Chopkinsca

I still find it a bit weird when a random stranger compliments my Doom hat. 

When it comes to music, maybe I just have shitty tastes.

If you had to set up your desk in any spot in E1M1, where would you put it? 

Just started the second Where's Waldo book. It's the only one I haven't looked at since I was young. Should be a good time.

I'm such a fucking child.

I have to say, Korn's newest album is quite solid. Of course, you have to like Korn in the first place.

So I was just scrolling through Youtube recommend and this happened

This is just a preview of what I've been working on for the past week or two. Time to completion is unknown. Depends on how the stars align and how much alcohol or other drugs I can obtain beforehand.

I finally live up to my username

Saying goodbye is never easy. Not because of a death, but out of choice.

This is going here because I have nowhere else to go with it.

I had a friend from a few years back. We rarely talked, with weeks or months between messages. Two years ago I decided to push and we started to message each other every day. I started to grow feelings for her. She is local, but we have only met up twice because of stupid anxiety issues. Last year I told her I had strong feelings for her, but she didn't feel the same way. I felt so horrible but we remained friends, because why throw away a great friendship over my stupid heart and feelings. It was going okay. My feelings for her were still there. I'd get stupid ideas that maybe she would change her mind and my mind would take messages the wrong way. I guess things got to a tipping point lately. Within the last hour I sent a short message saying goodbye. I unfriended her in every place we were friends and here I am. She was my closest and really, the only friend I had. 

I wonder what kind of maps I'd be making if I didn't drop off the Doom modding scene for 10 years.

After 16 years, I finally have the first letter of my username capitalized.

I don't even know what this status update thing is. All the crap the hip kids are using these days.

Well, it seems I just can't get back into modding Doom. I used to have such a passion for it, but now, my creativity just feels numb. I've tried a few times to get back into it, but just can get interested. I miss the days where hours would be lost creating whatever crap I created. Bah.

For some reason I wanted to play some Roguelikes, so I scoured the webs to find a bunch to play. This is what I found: http://imgur.com/a/QOcpX

Just wondering, any must plays here, or anything I missed?

After exactly one year of hard grinding for experience, I reached level 28. I have yet to decided where to put my stat points though.

I know I could go to a random tech site and ask this, but I feel an answer from here would be more personal.

How does a Nvidia Geforce 6200 256MB compare to a ATI radeaon 9600XT 128MB? I found with the 6200 it allowed me to play doom 3 on max settings, but other games I'm getting shit performance. I thought that because the VRAM was higher, the 6200 would be better, but I'm having doubts. I heard that some 6200's have 'TurboCache'. From what I know, the card actually only has a small amount of RAM and uses system RAM for most of it's processing.

With that, it might not matter. I may be getting some 512MB card (no idea on brand/model), but the price will be free, so can't complain.

About a year ago I tried to learn 3D modeling and it didn't really turn out well. I ended up getting overwhelmed and kind of dove into the deep end with learning. I was able to model simple stuff, then I got into a "hey, let's model a car" type of mindset and found it was too much to handle. Looking back, I wish I kept up with it because people have said I have talent.

One big distraction was WoW. I was convinced to start playing again with some friends. That's probably the biggest reason I played, to play with other people. Played the new expansion a bit and finally was bored of doing the same thing every day.

All of this time I have been frantically thinking of what I want to do in life. At one point during the summer I picked up photography and enjoyed it. The only downside for a photography career is that you are usually self employed doing contracts and I can't really handle that, I'd rather work with a team.

About a month ago, I was talking with my employment councilor and he brought up "what have you been doing with game modding? You had talent". Around the same time, I picked up work on Phocas Island 2.5 and looking back on it, I'm quite amazed at what I have achieved with that and realized I *do* have talent.

Then I had the perfect way to get back into Blender. A friend wanted a simple model for his mod and I gave it a try. I found Blender is like riding a bike and in a short time I was able to make a relatively good model:


A new version of blender was released since I last used it and at first was intimidated by the changed UI, but as I worked with it, I saw the logic for all the changes and now I prefer the new version. As a simple "get back into things" model, I tried a Barrel (which I could used in PI2.5) and this is the result (I know the planks should be tightly together and the lid should be inside the planks):


I've been looking at local game companies and there are a few I feel I'd have a chance at. An advantage I have is that my employment councilor can try and get me working for a company for no pay just so I can learn and get used to being part of a team. Not having to be paid will look attractive to a game company should my little portfolio impress them.

So now I'm just doing tutorials and playing around with blender. I can only get better and someday will achieve a dream I've had since I first played a video game; game designer.

Two Christmas's ago I got a nice camera. Up until recently, I haven't used it much. I mostly used it to take pictures of things for memory. Of course with me being a noob, I was taking pictures using the camera's automatic setting mode. About a month ago I decided I wanted to get serious with photography.

I sat down and watched a bunch of videos on youtube for beginner tips. One of the first tips was to get out of auto-mode and change the settings manually. I thought I would have a lot of trouble with this, but I caught on fairly quickly.

I still have a lot to learn, but that's one of the draws to photography. Anyone can pick up a camera and take pictures, but it takes a bit more to create unique photos.

My camera's specs
review of my camera



Basic shots, all these where done in the camera's auto scene recognition
Some more basic shots in auto mode. Mostly showing what my job involves.


After this point, I was shooting in manual mode (setting ISO, aperture, shutterspeed)
A walk in the park. June 23, 2011
I liked a lot of these shots, but I forgot to reset the white balance from when I was playing with it the night before
A nice day out
A weekly car show
Another walk in the park.


If anyone has some tips on good photography, or just general comments on my photos, I'd love to hear it.

I've been slowly learning how to model using blender. I'm not going at it as much as I should be, but I have made some progress. Right now I'm working on my first non-tutorial model. I've only done a few modeling tutorials so far.

It still needs quite a bit of work. Need to add more spikes to the shell, then do the skinning/materials that I have no idea how to do. I doubt I'll get to animating it. I imagine I made a bunch of noob mistakes in making it.

So today I had a meeting with the CEO of a local independent game company. The meeting went pretty well. I made a website showing off my main project; Phocas Island 2. He was impressed with it and understood the limits I was working under. I'd say my chances of getting this job are average to high. He said straight out that he would say no right away even to someone with a college degree in game animation/graphics. From the images I showed him he said he could feel that I have a passion for this type of work. He also discussed my getting a newer computer (which he wouldn't do if I didn't have a chance at the job). For now, he gave me two programs to play around with (Blender and Unity 3d) until next Thursday for the follow up.

I've never thought of making a job out of game design, and here I am with a chance at a dream. I hope I get it, would be great to develop with other people in a room instead of alone on some hobby project.

I have a project idea that I would really like to see done, but sometimes I just don't know if I can bother enough to do anything with it. Early last year, it was looking good and I made a bit of progress (mostly experimental, as usual) but I gradually stopped doing anything in regards to doom editing. I really wish I could see a finished product, or something close to it in someone elses work, but no one ever does anything even close to what I envision. Right now, ForeverHood is my most anticipated mod because from what I have seen, it seems in some ways similar to my project idea (just not in a good style as ForeverHood is). Maybe it is lack of organization in the design aspect, or trying to do too much by myself, or the fact I am morbidly depressed, but I can't seem to stay with working on it at all.


Two or three of you may have seen parts of what I had done because when I'm drunk I like to give other people a copy of what I have so far so they can tell me things about it. I wonder if those people ever think "I wonder when that map will be finished" or something like that. My idea involved gameplay that is mostly different from what you are used to in doom (there are hundreds of other maps if you want classic doom style play) but still be fun and an overall (maybe) memorable experience. I planned on having it largely open-ended, but not convoluted as to where you should be going.

I wanted it to involve an item system, where items are used to solve puzzles (not like in hexen though). More of like in adventure games where you experiment and use logic to use the items in proper ways. Also like in zelda games. One of the more simple examples may be finding something that could be used as a torch and then finding a fire to lit it, then in turn using the torch to burn down some trees that block a path. The 'puzzles' that move the story forward will be more easy to figure out, and the ones that reveal secrets will be more towards the difficult side. I also want to have a lot of secrets to find, maybe making half or more of the level set being secrets. Secrets not just being new areas to explore, but secret actions you can perform whether it be using items in odd ways, or otherways.

There would be a story, but it would be subtle and may not be recognized the first time through. Using hints in the environment will reveal the story. I haven't fully decided on the story though.

I had planned on making a lot of new variations on monsters. Not 'fire 300 fireballs at once' type monsters though, ones that will make sense and 'blend in with' the atmosphere of the map. Some parts will have a lot of monsters and play a bit like classic doom2 maps, and others will have very few monsters, but they will appear at times that fit.

Maybe if people comment on this, it will motivate me to get working on it again and perhaps finish it. I do have a small part of it that was from when I was going to do it in hexen, and could serve as a 'demo' map if anyone special would want to look at it. Having other people help me work on it could help it's release, but I would have to find 1) someone I trust,and 2) have that person be able to map in a certain way that fits what I want which would be rather difficult, so I am not asking for help.

Sorry for the paragraphs, I forgot the rules on proper english sentance/paragraph structure. Except you can't forget something you never knew. That is all.

Or if that doesn't work: link

and if neither works, I don't know.

I have a new computer which for the most part worked fine for the first week. Then it would start crashing often and make it difficult to do anything. I reformated several times and it didn't fix anything.
Right now I think that maybe the RAM is bad because I think the errors are memory errors.
I know of memtest86 as a memory tester, but I don't have a floppy drive or a way to burn a bootable CD so I can run the program. Are there any memory testing programs that can be run in windows?
I don't really know which programs to trust on the internet anymore.


Edit: I forgot to mention anything about the specs. I don't know what will matter, but I imagine knowing that it is XP would help. If anything else needs to be known, just let me know as I am sort of lazy (more of tired of the computer) right now.

I have bought two parts for my computer so far, one being the hard drive. I have another computer on which I have a lot of files I want on it's hard drive. I am sure I already know the answer to this question, but I want to ask it anyway:
If I format a partition on the new hard drive, am I able to get the files from the other hard drive while running XP? I am sure you can, because of the whole 'backup' partition deal that people set their hard drives up with. I guess I am just bein cautious for some reason.

Being able to get power to it may be and issue, as I don't know what the computer looks like inside, as it isn't mine. If it is a big problem, I should have the PSU bought by the time I will be able to try and transfer the files.

From this website, am I correct to assume that the most expensive one would be the best? If not, what would truely be the best?

Or would there be a better one from this website (under $200)? If there would be a good deal, I could go $50 higher, but only if I have reason.
I just don't have much knowledge on graphics cards (or anything on computer components for that matter).

Thanks for helping if you do so.

Am I correct to assume that in cases that already have a PSU, that you can remove it if you need to? I would think it wouldn't be too sane to fuse the PSU to the case, even if they are a package. Then again, they could be attached for the same reasons.

The reason is because at the store where I am buying this computer, the only cases I want come with a 300W power supply. I will most likely need a 400W+ PSU, so I would need to replace the PSU.