Blah
UT2007 demos = drool.
I’ve had access to the inner circle of the Unreal development universe for a while now... a right so many fan boys would all but kill for. Yet in the hustle and bustle of my life, ntm frustration at hammering the engine into a workable demo in a compressed timeline on specialized hardware, I had never got around to downloading the actual UT2007 game / demo package.
Until Steve calls up and asks for a hand prepping a particular demo copy of UT2007 such that it can be burned and run on a different machine. For demonstration purposes, though you can understand why there’s not much documentation along this line.
Well, just what I need - an excuse to download 8.45 gigs over an un-intuitive synchronization package. Well, download it thrice [if most of the large content packs skipped over]; the first was incomplete, the second was complete [but the source code version... i.e. no exe files, nor updated instructions on the overly obtuse compilation procedure] and the third the actual demo build. I was overjoyed when I saw the exe files.
I haven’t played the game yet, but the demos are freaking awesome. The engine was 4 kinds of cool to start, but its really neat to see all those pretty pictures presented in realtime. It does take forever to load though, but so far its really rather nifty. My only big complaint is that the skyboxes in the space scenes suck balls. Sure, it’s a high res planet texture, but it’s really dead and lifeless; even one of their original space scenes + high res-joy would be a lot more visually interesting.
I can’t [nor really shouldn’t, for NDA / sue-my-ass reasons] share copies of this, but I’d be more than interested in giving anyone a tour of cutting edge tech... and more tastefully applied than Perfect Dark! [Though PD was displacement / parallax mapping only... none of this cool emissive lighting, soft shadows, high res skins, etc etc]. I’ll point out that people also do NOT look like giant Barbie dolls!
Renders = slow as all hell...
Poor media box... it runs Half Life 2 like nothing else, but its not much of a render workhorse... I’m strongly debating outfitting it with more RAM and a duel core Athlon, inspired by Tom’s crazy success in that dept. Though in this case it would likely cease to be a media box and more a true secondary computer, monitor and all. I wonder if I can get 3DI to pay for it.
Guestimation right now is that these Sheraton renders [nice, high quality ones I can be happy with] will take ~ 8 - 10 hours a peace. So, about 5 days of solid computing... I’ll post them when I get them.
In the meantime, I have to write some tutorials on box modeling. Should be fun; I’ve been meaning to do something like this for years, but once more the promise of being paid to do said task seals the deal. I’ll make said tutorials available for anyone interested in learning the basics of this software.
And last, but certainly not least, I’m _not_ through with Art History!
NOooo! I met with Dawn this afternoon [apparently I have a reputation for scary administration, though she does remember the bribe, er, chocolates after the confusion last-year]. Anyways, I met with her to get an official copy of my education to date / remaining, and get Dad off my back. Well, turns out that everything checks out save my being 3 Art History credits short. Bloody fucking Joy. And a REAL Art History class too! Not a neat seminar, but a boring ass lecture of boringness.... blah.
And the real reason for this post? LJ-Cut = awesome. I will be more sensible with its use in the future though....
I’ve had access to the inner circle of the Unreal development universe for a while now... a right so many fan boys would all but kill for. Yet in the hustle and bustle of my life, ntm frustration at hammering the engine into a workable demo in a compressed timeline on specialized hardware, I had never got around to downloading the actual UT2007 game / demo package.
Until Steve calls up and asks for a hand prepping a particular demo copy of UT2007 such that it can be burned and run on a different machine. For demonstration purposes, though you can understand why there’s not much documentation along this line.
Well, just what I need - an excuse to download 8.45 gigs over an un-intuitive synchronization package. Well, download it thrice [if most of the large content packs skipped over]; the first was incomplete, the second was complete [but the source code version... i.e. no exe files, nor updated instructions on the overly obtuse compilation procedure] and the third the actual demo build. I was overjoyed when I saw the exe files.
I haven’t played the game yet, but the demos are freaking awesome. The engine was 4 kinds of cool to start, but its really neat to see all those pretty pictures presented in realtime. It does take forever to load though, but so far its really rather nifty. My only big complaint is that the skyboxes in the space scenes suck balls. Sure, it’s a high res planet texture, but it’s really dead and lifeless; even one of their original space scenes + high res-joy would be a lot more visually interesting.
I can’t [nor really shouldn’t, for NDA / sue-my-ass reasons] share copies of this, but I’d be more than interested in giving anyone a tour of cutting edge tech... and more tastefully applied than Perfect Dark! [Though PD was displacement / parallax mapping only... none of this cool emissive lighting, soft shadows, high res skins, etc etc]. I’ll point out that people also do NOT look like giant Barbie dolls!
Renders = slow as all hell...
Poor media box... it runs Half Life 2 like nothing else, but its not much of a render workhorse... I’m strongly debating outfitting it with more RAM and a duel core Athlon, inspired by Tom’s crazy success in that dept. Though in this case it would likely cease to be a media box and more a true secondary computer, monitor and all. I wonder if I can get 3DI to pay for it.
Guestimation right now is that these Sheraton renders [nice, high quality ones I can be happy with] will take ~ 8 - 10 hours a peace. So, about 5 days of solid computing... I’ll post them when I get them.
In the meantime, I have to write some tutorials on box modeling. Should be fun; I’ve been meaning to do something like this for years, but once more the promise of being paid to do said task seals the deal. I’ll make said tutorials available for anyone interested in learning the basics of this software.
And last, but certainly not least, I’m _not_ through with Art History!
NOooo! I met with Dawn this afternoon [apparently I have a reputation for scary administration, though she does remember the bribe, er, chocolates after the confusion last-year]. Anyways, I met with her to get an official copy of my education to date / remaining, and get Dad off my back. Well, turns out that everything checks out save my being 3 Art History credits short. Bloody fucking Joy. And a REAL Art History class too! Not a neat seminar, but a boring ass lecture of boringness.... blah.
And the real reason for this post? LJ-Cut = awesome. I will be more sensible with its use in the future though....