Azzizi

Reply to Brad's DISC personality profile in Business Stardock Forums

>.> Not that I've taken it or anything, the text is just eeriely familiar...

Reply to Balancing RTS: Hard-cap vs no-cap unit limits in PC Gaming Stardock Forums

I prefer soft-caps, myself, though in some cases, hard caps are just the only choice that works well. Sins actually has my favorite sort of soft-caps: One falls into Fleet upkeep, where a player needs sufficient economy to support the fleet(though I think in Sins' case it needs a little tuning perhaps), with a harder cap in the form of population limits(both for the overal fleet and for Capital ships specifically), which can be raised via research. It's a flexible setup, in that you ca

Reply to Sins: Akkan (practically) Invincible in Sins of a Solar Empire Stardock Forums

..admittedly, I didn't read the subtitle. But I still question the validity, given the premises.

Reply to Sins: Akkan (practically) Invincible in Sins of a Solar Empire Stardock Forums

Where to start... oh, I suppose the best place to start would be "against AIs". Going up against a decent human player should be a real eye-opener. One-on-one slug matches aren't really a very good indication of capital ship balance. Especially when you're dealing with support vessels. Sins is a fleet-based game, and its balance should be treated as such. Sure, Akkans are arguably 'stronger' than a Dunov one-on-one... but neither of these ships are intended to fight by them

Reply to [MOD] Blackseraph's Tech Demo, Stage One: Ship Proliferation in Sins Modding Sins Forums

Just thought I'd poke my nose in and mention, if you haven't seen the 1.1 patch notes, they're making it possible for abilities to cost resources. I figure that'll be a veritable windfall for the mod here. Otherwise, it's looking pretty cool. I haven't had time to play with it yet(busy working on my own mod lately), but I plan to check it out soon.

Reply to What you want in sins II in Sins of a Solar Empire Sins Forums

Turrets, instead of fixed fire points like we currently have. I'd like the facility for real, tracking turrets, at least as an option to modders if not on the stock ships. they could still use the existing fire arcs, I'd just like rotating turrets for weapons and some abilities. I'd like a facility for capturing ships via boarding actions, either using assault shuttles in place of fighters/bombers or using marine boarding frigates or similar. And it should take some uninterrupted time t

Reply to Binary files? in Sins Modding Sins Forums

The documentation that comes with the modding tools also covers everything you need to know about ConvertData. It does NOT currently convert binary->text, but that will change with the 1.1 version release, as I understand it.

Modding Sins - UVs and Other Sundries in Sins of a Solar Empire Stardock Forums

So, once again, another installment of this ongoing accounting of modding Sins of a Solar Empire . Today’s update is primarily concerned with on of the latter portions of the modeling process and early portions of the texturing process– or, if you like, a transition step between the two. I’m speaking of that most esoteric of tasks, UV mapping. UV issues are one of the things I see and rece

I don't want to survive; I want to LIVE! in Movies & TV & Books Stardock Forums

Just got back from a trip to see Wall*E-- as the title might indicate fo those that have done similar-- and it's a fantastic film. I shan't be reviewing it or anything like that, except to gush enthusiastically and say anyone with the slightest desire to see it should go do so. As a short point of background, I have a BFA in Visual Communications(Animation). So I'm a fan and student of animation, and sometimes I'm pretty critical of it. I was trained to be. But, all I really have to s

Reply to Dragon*Con 2008 in GalCiv Journals Stardock Forums

Cari! Maybe we'll find some way to get a day pass to come hang out again or something(The Girl and I were handing out with you and Paul during the 2006 panels). My vote, on a side note, is for the Modding panel, but that's probably none too surprising. I love modding. XD

Reply to ConvertXSI in Sins Modding Sins Forums

Luck pretty much has nothing to do with it. Head to the Downloads link at the top of the page and click the "Forge Tools [Beta]" link. The archive that downloads has the map editor, particle editor, a set of flat-text versions of a bunch of the stock games files, ConvertXSI.exe and ConvertData.exe, along with readmes and a set of PDF documentation, all neatly arrayed.

Reply to BlAg, BlEg, BlIg, BlOg, BlUg and sometimes BlYg in Humor Stardock Forums

(I also fail at proofreading my comments. I mssed a couple of typo mistakes here and there. Such happens. The most glaring one is that I chose a semi-colon as a stylistic choice.)

Reply to BlAg, BlEg, BlIg, BlOg, BlUg and sometimes BlYg in Humor Stardock Forums

I realize this is a humor article, but... well, okay, I think the questions are asked often enough seriously to warrant answer. I'm NOT a linguist or English major, but this is what I've picked up over a lifetime of using and learning about it as a native speaker: 1. English is a strange hybrid langauage, in that where most languages have a single 'root language'-- like Spanish and French are latin-based-- English is based on both Latin and Germanic roots. This is why sometimes English

Reply to What Did You Play This Weekend? in Gaming Stardock Forums

I actually didn't get a lot of gaming in this weekend-- but that's not wholly unusual for me of late. Somewhat ironically, the whole process of trying to land a job in game art has me pretty busy NOT actually playing them. Must work on portfolio! and all that. But I still manage to wedge in some gaming wherever I can make it fit, and this weekend is no exception, so... Most of my work over the weekend was caught up with my personal <a href="http://azzizi.impulsedriven.net/a

Reply to XSI-modeling questions in Sins Modding Sins Forums

^^ Very close to how I'd approach it. In this specific ship's case, I'd build from a cylinder instead of a box, since it'll be easier to get even spacing of segments that way, but that's really just a personal preference-- the basic methodology is still the same. Remember to be conservative with poly counts! Games have low-poly models out of necessity, due to performance needs. Poly budgets are much better these days, but it's still best to be frugal wherever possible. IIRC, the stock S

Reply to Trek Mod's Accomplis in Sins Modding Sins Forums

Ideas? First one off the top of my head: don't use .3DS. It's pretty horrid. If you can, .OBJ files are generally much more reliable(and is what I've been successfully using to import models into XSI). Of course, that might very well be moot in the end if you roll your own. 3DS format has a lot of problems these days, though.

Reply to XSI-modeling questions in Sins Modding Sins Forums

[quote]There's a pic of the saucer section i made previously below. I was thinking I might make this the practice thing and just finish it off with some squares and use it to find out about texturing. Mansh00ter, you said you used cubes for everything even curves, I was wondering how do you do that?This modelling stuff is difficult. I'm starting to see why people take college courses on it. I thought you only had to do that if you planning to do really complicated stuff professionally. I'm gonna

Reply to ConvertXSI in Sins Modding Sins Forums

Well, first, you should probably have read the documentation. ConvertXSI is running fine. It's a command-line tool that converts dotXSI files(from the XSI modeling program) into mesh files the game can read. All the needed information is in the Mod Package documentation.

Reply to Let the Internet Burn in FPS Stardock Forums

An additional to #3 is the forums are now awash with posts like "The flare gun sucks!" because people are too stupid to figure out that using a weapon balanced for ignition-damage does, indeed, suck when you can't ignite half the server. As for me, I love the update. And I love the flare gun, though I'm waiting on the furor to die down before I make any qualitative statements about it either way. So far, though, I think it's a great weapon because a) I can hit the broad side of a barn

Reply to Kicking Things Off in Living in Cyberspace Stardock Forums

[quote who="SanChonino" comment="2"]As a long-standing blogger in Stardock's other blogging community (the black-sheep of the Stardock family, Joe User), it's exciting to see all the new blood that the Impulse blogging is bringing in - since many of the same categories are shared (thus, so are the articles) between the two sites.At any rate - let me be the (second) to say, welcome. Hope you have a good time while you're here. [/quote] Thanks. It's a little wierd, since i do

Reply to Graphics and Sins of a Solar Empire in Sins of a Solar Empire Stardock Forums

Just a point of order, I think it's more accurate to say that Ironclad is to be commended for the game both looking great and running on older hardware. Personally, I run it on a Radeon x850 XT Platinum and it looks and performs fantastic no matter what I throw at it on the highest settings. Even the big several-hundred-ship mega-battles are silky. And the modding, the modding! It's actually one of the easier games to get ships working in, despite the entity f

Modding Sins - Building the Astraea in Sins of a Solar Empire Stardock Forums

So, a continuation from the first post about my Sins mod project, which was made on my main blog site. this one falls into Game Design, because there’s very little artwork involved, and mostly deals with game integration. I wasn’t feeling up to more work getting the UVs and such done on the Astraea and decided to take a break from

Reply to It's getting too massive to still enjoy? in Sins of a Solar Empire Stardock Forums

One of the habits I've found I have to get out of in Sins to really enjoy it is my terrible, terrible need to micro-manage. Sins is actually pretty stellar at running itself based on large-scale directives you've laid down when you're otherwise busy-- but learning to trust it to do so can be difficult. Also, I believe you can actually play the game almost entirely through just the Empire Tree once you get comfortable interpreting it. This is handy for watching battles close-in for the c

Reply to What type of slang is used on SINS? in Sins of a Solar Empire Stardock Forums

[quote who="LordSethD" comment="10"]Not to burst any bubbles but we were using the word Nerf back in the beginning days of UO when they Nerfed Ebolts and suchEven I can vouge for that, my father was on the UO beta team... we've been using that term for a looooooong time [/quote] And it's been around even longer than that, though i can't remember the first time I heard it... probab on a MU* someplace. I know the earliest MMOG usage I heard was probably in Subspace way back in the dawn

Kicking Things Off in Living in Cyberspace Stardock Forums

So, I heard about Impulse a mere few days ago-- I don't remember exactly what pulled me to the news item detailing the whole thing, probably a trip to peek at something Sins -related-- and became rather enamored of the whole concept and giddy for its success. So, thus, here I am. It probably really starts earlier than that, though, way back when I first really got involved with Stardock's products. I'd read the GameSpy review of GalCiv2 and filed it away to check out when I go