Nadril

Yeah they did have one crash the first day lol, servers were getting overloaded. Like every server was high/full pop. Been running quite smooth though even with these big events going on. I agree too that the ad sort of left me thinking it was just another garbage MMO but I was pretty surprised.

I'm not entirely new to photography (I've dabbled in it before) but this is a photo I've kind of liked from my photography class I'm doing so far. Not the most interesting subject, I pretty much just stayed around our tech center. Thoughts? I'm still pretty new to this and it is interesting coming up with subject matter around my campus. At least I'll have better subject matter once we start messing around with studio lighting and stuff. But yeah I haven't done photography in like 6 years. Oh and I'm using a Canon Rebel or something like that, school DSLR.

http://www.riftgame.com/en/ So yeah, another MMO. I've been debating making a thread on this for a while now and after a few days of playing the open beta I figured why not. I'm just not going to try and gush all over it this time :P. So, what is RIFT? Rift is a new MMO by TRION, a relatively new company to the scene. The game, especially upon first glance, draws a lot of inspirations from current generation MMOs. Indeed RIFT doesn't seem to be looking to "shake up" these like some other major MMO releases coming down the road but instead they are just trying to use these mechanics to their fullest. That isn't to say, however, that RIFT is a carbon-copy. The game has a couple features that stand out from other MMO games on the market and give it a bit of a unique flare. Those include: Rifts Rift's are sort of the bread and butter of what RIFT (surprise?) is all about. What are these? Well the best way to put it is they are sort of like a more dynamic public quest from warhammer. For those who don't know public quests were basically these large quests that would happen in a certain spot of a zone and have several stages. You were graded on how much damage, healing and damage taken you did. Well the rift's in this game are somewhat like that. You have major and minor (and then raid rifts later, IIRC) that will "randomly" spawn around a zone. These act like a public quest where you go through the stages and stuff. At the end you clear the rift and get a reward. The rift's are all based off of elements (death, water, fire, ect.). The difference is that RIFT takes it further than that. For example if a rift is left uncheck the mobs from it will start building footholds and encampments around the zone. They have the possibility of taking over a zone if left unchecked. Of course on beta the mobs don't tend to get far due to the zone being crowded, but I've seen them attacking and such. In addition to this there are zone-wide events that will trigger that involve rift's. Some are basic ones, others are actually epic events that may last 30 minutes to an hour. One in the starter zone has the map get covered in death rifts all of the sudden (I'm talking like 30 of them) and have bosses and stuff wandering around trying to take the map over. It becomes this kind of cool thing where groups are forming up and fighting off different rifts, some are fighting off bosses and some are clearing and taking back footholds. Speaking of groups it's really easy to get into one for a rift. When you walk near one it gives you an option to join any group nearby the rift and it has made it really easy to get large raid groups going clearing these things. Soul Trees http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html Soul trees are RIFT's answer to both classes and "talents". In RIFT there are 4 basic class archetypes: Warrior, Rogue, Cleric, Mage. Each of these 4 archetypes have 9 soul trees, 8 regular ones and 1 PvP specific tree. Every character can have a maximum of 3 soul trees "equipped" to make up their build. Above is the soul tree calculator. As you can see part of it is a standard, talent-tree deal. You put points, get talents to improve abilities, move up the tree. The difference is that these soul trees are also tied to the abilities you get. What this means is that you have a lot of customization options when it comes to how you want to build your character and lets you create a very personalized class. I have been able to recreate the "idea" of a lot of different classes from various MMOs through these combinations. It's actually a really cool process and is RIFT's largest feature to me. It should also be mentioned that you will be able to have up to a maximum of 4 specs (have to buy each one with gold) that you can swap between, much like a "dual spec" in WoW. This means you could have, for example, a PvE solo, PvE group, PvP solo, PvP group. The other cool thing is that a lot of classes have abilities to do different roles. A cleric, for example, can heal and dps. A rogue can tank and DPS. A mage can DPS and heal. A warrior can tank and DPS. The worry, of course, is that balance might be an issue. I haven't actually had much experience with that but it will be interesting to see how they handle that. So is it any good? This is always the million dollar question. It's no surprise to some people that as of recently I've been pretty jaded to MMO releases. WAR, AoC, Aion.. they all really bit me hard with various issues. I initially looked at RIFT with a lot of skepticism, and I still do look at it like that. That being said I do think it is a worthwhile game to buy if you're bored of something like WoW but want an MMO that doesn't drastically change everything. Trion does seem like they have their [cabbage] together and have responded to issues quickly in beta. The game runs well for me on a modest laptop and the network code has actually been excellent. (getting 50-75ms to an east coast server from Kansas). So I'm not going to fully review a game that is still in beta but I thought I would give a fairly brief list of pros and cons I've found about the game so far. Pros - The soul tree and class options are actually really cool. There is a nice amount of customization that lets you play around with how you want your character to be. - rift's, while I was initially skeptical to them, actually turned out to be cool. They are a bit "zergy" with a ton of people in them currently though. - You don't really have to level through quests. You can level through PvP or rift's. Cons - I'm not 100% sure how keen I am on some of the animations currently. Melee especially seems a bit iffy sometimes when a lot is going on in PvP. - The early levels (like 1-6 or so) aren't that interesting at all. After 6 it certainly picks up but 1-6 are very tutorialized in nature. - I'm not sure what opportunities there will be for world PvP while leveling. At max level it seems like there are a lot of reasons to do it, leveling I'm not sure aside from a few specific instances. So yeah, RIFT isn't going to drastically change anything. However I feel like it's got the best chance out of any MMO in the past few years to make a bit of an impact on the market. WoW is stagnating due to a lot of people bored with cataclysm and most other modern MMOs have been hemoraging players. It seems that RIFT has a stable amount of content ready for a release. I'm not going to say that this game is incredible but truth be told it is a fun game. As an avid MMO player I feel like, at the very least, this will be an interesting game to play for a bit to tide the time to the major releases such as Guild Wars 2.

I give up, who?

You (and elk) need to watch satoshi kons other movies :P. Watched akira and paprika. Both awesome.

Playing RIFT open beta.

Just play phd and get carried.

edit: Where is your sig from/what is your sig? I've been wondering about it. Paprika. Im pro at google. Its real hard to use image search :P. And yea its paprika.

Do you also feel this way about other unknown information about the physical world? What causes the force of gravity? Cause I'm going to claim that it is tiny tiny men who have telekinetic powers. Nobody knows so theres no problem with my claim. All I'm saying is that I don't see a problem in believing in a God or higher power. I don't believe in one myself (I think it is a silly and outdated concept) but I can't prove anyone right or wrong. I'm not going to answer the stupid question anymore because I don't know what a good answer is. I'm Atheist, I don't believe in any of this.

Hard to say really. The layout just kind of is really basic. Doing a cool designed site like that can work really well. Maybe tomorrow if you're curious (about to go to bed here) I could find a few good examples of illustrated web sites but the big thing I can say that I've seen a lot doing is do a big illustrated scene as the background, or do a large header and do an illustrated scene there. Play to your strengths pretty much.

I agree with Sam, all of your stuff is way too desaturated. Of course the answer isn't just to saturate the hell out of it, you need to find a good balance. You also need to not have everything be at around the same brightness. Nothing at all stands out, even with your latest the image of the guy doesn't stand out because it just blends in with whatever is going on in the background. The border is the brightest thing and is what causes the most attention from the eyes, thats a bad idea. Don't use borders or at the very least stick to a simple, 1 or 2px stroke or even just a bar on the top and bottom. You need to keep in mind you don't need to use a border, you certainly don't need to use a bright and tacky one. Only use a border if it's for a reason. Other than that you seriously need to work on your color. I'm not going to post a link (as often they just get ignored) but if you're really interested in improving yourself look up some stuff on color theory. It's really not difficult and, honestly, a lot of it you probably already know. You should know some colors look better together than others, and different colors together can give a different look (be it calm, edgy, ect.). Right now you're using way too much grey in your images. Try to just not use any grey for now, it almost never looks good on a finished product unless you really know how to use it well. (You don't right now). Also stick to something simple. One or two color sigs, complementary colors with an easy focus (either center or a third of the way to the left or right; rule of thirds) and just do that until you get some of the program basics down. Once you get that down you can start experimenting more with different ideas; other color schemes, more than one focal point, ect. And finally, yeah, just look around at other examples. Sam's link, sites such as DeviantART and even just mundane things around you. ps: stay away from lens flares. Thanks.

Second thing is cool, first thing has way too many things going on and no balance or focus and the web page is... bland.

Thanks. I consider myself to not believe in a God (or at the very least I find the idea incredibly unlikely) so that's why I just stick with the term "Atheist". It's good to get some opinions from someone else though who is level headed about the whole thing. I'm not totally sure how good of an example communist Russia is in terms of an atheist society. Of course it's kind of hard when it really is the only example, and it's also sort of difficult when there are a lot more people who adhere to some religion than who are atheist. Finding a good test sample without having a dictatorship-like level of censoring free religion (or lack of it) is difficult and impossible currently. That being said I don't think that Religion should be totally gotten rid of more so than some societies need to place less of an emphasis on it. I don't think the US, for example, should place such an emphasis on Christianity. Yes, you can practice (or not practice) whatever religion you want here; but if you were to be running for president you damn well better be Christian. Of course this is more of a public view thing than anything else, I think that some of the more... outspoken members of religions need to understand that while good morals can come from religion it also is not the only place they come from. This is kind of the thing I'd wish more people did. Honestly the thing I am against are the actual religious groups. You can believe in God if you want, after all we don't know one way or another. If you feel strongly about it (just as I feel strongly about there being no God) than it's totally fine, neither of us are wrong because neither of us know. What I don't like are groups who use religion as a means to scare people into acting right or as a means to shun those who are different than them. (either by being homosexual or of a different religion). I just think that you should believe what you believe in and not be so fixated on one version or ideal of "God" or what your religion tells you is right or wrong. I firmly believe that people are good natured without being instinctively threatened by the ever-looming thought of a "hell". I just wish that people would follow their own moral compass rather than one laid out for them by a religion.

Harsh. I'm still waiting for a reply (unless I missed it) to what I posted a while back :(. Which post was this? If you repost I'll reply (iirc you're an athiest, and you're reasonable enough :P). Found it.

I must say, quite bluntly, that some of the reactions on this thread chillingly resembles the reactions of a condecending group of religious nuts after getting a fresh wiff of Jesus Juice; "doesn't matter that humans are evolving as a culture and biologically...she is 13 and is still a child. - This has happened thousands of times in America, and everytime the young 'innocent" girl si the one that gets sex or flirted with while the older men have a good time. Are you guys certain you want to adopt this attitude? Then I don't pray because it doesn't really do anything. I can't imagine the lack of accommodation skills that praying shows in a person. I am appalled. [100% honesty if this chick were my sister, I'd be more pissed at her for being [developmentally delayed]ed than him for being creepy] Really?

Harsh. I'm still waiting for a reply (unless I missed it) to what I posted a while back :(.

This again. Haha. It really is an awesome song.

I'm a fan of the 3rd and 4th shots. Don't really have a ton to say.

Yeah he made like $800 or something first time he ever played Blackjack lol.

It can be kind of fun. I've been to the casino two or three times. The first two times I ended up making a bit of money, the last time I lost like $60 so I'm pretty much even overall. My grandparents are big gamblers. Granted they mostly do it as just a way to get out of the house and have fun, not as a way to make money or anything. They'll go to the casino with a few hundred dollars and just play slots. Sometimes they'll make money, sometimes they'll lose it. Obviously in the long run chances are the casino is going to be the one winning the money but they think it's worth it because they have fun with it. So yeah I'm not a huge gambler but I'll do it rarely, mostly when I'm with my grandparents or something.

I've never gotten why console CoD players spin around like a [developmentally delayed] while getting a kill. It's one of the most annoying "trends" I've seen in console machinima. Seriously, someone tell me why people do it -- it doesn't look stylish or cool at all. It's just some kid spinning around in circles and then BAM LOL I GOT YOU.

You realize a lot of people think computer parts cost a lot more than they really do, right? People seem to think you need to spend thousands and thousands to get a good computer when that just isn't the case. Point is telling him a $200 card when all he plays is runescape is just sort of wasting the guy money (and the card might not even work for him). While I very strongly agree with you, spending thousands of dollars on a computer only happens when they get kind of decent prebuilt. I still regret getting a prebuilt HP for $2k 5 years ago. At least I'm now on a computer that is much stronger and that I built myself for $600. Anyway, prebuilt being, that's why people think computers cost much more than they actually do. (hint: that was my point.)

I'm not sure really. The easiest thing would just be an instant illumination of the image, a gradual I'd probably have to use javascript and might get messy alongside of lightbox javascript.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sN9pFRCWnxY&feature=autoplay&list=ML4oVf-d_DwKBO13rwSf-iqqgHHjfIeoQl&index=6&playnext=5

Was thinking about something like this for the portfolio page. Also I think I'm going to mess around with the background more tomorrow or something. [hide][/hide] Not totally set on how dim I want the non-highlights to be. First image is example of what it'd be hovered over. Also not sure if I want to spread out the thumbnails or not. I think since they're dimmed they don't really need to be.