LadyCrimson

I had a thought...maybe there were some spider egg sacs near the bed and they hatched, releasing hundreds of itty bitty spiders that crawled all over the bed for a couple days.

I might've made a good doctor...those pictures don't bother me at all. Then again, my gag-reflex for bad smells is very high, so...scratch that. :D

I remember playing Quake 2 at 1600x1200, and the health and console and everything were absolutely miniscule. I have 2gig RAM too and it certainly makes a difference. The only reason I play in 1600 is for screenshots. Unfortunately after a long period of time I've gotten so used to the way it looks in 1600 that 1024 looks rather horrible to me in most games - flatter colors, pixels too large and noticable, the view too "close-up" and confined feeling. So I run at 1280 when I'm not concerned with capturing images. I think Kaftan (and others like him) are just so used to max AA that they can't go back...I've never run at top AA for long so I've never gotten overly used to the look, but I'm sure if I did, I might start to get more picky about it. One's eyes get used to stuff after a while, that's all. I think some people's eyes are also just a lot more sensitive to some things, like how some can hear those very high-pitched electronic whines to a point of distraction and some can't. I grew up with games that make today's low level of aliasing look like perfect straight lines by comparison so I don't really think about that too much. The resolution tho...different story.

I'm not sure he was talking to you that time.

Supposedly my system RAM is fairly fast - tho I suspect sometimes that it's not as fast as it claims to be. My performance at 1600 is acceptable/smooth enough to me personally, in general, tho there's sometimes graphic slowdowns when a lot is going on. If more vid RAM would help that aspect then I guess I'll try it. I hate shopping for video & sound cards. Meh.

I haven't played BG/NWN etc in ages but I like controllable in any game. Having the AI there as a back-up or for smaller fights is fine, but being able to grab control must be there for when I want it.

I don't know about CoF, but B. Widows will die to being sprayed with insecticide. It just takes many repeated sprays and an hour or so. Tough buggers. Far better to stomp them, as he said. They can also create some of the toughest web globs for their size and general class. Could make rope out of it if you had enough. haha I'm no spider expert, but I have studied them (and insects in general) off and on over the years. I find them fascinating...as long as they're not in my bed. I still think that's so freaky. I've never heard of that before, outside of horror fiction. A couple strands now and then, sure, cause they leave behind their anchors when they crawl around, but....

Depp just played it too weird for me...it wasn't because he was a terrible actor. I just saw 3/4 of The Island, with Mr. Obi-Wan in it. omg that's one of the worse sci-fi action flicks I've seen in some time with one of the most perposterous "falls from a height but lives" stunts. It's so bad I'll have to finish watching it tomorrow. But Sean Bean was kind of funny...or cute...or something.

We have tons of black widows here. There's always one in our house somewhere. Cobwebs all over you in the morning...that is freaky. "They're coming to get yoooouu, Commissar."

Geez...I thought you didn't drink. Midnight here...happy new year.

They were doing that on our local channel 20 for years. I've seen them all. Great stuff tho. Gogo Kirk and uh...stuff.

omg too much Farrell going on.

Just got back from the store. I'm all set. Now if hubby would just get back from working on The House... *dances*

I just re-installed and never asked me for one.

I might drink some wine later...I drink 1-3 times a year. And not much even then. Don't need it just to P-P-P-P-A-R-T-Y!!! Wouldn't mind some firecrackers tho...that's always fun to scare the kitties with....

How the game feels when I'm playing (not the techie numbers) I notice a much bigger performance hit from upping resolution than from increasing the AA/AF. Going from 1024 to 1600 causes a large FPS loss, which I assume is a combo of older card+only 128vid memory + just the extra load. If I then max out AAwhile in 1600, the loss to performance (lag, lowering of FPS) takes another minor hit but I really hardly notice it. if I max everything out in 1024, same thing - the performance loss isn't very significant vs. the resolution itself. Anyway, if I had more video ram (my system RAM is 2gigs, that's not it) would that reduce the hit at 1600 by a lot? Because I swear every time I upgrade I see a tiny bit of FPS style improvement but nothing enough to have made it worthwhile to me. I don't care about another 3-5fps...maybe 15-20 would be worth it. P.S. If you build your own PC it's only about $800-1000 for a decent (not uber) newer system, not including monitor. Not $2000...but still too much for some I know...just saying...

What CoF said.

You can get pretty far in the story-based game without help in GW actually. Even past the desert. Just not easy... Here's my take on it: It's free, but even so, I got bored of it a lot faster than WoW, primarily because there is very little exploration factor...your path is pretty well laid out for you in a linear fashion, although there is some exploring, dont get me wrong...just not as free and open like WoW and some other on-line action-RPG's. But...hey, it's free...and if you like PvP and can find good teammates (the random matches aren't that great), it's cool.

Actually, in either picture you posted I can't see your character...well ok, a slight shadow tells me he's there, but it's pretty dark. :D Just for more comparison (and cause I'm bored...), here's mine at 1600x1200, 2xAA and 4x AF. I do not have the latest super-vid-card, it's a GeForce 6200. Click the pic if you want to see it full size (770kb .jpg). And of course, it looks better in-game & away from lossy .jpg's. In the full-size pic you can see a little jagged edges here and there but in-game it's not noticable...I don't see the flicker Kaftan is talking about in Kotor2 - I do know what he means tho, in some games I still see that even with everything on max (WoW....).

Sigh. Well I was trying to compare .psd vs. "hi-quality" .jpg vs. 8-bit tif and it was interesting because the psd definitely showed the slight beginnings of more artifacts. In the pic you can see it at the top portion of the eye stalk, little more grey in the middle of the brown. Not much tho. And actually, the .jpg didn't fare too bad considering, even tho it's obviously far inferior at that magnification. It's all so confusing. Sometimes I think there's really not enough difference between the 'expert' formats to really matter beyond a certain point. Each has a little failing in one area vs another.

I'm concerned with both the master-file one uses to work/edit from, and the final-master that you actually send to the printer. The minor issue I have with .psd is that while it's currently very popular, it's a proprietary format and assumes whoever you might send it to has a program that can read it. After much googling and a mild headache from too many numbers/on-line reading I think .tif sounds like it's still the best and most universal for printing/final version archive concerns, particuarly with photos. .psd is good for the working copy if you have layers and if you're concerned with space it's slightly smaller than a .tif for the print-master.

To my eyes it makes things like ground/water reflections look more vivid/dynamic with less blurry depth vision. I really hate that blurry look like in karka's pic. Not all games benefit a whole lot from it, tho.

Not being an expert in this area, I'm wondering if there's any major quality difference between .bmp and .tga. The file size is almost the same, so they both contain approx. the same amount of information...does that mean they're about equal in quality? And...on my screen, I don't see a lot of visual difference between .psd and .png files, despite the .psd's major file-size difference, even when blown up 500% - seems like .psd is mostly if you want to save files seperate layers. Any expert input on what is the best to use for your "original" file? I've tried googling it a bit but haven't yet found a satisfactory answer (for my non-techie brain...), if indeed there is one. There's a lot of artists here so I thought I'd ask opinions...

I also notice, but also don't care (much), and I also think too much AA makes things a bit blurry, as CrashGirl said. I think the AA difference is not quite as dramatic (and even more blurry-edge looking) if you are not on a high resolution (ie, over 1024)....so if you're still playing on 800 or 1024, especially if your monitor is small, it's not that big a thing. These days I like 1280 or 1600 resolution w/a low AA and antisoptric setting. 6AA seems like overkill to me.

To me it's not about civil rights for animals...it's about the level of racial maturity that such useless and pointless 'sport' says about the human race. That and I like creature diversity.