Messages

1

VGMaps Social Board / Re: Can someone identify a song?

« on: January 15, 2012, 03:44:14 pm »

TSFH creates wonderfull epic songs, if you like that kind of music. Check out album Invincible (2010), tracks Freedom Fighters, Master of Shadows, Black Blade or To Glory.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xjdzVbe-H8 - Freedom Fighters
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHfWV9S6ILo - Master of Shadows
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIZzaz-Trd4 - Black Blade
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZ1GbBlS9wM - To Glory

TSFH is my favorite company from these trailer production companies, you can also check out Immediate Music (same style as TSFH, IM has one public album Epicon released under band name Globus), E.S. Posthumus, Audiomachine or X-Ray Dog (little bit heavy on electronic).

2

Gaming / Re: E3 2011

« on: June 07, 2011, 10:13:38 am »

1up has nice stream: http://www.1up.com/flat/Events/e3conference.html

3

Gaming / Re: Portal 2 coop?

« on: May 19, 2011, 05:43:18 am »

No mic is a big problem. I've tried that with a friend - he could hear me but could not speak and whole experience was pretty frustrating. We gave up after two test chambers. You don't need hifi quality mic, cheap 2$ mic will be enought. Or plug your headphones (that type you stick into your ear, like stock ipod headpones) into mic port, hold both earpices near you mouth a try record something. it will work, but this solution require some tweaking and quality will be very low

4

Gaming / Re: Portal 2 coop?

« on: May 13, 2011, 04:31:27 pm »

I get that motion sickness too at some games. Fortunately not very strong, but after two or more hours of playing I have to take a break. It annoys me a little because I used to play first person shooters for a long hours without a problem. Changing FOV to higher vallues ussualy helps. I do that at almost all FPS games now automaticaly.

Portal 2 is one of the best games I played in a long time and I could play coop with you if you want. Unfortunately I'm having masters exams in few weeks so I'll have time after that, if you won't find a coop partner by then.

5

Map Gab / Re: Very, very big maps.

« on: May 06, 2011, 05:50:44 pm »

So I've done some research on Google Maps API and found user friendly way how to open big maps within Google Maps:

- GMap Image Cutter http://www.casa.ucl.ac.uk/richard/GoogleMapImageCutter/gmimgcut-download.asp will create one HTML file and folder with JPG tiles
- Key for domain which will host final map is needed from Google website http://code.google.com/apis/maps/signup.html (keys are free)
- Key is inserted to HTML and everything is uploaded

Unfortunately there are some issues: Tiles are saved in JPEG so quality is not perfect and there is no 100% zoom ratio. For example zoom level 5 is 95% and zoom level 6 is 102%. I've tried to change picture size to multiples of 256 (tile size) but with no luck.

I've coverted that big map from AS2 and uploading it here: http://doc.riotix.com/map/. Size of whole thing is 132MB and almost 22 000 files. Aside some problems I think this is a nice and easy way to store large maps. Even perfect if 100% zoom level would be created from PNG's...

6

Mapping Tips/Guides / Re: 3 Requests

« on: April 09, 2011, 06:29:53 am »

ScreenshotCaptor is very usefull aplication: http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Mouser/screenshotcaptor/ but I'm not sure, if is capable of taking screenshots automatically. For that if you have any gaming mouse or keyboard, you could create a macro to press key every XXX miliseconds.

For masking you could create batch within Photoshop a apply this batch to folder with screenshots. Very easy and fast way to crop huge amout of files with same content.

Or if you can use Autostitcher do it. It can crop files and stitch them very fast.

7

Map Gab / Re: C&C Maps

« on: March 16, 2011, 05:26:54 am »

I'm aware of GDI Mission 3 missing. Unfortunately this mission was absent from data pack which i was exctracting all map files. If you have this file fell free to map it.

Map names was extracted from map files (that's why names are so cryptic - SCG06EA.ini). Map file is ordinary txt file with every unit and mission description in readable form. Some maps  had string <none> in name atributes. Again, if you have any additional info, feel free to add them.

Unfortunately I don't have original map files anymore so I can't look into it.

8

Map Gab / Re: Very, very big maps.

« on: February 08, 2011, 03:46:01 am »

DarkWolf: Physical memory is not problem, I have 4GB RAM and dynamic swap file. Problem is 2GB limit on 32-bit processes. Google Maps API would be ideal but I don't have any experience with it. And I don't know if it could run on vgmaps it's realy not up to me.

Revned: Tried JPG on quality 10 and get 76MB file without significant detail reduction. Now I'm trying color reduction to 16 bit which should lower PNG file sizes little bit. This game is using true color space only for lighting effects. Overal image quality loss is negligible.

Maxim: Compression takes more memory than uncopressed image. 8416 x 12674 px image (200MB in BMP) takes 1,3GB. I've tried Ken's forum few days ago but posting there ended with 403 error.

9

Map Gab / Re: Very, very big maps.

« on: February 07, 2011, 09:55:14 am »

I'm currently working on a maps for Alien Shooter 2 which has pretty huge maps. So big that PNGOUT is refusing to compress them and exits with "malloc failed" error. My guess is that I'm hitting memory limitation of 32-bit. Unfortunatelly I can't find 64-bit PNGOUT for windows so I'm stuck. So any ideas how to bypass this error and compress these big files? Photoshop has very bad PNG output and PNG's from PS can be compressed to cca 60% of their original size.

one of the bigger levels from game: 18836 x 13674 pixels, uncopressed PNG: 273,6MB

10

Maps In Progress / Re: Jagged Alliance

« on: January 13, 2011, 10:47:22 am »

So I've played around PS little bit and I think I've solved your problem. Unfortunately shorelines has to be corected manualy, everything else can be automatized.

This came out from stitching screenshots together


after repairing shorelines I've selected all blue pixels (with magic wand tool, tolerance 150, AA turned off) then contracted selection by 4 pixels (in order to preserve original shoreline waves and details) and hit delete. Result:


Then I've created new ocean from single screenshot. Water tiles are repeating in chunks 32x28 pixels with some random variations in wave pattern. And finaly whole sector with new ocean


Here you have ocean pattern. It can be stacked in both horizontal and vertical axis without any seams

11

Maps In Progress / Re: Jagged Alliance

« on: January 13, 2011, 04:04:13 am »

Unfortunately I don't have any map files from my previous work at this project but, If you want me to, I could create rough map of all sectors and you could add mine placement, boxes, interiors etc.

I'm for DOS version for sure. Graphics has that wonderful "old game feel" which I realy like

12

Maps In Progress / Re: Jagged Alliance

« on: January 12, 2011, 05:22:55 pm »

yeah I exactly know what you are refering to because I've tried map this game in past. But I didn't have enough patience to pinpoint every box, gun, mines etc. and I didn't want to submit half finished work so I abandon this project.

On the other hand I would love to help you. Water ripples are tricky but white shore waves has pretty slow framerate so it just matter of right timing of taking screenshot. I've set a macro to capture whole map in couple a seconds and then another Photoshop macro to stitch them together so basicaly you can have sector mapped under a minute. Then I took shoreline screenshots to correct stitched sector. At this point this has been my standard mapping procedure - make a macro for mapping, make a PS action (or macro if you like) for stitching, correct stitching errors.

Now from what I remember I was planing to release map of a whole island instead of individual sectors. As for water ripples further from shore I would create a seamless body of water (from one screenshot) as big as whole island and just replace original badly stitched water with my own.

I hope it will help you a little.

13

Map Gab / Re: Very, very big maps.

« on: September 14, 2010, 07:07:16 am »

You are right. I'm running CnC maps with None filter type and there is 30 - 40% size reduction. Kinda stupid not to read manual 

Jon do you want me to send you all my files again? (I will be recompressing them anyway)

14

Map Gab / Re: Very, very big maps.

« on: September 14, 2010, 05:08:34 am »

Every map I submit is procesed by PNGGauntlet. Simply because Photoshop has slow PNG export so I'm saving every map in BMP and then compress them by PNGGauntlet with Xtreme! option. Advanced options are set to default.

I've ran CnC map again and it didn't save a byte. But maybe I'm doing something wrong

15

VGMaps Social Board / Re: Is there a painless way to correctly tag a massive library of messy MP3s?

« on: September 11, 2010, 10:43:43 am »

Try to google if your iPod Clasic can run custom firmware called RockBox and all your problems are solved. Rockbox can play almost every audio codec (Flac, OGG, WMA included) and can read files and folders directly from memory. I had this firmware at iPod Mini (RIP) and now it's in my Sansa MP3 player.

As dor taging MP3 files I used WMP's "Search album info" function ion each album with combination of forcing some type of information (genre for example).

As for naming folders it's up to you, how you name it. Synchronization software will rename and sort files by itself when transfer to your iPod.But for example I have two main folders - Albums and Soundtrack. In Albums folder every album is named: <interpret> - <year> - <album>. For example:
Prodigy (The) - 1992 - Experience
Prodigy (The) - 1994 - Music For The Jilted Generation

In soundtrack folder it's little different:
<movie/game name> - <year> - <interpret>
Assassins Creed - 2007 - Jesper Kyd
Assassins Creed 2 - 2009 - Jesper Kyd