sculpt like this.
It only took me a few minutes to sculpt this doodle, but it was a lot of fun and it killed my boredom.

EDIT: I found the guy who, I assume, was the first one to really do sculptures this way inside of ZBrush. He was the first one I saw do it, and I always thought it looked cool. I never saw his videos until a few minutes ago though, very neat stuff.

Here's the forum post with his work (the YouTube videos are on the second page): http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?t=50778&page=1&pp=15&highlight=Sphere

Image hosted by ImageShack. Thanks!

What I'm looking into.

So, this is my second blog post. I figured I should take this time to let everyone know what I'm doing right now.
I've recently joined a mod team who are developing a mod for the PC game Doom 3. Unfortunately, the mod isn't public knowledge yet, so I can't show what I've done so far (but I can say it looks awesome). Although, soon enough I will be able to post info on it, but I can't say how soon, of course.

Right now, the game that I'm most excited about was only just announced. It's id software's Rage game, and the game has been revealed to have a story-line in a post-apocalyptic time-line. They said it's not going to be the usual id software type of single-player game, and by that they mean it's not going to be just run and gun corridor shooter.
The game is also supposed to focus on driving buggy-like vehicles, as well as shooting. You will even have a garage which you can fill up with cars. And throughout your experience, you can accumulate money and build up your car, customize it. And this is a direction completely different than id software has ever taken. Just take a look at their Quake and Doom series, very simple games, pretty much just running around and shooting evil things.
There's probably more to be said about the story, but that's as far as I really feel I need to know. Really quick, here's a video of the QuakeCon 2007 trailer:

You can also view the High Definition version here: http://www.gametrailers.com/player/23174.html?type=mov

(You might notice that the game may really remind you of a movie called Mad Max, and I think they drew major influence from those films.)

What interests me is the new engine id software has created to power their new game. It's called id tech 5, and it's going to be the baddest thing around.
id software always releases the best technology, they're well known for that. But they're also well known for releasing crappy tools to make use of that technology.
This is what they have set out to change this time around. They actually have dedicated tools programmers now, when before they were a much smaller team, so they could not take the time out to work on tools like they really should have. And while I was at QuakeCon 2007, we got a first hand look at the tools that will come with the PC version of the game (you will be able to drop the console and type in 'idstudio', and the tools will launch).
One of the most difficult things that modders had with Doom 3 was crappy tools, and I can agree to that. Artists shouldn't have to spend half of their time trying to figure out how to write a text file to edit their in-game character, and even more time trying to fix the problems that the text file is having, when they should be spending 99% of their time making awesome art! (Writing those text files was very easy to mess up.) With id tech 5, they look to eliminate this problem, doing their best to prevent any artist from ever having to write a text file. Thank you, is all I have to say.

Here's what we saw of the tools at Quakecon 2007: http://www.quakeunity.com/file=2514

This Rage title will definitely be a lot of fun to mod. And since it's coming from John Carmack, we already know it's going to be a clean, smooth-running engine. The only thing I am concerned with is the MegaTexture. Now while the MegaTexture technology is amazing and it brings nothing but quality to final game products, it may cause problems for modders. The reason being, modders rely pretty much entirely on distributing their mods over the internet. John Carmack mentioned something like, they have 2 wastelands in their game, both 64kx64k texture files (Diffuse and Normal maps, not sure about Specular maps or anything else) and it takes up a few gigabytes worth of space; that, plus all the game files means that they are going to have to release the game on 2 DVDs for the PC and the 360, and one Blue-Ray disc for the PS3.
This might mean that modders will be forced to make maps low-detail, or in a much smaller size, or in a bunch of segmented pieces in order to keep the files light enough for internet distribution. Or who knows, maybe this will be one of the pushes towards faster broadband connections.
Even so, Rage is the number one title I can't wait until it's release. (But that may be quite a while.)

First blog post!!!

Gee-wiz!! Exciting! I know that this is the start of something so beautiful!! I know, that due to my awesome Browncoat-ness and me being so cool and hip, this will definitely become one of the most popular blogs!!!

Or maybe not.

Most of my blogs will consist of talk of the game modifying community, and game technology! But I probably will wind up dabbling in more personal subjects and matters that I feel concern me enough to publish something about it!
I may also post my art here as well, that I have not made up my mind on. As a modder, I am a 3D artist, as a person I'm just an artist. Whether it's 3D sculpting or just a pencil and paper, I desire to create things my entire life. I know I will post more of my digital creations in this blog rather than more of my real-life creations; after all, digital creations are easier to get into the blog...

Enjoy!