Herbert1405241469

Well I just picked up Clear Sky today and got it all installed, and downloaded the latest patch (because they just can't seem to figure it out that they should release games that have been TESTED before they ship )The first Stalker game had major slowdown issues, and needed extensive tweaking and mods to get working, but eventually, the game did kick *bottom*. The graphics are sweet.But for some reason, it's like we're starting from ground zero here with Clear Sky. I upgraded my gfx just for this game coming out (GeForce GTX 260) and all the specifications are met. The main menu was flawlessly smooth and had no trouble, but as soon as the intro movie was finished, I found myself lagging at a verrrry slow framerate. My computer should handle this no problem. It's a matter of poor optimization. Tweakguides.com has a whole bunch of things you can do, and I found in the Gamefaqs.com message boards for this game a list of settings you can put in to your user file, which definitely made the game framerate skyrocket, but even still, the game looks like it's running in low-res mode... The textures are muddled, and everything looks blurry. But the game is playable with tweaks and the latest patch.The first time I actually got to pull out a gun, I am placed in a swamp with anomalies stuck right in my path forcing me to use bolts to not get blown up. The radio states that I should use my detector to find anomalies, which are now for some reason invisible... Argh, this takes some getting used to, just because I'm surrounded by anomalies I have to watch my step or else I get blown away. After you get close enough to the right anomaly, the anomaly will appear just like it looked like in the first STALKER.I keep dying, but that's as far as I've gotten. Just doesn't seem as polished as the first game, so I'm hoping the already active fan modding community can pump out some fixes to make this game better.More as I get through the game.

I know that hitting the CAPS LOCK in photoshop screws up my eyedropper and converts the cursor into "precision mode" and for the longest time I hadn't realized that. Maybe you have something like that selected when you go to use the crop tool. I know holding down SHIFT will make it form fit a cube when you make your crop box... Check your toolbars and see if options aren't selected that aren't screwing you up.

I'm glad you figured it out. Man I hate Joomla. I had to jump in on a project that someone started in Joomla, and had to figure out where the heck they put everything, and it took an hour to make a new page with a form in it.... UGH. I much prefer coding straight PHP and using includes to minimize redundancy.IE 6 also ticks me off. I'll design a site that looks perfect in all modern browsers (ie 7, firefox, etc) and our client uses ie6 and complains that everything is broken >.<Luckily, I found a tutorial on how to get IE 6 in Ubuntu, so now at least I can see what he's talking about. And going to my other site's I've done, those are broke too, and never realized it. So web developers, take heed. Find a way to check your work in IE6. It sucks, but people still use it

I much prefer to code my own php file to send emails from my web server. You can control which fields you want to have populated, and with a little javascript, you can add validation to the fields so that people can't just hit submit without entering in valid data. It's not hard if you look into it, there's a lot of cool stuff you can do with PHP

I just downloaded the demo for GRID on my PC tonight, and one of the biggest things when it comes to simulations I've discovered is the importance of having a wheel accessory or something other than just a keyboard or gamepad. My friend had old N64 steering wheels we'd use for playing Nascar 2000 back in the day, but sadly they do not work on my computer ( I tried a N64 to USB adapter which works great with the N64 controller, but not the steering wheel )I've been looking at the Logitech G25, but the darned thing is $300. It's cool though, because it comes with foot pedals with a clutch, and a gearbox to practice shifting. I'd like to get it just to learn the basics of driving a manual transmission before going out and wearing out the clutch on an actual car for real life practice As far as GRID goes, here's a mini review of the demo:Graphics have come a hell of a long way. One of the best features I like with this game is the fact that damage affects your car. I have Need For Speed: Carbon for the Wii, and you can run into a wall doing 200 mph, and your car won't be affected at all... Here with GRID, if you do something like that, you can total your car. It makes driving more realistic in knowing that you should avoid banging up your ride. The game itself is hard. I have the N64 controller hooked up, which is better than using the keyboard, but having a full force feedback steering wheel would definitely help things.I'll probably buy the game, but I'm going to try other demos first if I can find them. The demo alone has 3 races, and no time limits or anything so it's worth a download.

Of all the games, I'd probably most recommend Black Plague, the second of the three. It should only take you maybe 5 or so hours to beat. And for $9, that's about right ;)It's got the horror theme down, while it has realistic "adventuristic" type puzzles about it. Best of the three I'd say. The first one you're avoiding dogs and basically hacking stuff with a pick ax, while the second, black plague, gives you more of a story plot, and overall more memorable moments.

Well, I have played most of Penumbra Overture, Penumbra: Black Plague, and I just downloaded and completed the most recent and final addition to the series, Penumbra: Requiem.Here's what I think:Basically, the game continues right where the last one left off, just as Black Plague did for Overture. Now, anyone that's played the first two know that the game is mostly based on logic and physics puzzles, sort of like sections of Half Life and Half Life 2, but the difference here is that you get no weapons.In Overture, most of the puzzles and progression involved hunting for items to build stuff or whatnot to continue (getting nitro glycerine and wicks and things for dynamite to blow open a cave in, etc). Overture had a basic plot, ie. a "reason" you were in the situation you were in, but had a crappy ending, and left a lot of questions. Overture took place mostly in mine shafts and underground areas, which, to me, got pretty boring after awhile.Black Plague took place in dilapidated medical and work offices, and had a much cooler atmosphere in my opinion. Plus instead of random dogs hanging out in the mines, you had to worry about "Infected" humans who would try to kill you. There were some very interesting twists and overall, I'd say Black Plague is the best in the series.With Requiem, though, they totally went off on a tangent. Instead of using the same formula of trying to escape the area and be rescued... the whole game is set up as a weird series of disjointed levels that have no relevance to each other. As someone else said, it's Portal without the Portal gun. You have to figure out logic and physics puzzles to find these orbs that unlock, literally, a portal to move to the next level. After 10 levels, you get the ending, and ...that's it.It took some people 2 hours to beat, it took me 4 because I was trying to find all the statues, and missed 1 so I might go back and try again.There are no monsters, only random noises meant to scare you and keep you on your edge, but there's no time limit for anything, so you can do whatever it takes to get a puzzle set without worrying about timing your work to a monster's patrol route.Well so you lost a bit of the scare factor and story because really there's nothing "new" added to the story. There is narration about some guy named Doctor Eminis who is infected and slowly goes crazy, but other than that, it's mostly just meant to be puzzles. If you like puzzle adventures, this game makes you think. I got through it all without looking at a walkthrough at all, so even though the puzzles can be obscure, you shouldn't have too much trouble figuring out what they want you to do. I purchased Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened, and I found out quick that I can't play it without a walkthrough because the puzzles are so convoluted and particular in how you do them. I mean with Penumbra, stuff makes logical sense and is relatively easy to figure out. As far as puzzle games go, Requiem is a nice game. Unfortunately, that's about all it's good for. Unless you are trying to find all the statues, there is no reason for replay, which is why I'm glad it didn't cost a lot (it's an add-on expansion to Black Plague, so you need Black Plague to play it).Overall I would say buy this game if you liked Black Plague and enjoy puzzle games. Most Penumbra fans are disappointed, though.

Well, instead of starting a new topic, I will continue where I left off. I took a break from Episode 1 in favor of Death to Spies (which you can see my review here) So I picked up Penumbra: Black Plague not finishing Overture, which is not something I normally do, but I did it anyway. I paid $4.99 for Black Plague at Gamestop. Overall the gameplay is exactly the same, but starting off, the second episode of this series is starting off much better than its predecessor. There is a brief narration at the beginning telling what happened in Overture, but you've really got to play Overture to get the full experience. It's sort of like Half Life 2, sure you can play it without ever having played Half Life 1, but you will miss out on a lot of back story and in-jokes. Black Plague starts out a little differently than Overture. It starts off right where Overture ended, and you wake up in a cell with nothing but a bunch of garbage around you, and you have to figure out a means of escape. Puzzles in this game are somewhat intuitive. They are much more intuitive than most Adventure games, where the things you do actually make sense in the real world (for the most part). There are times I just desperately needed to look up a puzzle solution online, but it is rare. The game levels are somewhat linear, but when they open up, you sort of wish you were back to being linear again, because there is just a lot of different places to go and see. Where in Overture, you had to deal with dogs and spiders and other things, now you're contending with mutated humans infected with a virus (hence "black plague" though that's not what they call it in-game). The infected humans are very well designed... ie. creepy as hell. At first I thought there was some blatant nudity going on (which the rating on the cover of the box clearly does NOT indicate) but it appears as though some sort of ... tube has grown from the belly button area down and up around to the .... well it looked like a ****, but it's not. Actually it looks worse, but I digress. (If anything, show me some female mutants, for the love of Lovecraft!) The environments start off in a hospital-like environment, though clean underneath, is coated with filth and blood which makes the place very creepy a la Silent Hill and Condemned. Exploring everywhere is vital. It is easy to miss something, but not hard enough to make it impossible. One of the tedious tasks is constantly opening file cabinets and drawers looking for items you'll need, or batteries for your flashlight. (which, is sort of a pain, because batteries don't last very long, yet you find tons of them... so which is preferable? Finding lots of batteries and having to keep changing them, or finding very few batteries but making them last realistically longer?) Don't let the low-res menu graphics fool you, this game is polished. I've had no trouble running this on my machine on full-quality, and everything is very cool looking. There's not much to the sounds, you'll get some dramatic music playing when you are chased, and some ambient while you're looking around. You'll get sick flesh ripping and screams, and overall very creepy audio ambiance as well, so this game ain't for the kiddies. If you've ever played the Journeyman Project 2 or 3, then you'll know what this next part is like... Eventually, you discover that you in fact are infected and have to find a cure. In the meantime, you develop a sort of alternative personality you can hear, a voice in your head like Arthur from Journeyman Project 2 and 3, though this one is slightly more malicious. It's a nice change of pace to actually hear people... uh, person....well something talking. As far as other character NPC interactions, they apparently "borrowed" the "Sadistically Funny-Yet-Sad Voice Over the Loudspeaker" theme that Portal kicked *bottom* in doing, with random announcements by some automated announcement system saying things along the lines of "Viral biologists are encouraged to not take their work home with them." They're not quite as punchy and LOL funny as Portal, but they are witty in themselves and I give that a thumbs up. Also, there is a female in there you communicate with via computer linkup that you eventually go off to try saving who may or may not have the cure. Overall, the game is actually worth more than I paid for it, because it delivers a truly chilling gaming experience with nice logic problem solving, and horror, and action. If you are into any of that, I would suggest stopping by your local gamestop and picking up a copy.... I haven't gotten to the end yet, but even if it sucks, the gameplay is enough to warrant a buy for $9.99 (or $4 if you can grab that) One thing to note, I had some trouble getting it to run after it installed, but this was fixed by installing their patch.

Well, I've finished the game, Death To Spies. From start to finish, overall a decent game. The ending I predicted right from the start, so that was a minus. There is supposedly a sequel in the works.Couple of things to note, this game is a lot like Hitman only on the surface. The actual nature of the AI of the NPCs is better in Death To Spies in that you can kill a witness that sees something they shouldn't (a body, you doing something, etc) and the whole level doesn't automatically know what happened (such as the earlier hitman games where your cover would be blown). The civilians react a bit more realistically when they are in danger. They actually get down, rather than try running around like idiots (sometimes directly into my gun in Hitman). Granted, in closed quarters, they will bump into you, but they aren't running randomly.There are ways of exploiting the dumb AI in some cases. If you find a couple (man and woman) kissing, you can basically jump up and down and run around hitting things and they won't notice you. Problem is, if you disrupt their tongue tag, the only real way to keep from raising an alarm is killing the couple. You can Stun the first of them, but that doesn't give you enough time to get around the second to either stun or use chloroform.The game is super hard starting a level, but as soon as you find a lone guard you can swipe his clothing, you all of a sudden feel like you're playing an RPG. The first uniform you get will usually be a standard grunt soldier, and half of the NPCs will know you're a phony (Red icons on the map, watch them or they'll sound an alarm).... As you go you'll get better disguises (getting an officer for example). Once you get a high ranking official, practically the whole map turns green (with the exception of some of the officers) and you can roam anywhere (depending on the level).The levels are huge, but the order you need to complete a mission without getting your brains blown out is rather linear. But this path is very strictly highlighted for you as you play. As you complete an objective, another map marker will show up telling you exactly where you need to go for the next part... This sort of takes out the fun of trial and error, but with the difficulty of the game (and each level taking around 2 hours to beat using saves) you need something telling you where to go because the levels are so huge. There are a lot of buildings you'll never go into just because you know you don't have an objective there.... One of the hardest, yet one of my favorite levels involves blowing up a train bridge. I don't know... I took me forever to beat but when I did, it was just so ... satisfying :DThe levels are diverse, sort of like Hitman 2. You'll be in enemy territory, there are levels in a hotel and an embassy, so you'll have your share of innocents to watch out for (if you liked Traditions of the Trade from Hitman)Stealth is key, if you set off an alarm, or if the guards find a dead body and set off an alarm, things can get ugly real quick. But the disguise system works well by letting you put on another outfit to help get you out of trouble.The points system they have set up gives you a rating to tell you how you did. Unfortunately, I don't think it really does anything other than that. I didn't unlock anything, and nothing new came up after I beat the game. Dynamite is fun You can set a countdown timer on it, and set up all sorts of fun traps/distractions. I highly recommend it if you're looking to try another approach.There is a bit of replay value, though I'm not sure how much though. You will most likely play through the first part stealthy as it is meant to be played. If you go guns blazing, hope that you have a lot of ammo, because there are literally dozens of guards you'll have to fight through depending on where you are. They do give you the option of being violent as opposed to stealthy, but it isn't easy as you can be quickly overwhelmed by 10 guards shooting at you at once.Overall I would recommend this game for people who have played Hitman and/or some of the the Metal Gear series.... It's more like Hitman though, and is in fact better in some cases...Rather than dragging a body, you pick it up and can throw it behind you which makes it super quick to hide bodies, as opposed to Hitman Blood Money's scripted "Hide Body in Dumpster" sequences.For $9.99, I have no regrets. It's given me more game time than Crysis did for $50.

What do you get when you combine Hitman 2, Metal Gear, and Battlefield 1942? ----Death to Spies I saw this at a local Gamestop a few months back but hadn't picked it up due to the fact that it looked like a budget title, though looking it up online I see it got decent reviews... Well I stopped by the same Gamestop and saw it was discounted 30% (from $19.99) and decided "meh, why not." Taking it to the register (along with Penumbra: Black Plague, which I will probably review next) the guy says "Oh hey this game is actually 50% off, we just didn't have any stickers to mark it" So I'm thinking at this point either Gamestop is suffering from the down economy, or this game is suck. Either way, I get 2 games for less than the price of 1 (Penumbra was $4.50.) I start up the training mission just to get a feel as to how the game works, and the first thing I noticed was the character's sort of ...weird run, and how he reminds me of this guy: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ "Oye this should be interesting." But that's about it as far as odd first impressions, because despite my low expectations, the game itself is actually pretty decent. I've gotten through the first 2 missions, and I'll discuss my first impressions. The training mission is rather standard, where you jump through hoops and go where the game tells you so that you can learn all the possible mechanics of the game so that you know how to chuck a grenade or knock out a moving target. The training area is rather large, though, and you have room to just move around if you want. Some of the things take some trial and error, but as you will see, that's pretty much the whole game. Starting the first mission, I was introduced to our main character proper, and even though the characters in the cutscene were supposed to be Russian, when they started talking I was shocked to hear not a Russian, nor even a crappy American attempt at a Russian accent, but a straight up American accent with no attempt whatsoever in faking it. Which I guess is good. Better to not fake a bad accent I guess. (EDIT: Ah, I found a fan-made patch replacing the voices with Russian and adding English subtitles. Thank God for modding!! File: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ Explanation: http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards ) The narration is presented as such, your character is talking to a higher-ranking commander, and the story is told through flashbacks, where each level is basically a past mission you guy has done. After the intro cutscene, you get clear cut objectives, and then you pick your weapons. Weapons are plentiful and pretty sweet actually, but the problem is that you can't keep them for long because foreign weapons such as Russian pistols and rifles draw attention to you and blow your cover if you are in a disguise. You can also equip a backpack which can hold more goodies including mines, dynamite, and more guns. Without a backpack, you can only carry 1 rifle, 1 pistol, and a knife and chloroform (a la hitman 2) and a choke wire (a la hitman as well). The levels are pretty big. The objectives are rather linear though, as the first mission is "get into the base, and kidnap this guy" involves only 1 route into the base, but multiple points where you can kidnap the guy... You are rated pretty much the same as in Hitman, where you get "points" for being stealthy and not killing unnecessary people. The manual states you get extra points by never switching into an enemy disguise, but I don't see how that's even possible in the levels without killing everyone. *maybe it applies to later levels, I have no idea* You get a mini-map with a Metal Gear style cone of vision of enemies, which you will need to survive. The whole stealth part of the game relies on whether or not you are in that cone of vision of your enemies. Basically, if the enemy is marked green, you could walk up to him and hump his leg and nothing would come of it. If it's marked Red, then if they see you, they shoot on sight if they get a good look at you. And if their cone of vision is marked yellow, then they will slowly get suspicious if they see your face (if you're facing them) until they are alerted and sound an alarm. Now, this is another thing, you get a little icon at the top of the screen indicating if what you are doing is suspicious and/or if you are holding a suspicious item (such as a Russian weapon in the middle of a Nazi outpost). Overall the color coding and meters that show up indicating that you are suspicious to certain people is clearly more helpful than the crappy little bar you get in the Hitman games, BUT it is also semi-intrusive as you are looking more at the meters than you are at the game itself. They should have built in a more intuitive system where if the enemy has some visual cue of being suspicious, you would see it rather than checking your anachronistic GPS map or your psychic Suspicion meter. Crouching and even crawling aid in stealth (a la Metal Gear). The cones of vision seen on your map will decrease and you can get closer to an enemy when you are crawling. Thankfully, you can save your game anywhere you want, which is good because you will fail... a lot. Trial and error are big in this game, as you have to try different routes to figure out what is best. This is a Godsend, because the levels take an average of an hour to beat (and there are 10 levels I believe so it's a decent sized game). On to graphics, sounds, etc: Graphics are well done. If you put your back to a wall and zoom in on your hat, you'll see hell of a lot of detail. I mean the game isn't as good as, say, Crysis, but it's definitely not a bad when it comes to graphics. http://www.fangaming.com/images/screenshots/s-375-69334.jpg <--Screenshot Sounds are mostly ambient. You don't really get to hear people talking, but you'll hear birds in woods, and German music being played over loudspeakers in camps, or records playing in offices. Overall well done. The AI is simple, but reacts realistically. If you are in disguise and they are green, you're free to do what you want, but no disguise is perfect so you always have to watch your back for yellow or red blips on your map so you don't get caught as a spy. Overall worth a look if you're into Hitman and like Spy/Stealth games. More mods: Unofficial patch #1: Uncensored textures? Not sure what's censored about it, but I thought I'd post the link for posterity: (EDIT: ah, I think it's the Nazi swastika they censored out because I had noticed that some of the uniforms didn't have it) File: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ Explanation: http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showpost.php?amp;postcount=2

Hello all,I've had this idea for a game in my head that would require keeping track of multiple variables over, say, a 1 week period.... So that means if I wanted to "fast forward" to Wednesday at 9:30pm, it could recall if an object was at x,y,z. Now, I know this would take up A TON of data, but with computers with 1 terabyte of Hard drive available, I figure we've reached the age where my game could be possible What would be the best and most efficient way of doing this and in what language?I tried doing it with QBasic, and it could record and track up to 20 objects for an indefinite amount of time, with a very very small file size, but I tried it in C++ and the file was much larger for some reason.My ultimate goal is to implement this algorithm into a 3D setting, so that's something to consider when trying to pick a programming language. Any ideas?

Well with a WYSIWYG editor, if you know how to code anyway, it saves you some time from having to type out commands if you flip back and forth between code view and design view (talking from a Dreamweaver perspective). Certainly coding the whole thing by hand is the best method of keeping things organized and stable, but there are benefits to using tools to type things out for you.I have personally been leaning towards using PHP the most simply because there are so many organizational shortcuts you can use (such as using includes) to save on coding and make it easier to edit and maintain in the future (editing only 1 file to update the site, rather than updating each page on the site by itself).

How about instead of regurgitating the plot, talk about playing the game, or adding something meaningful to the internet Personally, I have RE4 for the Wii, and everyone says that's probably the best version, but honestly, I haven't been very impressed with it. I'd say the biggest gripe for me is the action sequences that force you to wiggle the Wiimote a certain way at timed moments to get through a cutscene. They did that in RE: Umbrella Chronicles, and that was even worse. You'd be playing through a level doing great, and hit one of those stupid action sequences and your other partner playing with the other remote wouldn't do it right or wasn't fast enough and you'd both die and have to start over or you'd get a crappy score :DAction "simon says" sequences..... I didn't like it in "The Indigo Prophecy" and I don't like it in RE!

In looking for new and different games, I came across this little item (saw it's sequel at Best Buy and looked this one up first for continuity's sake). I've played Penumbra for an hour or so. The only thing I knew going into it was that the ending was really sort of lame and unresolved, but it had good horror/suspense elements and a good physics engine. Running it on highest graphics settings was no problem for me. No bugs or glitches, which is more than I can say for most mainstream titles... But the loading text font and layout sort of showed me that this was indeed either an indy game or really low budget... Either way, I am giving it a shot. So here's the basic story, you are introduced to the plot via text narration. You never hear the protagonist's voice, but rather you're reading a note from him about how he received a note from his dead father talking about a safety deposit box he inherited. He picks it up, and the letter inside says to destroy all this information... Well with curiosity being human-kind's worst flaw (and it would make for a hell of a sort game) he decides not to burn the stuff, but rather go to the place located on a map, in Greenland. (How scenic!) You start the game out in a cabin on a ship where you can test out the physics and how the things work. Basically, rather than having an "action" button that automatically opens doors and unlocks things... you have to click on it with your mouse, and PULL or PUSH stuff to manipulate it. It's really well done. I like it when games break away from the mainstream and make things more realistic like that. Once you pick up some gear and read your journal, you land in Greenland, and find yourself lost in the snow. So far, the game is really linear, and progress is puzzle-driven, as in you need to solve puzzles to progress. It's a different change of pace compared to "shoot x number of bad guys, pick up a key (or push a button) and move to next room and repeat" type of games. Puzzles, for the most part, make perfect sense in a real-world setting, where to get out of the snow you have to smash a hatch's ice off so you can move the handle, or use wooden beams to cross over an electrical barricade (rather than metal or you're toast). As for enemies, you're stuck sneaking to avoid them, because you really don't get any weapons. So far, I've had to deal with just dogs, and I believe spiders ( so not for those who have phobias... or maybe it is if they want a scare!) It sort of doesn't make sense how a dog can survive in a mine area for so long, but plot holes aside, you're still stuck avoiding them, so I hope you're Thief veterans!. Sneaking involve crouching and your screen turning a sort of purple hue. When you're hidden and standing still it becomes really pronounced and it even helps you see a bit better in the dark. It's not perfect, but it's good to know you can hide. Enemy AI is somewhat lacking, but for not having guns to kill them with, I don't mind so much if the dog's can't hear me running in the next room. You get a flashlight, but as with horror flicks, you need to make sure you have sufficient batteries in it or you're SOL You can sort of see in the dark a bit so you can conserve flashlight, and you have a glowstick, but I'm not sure if that's unlimited either. You get some narration via papers laying around. Sort of like System Shock. It works. Why re-invent the wheel? So far it's good for if you have nothing better to do and are in the mood for a puzzle. It's creepy enough to keep your interest, while it also exercises your mind while not being overly difficult. And it's not tons of reading to go through to get the back story *cough*The Experiment *Cough!* Go at your own pace, but keep moving. It reminds me a bit of 'Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth' without the guns. The theme is very much like a Lovecraft plot where the son unwittingly follow's the father's foosteps leading a neverending cycle of death. More as I play it. You can play the "tech demo" free here: http://www.frictionalgames.com/site/penumbradownload/

Simple. Free. Filezilla.The only annoying thing, which is the catch-22, is that they update it very often, like multiple times per month, which means you'll get a message every so often letting you know there is an updated version available, and you have to download it and update your copy. Other than that, excellent program and couldn't recommend it any more highly!

Wow, nice artwork all... Do any of you use those drawing tablets? or just a mouse? I have a Wacom Intuos 3, and makes doing work in Photoshop so much easier most of the time.

I saw this movie before as well. I'm not a comic book guy and never read any of them, so this is an outsider's perspective. Luckily, I had a guy with me who knew it all about the Hulk, so I got the back story.Seeing the "abridged" version of how the Hulk was 'born' was relatively understandable to a guy who doesn't have a clue, but it took my friend to tell me "They're just skipping that because they went over it already in the previous Hulk movie, so people saw that already.""Oh, well that makes sense," I whispered in the theater.The movie itself wasn't bad. Like the first poster said, it's mostly just Ed Norton running from people, which can make for a good action shot, though I'd say it's about 50% of the movie.I feel bad for the actress they got to play the lead role opposite Norton... It seems like almost every scene she was in, the director decided to make it be raining, and they pretty much had her in a white shirt every time. I don't feel bad for the male members of the audience (such as myself), as this was hot I had seen Iron Man before this, also oblivious to the comic series, and found that to be more entertaining. So I would actually recommend that before Hulk. Iron Man just has more humor in it that makes it stand out more.

I grew up on Photoshop, and have little experience with GIMP. I tried it on my linux partition and was hopelessly lost. For people out there like me, look up GIMPShop. It's basically GIMP with photoshop shortcuts and menus. Makes things work much more easily when your shortcuts do what you want them to

The amount of megapixels is only part of the equation. You need good lenses, of course. The CCD (I believe that's what it's called) the part that captures the image itself needs to be high quality. I saw a guy's cell phone camera with 2 megapixels compared to a regular point and shoot at 2 megapixels, and the point and shoot had a better lens and CCD, therefore came out with a much nicer picture, despite the same megapixel size.Above all else, you need a good photographer handling your 39 megapixel beauty

Yep, you really shouldn't mix P tags with header tags. One is essentially like the other, only Header tags will format the text differently.You can customize how the text looks in those types of tags using CSS. So if you want a H2 tag to be 12px, and a H1 tag to be 16px, you can just do that in a style sheet, and it will automatically apply those styles whenever you use those tags. Saves the trouble of updating individual sections of code if you need to change something, as you will only need to change the style sheet, and it will automatically update whichever page is using that stylesheet!

Lol, Lost Coast is a free tech demo you can get off of Steam from back when Half Life 2 came out.That was probably the first start of HDR in (mainstream) games (that I can think of).The Orange Box is the best Bang For Your Buck set you can ever get, if you don't already have HL, HL:ep1 and all the other stuff that came out before the Orange Box was released. Even still. Getting EP2 and Portal is pretty decent. I don't play team fortress 2 though, so I'm probably missing out on that part.It's cool though, because I could "gift" the license for the games I already owned to a friend of mine, so he got to play HL2 and HL ep1 for free (well I paid for em, but he still got to play em)Portal is definitely a kickass game, not even just for the gameplay, but the dry humor they play throughout with the AI tracking your progress. The gameplay just makes it all the more unique, and I hope they make a cool sequel for it, because it's definitely needed.The Half Life series is going strong, unlike most game or movie titles that suck in the middle and have a lackluster finale. I do hope they take it in a good direction, and I think they will for the end of the series, because they give a damn about their customers (or at least fake it if they don't, who knows )

Quick review on my latest game acquisition.... Medieval 2. Picked up the dual pack that came prepackaged with the expansion pack: Kingdoms, and I'd say it's worth the investment.If you've never played a Medieval Total War game in the series, I'd say start with this one if you have the rig. It really doesn't take a huge computer to run, but to get the full effect with the graphics pumped up to show hundreds of guys running around on the screen killing each other, I'd say have a decent rig. Otherwise, it will run, though not sure how well.Basically, Medieval is a combination of turn-based campaigning, and real time strategy fighting. You plot your global domination around a 3d world map, and you can do so many things (your troops can only march so far on the board before they can't move any further) and you can build things such as sea ports, taverns, etc in your towns... And the you end your turn and the AI countries will in turn act accordingly, either peacefully or war-like depending on what they want or who they hate/like. If you engage in combat on the game board by purposely attacking a foreign city or army, you go to the RTS aspect of the game which can be massive. You can either try to capture enemy cities, or fight an army, where you coordinate your troops to fight the other country's army. If you don't want to fight, you can select to auto-fight and it will determine a winner based on what troops you have and how many, versus how many and what kind your opponent has. Generally, if you have more troops, you'll win, plus you'll lose less men if you have experienced generals on your units.Medieval 2 is different than the one's I've played in the past where I can't seem to change which time period we start at. I remember in the old Medieval Total War game, you could start in the early medieval era, all the way up the Renaissance. This one you start in a set year and I don't believe you can change it. Also, it doesn't look like all the same regions are selectable as they were before. I was scrolling through and some odd ones weren't available. I really didn't dig in too deep, but it's worth a look on that aspect. I started off in Venice, and slowly worked my way to conquering various territories, and slowly started realizing that my empire was not being run the way I really wanted it to, so I pretty much scrapped that (after about 10 hours of gameplay) and decided to take on the New World with one of the expansion campaigns. This is indeed quite a change of pace over playing the same European fights.... Now you're making peace and warring with the native americans, the Aztecs, Mayans, etc. You can play as the Spanish, or as one of the natives... I picked Spanish and started off by making peace with everyone till I could get settled in the couple of areas I started off with... I slowly started making up my army and fortune, until finally I could start taking out Rebels. Now, rebels are generally not associated with anyone, so you can fight them without starting a war with half the other cultures involved on the map. So once I had them, two of the AI countries started warring, so I sat back and waited for them to kill each other off, and then I wiped out the winner.There are many strategic ways of going about this. If you are a super power with a big army, you can generally sway other cultures to do what you want with a simple "Do as we say or we'll attack" but that generally doesn't work.With the America's expansion, one of the biggest things you had to keep up with was religion. Being in a new world, you have to make sure you convert the heathens using priests and it makes taking cities a bit easier, and revolts less common. Likewise, they'll shuffle out Sun God worshipers to counter your teachings...I'm still playing, but so far I'd say graphics have come a long way, though there still a way's to go. Sounds are excellent and realistic. Music is ambient, and adds, though sometimes repetitive. Gameplay can be hard for people who aren't used to strategy games, but it's definitely worth a look even to download a demo of it to try out.One of the problems might arise if you become bored if you're used to shooters like I am. So to take a break I installed S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl for kicks (also a good game once you patch it up and get some mods

OpenOffice has a "Export to PDF" function that works really well. Either that or creating an 8.5x11 image in Photoshop and saving as PDF from there. Either way are the easiest ways I can think of creating a PDF.

I say extremism is bad, so I use both! Div tags load faster than nested tables would, but tables display better for the most part as what you see is what you get, and you don't have to worry about specifying exact pixel sizes with tables, as some can resize dynamically... So I say use DIVS for the overall layout of the site,so you can apply some cool CSS formatting, but when it comes to laying out content, sometimes it's just easier to throw things into a table so they lay out nice!

Yep, if you're going for an online text game, php is probably the way to go. If you're doing something offline, though, you may consider programming in QBasic because it's the easiest language I know (though it may be a dead one haha) but it'll help teach you logic of how programs "think" and move through a program and it's a good starter language. or if you want something more modern, Game Maker (site's currently down, but here's the link: http://www.yoyogames.com/gamemaker) is a new sprite-based free game making tool that you could probably use to make pure text-based games highlighted with images for some flavor if you so desired.