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At 11/26/09 10:33 PM, LegalRodrigo10 wrote:

At 11/26/09 10:26 PM, ThePhantomGamer wrote:

At 11/26/09 07:50 PM, Qonquerer wrote: I prefer to use ingame music.

Same here.

Oh same here too...

Likewise. 99% of the time I don't feel the need to listen to any other music. I want to experience the game as it was meant to be and music adds a big part to your playing experience (especially the atmosphere of the game).
The other 1% of the time I'm just too lazy to switch music.

Also, WHY would anyone play their own music while playing Left 4 Dead? Practically everything in the game is foreshadowed by the music and sounds. You can hear tanks coming due to their growling (and their theme music), there's a small music cue before a SI spawns and Hordes have a warning music. I silently sit and wonder if that person gets kicked often.

I think exactly what you said

Also, The art forum rules.

Post your art IN THE FORUM, do not simply link to another site for people to view your art.

I'm going to avoid posting anything until I know what you're trying to do here.
A.k.a what work in progress?

At 11/26/09 12:01 PM, M-Vero wrote: To all us American Forumers, Happy thanksgiving!
To people in other countries, happy what ever holiday/birthday/celebration may be going on!
Got nothing? Than Happy Thursday!

Pfffft, you americans have way too many holidays

I don't know the answer to your question, but I do know that there is a thread in Wi/ht forum that is specifically for Art portal questions. Any thread in Art forum is to have a starting picture.
Alternatively, geeral chit-chat also goes to the Art forum lounge.

I almost feel as if I'm spamming this thread.

Oh well. Moar enemies.
First one is a simple walking turret. Can only walk on the ground (duh) and attacks by pointing it's gun in the skies and firing HAPPY RAINBOWS.
*ahem*

Seconds one is some sort of drone carrier that flies onto the screen, launches it's four drone (that in turn start attacking the player) and flies into the sunset.

At 11/20/09 03:24 PM, M-Vero wrote: And I have absolutely NO idea what I'm gonna do with Renae, damn you for being so mysterious.

A girl trying to ban some art thief only to realize that her banhammer no longer works? Since she's so mysterious you could just wrap her in some armor or robe.

At 11/19/09 11:01 PM, Tommy-Gun wrote: It's looking pretty good, although I think you should make the borders larger so that you can include more people.

I thoughts so too for a second until I read the fine print in the OP. Not sure if I understood it correctly, but..

Naturally it will get progressively larger so high res progress images will eventually be submitted as sketches in the art portal.

At 11/19/09 01:57 PM, TaraGraphics wrote: There's no signature. That's the evidence.

Hey, hey! Not everyone tags every single piece they make

The first time you complete a Left 4 Dead finale is amongst the most epic moments in your gaming life. Especially when you're running for that helicopter with a colossal zombie horde chasing you and an angry tank standing between you and the chopper.

At 11/17/09 07:39 AM, tally1989 wrote:
From what i heard, the l4d2 boycott was about users refusing to buy l4d2 until valve gave them the free updates they where promised for l4d.
But the boycott pretty much failed, since there's allot of people in the steam boycott group playing l4d2.

Well, it failed for a different reason actually. Here
, I'll let the leaders of the boycott speak for me

On a different topic - Has anyone got Modern Warfare 2 for the PC? There's all this talk about the support of dedicated servers which, as I understand, is a KO for modding and control for gamers. However, how is the online experience from a technical standpoint? Laggy? Perfect?

Continuing with the idea of mining colony...
The two topmost ships are simple grunts. The one on the left can actually shoot too, but the one on the right tries to do kamikaze runs, being equipped with explosives.

Below is the concept of the Mining Cannon.
It's a mobile mining rig which can pull it's miner out of the ground to fire at you. In addition, it can sometimes fly into the air (remember, it starts off as aground turret) and hover there while shooting.
Leftmost sketch is the mining(idle) posistion, middle and bottom show the ground turret position and rightmost sketch has the hovering cannon configuration.

At 11/15/09 07:17 PM, Kurofelis wrote: E- Barricade Mine

I am confused. Are you saying that the WHOLE WALL is indestructible?

Regarding the rest of your ideas....interesting, but they all sound so difficult. They alone could populate the end part of level filled with the harder enemies.

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I've been developing my level plan that I presented at the first page. I got an idea what the theme of the first section could be - mining colonies. Below are tow concepts of the general look of the level.
One thing I would like to have there is giant mining robots stomping in the background. Would be such a nice background element.

At 11/14/09 04:53 AM, Kinsei01 wrote: to be honest though, it DOESN'T SEEM TO BE MANY concepts on the player ship...

...since EVERYONE SEEMS TO BE FOCUSING on the Player ship...

..I see a contradiction there. But to be honest, the player's ship needs to match BoMToon's template so that we could apply upgrades to it. He hasn't yet made a template so it's a bit rushing ahead of time to be designing the player's ship.

At 11/14/09 04:58 AM, Kinsei01 wrote: And finally I have only seen one enemy in the thread so far and it was by M

Heyheyhey, now that was cold. I've been working on enemies too >:(
Besides, what's with the X-s and O-s marked on your sketches?

And a few sketches for the grunts. No fancy pattern designed, just your general "fly-straight-and-shoot-dumb" enemies.
The two on the right are earlier versions of the charger.

Another enemy is the Samurai
This is a medium-hard enemy . It has pretty heavy armour all over and has two turrets that rotate and fire towards the player, doing fairly little damage. HOWEVER, once it's health drops below 50% it will either transform into a gunship (see #1) or do a kamikaze dive (see #2).
Alternatively we could have it transform into gunship when it's HP drops to 50% and the do a kamikaze dive when it's nearly dead.

Anyway, the transformation will move the armour plates that reveals 3 laser turrets that, unlike the cannons before, fire only straight. On the other hand, they make shooting at the Samurai harder. A weak spot is also revealed so the more daring can dive between Samurai's cannon fire to destroy it quickly. Risk vs reward.
*Note - the cannons continue to fire, giving the Samurai a total of 5 turrets.

The kamikaze dive will have an alarm sound before it starts moving for about 2 seconds. Then it starts diving forward, causing highsh damage when it hits the player. On the other hand, it dives in a straight line and it doesn't aim towards the player.

At 11/10/09 06:49 PM, Kurofelis wrote:
Idea for "Gate Guardian".

I like idea of such guardian. Not sure how we would handle having two routes though...or ignoring it. I mean, how many SHMUP's allow you to ignore a boss, even if it's mini?

At 11/10/09 06:15 PM, FatKidWitAJetPak wrote: ***I will make that ambience for you guys and see if it suits. All i have right now is this and im not sure if its punkish or not heeh.***

Eeehhh....I doubt the game will have a place for ambient music. Unless we plan to have some long and melodramatic cutscenes (which I assume we won't have).

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Gonna flail around with more concepts...enter the Charger!
This one's a annoying bugger.

I've illustrated it's behavior, but I'll also explain it here. The Charger flies in (typically in groups of 3-4) and stops in mid-air. It rotates towards the player and then starts revving up the engines, at which point the flap/wing/thingies are floded together and the engine and wings start glowing.
After a moment it will charge towards the player, causing moderate damage if it hit the player. If it doesn't then it just flies off the screen.

Title: Fraxy

Genre: Shoot 'em up

Description: A small ( 1.8 MB download!) top-down shooter in which the player is pelted with a neverending flow of bosses.

Why you should download it: Boss fights. Bullet hell. Laser hell. Boss fights. If you loved those features in shooters, you'll love this game. Also, if you get sick of the default bosses, the game is practically made for modding! New graphics, new campaigns and mostly..new BOSSES can be easily downloaded online.
If you are still unsure, then maye ye should watch gameplay videos

Link to game: Although the page is mostly japanese, you should be able to find the download.

At 11/9/09 03:26 PM, TheDaveAngle wrote: I believe photoshop threads aren't allowed in the art forum.

Actually...

"Do not post requests such as "Photoshop this" or "Draw this" without giving your own example. You are allowed to create Photoshop threads but you must provide source art as well as a second post with your own submission. Please don't ask people to Photoshop your friends."

So, technically it could fit here. Though ripping the editable image from a screenshot is kind of strange...

At 11/9/09 02:59 AM, Simple wrote:
Type map in the console, then you choose the map name and THEN you can turn sv_cheats 1 on. Although it doesn't give you any hidden weapons.

Eehhh, actually I'm quite sure that somebody reported using the grenade launcher ( it didn't have textures) in the demo.

As for the whole demo...well, I liked many of the gameplay upgrades, but I'm terribly disappointed in the music and the atmosphere. In L4D the survivors were like "Oh shit, it's the zombie apocalypse!". L4D2 has a more "Meh, zombies. Let's kill as much as we can! :D" feeling. And the survivors feel boring too. The only one that interested me is Nick and that only because he's wearing a white tuxedo in a zombie apocalypse - don't see that every day.
And that music....ugh. I'm not going to even bother.

Concept for the third section, the city. There's a omnious orange glow down there because I had the thought of street level being a total mess - crime, riots and such.

Also, a cookie for whoever gets the reference ;)

And as a logical follow-up, a concept showing the transistion point between the first stage and second stage. The door is to be blown up by shooting the conveniently places glowing locks.
Maybe have a mini boss fight before this point.

A basic concept for our level layout. I'm not sure what the first section could be. Perhaps some sort of wastelandish place or a a mining excavation.

Thanks for taking the lead M-Vero even if you did write a lazier introductory post than others.

In case you didn't already I went around and smacked everybody on the team on the head with PMs telling them to get their ass over here. And if you did...well, doesn't hurt to do it twice.
Speaking of, has anybody seen FatKidWitAJetPak?

Every other team seems to use MSN messenger as their default way of communication so I suggest we do the same (unless somebody has got a better idea). I've posted the MSN addresses I already know in this document . If you do not have MSN MEssenger, it can be downloaded here.
Don't worry, it'll be deleted as soon as everybody have established contact - no spreading your address around the Internet.

Is the player's ship going to be the same over all levels (top-down levels showing the top of that same ship) or will every level have a different ship as the player?

Hmmph. I was planning to make the purple parts on the bot have a glowing effect but doing so with only 3 colours turned out to be very hard. I might still edit it later, but until then you can consider it my final image.

.png here

At 11/8/09 08:38 AM, IDuDe wrote: Can I get a short explanation on what a "SHMUP" is?
I seriously have no idea.

It's short for "Shoot 'em up". If you on't know what that is then just take a look at the videos here

At 11/7/09 04:12 PM, BoMToons wrote: Johnny Utah is helping me build some demos which will turn into the 7th "final boss" level that unlocks when the player beats the other 6 levels.

Eh.....pardon?

I got a steady 45 fps while shooting the crab ( Pentium D processor, 2.6 GHz)

At 11/7/09 01:38 PM, big-jonny-13 wrote: If it's a request you're asking, repost your request here please.

o_O
*points silently at*

Yep, it's been a while. Well, it takes time to study them and even more time to write about them. So, patience is a virtue.
Note - I have OpenCanvas 1.1 on my to-do list and the program has a collaborative drawing function. Basically, it allows two people over the net to draw on one canvas. So if ANYONE is interested in doodling together, send me a PM.

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Note that this review is written from a drawer's/painter's perspective. Photographers might be more interested in the review offered here - http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2009/0 1/gimp-2-6-review.ars

GIMP, an open source photo editor, is amongst the most well-known freeware programs. It's the Photoshop for the open source community - a good all-around tool for painting and image editing.

It does not leave a very good first impression though. The primary reason why GIMP is called a pile of rubbish and quickly uninstalled is it's user interface. Older versions of GIMP had a multi-window interface where EVERYTHING had it's own window - the tools, layers, your image (god forbid if you had several images!), colour picker etc. A very cluttered interface was created - Imagine having such a mess on your desktop.
The newer versions have a bit more more "intact" user interface but the docks still float and that is hands down my biggest complaint. It's annoying when you switch to you web browser for a second and then look at GIMP only to discover that your layers dock is buried below your image. Or when you constantly need to move the tools dock because it keeps covering up parts of your image. Rumors are about of a single-window interface being added in the next version, but that's still months away.

The upside is that GIMP has a highly customizable user interface. You can toss tabs around like ragdolls, tear away docks and delete whatever you don't want with the exception of the basic tools. This allows you to fine-tune the UI to accommodate your needs.

GIMP has a fairly standard toolset for a photo manipulator. A variety of selection tools, brush, clone, erase, paint bucket, transformation tools, dodge/burn. Transformation tools are sadly divided into scale, shear, flip, perspective and rotate. Why they couldn't have joined the tools is beyond me. But the weakest link in GIMP's toolset is most definitely it's abysmal text tool - writing creates a pop-up input window that you need to type your text in. In order to change the colour/size/etc of your text, you need be juggling between three windows, two of which have a habit of getting buried under the main window. It hard to put in words the frustration that you will feel when you try to make an image with large amounts of text in it.
Also, GIMP doesn't support layer groups which will you'll be missing when you have several dozen layers.

I now I've been ranting on a pretty negative tone here but....I'd be lying if I said that I consider GIMP to be a bad program. But in the mean time I can't really bring up anything extraordinarily good about the program. GIMP does not sit on a shaky throne built of "meh" and supported by a few awesome features. What makes it great is the things you barely notice. Those handy handles that can modify your selection. Script-Fu plugins. Exact modifications for selections. Wide range of brush sizes
GIMP does not glimmer or shine, but it's better than all the glitter-covered fakers.

It's important to note that GIMP is not a professional program so comparing it to the industrial standard (you all know what I'm talking about) is somewhat unfair. GIMP does not support CYMK, doesn't have 16-bit colour channel support, HDR nor does it have RAW support. If you think that you'll miss them, you are out of luck and should start thinking of a way to shell out the money for Photoshop. If you got no idea what these things are, you most likely won't need them and will find GIMP to be more than enough for your needs.

As any open-source program, GIMP is constantly being developed, extended and improved. If you took a look at GIMP some time ago and didn't like it, try giving it another shot - maybe your annoyances have been fixed.
Next versions of GIMP will most likely invalidate many of my complaints. For example, GIMP 2.8 will bring a new text tool that no longer uses a pop-up window for text editing and it also is rumored to have a single-window interface which would definitely improve the usability of the program.

Version reviewed- 2.67

Fun facts
* GIMP does not refer to a limping person - it stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program
* GIMP developers have actually mentioned that they do not aim to make the next Painter/Photoshop.
* Nevertheless, several attempts have been made to make GIMP behave and look more like Photoshop.
* If you are displeased with GIMP's UI, http://gimp-brainstorm.blogspot.com/ Feel free to leave them a constructive comment.
* You can download GIMP Animation Package that allows you to use it for small .gif animations.

Usability- 6/10
Streamlined and designed to be minimally disturbing...in theory. In practice the floating docks are a constant distraction.

Ease of learning - 8/10
The UI will confuse you initially, but other than that it's easy to understand. The online manual is of great help.

Powerfulness- 8/10
Very feature-rich for a free program.

UI - 8/10
GIMP's UI really shines with how customizable and streamlined it is. One point lost for the multi-window interface and one for the text tool.

Overall - 8/10
It requires patience to use, but it's a good all-around program.