User talk:Dragonsbrethren

PSX DOOM Textures
Are the animated textures supposed to be horribly grainy like that? It looks like the kind of dithering a crappy GIF animation tool would add. --BMF54123 09:38, 9 January 2013 (EST)


 * Oh damm. sorry, you're right. I didn't notice it at their native resolution before I uploaded them. That's strange, I use a Paint.net plugin for animated gifs and I've never had any problem with dithering before. The PSX textures are a bit grainy compared to PC, but no where near that bad. I'll try to figure out why they saved so poorly this time and upload better ones. --Dragonsbrethren 13:11, 9 January 2013 (EST)


 * Okay, just redid them with Unfreez and replaced the old ones. No idea why the Paint.net plugin couldn't handle saving them, source images all shared a palette so it should've been simple. The dithering on them now is there in the original textures. --Dragonsbrethren 13:39, 9 January 2013 (EST)

Thanks!
Thanks for keeping up such detailed content and articles on TCRF, especially over the past few weeks/months with your work on Final Fantasy IV, Goldeneye 64, and Perfect Dark. I've really enjoyed having new content to view thanks to your time and effort. Especially the visual part, like the pics! (words are fine too :) ) --Celice 04:47, 5 February 2013 (EST)
 * Hey thanks, glad you like those articles and my screenshots. --Dragonsbrethren 13:23, 5 February 2013 (EST)

Since you're working on PD page
I mentioned in the talk page about the 1999 beta footage.

http://tcrf.net/Talk:Perfect_Dark#The_1999_beta_footage

What are your thoughts on adding some of this stuff?--Ambient Malice 01:15, 13 March 2013 (EDT)


 * It's, unfortunately, outside of this wiki's scope. Only things left in the game are covered here, with material like that only being acceptable to post if it shows how something unused in the final game was being used during development. There's been talk around here now and then of doing some sort of archive for prerelease material, and I'd definitely love to document the differences in that footage if anything ever happens with those plans. Not every day something like that turns up, a short clip here and there sure, but over a half hour of straight gameplay is incredible. The Conker 12 Tales, Dinosaur Planet, and JFG vids on that channel are even more impressive, but I'm not particularly interested in those games. --Dragonsbrethren 01:26, 13 March 2013 (EDT)

Oops
Sorry about that. I thought "none" was a placeholder for image captions. Sorry. MightyKombat 10:58, 28 March 2013 (EDT)
 * Yeah, no problem. I kind of figured that was the case, since it's not a very descriptive alignment option when used as part of the wiki markup. --Dragonsbrethren 12:29, 28 March 2013 (EDT)
 * It does seem a bit vague, yeah. MightyKombat 15:10, 28 March 2013 (EDT)

Thanks :)
Thanks for helping with the TF2 articles :D You're adding in everything I forgot about, and then some! It's a pleasure working with you, so to speak. 404: User Not Found (talk) 18:55, 18 April 2013 (EDT)
 * I'm glad you're happy with my changes, I was afraid I might be stepping on some toes since I've seen you cleaning up the TF2 subpages recently. There's more unused/beta weapons I can add - I actually looked into those sometime last year for the TF2 wiki, since I was interested in their attributes as presented in-game, and uncovered some stuff from when Valve's closed beta leaked. There's also the open beta stuff, some of which made the cut but there were a few significant changes that didn't. --Dragonsbrethren 00:35, 19 April 2013 (EDT)
 * Don't worry about stepping on toes! I'm all about formatting, making things look damn good with damn good screenshots, and making sure everything is covered. If you've got info that isn't on here or the TF2 Wiki, ADD IT! 404: User Not Found (talk) 01:05, 19 April 2013 (EDT)
 * Also, I want to get my hands on that closed beta. Lucky you :P 404: User Not Found (talk) 01:10, 19 April 2013 (EDT)
 * Oh, no, I don't actually have the beta, I just found a huge dump of information from someone who did:
 * Sadly the screenshots and all but one video are gone. Most of this is stuff that went live in the Classless Update, outside of the new weapons (with the exception of the GRU). --Dragonsbrethren 01:24, 19 April 2013 (EDT)
 * Ahh, so basically this is openly available information from the TF2 Wiki on their Closed Beta article. 404: User Not Found (talk) 01:32, 19 April 2013 (EDT)

Turok 3 prototype carts
Not many people remember Turok 3, but it's one of my favorite FPS games. It was severely rushed, and two significantly different prototype dumps exist, dated about 3-1 months before release. I'm thinking of making a page for them, and wanted your advice on how the page should be formatted, and whether it's relevant, since you've done such a good job with the Perfect Dark page.

For example, here is the N4TKER09 (3 months before release) Intro sequence not found in any other version. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0U6SQi6mltE


 * Cool, I've never played the game, but more prototype articles are always nice. They'd definitely be relevant. Also glad to hear you like the formatting in the PD articles, I played around with that a lot until I figured out something I was happy with. Since you're going to be writing about two protos, you should make a Proto: article, then give each one its own subpage of that, like Sonic 2. Help:Contents has some basic formatting info, but I'm going to assume you're aware of that and want my opinions/preferences on laying out the article, so...


 * Break the articles into sections based on whatever makes the most sense for the game/changes. Typically this is done by content type (models, textures, etc.), but for PD I did it by mission first since so much stuff could be tied to a specific mission.
 * The more screenshots/video of changes and unused stuff, the better.
 * I recommend comparing the earliest proto to both the later proto and final version in any place where it's applicable. This is good not only for refreshing people's memory of the final version, but also for people like me who have never played the game (I've read plenty of articles here for games I never played, or played a decade ago and barely remember). I did this for some things in Doom.
 * In the case of things that are only present in the proto(s), try to show and describe them in detail. (The Sonic 2 proto articles I linked are bad in this regard, IMO, because entire scrapped levels only get a screenshot and a few sentences of text. They should have more screenshots pointing out interesting areas.)


 * If you wanted help with the actual wiki markup or there's anything else you want help with, just let me know. --Dragonsbrethren 12:28, 22 April 2013 (EDT)

advice
I'd like your advice on how to proceed. At the moment, I've created a main T3 page, with the two prototypes as subpages, since I figure that myself or others may discover content in the final game which belongs in the main page - and I feel that information which isn't specific to either of prototypes would belong here. However, would it be more 'correct' to make them Proto:Turok_3 pages?

http://tcrf.net/User:Ambient_Malice/Turok_3

--Ambient Malice 02:43, 24 April 2013 (EDT)

Please bear in mind the page is still WIP. As an example of content I'd put on the first page, whether it gets named Proto:Turok_3 or not, I'm going to record a video showing how the PSG weapon's behavior differs in both prototypes, as well as the final game. With this in mind, I think it would be ideal to treat the Turok 3 page as Proto, but with subpages. I'll do this when I move it out of Userspace. --Ambient Malice 04:37, 24 April 2013 (EDT)


 * It's looking good so far. It should probably be moved to Proto:Turok 3: Shadow of Oblivion when you're ready for it to go public, since full titles are used for the articles here. There have been proto articles here without a corresponding main article before. If N4TKER18 doesn't have many differences to final, you might want to ask an admin if it should really be a subpage or not, I know subpages are how multiple protos are usually handled here, but it seems like a waste in this case unless you have more information to add to it.
 * You can place the audio files into a compare template as well, that's not just for images. (Use |width=600 so the player fits in the boxes when expanded). For the boss health bar, I'd add |right to the image rather than just placing it after the text.
 * One thing you should be doing is tagging your screenshots/rips with the screenshot/rippedgraphic/etc. templates when you upload an image. Speaking of your screenshots, almost no N64 games actually render at 640x480, so if you can you should grab them at native res. I wrote up how to do this with the Glide64 plugin here. Given the issue you mention with shadows, it's understandable if you can't capture native res and have to use what the N64's outputting, but I figured I'd bring it up. --Dragonsbrethren 14:18, 24 April 2013 (EDT)

The native resolution of Turok 3 should be 640x480, but I couldn't confirm this because nobody seemed to care enough to document it. However, Turok 2 ran at 640x480, according to Acclaim, in high resolution mode, so I reasoned Turok 3 would too. I used the z64 plugin which is very slow, but emulates shadows reasonably accurately. Unless there's some technical quirk I'm not aware of? I do know some N64 games rendered at oddball 'high' resolutions.--Ambient Malice 19:39, 24 April 2013 (EDT)