Thrik

Don't you think it looks good at distance though, brkl? It creates quite a nice Disney-esque effect of giving characters form without lines. It's only when it zooms in and it starts becoming a soft shadow and shit that it looks bad IMO. I honestly didn't even realise it was 3D in the stills I saw until I watched the video, but maybe I'm just shit.

I think the main hook for me is that they've brought back original team members and have no publisher control. I have no idea what or who worked on the previous two games but there was something very wrong there, although admitted BS3 wasn't awful — just lacking that extra magic. For what it's worth I'd definitely prefer 2D animation, but obviously that shit ain't cheap and this budget isn't exactly grandiose so it's important to keep expectations in check. I'd love them to do a Double Fine and have enough excess to do that, of course. I think they've done a pretty good job though, and while the 3D needs some work (which it inevitably will, this is all pre-production shit after all) it looks a lot better than comparable efforts I've seen. For me, the current 3D art looks pretty nice until the close-ups start happening... although when you see some of the close-ups from the original games' FMV sequences they weren't exactly incredible either. The animation definitely needs work too and gives away the fact it's 3D, but then that's no surprise as you can always tweak 3D animations whereas 2D animation has to be perfect from the start. There's plenty of time to work on that though, particularly with the inevitable avalanche of feedback they'll be getting after this video and the fact they seem to be doing a DF-esque approach to forums and community participation. I'm optimistic!

The style looks really good in the video to me, if it weren't so smooth I could easily have mistaken it for actual 2D art. Considering that the original games had such a minimalist approach to character art there's almost no difference at all in stills; Broken Sword is one of few 2D games that cel shading is absolutely suited for IMO. The last two Broken Swords were pretty piss poor, but who knows what kind of pressures (financial or otherwise) could have resulted in that. I'm willing to give them another go, seeing as they're making a real effort to bring back old team members and clearly make it a truly faithful sequel. The Director's Cut was clearly just a way of testing the market done by a skeleton team so I wouldn't read too much into that.

In all seriousness though, glad to see this. Been anticipating such an announcement for ages now and it's about time this 3D nonsense was dropped in favour of what remain two true adventure game classics — and nothing to do with Sierra or LucasArts, no less!

An adventure game on Kickstarter? Fuck me, this is one for the history books!

Haha, I just see it as an angry face.

... has no single-player. This falls squarely in 'wat' territory for me. What is C&C without its amusing single-player campaigns?! I really enjoyed the relatively realistic tone of Generals too, as it was set in a more believable near-future rather than the usual craziness. Bah!!!!!

Yeah I wasn't able to stick with RA3 either. I did really enjoy C&C3 though and thought that the series was going in a great direction, but RA3 for some reason looked worse, played worse, and despite the admittedly amusing theatrics just couldn't hold my attention. From what I heard C&C4 was an absolute joke so I'm not going to bother with that. Even now C&C3 still looks pretty good though, maybe I'll get the expansion for it at some point and/or replay it. It's a shame because C&C always walked the right line between being quite realistic and having some crazy sci-fi stuff going on. When a game gets that balance right I get a really good feeling from it, the same thing that made me fall in love with games like Battlefield 2142 and Metal Gear Solid. Oh well. EA will inevitably return to the series again and again, it's like things such as Sim City and Civilization in that respect. Hopefully a future try will be another hit.

This is a nice idea, seeing as a whole load of Flash embeds can be quite heavy. Even better would be if it showed the video's thumbnail image which I think can be fetched via their web service. Bit of work, though.

Hah, awesome brkl — looking forward to seeing more. Absolutely love photography of dead/ghost buildings. Had another fun day out this weekend, so naturally lots of snaps. :XD:

Short video I shot at the same time as the cat photos I posted:

Man I can empathise with this. When I was made redundant last year I had to rebuild a whole new portfolio as being happily employed for five years had rendered my previous one beyond obsolete, however as I went through my projects I realised that many of the clients had replaced the work with bafflingly poor alternatives, or even worse tried to edit them themselves to the point of horror. So for my new portfolio I opted to go through the unbelievable hassle of turning everything from ASP.NET e-commerce to WordPress e-zine into a static, portable build I could use indefinitely. It was worth it because at least I know these'll never just stop working some day, and I don't have to worry about anyone clicking a thumbnail to see the full version of my work only to find a completely different site. I should clarify, however, that this took fookin' ages. For the sake of efficiency I rarely built my work to be used in a standalone fashion.

You can revoke consent nowadays? Man, that's great. I totally need to revoke consent after waking up beside a munt in the morning.

I think they need to realise that Assange isn't the problem, if it weren't him it'd be someone else. The real problem is the things they have to be ashamed of, and the people within their own organisations leaking them. If Assange and his crew were hacking this stuff then fair enough, but as far as I'm aware they're not. It's an absolutely ludicrous situation that's come about because the upper levels in every country have decided someone needs to pay for this shit getting out. What really pisses me off is that because most people are relatively indifferent about the whole thing, he's going to inevitably get absolutely arseholed.

Hah, that's a whole kind of creativity I'd never even heard of before! Decided to make use of my cam's video capabilities for the first time, came out as a pretty good mood piece or background noise if you're into that kind of thing:

Is this guy not just being scapegoated like fuck because of the whole leak thing? This whole situation is ridiculous.

Nice photos Nachimir, although I'm not entirely certain what I'm looking at. Haha, Brown. Excellent progression.

Yeah, this. Fackin' Valve!!!!!

Splendid cat, although I'd be worried about those claws in the second picture! My favourite is the train platform. Seems weirdly empty.

Wasn't it one of those ULTIMATE EXTRAS!!!!!!! things?

Man I love evolution.

Main course, I usually have it with rice. It actually doesn't really taste sweet at all, once reduced to syrup it becomes a surprisingly delicious sticky oriental-esque sauce. It really has nothing in common with the flavour of actual Coca Cola at all, although I guess it is an ultra-strong version of it.

Haha. No that would be pretty bad I think. You just get a big pan (ie: wok), throw a bunch of chicken thighs or drumsticks into it, then put enough coke in to cover them — push them down if they float. You then cook the coke on the maximum temperature until it's reduced to an extremely thick and sticky syrup, turning the chicken bits so they cook nicely. By the time the coke has sufficiently reduced (30 mins or so) the chicken should be pretty much perfectly cooked, so you just roll the chicken around in the syrup so it's covered in it then stick them on a plate. At this point you can use the remaining syrup as a drizzle. There are more elaborate versions out there but I don't see the point really, at least not until you've tried the regular version and want to customise it a bit. It's very simple but it tastes great, definitely a Chinese-esque flavour. It has to be proper Coca Cola though as most cheaper versions don't use the same herbs and spices for flavouring, if they use real ones at all. Also diet version won't work as the sweetener reacts very differently.

I've not experimented as much as I'd like with food yet, but my hits so far include: Peanut butter mashed potato Marmite wedges Chicken strips with flour, breadcrumbs, and whatever spicy shit I have in the cupboard Honey roast potatoes I also make a lot of Coca Cola chicken because it's easy and tastes great.