Gerard

Wish we were allowed guns over here. Meh suppose the lack of gun crime is a good thing. Our CCF (school army cadets) get to fire some guns occasionally, they get military backing and its all done on a range and stuff so its legal, never done it myself though. I dunno whether itls the status symbol, or the feeling of power or control or what, but I'd love to be a weapons officer (police or whatever), just something I'd like to do. They're interesting and clever and stuff I suppose too.

Deep gash for me, although I've also broken both arms (separately). In Art at school we'd filled 500ml bottles (coke, pepsi, tango etc) with plaster, left them to set, and then cut away the plastic bottle with a scalpel, leaving the plaster case of the bottle which we'd paint and do stuff with. My bottle was a thick curvy Fanta bottle, and my scalpel was a bit too blunt. I was pushing really hard... and slipped. Scalpel went straight down my forefinger of the hand I was holding the bottle with, and got stuck in the bone on the side of my knuckle. Funny thing is it didn't really hurt, and I kinda became kinda dazed - felt like some kind of bodily self-defence pain-prevention mechanism kicking in. I just walked to the other end of the classroom, bleeding absolutely everywhere, and was rushed to hospital by the overenthusiastic teacher. Sad thing was she was really scared she was gonna lose her job from letting kids loose with scalpels and one getting injured. All i'm left with is a little scar where the scalpel got stuck, the rest of the finger healed over pretty quickly. And it still works

Yeah spose there's more to worry about. Like a new skin.......

A year ago I managed to fall off my bed and break my arm... On my 5th birthday I managed to fall off a wall onto a bike and break my arm too. Couple of years ago I got a scalpel stuck in the bone in my hand. I ran into a lamppost and went to hospital around the same time. So.. yeah

There have been lots of things which have pointed to the requirement of a privileged members group, a VIP group, or a separate group for newbies. It is a tricky situation, and the last thing we want to do is divide the members in half. If we said everyone with more than 50 posts is privileged, then discrimination could come in and the people in the better group would think they were better than people in the worse group and treat the newbies like dirt. Pips work separately to groups, they are based purely on your post count and change nothing but your title. It is easy enough to promote people to other groups when they get x posts, but is it a bit of a faff on if we're doing that for loads of separate groups? There's no way we're having 40 new groups, because anything we wanted to change we'd have to change 40 times. Perhaps one or two, see what Chris says. For example: New members may not be able to post new topics, upload anything or post twice within 30 seconds. After 20 posts they get automatically promoted to the 'members' group, where they can do everything you guys all can. After 500 posts they get promoted to the privileged member group, where they can upload more, and maybe have access to a separate forum that other members can't see. Perhaps the normal+privileged members could get a blog, but not the new members, or perhaps not. It is up to Chris, who hasn't been to keen on the idea whenever I've mentioned it. But tbh I think it'd be good if we were careful about it, and made sure the only difference between the groups was post count, not 'better' people.

Everything in games is made up of triangles. Absolutely everything. Triangles, called 'polygons' in modelling, are pretty simple things to work with, they are just three coordinates, with something like a colour or a texture in the middle. Two polygons can make up a square, and lots of little triangles can make something resembling a circle. See how this image below creates a spheroid from thousands of polygons: Why do they use polygons? Well with 2D games, objects are just made with pictures - just loads of pixels. If you want to rotate an object in a 2D game, you just switch to a side-view image, then a back view, then the other side, then the front again. The problem with that is you only get 4 views, and you can't rotate to any other degree than that. Of course there's nothing stopping you making 360 pictures of the object at loads of tiny angles, but thats a lot of work for one image and takes up loads of space. Polygons, however, are mathematical; they are perfect shapes that the computer can deal with easily. They are actually programmed as three-dimensional shapes rather than lots of different shots. The computer can actually rotate these shapes itself, and add on any effects such as lighting and shadows and movement easily. Since the rotations are done by a mathematical formula that will project the shape at any angle of rotation, only one image needs to be stored in the game. Therefore, with polygon games you have very smooth rotations in a much smaller file size, which you can do more stuff with. You should be able to see the disadvantage here. That sphere above uses tens of thousands of polygons, which are just three points of the triangle, and don't forget the polygon next door uses two of the same coordinates. If you wanted a perfect wheel, with all the tubing and a perfect circle, you'd need millions of polygons. You can halve the size of the data in the wireframe image by halving the number of polygons. In that bike, they won't be using too many polygons, to save space and load quicker. In games where you have cars as the focus (racing games) you'd have loads more, but GTA is more about what you DO with the bike than what it looks like. I think it's realistic enough, if a bit jagged. Hope that answers your question

Members have a maximum total global file space limit for all uploads (including PMs and posts) of 1mb. If you exceed that limit, you could remove the attachments of your older posts in Attachment Management. From here you can also see how much of your space you've used.

One Thousand Posts

This is a pretty simple contest. I'll post a picture, and everybody posts funny captions (titles) for the pic. We'll decide the winner and set out another one. Don't post any new pictures straightaway, if you have any funny ones PM them to me. EXAMPLE: So... how big is the TV? Can you imagine the size of the butt? Honey!! I shrunk the customers! You know...when the ad said "Giant Furniture Sale"... It is quite crucial to put in a decimal point when sending in requests for certain dimensions... You think you could help me move this into in my living room? Simple? We'll judge on the funniest entries in a few days time. Here's the competition image:

There is a tunnel that goes alongside the "river" south of the dam. It comes out at the bottom of the road from the Big Ear, theres a path just down by the water there. It goes south to just below the rail bridge I think. There's a police bribe in there too. Is that the one you're on about?

Hmm.. now I'd go for Chris, Righty, 888ball, Spaz (legend), Sky, SmallPancake/package.. and thats it for now.

Not too bad, but a couple of things I'd like to counter. Call me old fashioned, but Grand Theft Auto is primarily about cars. Good old fashioned land-based cars with wheels. Walking is allowed, and other vehicles such as planes, bikes and helicopters have been slowly introduced. For your argument, hovercars (and some say spacecraft) is just another step in the same direction. I am a bit of a sci-fi fan myself, I do like a bit of the old Star Trek or Stargate SG-1 occasionally, and I agree that there isn't enough of this large-scale futuristic stuff in games. However, is GTA really the right game to do this in? Perhaps a new series that is based in space with spacecraft, space stations and aliens is what is needed. My concern is that if GTAIV did go in that direction, we'd lose a lot of the freedom of the game and gain too much at the same time. If you've got the Hydra in San Andreas, and you just go around everywhere in that, it kinda spoils it. If it was all air/space-based with elevated walkways and flying cars, there would be no more mountains, no more roads, no more houses, no more trucks, no more airports, nothing that we've come to expect in a GTA game. I actually would quite enjoy it if we had one futuristic GTA game, I reckon it'd be quite fun. But would people expect to go back to the old format? If they changed they wouldn't go back. GTA would become a space game, with its older versions being land-based. I don't think it's time to end the series, but maybe a new one would be good too.

Anyway, now you can download Office 2007 for yourself here: http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/be...en/default.mspx Be warned, it's a hefty download. Also it is only a beta, so wont work 100% yet. Also its Office 2007, not 2003, so it saves documents as .docx etc rather than .doc, which makes it somewhat incompatible with older versions unless you saveas them, which wont be 100% to Office 2007's potential.

I can't see any way to open PDF files in Word 2007, but I do appear to remember something about them. I'll try and find out.

Yeah Word 2007 documents are saved as .docx instead of .doc, but the old compatibilities are still there (One option is "Save As Word 97-2003 Document") This is because faster and more versatile XML is used for storing the information and formatting instead of the older unique methods. In fact, most recent Microsoft programs themselves are written partially in XML. I was digging around inside Windows Live Messenger (MSN8) a couple of weeks ago and found the entire XML source code for one page or another, CSS and all. Pretty funky really. And this is better than any apple product. I dare say that Microsoft have actually got it right this time, something they haven't achieved since Word 2.0 for Windows 3.11 It's a billion times better than Vista too

Well I got my hands on beta 2 of Microsoft Office 2007, and I absolutely love it. I'm still writing the full review, but in the meantime have a sneaky look at my screenshots in the meantime. The new ribbon interface replaces menus and icons. It's a straightforward set of ideas really: put different icons on different tabs for when you're doing different things. The thing is, unlike many recent innovations, it actually works. When you're writing, you go to the "Home" tab, and everything you need will be there. When you want to add something, you go to the "Insert" tab, and everything you need will be there. When you want to edit a picture, simply select the picture and the "Format" tab pops up, which has absolutely everything you need in it, including shapes, styles, shadows, 3D effects and arranging tools. The second great change of Office 2007 is the expansion of styles. Now you can set predefined styles to pretty much anything (images, pages, text) , and these work in conjunction with the improved theme system. The third great change is Live Previews. When selecting a theme or style to anything, you no longer have to think, guess, undo and repeat. Now all you have to do is hover over the thumnail and your document is instantly updated to reflect what would happen if you chose that. This works for text styles, fonts, font sizes, themes, colours, drawings, positioning, shadows, 3D effects.. everything. I'll leave you to drool over the rest, and you should be able to view the finished review in under 24 hours. Enjoy.

Guys I don't think it's time to complain about what you want to keep, it's time to say what you want thats new. I think a custom skin would be great, and a variety of colours should please most people.Hey, it worked for Codename Forums.. and ohmigod they've upgraded IPB at last.

There are several to download from our download database

"WE are the winners, of Eurovision........ oh no we aren't" Was funny still

Third Person Shooter is 3PS not TPS. I think an Online GTA would be alright, and a lot of people would like it. Maybe I'm just antisocial but I prefer going it alone. Doubt other people would join in with what I do ingame.

This does NOT go in The Lounge *Moved to San Andreas Mods*

That's one problem Rockstar have. Because you can do so much in their games, people want to be able to do everything. As soon as you can change clothes, people want to design their own. As soon as you can drive, people want to be able to fly planes. As soon as you can fly planes, people want to be able to fly helis. As soon as you can earn a bit of money, people want jobs. As soon as you can buy a house, people want to live in it. As soon as you get a massive playing area, people want the entire universe. Having the entire Earth, and several other planets is just completely unrealistic, and would completely undermine what the game is about. In space all you could do is fly to places, and maybe walk on a planets surface, can't jack any cars or shoot people - oh let me guess, you want space-based missions, right? I mean space would be fun, and it is in many games, but just not GTA. If you want space, buy a space game. GTA is not space, and should never be space. HOWEVER visiting the moon or some small place high in the sky (but not another planet or in space) would be alright. Space vehicles would be pretty cool, especially if there was the big launch pad and exclusion zone and everything. Just so long as you can't hop into a spaceship and land on a planet within two minutes, that would be boring. If it was realistic, then sure, why not. The superman Idea is alright, but many people would say what is the point if you can't die and just fly everywhere. It's like when you get the Hydra and Jetpack in San Andreas, and you just never walk anywhere again, spoils it a bit. The whole point of most of the game is staying alive, and the whole point of it being Grand Theft Auto is that you drive a lot. Never dying and flyingwould be boring really - infiltrating a military base you'd just fly in, ignore everyone else, maybe shoot one of the guards, and complete the mission in about two minutes. Boring. Wrestling is alright, just NOT WWF style wrestling. I think the ability to fight properly instead of wildly throwing punches would be good. As for missions, only a training mission early on, but perhaps some missions would have parts where you can't use a gun (ie sneaking into a house) and you have to use either a knife or hand-to-hand combat. Chopping down trees is good, more environment interactivity is what we're all hoping for. In SA you could run trees/lamposts over, and make tyre marks in the ground, but not much else. Digging, chopping, picking up and setting fire to stuff is all good. Severe weather would be great, but perhaps annoying if you're trying to complete a mission and you get picked up by a tornado and dumped somewhere over the sea. So long as missions had their own weather instructions, then severe weather is a definite yes. Having it interact with the environment more (picking up cars, trees and people) and laying snow would be the best. One other thing I'd like to see would be rivers - in San Andreas almost all the water is on one level, and the rivers are all fake. There is no flowing water or trickling streams, and I think there should be. Same goes for the Dam, there should be turbines spewing out water high up. There should be puddles when it rains, and the rivers should get higher and occasionally flood. That's be alright I think. As for Jurassic Park, I don't think animals are gonna make it into the game - it's too risky, remember how they deliberately removed the sex scenes (yeah okay they got found, R* won't make that mistake again). If animals do get in, Dinosaurs are a bit.. unrealistic. If animals were in I'd prefer to see dogs in the street with their owners, cats in the alleys fighting, deer in the woods, sheep and cows in the fields and horses you can ride - pretty basic stuff. Riding horses would be cool (it is in Gun), but you don't tend to see Dinosaurs much these days, and if they were on their own secret undiscovered island far away.. well thats just copying. All in all some good suggestions, but a few I don't think are very GTA, and should be in different games.

Thats a sad but true fact i rediscovered the other day. I had my photo taken with armo on his leaving day, and I just looked so unbelievably nerdy in it compared to him, I was horrified. Had one short term, but wouldnt do that again. Looking for long term. Failing. Everyone who I tell seems to freak out too. Oh well.

So what is the film actually about? All I know is its about the blood line of Jesus, and his wife Mary Magdelane in Da Vinci's painting. What's the storyline?

That was the best Lordi (Finland) absolutely deserved to win, and they had a decent song too. Loved the.. girl (?) on the keyboard too. Total Klingon. Daz was pretty... lame. Was alright but should've been better. We'll never win anyway because we don't have all the political allies that everyone else has. Damn the island.. separating us from everywhere else. Damn the French, not giving us any points. Yay for Terry Wogan thought. Awesome guy.