I don't give a wooden nickel about your compatibility...

Steam has a great sale going on, so I padded my game list a bit more. Only to have McNaire and I to start talking about old school games... Mainly, Red Alert 2. But it seems that out of all the Command & Conquer games, that is the only one that has compatibility issues with Vista. From what my research discovered, even the original Command & Conquer and Red Alert will run, although I haven't tried them myself.

I've tried all the tricks that I know, and everywhere I look everybody keeps telling me the same things(change compatibility and run as admin), which is what I tried before I even looked. Ah well...

Comic stuff:

Still getting things together for the big release, which as you may have guessed has been postponed, or readjusted, or whatever you want to call it. I'm guessing the second week of January, but that's not concrete. I really hope before February, hope...

Rrandom TF2

Just a couple of random screens of TF2...

I'm not dead...

Despite the rumors, I'm not dead. Nor is McNaire or Garin. We've... uhh... been busy...? with other stuff... I guess...

We did start a Thanksgiving Special. We did mention a second season of Opti-Pessi. I think I even mentioned a few more BLU's yet-to-be-released. And all of this stuff, is still hanging out on our collective hard drives.

Speaking of hard drives. I finally got around to getting my CD collection ripped.


Now it's time to get that hard drive I've always wanted.

But that's off topic, or is it? I don't really remember.

The point is, we are around, we are working on comics and projects and such. But we are slaves to the retail world, and this being the craziest time of the year for us retail peons, it's just hard to find time.

We also lost the ability to run our own GMod servers. I used to be able to host them, but now I'm on a local network, and we've never been able to computer on a local network to host a server. I might work out a way to run a dedicated on one of the other computers, but I don't think that will solve the problem. I'm also pricing the cost of buying a GMod server, as well as web space and a proper dot com.

I also really enjoyed writing the 'Anatomy of a Comic', and want to try to do some more things like that.

Anyways, I hope to get some stuff coming this way shortly, and I am still hoping on Opti-Pessi season 2 to be released on/around Christmas, but that's still in the air a bit.

Opti-Pessi - Thanksgiving Special - Part One

I'd like to thank the poor sap whom's internet I am currently stealing, for allowing me to bring you part one of our Thanksgiving Special!

You there, Stalker, come over here.

Okay, couple of quick notes:

I'm playing too much S.T.A.L.K.E.R. right now.

We may or may not be working on a Thanksgiving Special, that may or may not intertwine both Opti-Pessi and BLU.

There will most likely be a delay with Opti-Pessi Season Two as I am moving this weekend, which along with the previously mentioned causes more delays.

It's A Special, It Doesn't Have To Fit The Main Line

I am doing some maintenance on our stored images, some images in old posts may no longer work. At least until I bother to fix them.

We are planning an early release special for Thanksgiving, or maybe we aren't... The suspense thickens...

Have a taste:

Never tell your password to anyone.
McNaire: Cool, that worked for once
KoreRat (uc): Whoa, this is a first.
Garin: Sweet
KoreRat (uc): Are we going to use this for constructive things? Or just being ourselves?
McNaire: Hmm...
McNaire: HMM....
Garin: why does it have to one or the other?
McNaire: I give up
McNaire: What's the answer?
Garin explodes form the wrath of god
KoreRat (uc): Purple.
Garin: i shouldn't have said
Garin: yellow
McNaire: M'kay. I just thought, since Garin was asking me about Korerat replying we could save some time (And my fingers)
Garin: cool,
KoreRat (uc): Let me get my "thinking music" going...
KoreRat (uc): There, Sabbath.
Garin: anyway all I have for an idea so far is some king of character gathering,some video game reference, and a violent thanksgiving reference
McNaire is listening to Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along. "I know you guys thought this was lame, but this music is catchy.:P"
Garin listens to TSO
KoreRat (uc): What's more catchy than, "I'm going off the rails on a crazy train!" ??
McNaire: Actually a lot of Japanese stuff, but that gets stuck in your head
KoreRat (uc): But on point, I think it would be cool to do a Turkey day bit.
Garin: likse that one HORRIBLE flash song....
McNaire: Don't go there Garin
McNaire: Anyhow
KoreRat (uc): hehe
McNaire: We can, but what's the theme?
KoreRat (uc): Opti's first Antlion Day?
McNaire: let's catalog T-day themes. "Football, Turkey, eating alot..."
McNaire: Why would Opti go for antlions?
Garin: no other food
KoreRat (uc): Better yet, Opti just realizes that its a real holiday.
KoreRat (uc): And tries to seek out its history.
KoreRat (uc): But we make changes, like the antlions and turkeys.
McNaire: Nah, I'd rather have him looking for the fabled Plymouth Rock
KoreRat (uc): first settlers into Combine and Indians into refugees.
McNaire: So we get great shots of him holding a rock and talking to it
KoreRat (uc): Adopting a pet antlion, and Pessi wanting to eat it?
Garin disconnected.
KoreRat (uc): He thinks Antlion day is in support of Antlions, so he finds one, then Pessi makes it for dinner.
McNaire: Can we make the antlion smaller and cute?
McNaire: brb
KoreRat (uc): I might be able to deflate them, or see if there is something on gmod.org
KoreRat (uc): kk
KoreRat (uc): Oooh. L4D models, we could do a special with them celebrating thanksgiving in the zombie apocalypse..

Left 4 Wanting More

The Left 4 Dead Demo is availible for a few more days. I would reccomened taking a look at it. It's only two levels, but after you play through it a couple of times you see how the A.I. Director works. I've played about a dozen times and it's always been different. And that's only with two levels...

The loading screen, just before you start the round, rules. Plain and simple. Although I did have some issues with the game. I ran it on it's reccomended defaults, except changing the aspect ratio to 14:10. And not even two minutes in it crashed to the desktop...

So I went back in. Quickly joined a game inprogress, wondering if it would be the same one. It wasn't. But it wasn't far from where I had crashed, so I didn't mind. We made it to the end, surviving all the Smokers, Hunters, Boomers, and Witches it threw at us. And I was left wanting more. But I had to go to work.

So, eight hours later I was back at home and loading up the demo again. Only this time I decided to go at it alone, in that I was the only human. This was in a way, better. I had the opertunity to explore the enviroments better. When I was with a team of other players they were more focused on the task at hand and less in looking at VALVe's handywork. I discovered there are almost two ways to anywhere, and that setting off car alarms is a big no-no. Well, seeing a horde of zombies running at you from three directions is pretty sweet.

I've played a couple of zombie games, a big fan of the Resident Evil series. But Left 4 Dead, it feels less like a game and more like a movie. The way the zombies move about and attack reminds me more of the good 'ol zombie flicks.


Oh, and I'm really excited about SteamCloud. So many hassels will be saved.

Ess Tee Ay Ell Kay Ee Arr

Spent a good portion of the evening working on getting the Credits page updated. I think I have everything on there now. Even added a few things to pop in with Opti-Pessi: Season Two.

McNaire and I did some shooting tonight also, then he managed to spend two hours messing up and fixing GMod. I don't think he fixed it yet, just gave up due to fatigue. A few jolly good laughs.

Still planning on posting those last few BLU's. But there is a lot going on in both the McNaireHood and the KoreRatHood. So, may be a little longer.

One of the reasons might have something to due with the fact I bought S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl the other day, and have already logged a good ten hours in it. Sadley, I don't think I've done much of anything yet...

Anatomy of a Comic is completed. Part five was written in about two minutes, and when I re-read it a few hours later I didn't feel like it came across how I ment it too. So I re-wrote it, so give it a second look. And if you missed it read the whole thing.

Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five

Anatomy of a Comic - Part Five

In the final installment of Anatomy of a Comic I will go over posting.

Really, do I have to tell you how to post a comic on the Internet? Because I'm assuming that you would already know how. Therefore this final instalment of Anatomy of a Comic is kinda pointless.

You want people to see you newly created GMod comic, right? You got a few options; First you can email it to all your friends. Have no friends? Well in that case you can store it on one of the many image sharing sites(photobucket, imageshack, etc) and post it in a forum of your choosing. Don't feel like getting banned from the forums for stupid reasons? Well then you'll just have to make your own site to release your comic. There are hundreds of options out there for free hosting, and plenty more if you want to buy some web space. I personally recommend Blogger, but McNaire pesters me into going with Word press.

Of course, if you set up your own site you might need to do some PR work to help people find it. But watch out, some places(like the Steam Fourms) will ban you for 'advertising'.

You still want more? Well I'm not gonna site here and teach you how to set up the site, write the HTML, or come up with a eye-pleasing layout. I'm afraid you're on you own with that...

Anatomy of a Comic - Part Four

Continuing my overview of creating a GMod comic, I will now discuss the editing process.

The process of editing your collection of shots into a cohesive sequence that matches along with your script is actually quite daunting. Or so I assume, as I don't do the editing I'm not really sure. I went and hired a guy to do it for me, but I asked him and this is what he said.

McNaire:

Well to start with, if this was a one person project the whole thing would be alot easier. It's always tricky having two or more people see what the other is thinking, so sometimes I've had to really mess with the shots given to me to make them work. But first and foremost, if you're doing a comic with someone, and you want them to edit, this is a NO-NO:

When you have anywhere from 3-6 shot choices for each frame, this is a nightmare to work with. I often jump back and forth and even return to select a new shot later and it's nigh impossible to do that without frustration. Thankfully I've broken Korerat of the habit and now he gives me this:

Which is much better.

To start editing, I first and foremost recommend getting decent editing software and no, MSPaint is not that. Just get something with Layers. I personally use Photoshop 5.5, years out of date I suppose, but good enough for what I do. In my little bit, I'm not going to really tell you how do things, it's not something short and there's plenty of tutorials about using PS and the like. Rather, to keep Korerat happy, I'm going to share my method and steps I use.

1)
I have a starter file with the comic header and footer already there. Also contained in the .psd are all the basic fonts and colors required for the comic (Font bubble colors and the like). This is basic for Opti-Pessi, a little more complicated for BLU:




2)
After reading the script I pull up the various shots to see what they look like and make sure they will work. Often Korerat likes a certain angle or shot, but once text would be added, the shot doesn't work. The bubble would hide pretty much everything interesting. This is also a danger if you like shooting first, then finishing the script later. As another side note: If you must have a certain angle, then I suggest getting three shots, one close, one a bit back and one rather far away, that way you choose the best one to fit the text.

3)
Start placing the shots. If it's like Opti-Pessi, where the last comics had no frames, then you have to take extra time to figure out what size you want each frame and how big. This is something that is also good to figure out before shooting the shots. A close up with two people is pointless if the frame has to be tall and narrow.
I always drop the whole shot into the comic then resize it to the size I need. This has two benefits. 1: You can make it just the size you need. 2: It make the shots look better. Because we use GMod, many of the shots look a tad...jagged. It's because everything is made of polys and antialising doesn't always look as good when a single frame. When shrinking it to the size I need, PS does its own antialising, smoothing out the picture so things blend better.

4)
After the frames are done, the next thing should ALWAYS be the text. It's tempting to do the PS work and adding effects, but once again, if the text bubble forces you to hide it, it's wasted time. I have found a really easy way to do good looking bubbles, and I might share that sometime.

5)
Clean-up and effects. I will not go into detail here, but you might be surprised at what was missing or in the original shots that I added/removed. This is one area where you often might go fishing for another shot to make editing easier.

6)
Send the comic to the first guy to get his approval. This often takes a few times as he catches all the little things you missed. He usually will be all high and mighty about it, disregarding the massive amount of time you have spent squinting at the screen to get what HE wants, but doesn't know how to do.

See, the concept is not that hard at all. It just take massive amounts of massive amounts of Time. especially for someone like me, who is a perfectionist. And someone like Korerat, who has a degree in innocently managing to be a pain. :)

Stay tuned later this week for part five.

Goldrush ranked 3071

My Goldrush map I posted on FPSBanana is rank 3071 on TF2Scores.com. The map got deleted from the Banana, claiming it was illegal. But I never once said that I made it, I said it was VALVe's map. I just found that I had a copy of it, so I called it 'pl_goldrush_v1' and put it up there incase people wanted to play it.

Oh well.

I will put it on my FileFront account, in the event anybody wants it. It's Goldrush, the way it was when it first came out. Got some bugs, true, but it also has the missing doorway, which I miss.

Polish are Cooler than Irish

Seeing as there are no Irish that view my site, according to my stat records.



But those Polish, they rock it out at number 2! And Latvia came out of nowhere. Sucks that Germany is so low on the list, I like them.

Okay, to be honest, it's late I'm kinda tired, just not sleepy, and I felt like I should make a post for a Update. So here is an update:

Anatomy of a Comic will continue, I'm waiting for McNaire to write his bit for the editing and he has a bit busier of a schedule than I. I had planed to post it today, but hopefully tomorrow or Wednesday. Wait, it's after midnight so today is tomorrow and... *sigh* So maybe it will get posted today or tomorrow...

We have a couple more BLU's in the que waiting to be posted. Then we will be unofficially canceling the project. It was a temporary gig from the start, and we need to focus all of our time on to the upcoming Opti-Pessi Season 2. However, if the mood sparks us or we get a good idea, we might still toss some out randomly.

Opti-Pessi is running smoother than planned. Although, I had wished to get a good 10 episodes in before releasing the first and it isn't looking that way just yet. We have almost the entire season written, albeit we are missing the beginning and the end. Plus we haven't posed anything or shot anything yet, so currently I'm unsure if we will make the December deadline. I might play the VALVe card and push the release back, plus season 1 started on the 25th of December so why not season 2?

So there is the update.

In closing, Russians loves me more that Irish.

BLU - Dishonorable

Anatomy of a Comic - Part Three

In this portion of my overview of creating a GMod comic, I will be discussing the posing practises I use to create my shots.

Before you load up GMod, it might be helpful to print out a copy of your script for quick reference, unless you got a fancy dual monitor setup. Lucky...

Now we load up Garry's Mod, and pick our map. To be honest I'm not going to go into major detail here, as posing is really easy to start. Trial after trial, with plenty of errors, and a few game crashes, will teach you how you want to go about it. Really I'm just going to offer some tips.

First we start with out 'stage':

Then we go through the rigorous process of adding our props to make it fit our script:

Sometimes you might want to add some background elements, even though it may not appear in your planned shots. Even if only a piece of it falls into frame it will add a sense of realism.









Next we add the ragdolls, or actors, remember to be careful and NoCollide when necessary:

Another good tip is to add temporary lighting. Place a lamp or two shining at your ragdoll to help see better.

And finally we take our shots. Panel one, the desk view.

And panel two, the door.









When doing a pose like poking out from a door, or around a corner, don't worry about the whole body like you would other poses. Unless you plan to have a behind shot, then it might be best to get the limbs looking right.









And there you have it. The best thing to remember is avoid the badly posed flailed limbs look, and the even worse face poses, extreme grins and such. If you spend the extra time on the the face and expression, the limbs and realistic looking poses, and added little touches to the background and just out of view areas, it will upgrade the quality of your comic immensely.

Stay tuned for part four early next week.

Anatomy of a Comic - Part Two

Continuing my overview of creating a GMod Comic, I will go over the steps to writing out an episode.

There are a few ways to go about this. But first, you might want to finalize you comic layout and panel counts. For these examples I will be using the Opti-Pessi eight panel layout.


The first is to simply sit at your computer(or grab a pen and paper), and write it. This example will be from the first four panels of the first episode of Opti-Pessi.

1) *wide shot of train station*
2) *opti and pessi sitting at table*
Opti- Can you believe it Pessi, we're back...
Pessi- *mumble*
Opti- And what a wonderful place too...
3) Pessi- Alright look! It's bad enough of I have to see that stupid grin of yours...
4) Pessi- If you're going to be following me around for the rest of my life...

The second method is to use a template, I like this method best. I tend to use these while at work. I made up a little sheet in Excel, made some copies(with the copier at work to save on my ink and paper), and while bored at work I brain storm. Below is an example of this method, while brainstorming I use quick sentences with basic information. The holes are filled in my head and everything is fleshed out when typed onto the computer.



The next method for writing is very similar to the above method, only different. In this form, you draw the comic. Below you can see the creation of Episode 13. This method only really works in cases of heavy action or specific angles desired. And is very helpful for pre-posing ideas.



The fourth writing method is to not write at all. I have done this a few times. It's a case of you load up GMod, you pick a map, you spawn your characters, you pose. As you go about this you think of what you what to happen, so you know how to pose. Sometimes you give yourself extra panels to play with, allowing for any idea changes in the script that you write during the editing process.

Those are the four methods I use to write both Opti-Pessi and BLU. There are other ways to formulate your ideas into a comic. And with time you will discover what works best for you.

Stay tuned for more later this week.

Anatomy of a Comic - Part One

Back in June I got a message from a YouTube user about the thought process and structure of production that goes into the creation of a single comic.

Hey, I recently discovered your G-Mod comic, and was wondering if you could give me a rough idea of how you go about one "episode"? I know it may be a lot to ask, but I'm an avid fan of Garry's Mod and would like to do something more with it than silly poses or the occasional submission to the Garry's Mod challenges! If you'd like me to be more specific when I say "a rough idea", just let me know.
Thanks very much, Steven

So, after four months I finally have the time, and actually remembered, to answer his question.


The first thing needed is you main character, or characters. The number is entirely up to you. The less you have the easier it can be writing dialog, while more can add to the feel. For Opti-Pessi I chose two, for BLU, three. One of the most popular GMod comics, Concerned, used a single character. You're best bet is to start with many, and as you write weed them out and/or combine them into fewer as you need.

Once you have established your characters, you work on your Synopis. You really don't need major specifics. For example, the Synopis of Opti-Pessi is, two brothers, one is an idiot the other arrogant and easily annoyed.

With your Synopis set you can now move onto a storyline. Here is where you work on the who, what, where, when, and how. Again, you can keep from the very specific. Say your character goes to the bank, instead of saying your character goes to the bank and speaks to the teller to get money out. Small details you can keep out.

You do, early on want to take time to decide on the rough layout of your comic. Is it going to be a simple one or three panel, common to newspapers. Is it going to be more akin to a full page comic six to ten panels. Or is it going to be completely random, and the panel count change from issue to issue. Again just a rough idea of this will be plenty, this early in creation.

With all the information you have compiled it is time to start writing! All of the above I pretty much keep in my head, occasionally revealing bits to McNaire when I remember to.

Stay tuned for part two, later this week.

BLU - Spy

BLU - Train

It's a safe bet that this was inspired by some of the happenings over at the Ubercharged.net fourms.

Not living under a rock.

Well, no. BLU wasn't canceled, just that issue. It's kinda confusing, I know. But it's been kinda hectic as of late for McNaire and myself. There are a bunch of issues waiting in the edit que, but I'm not sure if McNaire has had a chane to work on any of them.

There has been some work placed in the Opti-Pessi storyline development. A lot of ground work has been done on the plotline. We got a lot of great episode floating, just working on the startup.

Stay tuned for more.

BLU - Cancelled

ID-10-T ERROR

There would be a BLU comic here, but I forgot to upload it and all that stuff before I left for work...

BLU - Leggin

There would be a new BLU comic here, but blogger is giving me crap and I can't get it uploaded. I'll see what I can do to get this thing working.

Fixed

BLU - Melon

Ubercharged Pyro Tennis

Last night I had a great game of Pyro Tennis over on the Ubercharged.net server. I recorded a demo of most of it and plan to try and smooth some of the better moments. Keep an eye out.

BLU - Movies

Opti-Pessi Season 2 - Coming Sometime

TF2 Stuff

Here is a bunch of TF2 randomness...


I associate the great Sniper night to the fact that I was listening to the new Metallica album while playing.




And, my first attempt at Smooth in TF2...



And, my second...

This has nothing to do with games...

But MetallicA is BACK!

So it's been five years since a studio release, eleven since a good one, and that was even recorded a year and a half before it was released. But it's okay now, with their newest album, Death Magnetic, they have brought back the sound well remembered and loved from their '84-'91 releases. The old school MetallicA.

Being a die hard 'tallica fan, I'm super stoked about this, and have a feeling this will be about all I listen to for a while.

BLU - Sandvich

Name Drop!

Just saw that I got a name drop over at Ubercharged.net. Go me! Last sentence of the post. "KoreRat has posted a thread with more in the forums."

Success is so sweet...