Cerez

Topology-wise, how do the eyelids work? Do they need to be on the head_eyes_mouth mesh, or on the head_face mesh? How does the game create the blink animation? What vertices does it stretch, or move? Or does that entirely depend on the weighting? Can the eyelids be a separate surface hidden behind the face that's moved down when the character blinks, or do they need to be vertices of the face? I'm confused...

You can still find certain games on consoles today that allow you to one-on-one with your friends, but not nearly as many as there used to be, and certainly not with such a great social experience. The funny thing is, in the 90s our parents were telling us that video games make you unsocial. Back then video games were social! When you played with your friends you were sharing in a real social, personal experience. It was a different experience to playing outside, but that didn't make it an unsocial activity. Compare that to much of today's games. The focus these days is more on online activities and virtual worlds -- not at all much linked to the real world around us. Not that I mind online communities -- otherwise I wouldn't be here -- but you just can't compare playing shoulder to shoulder with your friend to playing with someone on the other side of the globe through a limited means of communication...

@@IrocJeff, with Tetris, you need to get to the point where you see the shapes almost like colours, and stay one step ahead of the game using the side view. I've almost finished it on my GameBoy. Of course that also means that you will start seeing Tetris blocks in your sleep, but don't worry, it'll wear off and you're not going crazy, hahaha! The original GameBoy is still the only gaming device you can take out into direct sunlight and play video games with. Prince of Persia (DOS) anyone? What about Ugh! (DOS)? I think some of the greatest multiplayer games games are in classics. I prefer to play with the person next to me, not online. Has anyone played Moonstone? Up to four people can play it, taking turns. It's a great game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlBiLNN1NhQ

I'm not sure the 16 GB of RAM will really help. My theory is that the reason the system gets slow is that it's constantly filling up the RAM and never emptying it until a reboot. When the RAM is full it starts dumping to the hard drive, which makes things even slower. 16 gig will help you increase the time it takes to fill it up, but I doubt it will help solve the problem. I've heard that reinstalling the whole system with a clean wipe can help, but that's just too difficult to pull off and totally inconvenient, not to mention risky. A temporary workaround is to run the command "purge" in the Terminal. If you rig a periodic shell script to purge the RAM every so-and-so minutes, that may help to avoid the memory fill problem. Also, based on my observations, Spotlight plays a big part in overloading the RAM. Which doesn't make any sense, but that's what seems to be happening. And you can't turn it off without losing the system-wide search in Finder! And the Dock and the Finder's Quicklook feature seem to be doing the same. When I open stacks in the Dock or browse media with Quicklook, each time I open/preview a new one the system gets a little slower, and more delay is added to the operation. I believe you are right. That's my assumption as well. Planned obsolesce is what it is. Each update is purposefully designed so that the patches slow the system down. Either that, or the OS X developer team knows jack-all about how to properly maintain and update an operating system -- which is not likely. I remember back in the Panther to Tiger (10.3-10.4) transition period we didn't have any slowdowns. If I remember correctly, the slowdowns started after the release of Leopard. (But it could be that there was no highly noticeable difference simply because it was my first system update.) Edit: Also, beware that 16 GB of RAM will automatically put a requirement of 18 GB of minimum free hard disk space for normal system operation. When the Mac goes to deep sleep, it dumps the RAM to the hard drive.

Nice work, @@Wystan! Who is he? I don't think I know this character. Is he a Republic general (military officer)? I can help you with weighing him if you like, once I get the hang of the process myself. I'm working at it at the moment.

I've always liked her. I'd do this, but I need to hone my skills up to the task, first.

Or if you want to go old-school, and learn things from the core with JKA: http://www.chopshopservers.com/education/video_editing_tutorial_by_commodore/

Didn't use to be such a hack, though. It was quite well designed at first. But then they overloaded it with unnecessary, junk features -- and compromised its performance and stability. OS X is in part a Unix-like system. Its core works much like any other Unix system. I used to be a big fan. But not anymore. You're right, it's much like Windows. Used to be good, and then they overloaded it with junk features. (I'm looking at you, Windows 8 and 10!) If anything, Windows 8 should have been its own tablet operating system. Like iOS from Apple. Not a successor to Windows XP and 7, which are OSs designed for work.

Indeed, jaMME is made for movie-making, after all, with the same performance benefits: http://jkhub.org/forum/75-jedi-academy-moviemakers-edition/

I'll be looking forward to your videos. It's always a joy to catch a glimpse of new cinematic talent. Glad you found a way to fix the FPS issue, though I would still give @@Ping's suggestion a shot. It's a great idea. That way there's no overhead processor and memory usage by a second software. JKA does a fine job recording video on its own. You just need to learn how to process it. In your case it would give you the speed boost you need to record smooth video. Here's a good, detailed old tutorial on how to film in JKA: http://www.chopshopservers.com/education/video_editing_tutorial_by_commodore/

I have a map fix-up favour to ask for someone experienced with GTKRadiant. This is a great map, and one of my favourites, but it's always had a few issues left over from its initial, rushed release: https://jkhub.org/files/file/2025-corellian-platform-encounter/ It was made for a contest, and the author was rushed to meet the deadline. I have the source and the author's approval for someone to go in and fix it. Wedge has moved onto other things, and he doesn't have a setup of JKA anymore, so it's up to us to complete it. There are not too many things wrong, so it should really be just a few simple tweaks. Two things need to be done, namely: 1. The wall on the left side of the bridge/entrance walkway is currently hollow. The right side is perfectly solid, as it should be. The same settings need to be mirrored across to the left side so that it is also solid. 2. This map is currently Duel only, but it has great potential to be small FFA as well. It would be great if we could add additional spawn points for FFA gameplay. That's it, really. It's not much, but maps are not my expertise...

Personally my big gripe with my Macbook, running Mac OS X 10.8.5, is that every time I sit down to do work on it, I end up waiting for the system to do something, and not doing any work! It's either a backup, or an update, or apps getting slow and having to restart the computer -- which takes a million years, by the way. Spotlight (the search utility) is always indexing at something in the background and slowing things down, and the entire memory management of the OS is absolutely horrible. It didn't use to be like that. When I bought my first Macbook with Mac OS X 10.3, the little machine was a speedy thing with less apps than what they have today, but a better workflow, performance, and stability. You knew that whatever apps you have installed, they will work reliable and the computer would always be ready for work. And the user interface was simply gorgeous in comparison to Windows XP's -- which I did like, by the way. But the new Macs are just not doing it for me. This whole idea of merging iOS with Mac OS X gives me the creeps in a similar way as the Windows 10 start menu does. Maybe even worse. Now, before you start saying that my Macbook is a slow machine with not enough RAM, let me assure you, it has enough to run the standard workflow apps I use: Processor: 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Memory: 5GB 1067 MHz DDR3 Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 320M 256 MB In the world of Linux this would run things at the speed of light. But not here. Mac OS X is just way too demanding, and inefficient for work on my setup today. As Windows slows the more apps you install (and the more they start running in the background), so does Mac slow with each (free) OS update, always forcing you to buy a new computer -- almost every two years! That's just not my idea for a work-station... Edit: The other thing is my system needs at least 10GB of free space on your hard drive to run properly. I'm not kidding. 10 gig! As I start to open and close a few apps, I'm just watching the free space on my hard drive disappear. That's how bad the memory management is. And that's with upgraded memory!

Have it your way, Eez... I have no intention of turning this into a personal battlefield. There really is no need. If I'm being unreasonable to you, then let's leave it at that. We all have the right to speak our minds. I can see why you would think that this is all just normal business, but my perspective is a little different on the values of privacy and freedom, and so I see things in a different light. It may be that both of us are right from a certain viewpoint.

I've wondered about this, too, when I saw the the first movie. I think it's a combination of heat vision with a heightened aural perception, or something similar. It's definitely more than just heat vision. Whatever it is, it's perfect for hunting people, haha! Edit: They can also see using natural light, it seems, because they can visually distinguish details in their environment at all times.

Those pie-charts have some serious flaws. I grant I was wrong and Mac does have a larger market share (about 2 times as large on average, not 10 times!) on the PC market, but Linux has a larger market share on mobile devices and web servers by a significant amount! See here for more stats: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems Think Facebook. Yes it does. What will their retailers think about them selling direct to the public? Often this is a clear suicide action by the manufacturer for their distributor/retailer connections. A manufacturer is generally not supposed to sell direct to the public. But if you're thinking about them selling through the retailers, then the answer is that this would jeopardise the heavy commitment business relationship that the manufacturer has with Microsoft for a not so promising, currently smaller market. It's not so profitable for the manufacturer, and Microsoft plays a big part in stopping it from happening. I'm not sure how the manufacturer you've bought from is managing this. That's why I find it hard to believe. But whether I am right or wrong specifically about the Linux/Windows question is truly irrelevant. We're getting very much bogged down on superfluous details. I've only brought that up as an example of corporate influence, but perhaps it is not the clearest example for everyone. Whether I am right or wrong about this particular question doesn't change the fact that corporations are hoarding information on their users and they are controlling the market, and our lives through usage of their popular products. I'm not going to answer the rest of these points, because I have nothing else to say, really. If you believe all this is okay, and nothing is being compromised, then that's fine by me. I don't feel the same. In fact, I feel it's going all wrong. I've said my piece. It's for each and every one of us to decide what is right and what is wrong for us. That's what personal freedom is all about -- about having freedom to fulfil our needs. No corporate ads dictating our needs, and not being restricted in our everyday choices. Having the freedom to think free, speak free, and fulfil our needs freely while respecting all life and the needs of those around us.

I understand that the majority of computer stock in a store would have Windows as an OS pre-installed because of business, but tell me, do Apple's Macs have a much larger market share than Linux? No. Then why does one quarter of a stock in most computer stores today comprise of Apple computers? I'll tell you why; because Apple is a corporate business. I am talking about wide-scale options and accessibility. Things that were present in the world of computers before the arrival of today's IT corporations. In a free, Western economy you will always have small specialist retailers -- until we don't have full corporate totalitarian censorship. The fact remains that to get my free options back, I would need to spend extra effort, money, and time -- whereas before these corporations arrived, I wouldn't have had to face these special problems. My point is that these corporations have taken over and controlled the market, and limited my options as a free choice consumer. If I walk into a decent computer store today, and ask them if I could have Linux installed for me on one of the computers I'm considering to buy, chances are they will say they can't do that because of their affiliation with Microsoft. Try it. I've had that honest response handed to me a few times now. Which computer manufacturers will allow you to purchase from them directly with a Linux OS pre-installed? I have never heard of such a thing. It would be bad for their business. There are mainstream and popular distros that are just as easy to use as a Mac. Ubuntu is one example, and Fedora comes pretty close. So your point about Linux being obsolete or hard to use is not right. Linux is a valid option for an OS, and not at all an obscure one today. If stores carried more Linux computer stock, the open OSs would quickly gain a much higher popularity. In many aspects Linux PC is a lot more useful for work than a Windows computer or a Mac. There are Linux distros that are intended for computer professionals, and yes, Arch and Gentoo are two of these. You're right there. But not all Linux distros require advanced computer knowledge. But Linux is a competitor to Mac OS X and Windows, and the corporations that own these products will do everything in their mighty power to stop such a thing from happening. The kernel does not require the GNU code to work, but by itself the kernel amounts to nothing. In order to have a full Unix-like OS -- which is what Linux is -- you need all the utility apps, which are a part of the GNU code. So Linux is just a kernel; GNU/Linux is the operating system. To be entirely fair and accurate, these days a lot more has been added to Linux distributions than just the GNU apps, so Linux is even more now than just GNU/Linux. But the core the OS stems from is still Linux and GNU. All you can imagine, really. Free speech can become a thing of the past. With such detailed corporate databases on each individual person and their activities, we could soon be entering a totalitarian regime if the political climate changes. It's Big Brother and more. What makes the CIA and the NSA so powerful? Information. Information on people. The more information corporations can gather from their users, the more powerful and controlling they become. Free market -- you can say goodbye to small businesses catering with quality products. As a small business owner you can't compete with monopoly from a giant corporation. Free choice -- as a consumer your options are limited to what corporations want you to buy. Forget about what you really need. They don't have it. Buy what they are offering, or don't buy at all. Social life -- "where did my friends go? We never hang out anymore, except online. And that's not the same." Social habits could be changed entirely to suit corporate sales, rather than what is the natural way of people. Privacy -- imagine a world where every laptop you buy has a built-in camera for potential surveillance -- oh wait, that's already here... Okay, imagine a world where every single computer and TV had this, with remote activation possible without the knowledge of the user. These are just a few points I could think of on the run...

As @@Asgarath83 says, experiment a little, @@Wystan. Just make sure you keep backup copies to your file before making the changes. That's what I'll do, too. It's either lblip2\rblip2, or ltlip2\rtlip2, or both ("t" is for "top", and "b" is for "bottom" lip, I'm guessing), if additional bones are at all required.

I might be able to tell you in a couple of days, @@Wystan. I still haven't reached that point in the rigging process yet... I think it may be lblip_eff and rblip_eff, based on their position, but I'm not sure yet.

Newegg is not exactly an average local computer store, is it? They are a specialty online retailer. They don't have the same pressure from Microsoft as local stores do. You have to know about them first, and their offering is only helpful if you live in the US, really. The amount the shipping would cost does not make it a viable choice for Australia, or the rest of the world. And I know of no such specialty retailers in Australia. In fact, they might be one of the very few choices in the world where you can still get a non-Windows PC for a reasonable price... That's not right. Before the rapid mainstream rise of Microsoft products, you could buy computers running all sorts of operating systems. There was no one-sided monopoly on the PC market. The monopoly started with Windows 95, really, and Microsoft's rise to business power. After Windows' mainstream success, the only other operating systems that saw significant development were Apple's and those of the GNU/Linux family (with a few small exceptions): https://everlastingstudent.wordpress.com/timeline-of-operating-systems-since-the-1950s/ And this is not to say that Windows 95 was that good. It had its pros and cons, like every other OS. It was Microsoft's aggressive business strategy that drove other systems out of the PC market. Apple has survived only because their products were catering to a specialist market at the time, with their own hardware -- therefore being independent of Microsoft's influence. A little respect, please, @@eezstreet. Richard Stallman created the idealogical foundations upon which the Linux open source community was built, and he has just as much right to use whatever GNU/Linux distribution (OS) he likes as any of us do. He's definitely not alone in using Gentoo, either -- there are those who prefer it, and Gentoo, too, has its advantages -- like any other operating system. The reason I choose to call it GNU/Linux is to pay my respect to all those who have created it. Not just Linus Torvalds' work on the Linux kernel, but also to everyone who has contributed to the GNU project and created the foundations for open operating systems. The whole community. I'm aware that the short and commonly preferred term for the type of OS is simply Linux. In fact, I somewhat resent the "Linux" label in that Linux is not a product, a brand, or a company, like the way it sounds. It is a whole range of openly developed operating systems, and the forefront to a whole software movement. Hence why to me GNU/Linux fits better to describe a type/category of operating systems developed from the GNU and Linux source. Also, from a technical standpoint Linux by itself does not do much at all. It needs the GNU code in order to function as an OS. I think you're missing the point. It's not about what stupidities of your activities the company records. (I use "stupidities" here in the literary sense. No offence intended.) It's about the fact that those records can be used against you in more ways than you can imagine. Especially if the political climate shifts and new legislations start to take effect. Once recorded, this information may be kept for a lifetime, or longer. More importantly, this information is used to herd us like sheep towards the pen. Edit: What you need to ask yourself is, is it really worth trading my personal freedom and right to privacy for using this company's goods and services? Be mindful of what power you are giving to those whose products you support. That's all I ask. But I've monopolised this thread long enough. Let's get back to general company and product rant, shall we? That new start menu in Windows 10 gives me the creeps! How can you merge an entire tile screen with the start menu and think you can practically get away with it? Besides, I don't see what was so wrong about the Windows 8.1 tile screen as a launch menu. If anything they should have provided both options as a configurable feature, but not merge them together! What were they thinking??

Just for fun:

Windows can be uninstalled, yes -- though if you've already had to pay for it, you might as well keep in on a partition... What you're saying is true, @@Xycaleth, but in practice most manufacturers will tell you to get lost -- either buy with Windows, or don't buy their product at all. This is because Microsoft is exercising their business power and encouraging (or, in many cases, forcing) manufacturers and retailers to sell only with Windows installed. My point is that you can't walk into a store and ask to buy a computer without Windows installed, or say, with a GNU/Linux operating system installed, whereas in the early PC days, before the rise of Microsoft as a monopoly, you could find computers will all kinds of systems installed. As a computer user this is a serious restraint to me. I've had to pay Microsoft on multiple occasions for software I don't use, and never needed. All because they have complete control over the market, and over the people. Like I said, I am just illustrating from personal experience what corporate control really means, and how it affects our lives. Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook are all involved in actions like this, as are supermarket chains, and other giant corporations. It's good to be aware, and to avoid supporting them where we can. Much of their power, after all, comes from mass consumption -- from our purchases. And, more importantly, we have to be aware of the fact that when in power, these corporations (especially in the IT scene) have means to monitor and track our every move, and keep detailed information on us. Which is something you'd want to avoid as much as possible. Not because you're doing something bad, but because it gives the person in power control over your life. Nobody wants to be a sheep.

@, I'm not sure I am following you... So you're saying it's okay for a corporation to take away my freedom of buying a computer with an OS of my choice because it's "just business". There are many kinds of business, but this is one kind I don't like. Slavery was "good business", too, let's not forget that... By dominating, and taking over, Microsoft has curbed my freedom of choice. And this is just one example where a corporation has taken over and controlled an aspect of my life. I can think of many. And spend three times the amount? Have you ever tried to find the parts for a computer like that? I have... It's not as simple as walking into a shop and making your pick. It's not something everyone can do, and it's hardly a substitute. Especially if you're looking for a laptop. If these corporations don't hold detailed personal information about their users, then why on earth would the NSA be interested in the data they hold? Think about that. The NSA would not make such a bold and risky move if it wasn't for valuable information. Google is tracking everyone's searches. It's a proven fact. Apple is tracking your usage of your Apple devices (and who knows what other information they're receiving), proven fact. Facebook is selling statistical user information to third parties -- ads don't pay the bill, that's what they're really making a living of -- proven fact (check their user license agreement). Microsoft has/had a backdoor for data access to everyone's Windows computer, proven fact. And there is reverse engineering evidence that the cameras of iOS devices can be activated remotely without the user's knowledge (without the indicator light turning on). This can be done either by Apple or by a hacker. Why, may I ask? What the reason for implementing such technology, if it isn't to spy on someone in the first place? With the giant servers Apple has built to host their iCloud data, do you really think they're not keeping any sensitive information on their users?