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Just finished: "Bible of the Beast"- Powerwolf Moving on to: "Afterburner"- ZZ Top

That it's not real. Those aren't real people, it's not real blood, those aren't real injuries, and no one's really dying. It's meant to basically bring into question why people are likening the violence and death in a video game, to the actual, real violence and death against/of a living and breathing person.

The length of the game isn't as important as its girth. Whether it's two hours, forty hours, or twenty minutes long, how stuffed is the game when it comes to content? How full is it? Sure, a 40 hour game can be fun, as long as it keeps you interested by adding new bits to encounter and use. But if the new content ends 15 hours in, it becomes a chore to finish that last 25 hours. You're just working toward the end then, grinding your way through the same things over and over, instead of encountering new and exciting things. Meanwhile, the 30 minute shmup that has multiple ships with different weapons and attributes, branching paths, various score bonuses to learn how to acquire and utilize, and even hidden "final" bosses (say "hi" DonPachi series), will keep players coming back again and again for years on end. There's so much to learn and get a grip on, that it pulls you back in with the tease that you just know you can do better and get a higher score if you learn more of the game's tricks. Is this a sure-fire way to keep everyone interested? Nope. There's no such thing as a sure-fire way, as each person is different. But that can be countered at least a little if you pack that game with a steady stream of new things to learn, see, work toward, and do. So, does it hurt the games artistically if people aren't finishing it? Not really, no. Some will find it fun to plod through that aforementioned 25 hour stretch of nothing new. Others will get bored and turn it off for good. If anything hurts the game, it's what is and isn't put into it. If the content is there to support the game's length, look and feel (and done at least reasonably well), it won't be the game's fault that players lost interest. That blame can rest on the shoulders of the individuals holding the controllers, and their fickle, fleeting tastes. Like all art, what a person likes and dislikes is going to be damn subjective, and could change weekly. So trying to make your art/game appeal to all, all the time, just isn't possible. But if you can pack your art with gameplay/visuals/sound/story/whatever that's done well, and not slapped together in a half-assed manner, you'll have a better chance of keeping your audience there to see all you wanted to show them... assuming the audience doesn't have the attention span of a ADHD-riddled ferret.

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PSSSSST! It's 20.

I said this in the chatroom, but I'll say it here as well... With the album preview done, I have to say that everyone did a great job on the mixes. This album got done pretty quickly, but the quality's there from start to finish. So thanks to DjM and DusK for letting me take part, thanks to Kyle and the crew for airing this online tonight, and thanks for the kind words about my work

Sent, my good woman

Interesting. However, I must say... REXY CLEER OWT UR INBOX... please.

This could very well be the first time one of my remixes has been played during an online radio show, since LT was doing his thing a fair number of years ago.

Powerwolf- "Preachers of the Night" (album) Powerwolf- "Blood of the Saints" (album) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWbfztup-6Q Just found out about these guys less than a week ago. I already have their "Preachers of the Night" and "Blood of the Saints" albums, with "Lupus Dei" on the way. Power metal, hokey lyrical concepts (werewolves, demons, etc.), cheesy from start to finish... and I love it. The album art for their last two albums is also particularly cool.

Having listened to some of the songs, there's a definite Devin Townsend vibe to it (which is a good thing, as Devin rocks). When I get some cash, I may have to pick up this album.

I know people keep mentioning that they got this or that with a student discount. I feel I should mention, that the so-called Student/Education/Academnic editions of those software packages aren't supposed to be used for profit. Unless the licensing setup has changed in recent years, that stipulation is part of why students get such a big discount. That means if you want to use that software for profit/business, you gotta pay the full price to get a full license. Maybe it's changed with Adobe, but that's how it was when I got student discounts on software during college.

These are two words I don't believe I've put side by side... ever.

Frank Miller consulting? Guess that means the line, "I'm the Goddamn Batman" is going to be in there somewhere.

After Effects is, in essence, a bigger, more robust Flash-like program. You can do less complicated edits to video and audio, you can add text, images, create and move objects around, animate objects (especially in newer versions), apply many visual and some audio effects, and it's all done in a pretty easy to follow timeline setup that shares similarities with Flash. It can also export video (avi, mov, mp4, etc.), flash (swf and flv), and some other formats. It'll never replace real video/audio editors, but it does do the job well if you're not needing anything overly complex to be done (though if you're really good with it, you can likely get it to do some pretty complex things in that area).

All it'll cost is some time and bandwidth to find out, so it couldn't hurt to try.

Guess that depends on how new your Mac or PC is. For someone like me, who's still using their 2004 PC, that stuff runs just fine. I'm sure the slightly older Mac OSes probably wouldn't have much trouble with them, unless compatibility took a shit from whatever was the current OS in 2005, to the ones that came after them.

You can get After Effects 7 and Adobe Premier Pro 2 for free from Adobe themselves at the moment (along with CS2... well, everything). You need an account, but once you make one, the only thing standing between you and 3 DVD's worth of Adobe software is hitting "I agree." Yes, Adobe has a "Do you promise you owned the original software?" disclaimer, but come on... even they know the people who downloaded that stuff didn't own it. All that software's from 2005, so it's already unsupported (the page with the "I agree: button even says so). And yes, all the software has a serial number listed to put in once it's installed. I'd post a link, but due to the "Do you promise you used to own it?" disclaimer, I don't know how OCR's link police will react. So...

It'll never happen, because how each one tries to do it drives the others nuts, and then they undo it. Argle- I believe the answer is NO

Do it! DO IT! YOU AIN'T GOT A HAIR ON YOUR ASS IF YOU DON'T DO IT! I TRIPLE DOG DARE YOU TO DO IT!