Official Off-Topic Thread

[JJ Naas]

Anybody ever give Vampire Bloodlines: The Masquerade a try? It's a FPS/RPG based on a boardgame property by WhiteWolf. It was made byTroika Studios, which was founded by some core members of the the RPG team at Interplay. That would be the guys who were making RPGS like Fallout. Vampire is a pretty solid effort, Great story, multiple characters and the dialog and in game opportunities are affected by your stats. If you feel like given it a shot, make sure to look for the fan made patch. Troika's games are kinda infamous for various bugs. I don't think it was entirely their fault, though, they were under a lot of financial pressure pretty much over the course of their existence. I even read an interview with Leonard Boyarsky(one of the founders), describing some pretty brutal crunch time he put in over most of their final two games that took him out of the game industry for a short period. And now he's on the design team for Diablo III

I've read that the fan patches to Vampire: the Masquerade: Bloodlines make a great game out of the buggy release version, but I've never played it, although I DID play and even complete Vampire: the Masquerade, which was a rather straightforward and simple RPG, but for some reason highly enjoyable.

I've been playing a fan patched Oblivion for a good while now, a big patch to get rid of the scaling monsters, fix bugs, improve AI, and so forth. I've enjoyed it greatly. I'm currently a level 10 female imperial Thief/Mage and I've just bought my first own house. I've stood clear of the main plot, I haven't entered a single Oblivion Gate yet.

[.TakaM]

Guess that 8bit sprite at IGN
You guys should enjoy that, I identified almost all of them.

[.TakaM]

Los Angeles, Calif.-The Star has learned exclusively that the voice cast of Futurama has just signed a new contract with Fox after weeks of intense salary negotiations.

As late as last week, the network was threatening to replace the original voices of Matt Groening's cult-hit cartoon, to the point of actually announcing a casting call for voice actors to replace them.

The compromise agreement, with the studio paying more and the actors accepting less, comes after the announcement of a 26-episode pick-up here by Comedy Central. Futurama also airs internationally in syndication, has produced four bestselling straight-to-DVD movies (later cut into episodes) and an upcoming feature film.

Severely reduced pay for all!

[skw]

You might have seen it already, but . . .

http://thevillagepetstoreandcharcoalgrill.com/

. . . fantastic stuff!

[MintPastille]

Coming from the very book-oriented field of programming, I am wondering if there is any literature worthy of my attention about art. Not specifically pixel art, but rather about drawing in general, as I suspect that the same principles apply pretty much everywhere. I am perfectly well aware of that skill comes with practice, but anything which speeds up my learning is something I'm interested in looking into. Have you ever read any art-related books which you've found to be good?

I realize that this is a very broad question; there are books about anatomy, color theory, perspective and so on. Preferably the book would be about elementary concepts, since I am a beginner.  I try not to be too specific, because I think that you're the ones who'd know what to start with.

[Jakten]

drawing on the right side of the brain
I have the old version of this book so i can't really say how different the new version is but i'm sure it can't be worse. A lot of very good exercises for drawing. If you do them regularly i'm sure you will improve quickly.

[Dex]

Reading MintPastille's post saying 'a book not specifically for pixel-art' leads me to wonder how a book dedicated to the basics and the advanced aspects of pixel art and digital graphics would turn out. Maybe Pixelation should turn that into a community project, since I've seen the limitless pixel knowledge displayed here before

Also, Jakten, I've got the old copy of that book too, I believe. Was a good read, very helpful.

[Cow]

Reading MintPastille's post saying 'a book not specifically for pixel-art' leads me to wonder how a book dedicated to the basics and the advanced aspects of pixel art and digital graphics would turn out.

As far as I know Ptoing has something of the kind (still) planned, I think this might've been mentioned once or twice on the forum here.

Also I have no cool segue but I'm turning 18 in about an hour! Although that doesn't entirely change much because I don't have money for any of my vices and I live in the most Conservative part of Canada so my vote's a throwaway.

[JJ Naas]

Technical drawing guides aside, reading about the history of art is also very inspirational, interesting and educating. And as the techniques and styles all around the world develop and change on the road from paleolithic cave paintings to modern art, you can also read that as a guide about what in general makes a drawing, painting, statue, building, vase or any other object visually pleasing. I have this book and it's always nice to open it from a random spot and marvel at the awesome things on its pages. Recognizing what makes any piece of art look good is essential. With technical knowhow one can paint a realistic apple, but all technical excellence is pointless if the painting as a whole isn't interesting.

[MintPastille]

...and I live in the most Conservative part of Canada so my vote's a throwaway.

Canada? Is it anything like Corner Gas?