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On a gaming community forum, some kid posted this days ago and said "HA HA"... (on Facepunch, http://forums.facepunchstudios.com/showthread.php?t=603042). He also posted in game screenshots...

I, for one, can't wait for SPORE! :D

The Facepunch Studios forums already have these guys beat with their forums' Smartness filter. It's awesome. Wish all forums used it. And /.'s discussions while we're at it.

if you like a challenge and you like half life 2, try installing the japanese-made SMOD. It's highly configurable. it adds challenge with things like riot shields on combine, stealth camouflage, brutal weapons, very mean ai, more enemies on maps(all properly scripted and placed), new types of enemies, old xen enemies (remade), different coloured guys that take a massive pounding before dying, altered level layouts etc. If that sounds a bit hard you do get a bullet time feature and tons of new weapons, and you will probably need them.

it adds shaders and effects and all that stuff and makes the game look much better. It's much bloodier, you can gib enemies and eat the gibs to go over 100 health. you get a button to do an uber kick that just punishes whatever you hit. it adds about 20 very cool weapons like the stuff launcher, which absorbs stuff with secondary fire then blasts it out with primary fire, works well with striders and cars and hoppers and pretty much everything), the gravity grenade (complete with scary screen effect), bla bla bla

ok so you get it at http://www.geocities.jp/faster_down/smod_bak/ (the site is in japanese but the mod is in english), go down to the bottom and download smod36, and smod36b. Then extract smod36 to your sourcemods folder, so it looks like sourcemods/smod. Do the same and overwrite with smod36b, then restart steam. Look for half-life 2 SMOD in the games menu and enjoy probably the best mod for half life 2 out so far.

for too much info on smod, try http://forums.facepunchstudios.com/showthread.php? s=fe60962945eb6aa9c68c4245ff45e2d3&t=70774

As a matter of fact, there is no growing body of works on the subject. It's just references to the single study by that Japanese researcher, which is not even applicable to CGI characters, because it was done about robots. There is no empirical evidence that realistic CGI (game) models are creepy. Most people enjoyed Polar Express and beside a few smartasses that wanted to seem cool by ditching it, noone talked about zombies. I watched it in IMAX and even though animation is not perfect 100% of the time and there are some moments that weren't as good as the rest, it is in no way "creepy". There was no negative emotion reaction and I haven't heard any viewer comment negatively after the film.

Check out Half-Life 2 renders with realistic lighting. Is there anything creepy?

Of course, PR folks are using this to boast about their product. Half-Life 2 guys did it, Shrek guys did it before. Of course, if you stick a high-poly realistic model in a low-poly rough environment and have it interact with other low-poly models, it will look wrong. Kind of like if you place Alyx from HL2 into the original HL. Also, if you create a great model, but do not do as good a job with animation, it will look wrong again. But what is creapy about it? It's just lack of polish and lack of consistency.

Furthermore, gamers are willing to go very far to suspend disbelief. Anyone, who played GTA knows what I am talking about. Stumps instead of hands, rectangular breasts, models that have 1998 written all other them. The effect is compounded by often realistic rather high-res facial textures, although there is absolutely abismal lighting and they look worse than plastic. Heck, Rockstar even put sex mini-games there with such horrendous models. If people can (and are expected to) handle that, they will handle a-bit-too-realistic Alyx.

All this talk about creepyness is 100% pure refined bullshit.

A month or so ago, someone took some HL2 models and rendered them with HDL. Then he put those renderings into his back-yard.

You can see them here

If you're anything like me, it's not just information overload...

I look at news sites all the time and see stories just re-affirming my views that the better portion of humans are fucking morons.

This is very depressing.

Like most geeks, I find most shit I am forced to put up with each day boring as hell.

Also very depressing.

Hell, what _isn't_ depressing?

Even reading Slashot and other forums and seeing the intelligence of your average net-goer is depressing. (As a completely off-topic note, everyone should run their forums like these: http://www.facepunchstudios.com/forums/ (check the ban list link))

Bah. I'm going to go stare at a wall or bash my head with a plank of wood or something.

I posted about it on my AQFL site (might not connect due to domain changes right now).

See here for amusing screen shots. Be warned some of them contain nudity.