Krytos

Here's a link to the Troops fan film at theforce.net. Check around their fan film area for others. http://www.theforce.net/fanfilms/shortfilms/troops/

Zoot may be ruthless, evil, destructive and more - but he's still a gentleman

A small update. Textures are done, are converted and are working in the game (with the usual annoyances of colour variations etc.). I'm currently trying my decerative blue theme with the Majestic, and I'm glad that the two large New Republic crests show up nicely I'll be releasing it with the a simple red lining texture, and if the texture packs ever get going there'll be 3 more at least. The bue one, another red one and one without. The downside is that there are two bugs with it still. One I can fix by deleting parts of the engine (z-buffer issue, there's a surprise ). The other, I've got no idea why its occuring - the camera centres off to the side of the ship. I've tried moving the ship prior to export and can get it where the camera centres, but the bounding box doesn't move and look rather stupid I'll be worknig on it later today when I wake up a little more - me need cafeeeeeeeen

It would seem the true origin of pwned might remain a mystery. I'd say pwned has been adopted into l33t speak, and not created with. Something that was brought to my attention the other day while playing CSS with some old timers, was a instead of calling "owned!" for something extreme like a multiple knifing or team take down etc., was "pure ownage". Perhaps that was abreviated to pwnage and pwned? I guess we will never know . . . . . If this is in reference to what I said earlier, note that I didn't say World of Warcraft - just Warcraft, as in the original It also outdates Counterstrike (hense again, Warcraft - old school gaming, ah the old days ) Noooooooo!!!!!!

I'm going to take a stab at 9 Seeing as the Gaurd asks a number as a question, I was thinking he might have been asking the time Yeah, I've got no idea where this riddle is going. Could you answer a question to help us out Scath? Is the answer even a number?

Wow, my first tripple post (I don't think that's a good thing though ). Well, this is probably one of my fastest textures so far. Two days, and I've got the basics done for the Majestic and 90% of the DAC done. All that is needed for the Majestic is some coloured stripes here and there to "pretty" her up while she's cruising through space And the DAC needs to have proper textures for the two new control towers. Majestic completely textued - textures need revising: http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/7370/textured015dp.th.jpghttp://img84.imageshack.us/img84/271/textured026mj.th.jpg http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/7451/textured033qq.th.jpghttp://img84.imageshack.us/img84/2720/textured040an.th.jpg http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/9773/textured051gd.th.jpghttp://img84.imageshack.us/img84/6633/textured063pj.th.jpg NOTES: I dropped lights into the hangar so they could be seen better. Rebellion is yet to make the bright blues (hangars and engines) I use stand out unfortunately DAC 90% complete textures - textures need revising: http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/3098/dac012qe.th.jpghttp://img84.imageshack.us/img84/2903/dac025wq.th.jpg http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/4528/dac038ya.th.jpghttp://img84.imageshack.us/img84/2118/dac048yp.th.jpg NOTES: The differences between the two ships physically, is the addition of the two control towers and the removal of smal details like the underside and wing objects

Ah, I get it now. Did you have any models in mind. I'd do the Errant Venture, but I havn't modelled an ISD I'm thinking of a blue and yellow (Mech Commander 2 style) Majestic at the moment The Ranger I did was meant to be a solid, pale yellow/beige colour - though in Rebellion, it didn't really turn out

Looks perfect J!

While I wait to see how people want their new textures (sunny side up or scrambled ), I'm working on the textures for the new Majestic. So far it's very white . . . and reminiscent of the DSD, which means I've got some consistancy going. Without any of my usual luck, I should be able to complete the textures soon. After making a few models and textures, I've figured out some ways to make them and then apply them - so, here's hoping this Majestic doesn't suffer the fate of the old. Taking a damn long time to complete! Also, speaking of that curse . . . I just realised I hadn't uploaded the old DAC I made. Well, I'll rectifiy that now and put the old Majestic model to rest.

I voted for Evolution. Whilst the theory can be challenged, and the current theory of human evolution is changed (relatively) often when new discoveries are made, that doesn't change the fact that the basis of the theory is still sound. We know the evolution occurs for a fact, and there's strong proof and links of evolution in history between other species (it's been a while, so I dont recal the names - something like cromagnum man ). I think, if you learn science this is something you should be taught about (particularly if you are learning biology or simular). Maybe it should be made more obvious that it's an evolving theory to those being taught it so they know the basics, as well as what is currently thought and finally that it is possible to change. I guess in a sense then, I think it should be compulsory. And like DC, I believe in a God - and I'm a Roman Catholic . . . a VERY loose RC though, as in I don't read the bible, I dont go to church . . . in fact, the only thing that would still qualify me as a RC is believing in the Holy Trinity and going to church for Christmas and Easter

Exellent discovery LLF!

Ta Madness, its made with Photoshop. The only reason I didn't want to upload a second model (or more than one), is for a few reasons. Overloading the model section and confusing people due to their being multiple versions of each model. So I figured since there's a texture sections I might as well use it. So far the vote's pretty even - so I'll wait a little longer to see how things go.

He's right!!! We'd better watch out, Zoot seems to be training more warriors for his fight. Not to mention aquiring allies!

Since you've been reading wiki's so much, might as well send you here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pwned The only thing that I can't see in there properlly is where the word "pwned" came from. Which, I don't recal the exact details, though had to do with a very public game of Warcraft and the person who won typed pwned instead of owned and it spread from there. Which is sort of what they wrote. Of course, my story could just be some Internet Legend I pronounce it powned also.

Nice Jahled! My favourite pics: http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Animals/GiantPandas/MeetPandas/PandaCubGallery/images/Aug30closeup.jpg http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Animals/GiantPandas/MeetPandas/PandaCubGallery/images/Sept19cubinbin.jpg http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Animals/GiantPandas/MeetPandas/PandaCubGallery/images/20051222-427Tai.jpg

In the words of Episode IV: "Stay on Topic! Stay on topic!" Here's one for car lovers. The Ferrari F60 Enzo, only 399 in the world. They cost more money than a house, and probably more money than most people will ever see. And, to top it off, Ferrari chooses whether or not you're worthy to own the car. . . they chose wrong. http://www.eshaun.com/pics/avatars/crashed-enzo-owned.jpg 1 down, 398 to go And a good 'ol Kermit the frog getting owned pic: http://aurores.polaires.free.fr/ozzy.jpg Go Ozzy!

Sorry for the lack of progress on anything here - I've been busy all weekend with RL stuff, and my free time was diverted to Reloaded So far, they're a basic cosmetic change. For example, the current texture for the DSD has red linings on it. My new one uses blue, and far more decrative lining. As shown here: Original- http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/240/dsd37ve.th.gif New- http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/9773/dsd3b9df.th.gif I was trying to picture the Obi-Wan (the first DSD to be contructed) when I created the new texture (which are untested as of yet). For the Battledragon, I'm making it all a pale red - as that's what they're meant to be (helps to pay mroe attention ) Not exactly sure what you meant by this. Do you mean, using the DSD as an example again, to make an Imperial version of it?

You've pretty much got it right. A buffer is a pocket of memory - virtual (paged on your harddrive) or physical (stored in RAM). In the case of the z-buffer, it's storing in effect coordinates of the faces. The z-buffer has a fixed size, and can't increase past its maximum. Force Commander had a 32-bit z-buffer, we have no idea the size of Rebellions - I'd be assuming a very low figure, like 2 bytes or 8 bits even. 32bits of data isn't that much - it's the deafult size of a integer in programming when programming in a 32 bit environment. So, think of it like this - you've got two faces overlapping, and the z-buffer is storing their values as 10.1115 and 10.1123 (these values are completely random and have no actual significance). As you zoom out, these values would loose accuracy because the buffer is of a set amount and needs to store new data - thus the only way possible to achieve this is too loose data/accuracy from the existing values to allow for the room of the new values. So, the new values would be 10.111 and 10.112 - which mightn't have too much problem. Also in programming, number's aren't rounded off, they just loose the last digit. Any more lose of precision and you'd have major problems as both are being stored as 10.11, and now the computer doesn't know which face is infront and more or less has a seizure and renders the faces off at random. Now, this is just an anology as I don't know the type of data stored in the z-buffer or the method of storing. I'd assume that the z-buffer stores cooridantes of the faces, or perhaps the distance between faces? I'm not even sure if the z-buffer is for every (ie. there's only a single z-buffer runing) or a buffer per model. Though when applied to a game like Rebellion, and it's practically non-existant z-buffer, you can kind of see how it has problems determining what face is what simply because of a lack of accuracy. A few test I've done to more or less confirm my theory about the z-buffer being the fault (I should note now that this is my theory and it might be wrong - though most things point to it being right), such as importing into the game a model that has these problems, though several times larger. The results where good, most of the flickering disappeared as if the faces had been too close. That being said, this is not a fix, because the game's space battles occur in such a small area that having mulitple large units would have the ships overlapping within each other and just look wrong.

Ok, I'll try to explain it as best as I can. First I'll talk about what the z-buffer is. In the 3d world, you have 3 axis. X, Y and Z. The Z axis is in essence the "depth" axis making objects 3d. A 3d model is made up of a lot of faces or polys - which can be considered as flat 3 sided faces. Each face needs to be "rendered" to be viewed. The fewer faces, the quicker it is to render the model. Games need to render each frame - so the fewer polys the higher the frames per second you get. Now, the game engine will only render the faces that can be seen, which is called backface culling where faces you can't see (genereally at the back of the model) aren't rendered. A Z-Buffer is something a 3d engine has that stores data relating to the distance between faces on the model. The idea is that the z-buffer helps decide which faces are hidden behind other parts of the geometry and doesn't render them. Now, in the case of most 3d games, there's something called Z Fighting. This is dependant on the size of the z-buffer as well as how the model is made. When there are two over lapping surfaces, where one is hiding the other, the z-buffer tells the engine to hide the one behind - however, if the buffer is to small or is overloaded (say by viewing a highpoly model) the engine and buffer get confused about which face is infront and which is behind. This results in these faces rendering at different times, resulting in a flickering look to the model. Newer game engines still suffer from this, though have much better z-buffers and engines as well as models designed to not suffer as much from this problem. If you play the Warlords mod for HomeWorld 2, you will see z-fighting on Mon Cal cruisers when zoomed out - the edges around the buldges of the hull flicker as the engine tries to decide which face to render. Finally, in the case of Rebellion, the z-buffer appears to be very small (after all the engine is very old an primitive). Which means that it will struggle with z-fighting all the time and even on faces that are at a fair distance away. So as your viewing the model, the engine is trying to figure out if the face you're viewing is actually infront of the model or behind. And because of the in accuracy of the z-buffer it gets it wrong a lot and doesn't render the correct face all the time. That's also why if you keep rotating the face sometimes re-appears. The z-buffer is actually sending the correct data at that point in time. Now the bad news. Rebellion's Engine is hardcoded - which means it cannot be modified, and we're stuck with it's poor engine, low level of colours and low output resolution. There's simply nothing that we can do to fix it. From a modeller's point of view, there are ways to work around Rebellion's problems - all of which are far from full proof. It's got to do a lot with the way the model is made, the distance between faces and trying to limit overlapping faces in the model. This, in turn, limits the detail that can be put into the model. So, if you want a higher detailed, better looking model, it will be more prone to Z Fighting. For Reloaded, we've havn't been immune to this problem. And have been forced to make the model suit the engine better. To date, several of the designs have been heavily plagued with this problem. Though, with a lot of time and perserverance, they have been fixed - though aren't perfect unfortunately. Hopefully, as Reloaded gets closer to being released we can go back over all the models to make sure there the best that they can be. I hope that explains the problems with Rebellion's Engine and Z-Fighting in general. If I've gone over head with any of this, tell me and I'll try to re-word it . . . try

Well, from experience - cups save your jewels, but you're far from out of pain. Also, if you can bare to look at the region the ball is hitting - you'll notice that it's pushing in severelly and would have at least dinted the cup. Any other injurries can be left up to your imagination Ow, just talking about it hurts

I've always been a fan of the "owned" and "pwned" pictures. Here's one that makes all guys say: OUCH! http://home.swiftdsl.com.au/~raza/owned-baseball.jpg I do not want to be that guy

The arc of lighting flung itself through the air, streaking the night sky purple. Krytos felt the lightning heading towards him, but did not panic. Raising his hand, and waving it as to swat a fly, he deflected the first wave of lightning and absorbed the rest. With a smirk painted across his face, Krytos boasted at Tofu. "You may be almost as strong as me, though you are no where near as experienced or wise. That comes with time." And as fast as the lighting had crossed the vast planes of Earth, Krytos faded into the night.

Those are awesome GIFs J. Makes me want to pull 'ol Indy off the shelf and watch them again @D16: Yoda called the younglings in E2, which was alright as it was in jest and in Yoda speach. Then in E3 Yoda, Obi Wan and Padme said it - which just sounded dumb when put in a serious content. Don't know what possesed Lucas to use that word to replace children

Nice Mad And I see it runs on a pair of double As

Awesome news! I'll have to download it later tonight on a my other computer that can run the game. So, those who already have it: What's it like? I had a question I wanted to ask prior to it's release - so I'll ask now. How does anti aircraft fire work? Are there dedicated AA units, and they're the only ones that can shoot at air units? Or is it more like Total Annihaltion, where any unit could shoot at air units - however AA units are far better at the task?