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.