Beta is Over
I wish I could stay up for the finalie, but that’s going to be at 1AM. I don’t think I can handle that.
I’ve had a ton of fun this weekend. This game is seriously as good as I would have hoped and more. It’s fun to play, and the sheer scale of it, from size to the number of things there are to do, it’s just amazing.
It wasn’t without its flaws. It was a little tough to play together with Biebs as we’d end up in different instances of the same world. Something the development team says they’re working.
I really want to keep playing, but sleep, work and the impending end of the Beta weekend keep that from happening. But there’s supposed to be one weekend per month until release… when I can then quit my job, ignore my family, and forego bathing to play this game without end.
At the very end, Andrea showed me how to enable hi-res screenshots. I wish I had this the entire time! The pictures it renders from the game are absolutely jaw dropping! The amount of detail in this game is ridiculous!
I’m posting scaled down versions here, but CLICK HERE for an example of one of the screenshots in its full 5656×3308 glory!
Dead bears. It was us or them. They started it.
This is my kind of monastery. They brew ale!
Divinity's Reach in the distance. It IS as epic as it looks.
That same city, from the inside.
More Divinity's Reach...
And more Divinity's Reach. Seriously this place is gigantic, so from here on out it's all the same city in these screenshots.
This is the picture in full res above. I recommend making it your desktop wallpaper!
The upper city. The palace and senate are located on this level of the city. Along with this incredible garden.
What's the one thing this city doesn't have? A huge aquarium? Actually.. no. It already has one.
Dwayna Highroad. Everywhere you go the city feels alive.
Highroad looking across the city.
Crafting stations.
Durmand Priory. A guild that focuses on researching and preserving history.
Just another part of the city I found pleasant.
Undertaker's cart near a cemetery. I just can't get over the detail put into this game!
Another highroad. Look at the man to the left of my character for scale. The banners you see hanging wave majestically in the breeze. The screenshots only do half justice. In motion it's even more gorgeous.
Steps to the Senate.
Inside the Senate. I'm surprised they let me bring this big ass sword in.
Probably an attendance book of some kind.
Beautiful stained glass. In most games you are left to imagine what is inside a building like this.
In Guild Wars 2 you can go in that building and see for yourself! Behind each of those stained glass windows is a statue of one of the six gods. Beautiful artwork!
More inside the same temple. Notice the water pouring down the wall on the left. Again, you've got to see it in motion!
There are six highroads in Divinity's Reach, each named after one of the gods. At the end of each road is a beautiful sculpture like the ones seen in the temple above. This is a statue of Lyssa.
And that’s just one small part of the small part of the game I was able to play.
Roots
Okay, so this picture is not what it seems at first glance. While I did get a picture of him holding the controller perfect (complete coincidince) I didn’t get that AND the screen in the same shot. So this is some fancy Photochop scripting to make it work.
It was pretty fun. I was sitting there listening to the podcast music and decided to pull out the game from the mystery song. We were playing that for a while and then switched to Galaga. Andrea and I had fun challenging each other’s scores. I remember Mom could get perfect scores on the “Challenging Stages” in between the levels. We didn’t do that good! Hehe.
It was a night of good old school fun!
What a good lookin’ guy.
6 Months Old. Must have got all his good looks from Momma. I know he didn’t get them from me!
Something to do
I think I have an idea. If I can find the resources, I think I’m going do some video editing. Need to dust off my editor… and my skills. Stay tuned!
A few more Guild Wars locales.
I haven’t posted one of these in a while. Gotten back into Guild Wars again recently. Lately as I’m going around I’m taking the time to appreciate some of the scenery. The artists and designers really created some breathtaking stuff. Well breath taking for a 3-5 year old video game anyway.
The original Guild Wars: Prophecies is over 5 years old. In the video game world, that is ancient. Still... the original has some of the most beautiful and detailed scenes. Sometimes in places you walk by all the time. Here is Old Ascalon City.
Autumn in Ascalon.
The second chapter: Factions is most people's least favorite out of the three games. However I find the world to be absolutely beautiful. Most of my favorite scenes come from Guild Wars: Factions.
Plauge or not, living in Kaineng City would have to be just people living on top of people. Some of the towing structures are towing shacks that look like they'll topple if you look at it too long. Others are quite a bit nicer... like this one.
Heck, this is just the login screen.
Waterfalls are always cool. And there's no shortage of them in Guild Wars.
I don't want to go in there... do you? I have a feeling that's not a fluffy rabbit hole.
Gateway to Istan from Guild Wars Nightfall. How do they even imagine awesome architecture like this?
Freshened up the place.
B.G. Willers 3.0 I guess you could call it. Stuck with the old theme for a couple years which was a nice slick theme. But this theme was released recently and it seemed kinda fancy, but not over the top. Give it a shot I guess. Maybe it will inspire me to post more! haha
More fun with the camera.
There’s a thread on one of the Oldsmobile sites I visit that had folks posting night-time pictures of their dashboard and interior. Long exposure pictures always look cool, and I love taking pictures of my car, so I sat down and fiddled with some of the features on our camera and here’s what I came out with.
Amazing mind trip!
Okay, this is what you do when you have amazing skills. Check out the photo this fella took. Looks pretty good for late 50′s photography. As I’ve posted before, I love taking old photos like this and “colorizing” them to kind of experience what it would have looked like if you had actually been there.
But a fella named Micheal Paul Smith took the concept just a bit further. And all he needed was a nice camera, a little photoshop touch-up, and some serious skills!
This is a real photograph. No colorization at all.
How’d he do it? Would you believe those cars are just models he built!?
Micheal Paul Smith.
WOW! Just WOW! He has truly done some amazing work. Check out his slideshow if you ever get a chance!
Another old timey picture.
Click for full size.
If it looks a little bit “off”, it’s because this picture was originally black and white, and I’ve had it around for a while and I color a little bit on it in photoshop when I get bored. It’s not done, but it’s kinda like a puzzle, you just work on it a little bit at a time. Here’s a link to the original file. I’ve had it for a while, but don’t think I’ve ever shared it. So there ya go.
Bringing another old photo to life.
Someone on Oldspower.com posted some old pictures of dealerships from back in the day. Kinda cool to see all these cars that are “classics” now just sitting on the lot as brand new cars. But the old Black and White leaves so much to the imagination.
Original
After a night with nothing else to do.
Pixlr
Quite a few of the pictures here are run through a Photoshop wringer before they get uploaded. Most of the time it’s just cropping something, or making adjustments to try to make up for my crappy picture taking. Now there’s a great website out there that has all the basic functionality of Photoshop. It’s free. And you don’t need to install anything, so you can use it on any computer with internet access.
Here’s a quick example of some editing that took just a couple minutes.
First pick the image you want to edit. You can either load a picture off your hard drive, or use the URL of any image on the web. I used a picture from my Picasa gallery, but you could also use an image you found in a Google image search as well.
Here's what you see once your image is loaded.
You can easily crop images, or adjust levels to make up for bad lighting.
Cell phones don't take the best pictures.
While not as powerful as Photoshop by any means, there are a few more advanced tools you can have fun with!
Now she looks more psycho than she actually is.
So there ya go. Head over to the site and piddle around with it, and have some fun!
A new “sig pic”.
On the message boards, you usually have a short space at the end of each post for your “signature”. Lots of people enjoy gigantic signature pictures approaching resolutions that were unheard of just a decade ago. I prefer to go easy on my posting brethren’s scroll wheels and keep mine more compact.
Spent an hour or two on this one. Tried to give the car a bit of an animated look, and give some love to those blingin’ wire wheels and white walls!
Bringing the past to life.
Or trying at least. I played around with photoshop and tried to add some color to Grandma’s old house. It’s my first attempt and it seems to have turned out okay…but still a little surreal. I think I can do better on my next one. Still kinda neat. Makes it a little easier to imagine what it may have looked like to stand there and take that picture. I had to guess on some of the colors. Like the true color of the car. Could have been green for all I know, I went with red as it is what I imagined it to be, and is a popular color of the era.
I had some free time to burn, what can I say?
Before
After
Photoshop fun
I was messing around last night to illustrate something on OldsPower.com took about 30 minutes. Could be better, but not too shabby for my first attempt!
Before
After
Final Fantasy video from back in the day.
Here’s a video I put together probably a couple years ago. Never really had the means to post it. Youtube wasn’t around then, ya know! I hooked up my PS2 to my old laptop (may she rest in peace) and recorded all the cutscenes from both games on the the hard drive. That was a good week solid of playing though the games, recording, saving, etc.
Then I edited the two songs together with Cool Edit Pro, and put it all together with Sony Vegas 5. Didn’t turn out too bad, but the music is a little cliche now.
blue ice
here are some pretty awesome pics … many of you might have seen them however they are being circulated as a tidal wave breaking the ice ….this is not true it just blue ice just wanted to share them you can find a few more pics in my picasa album.
Trying out a new theme.
Change is good, right? Can’t remember how long I was with the old theme, but figured I’d change it up a bit. Supposedly this theme I can customize the header image and cool things like that. We’ll see. Might roll back to the old one. It was pretty plain, but flexable. So we’ll see where a little tweaking takes things.
Am I allowed to put this on a resume?
Well, I piddle around in photoshop from time to time. Mostly just cropping things, or changing the color of of my car. Ha ha. Recently though the Oldsmobile website I visit was looking to come up with a sticker that members could slap on their car and show their allegiance to the forum. I figured what the hell and came up with a little something.
Everybody voted, and whadda ya know, my design won!
Not only that, the owner of the site asked me to try to turn it into a banner ad they could run to promote sponsorship on the site. Check it out, though you might have to refresh a couple times before it pops up in rotation.
I don’t get any money off the deal, which I never expected to anyway. I’m just goofing around and happy to lend some nerd help. Since there’s a lot of people who know a lot more about cars than me on there, I suppose this is the best way I can be useful on an automotive forum! Ha ha. Just kinda cool to see something I did have a widespread impact. People from the San Fransisco, North Carolina, and in between will be sticking these on their cars. Just kinda cool.
How long until they die?
I planted some flowers just the other day. Something I’ve never done in the past that I can recall. I’ve planted a few vegitables but nothing that’s supposed to look pretty. I’m known more for my Nintendo thumb than my green thumb, so we’ll see how long they last. I was told that mid to late september is the best time to plant this stuff, but who knows.
Anyway, they look good for now. Much better than the dirt rocks and weeds that was there before hand. Like everything else it seems, I’m not striving for perfection, just “better than it was”. Which I figure over the long run is a pretty good strategy to have isn’t it?
Anywho, just wanted to share, and show a picture while they at least look decent. I’ll TRY to keep them alive!
They don’t make ‘em like they used to.
Yep, another wallpaper. Hope this doesn’t turn into the Wallpaper blog again like it did a while back. Hehe. I put together a little homage to Oldsmobile’s history. Lots of Cutlasses and only one Toronado! Click the picture for the hi-res version.
Here’s My New Car
As you know, Matt and I put some model cars together. Mine is cooler than his tho! hehe
Mine is a 1968 Chevrolet Corvette Roadster (as pictured above). What do you think of the huge motor? Pretty cool, huh?
I got some black paint specs on the body, but luckily in this picture you can’t really see them.
Oh well, that’s my car. Enjoy!
