EVEn further into the emptiness

Our corp is up, yay. We are *many fingers* and we like to *squeeze the juice*!



It was a long trip, but there's a nice spot at Uosusuokko system (aka Suokukko) - lots of asteroids around, the system's near 0.0 space but still secure enough, and even quite close to Jita, the biggest trade system in the known universe. So Many Fingers got a hangar from this little Caldari station, one with a nice view.





Also, got myself a destroyer just for shits and giggles before getting a more expensive cruiser. The targeting range is abysmal, but once I get close enough with all my seven little babies, they do unleash a satisfying hail of uranium upon the offenders. Very cheap and not that effective in the long run, but gets my point across with those I need to get up against -- been hunting mostly small time (pi)rat(e)s with it, nothing grand, I still consider myself more of a miner/trader. Though when I decide to buy that cruiser, there's gonna be a small podgoobath just to get that out of my mind. Even carebears need to get loose sometimes.


Mining is getting more organized, bought a few secure containers as we got tired of the goddamn can flippers. Also with the Strip miners it's such a *party* to clear almost whole fields of valuable ore in a, well, reasonable time span. The corp just needs more sec containers, way more. And bigger ships, I want my Hulk already! ..enjoying my ~200,000,000.00 isk price tag.

Guess that's pretty much it since the last entry, on the other side of life I' ve been giving myself to school; we're doing this huge project for Nelonen and it really is draining all my creativity and strength. But I'm gladly giving, since it's fun, I learn a lot while doing, and we have a great team to work with \o/. The stuff we're working on is going to air somewhere during the next year as Nelonen renews it's look. Guess we'll be up for the whole year or something, keep an eye on the early morning cartoons especially, and their announcements :). That's probably all I can say about that here.

Happy holidays everyone, see you in space :).

The ____ is a spy

Ooh aah, zombies soon (+ additional Valve Time). Left 4 Dead 2!

If you somehow missed it, preordering L4D2 had some interesting effects as revealed in these next few screenshots:

..just rawcking mah axe.


Getting there..


Yes. Bills hat for Team Fortress 2, yay.

--


The new, bluntly suggestive zombies. She looks like she's trying so hard! The L4D2 demo has been under some serious gaming for these few weeks, everything seems pretty much as hoped for; it still feels like home, but everything's more polished and just a bit different to feel fresh.

Hrrraah, can't wait for versus <3.




Not related. Really.

EVEnt horizon

Oh wow, now I've done it, I surrendered myself to EVE Online.

The funeral bells for my already dying spare time, finally I meet the legendary MMO that avoids all the godawful "kill hundred dire rats after you're done with these thousands of dire wolves" and "hey it's this exactly same old generic fantasy theme all over again" traps and delivers something even I get excited about. And if you know me, you know that I'm not that good in coming into full terms with MMO's. I've tried many, since the idea of a huge shared world is still very intriquing to me, but it's one month tops that I can keep that interest alive when the game usually does its best trying to bury any innovative ideas and just fit into some already invented simple mold. Could be longer than a month in rare cases, but then it's all about the friends there, not the game itself. I'm very excited to see what happens with EVE.




I mean, I just spent another evening mining asteroids and enjoyed every minute of it; they weren't lvl1 dire asteroids and they didn't attack me! Then there's the actually working economy that's hugely dependant on the players (not NPCs with infinite pockets ), everything feels like it's actually immersible for the player. I spent time browsing the Market to find a good system to sell my ore, travelled there to sell my goods, refined some of them and: PROFIT. Of course, this is way more profitable in a group.

Sure, I'm not talking about some 100% realistic space simulation, but it's not just "magic", it's based on the real world and science.



An example: you accidentally or just out of plain curiosity jump in a solar system too far from authorities, maybe even as far as the 0.0 space, the no mans land with no NPC police at all, only the player controlled mega corporations' own laws. You happen to get ambushed by some pirates with pumped up PVP ships -- your ship gets shot to pieces, gets looted, they even blow up your escape pod. Those bastards.
Better start hoping that you did remember to take that more expensive insurance to cover your lost ship and that you updated your clone back in your home system so the skills you learned are still in your newly activated vatgrown brain as well, as you set course for revenge. The insurace covers only your ship, all the stuff in the wreckage is lost in the hands of the outlaws. It might sound harsh at first, but it only teaches you to stop doing stupid shit and in the end you are only smarter and having more fun.



Also, the fact that there are no levels per se, is such a huge plus that I could kiss them just for not being there, the important factors are your learned skills and your wealth. And you set up these 24h learning queues that progress even when you're offline, another nice trick to avoid unnecessary grinding and to make the next day's login a even more pleasant one; "hey, I learned a bunch of neat stuff during the night". And no different servers or shards, only one big world!

EVE, even though it's a bit too early to tell, I might be in love with you.

(Hey guys, there's a free 14 day trial available if you're man enough. You can catch me online by the name Anenae, a Minmatar miner/something.)

Also, the classic. Not entirely true though, just keep in mind that there's less hand holding and a bit more stuff to learn in the beginning than in an average MMO, and the game isn't gonna tell you that "you're a [FIGHTER] so you must [FIGHT] with your [WEAPON]".

Hmm, I think I have to create an alt Amarr at some point even though they are religious fanatics. Just because of the name :D.

Zombies plz

Well then! Some of you have probably wondered why this took so damn long, I mean, it was bound to happen someday. Here it is now!


Also found this pic of Smoker-tan I drew about the same time I did Hunu-tan. She felt like she was missing something back then, maybe teh funnies, but after giving her colors last night I guess she's ready for the world. Bill, beware.


orz

BRÜTAL VICTORY

Aaarrh, Brütal Legend <3.

If you're any sort of metallist-kind of dude/dudette, I highly recommend you to find yourself a copy of this awesome piece of METAL. Like, right now.

I don't have a X360 myself, but we gathered to a more better equipped friend's place with few dudes to try it out and Ozzy on a bicycle, it payed out thousandfold. Haven't felt that much like home with a game since, well.. I don't know when. It's not that the gameplay itself is too fantastic or anything new, the metallic beauty of Brütal Legend lies in whole different, brütal spheres. It's fucking metal, dudes.

Been spending my time finding those oldies that play throughout the game from Spotify now, pretty awesome shit. I love finding old treasures that can still make me go "hell yeah!"

--
And on a completely unrelated note, this kinda cracked me up.
(aww man, they already removed all the comments complaining about zombies)

Encounter

Something little for those who enjoy these two insanely awesome AI's. Had to speedrun Portal once again to get the cobwebs out of my brain and this is the result. I have so much to do for school that I can't think straight.

SHODAN should be just a 2D image on the screen, but I felt like she needed some depth and perspective in addition to her charming manners. She's, err, using some mad parallax mapping, or something.

Perfectly normal maps

Click above, I broke my embed codes.

This about one second's spotlight for my leading actress Will came to be as a part of my slowly regenerating trust for my PC's current updated state of not constantly crashing and actually being able to run 3Ds max properly. I began studying Zbrush and learned how to bake normal maps out from it, something I'd wanted to learn for some time now. After all, the games nowdays are pretty dependent on normal mapping and it feels like one of those things that every modeler should be able to handle.


So Willow here is my little learning dummy, she suffers from many flaws since I haven't built her that properly from the start, more like applied all newfound knowledges on her as time has passed, so she isn't finished by all means; the skinning needs work (the sleeves for example), her shirt -arms mostly - is probably going to get new geometry altogether (once again), she has yet no facial rigging at all, only that constant ":[|"-look on her face, and so forth. The actual NM's show best for some few frames as the light hits her jeans.


Anyways, as I baked her those maps, I thought that what the hell, might as well see if I remember anything from those After Effects -classes too. So I changed the moving light that was originally there just to show the NM in different lighting into that little glowing whatever, built a scene for her over this old low-res forest painting I'd made ages ago and tried to put her in there at least somewhat decently. Lots of different layers of noise, color correction and blur occured.


Spent only one late night for this scene and didn't bother with too much detail, but this proved to be really useful for me as I went through the phases needed for getting stuff into proper polygons and out of 3Dmax into a moving picture.

Brontotype

What I've been doing the past four days? Playing Prototype, that's what.


I had no idea I'd get so deeply consumed -- exploring Manhattan, and the ridicilous feel of raw power just blew me away and glued me to my PC for every free moment I could spare. It probably will today also, as soon as I'm done with this entry.
Even though the story mode is completed, there's the free roam mode which lets you, well, freely roam through the island and complete little events to gain more exp.




Alex isn't as subtle in his gentle pushes as his look-alike Altaïr.


Or in his attacks.


Or in his feeding habits.


He just likes to slam his fists to the ground all day.


"Ugh..no more dude, I'm done drinking for tonight."

The fact that the slimy dude sitting there is called a Hunter and Alex looks like a Hunter from L4D with his hoodie, is such a huge little joy for me, a hunter hunting hunters. Heh :|.

Also this.

Level up

So, I got my rig updated. I can finally shoot zombies with every possible eye candy there is without my PC choking up all the time!


Miss Internet.





With that look on her eyes, she'll probably take him as far as Valhalla.
..I dunno, this just somehow got me thinking of Valkyries.


The motion blur looks pretty neat, especially in screenshots. Featuring Miiz as bouncer.


"Shit. You did all this?"

Uaah

I did it! I hacked and purged her mainframe.

I'm sorry ;_;.


Couldn't be helped, slicing up a whole space station full of people is a bit harsh, not to mention the endless threats of spreading her nasty virus-thingie to Earth. I mean, I can't even use the infestation.


This place was creepy, didn't expect such a Gigerish approach from her.
And that stuff crawls - pulsing red veins underneath it. You should've been there.


Meanwhile, I caught a roomfull of these guys sleeping on duty. How sweet.


Her elites tried to give some resistance, then I remembered the RF-07 Skorpion I'd picked up earlier. Minor damage yeah, so here's 3 x minor damage's per click from a 100 bullet mag; swiss cybernetic cheese.


There's she is, finally. Didn't go quietly, no.


But oh well, when this baby gets to its destination -- we should always watch where we dump our garbage, now shouldn't we.

It's funny, but now after the original it's much easier to see the little things that are 'missing' from SS2. Nothing too big and nothing that makes the game any less brilliant, but still some little things point out even sharper now.
Like the lack of cyberspace/simplified hacking, some UI-things, and there's the omnius presence of the badly executed 3D that makes the sprites actually look good and stuff like that. Derms, I really miss those little patches, but I guess that's just the influence of me reading Gibson's Neuromancer a while ago. Good book, you should look into it.

I also started a new game in SS2 with a PSI-fag, let's see if his neuromagic can replace guns completely. As if.