Jump to content
DerelictStudios Forums

flyby

Volcano Officer
  • Content count

    5,009
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Community Reputation

0 Neutral

1 Follower

About flyby

  • Rank
    Grumpy Grandpa

Previous Fields

  • Country
    Belgium

Contact Methods

  • MSN
    flyby_DS@hotmail.com
  • Website URL
    http://
  • ICQ
    114017403

Profile Information

  • Gender
    Male
  • Mod Registrations
    Played Blitzkrieg 2: The Finest Hour
  • Army Rank
    Major
  1. flyby

    Who The Hell Are You?

    Although the forum went into hibernation, it is still great to revisit a few times a year... Nice to see Weston you made a career out of your hobby.. And you Killa? still in the army? last time we spoke you were contemplating re-entering military service... how did that go? From time to time i still see Greg (our kickass texture designer) popup on my skype notification... Smurfbizkit also popsup from time to time and to show me their progress on that SC2 WW2 mod he's working on. goes very slow, it seems, but the unit design is really really good... a bit sci-fi ww2 -ish.. love it. Hell, even Logan is still in my contact list and i spoke to him last year. He showed me some amazing airplane plans (front/side/top) he colored. ah so much fun with the old Blitz crew... As for me, i had a brief moment of nostalgia last year and started modding Zero Hour again, but helas, i soon ran out of available free time again... so after 2 weeks my 1946 project went belly up again... no time, which is in essence the fate of any 3D freelancer :) Did however find a solution to limit the traverse of a bunker gun..i recall we've researched that for weeks and weeks, in the old days,and never found a solution... no need place turrets anymore. :) Also tried to get the aircraft carrier logic working on a regular airfield, but failed at that... although I've seen half finished mods that do have that feature... damnit ! It is with some serious nostalgia i look back on the good old Blitz-modding days. My current workload just doesn't have room for these type of free time indulgences anymore. Currently I drifted more into actual Tv-set decor designing, then mere rendering them, like in the past. Artistically more rewarding for sure, but it gobbles up all my free time... Oh well... success in life, guys !
  2. flyby

    Anyone Interested In Testing A New Blitz 2?

    hmmm.. that is a solvable problem... took me some time too to get a fix, but i got around it with my old max8 license i had laying around...
  3. flyby

    Anyone Interested In Testing A New Blitz 2?

    Honney !! I'm back....... 7 years later... B)/> I can finally say I got out of the dark shadows... the only thing I miss is enough free time.. but is a minor problem.. After seeing and experimenting with the new shaders (ENB Series) for the SAGE engine that float around, I decided to pick up where I left 7 years ago... so.. work on my Illusive "1946" for ZH will resume soon... Got me a weird online CnC package (17 cnc games) from OriginGames and after some fiddling, got everything to work again. It will take a few weeks before i get a grip of all the code again but hey.. motivation is there again... If you didn't say ZH yet with those new shaders , try this : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkyReM-OJ5E. It rocks... all I need to figure out is how they did the water...
  4. flyby

    Created With The Map Editor

    not true actually... Renegade used a different game engine. Renegade was "ported" : only the story and part of the gameplay was reused. This is different... It uses the same engine, for all the things you've seen. only the interface was modded. So the game can be used as RTS, but also as FPS or arcade-shooter... I wonder if there will be any reaction from EA.... if any..
  5. flyby

    Iran Elections Turned Revolution?

    All will depend on how brutal the police and army will react... Will they side with the clerics/president or side with the people? It's clear this protest is just not a few unhappy marching down the street. It is a mainstream feeling in the Iranian society wanting to become a more modern, tollerant Iranian state. If the army sides with the people, then we'll see the end of the muslim fundamentalist republic. If not, it will be squashed , much like the chinese did a while ago... Too early to tell... not all revolts cause a revolution...
  6. flyby

    Would You Have Been A Nazi?!

    It's always nice to see whether your opinions have changed over time (4 years since the first test)...
  7. flyby

    Would You Have Been A Nazi?!

    The Expatriate Achtung! You are 8% brainwashworthy, 14% antitolerant, and 29% blindly patriotic Congratulations! You are not susceptible to brainwashing, your values and cares extend beyond the borders of your own country, and your Blind Patriotism does not reach unhealthy levels. If you had been German in the 30s, you would've left the country. One bad scenario -- as I hypothetically project you back in time -- is that you just wouldn't have cared one way or the other about Nazism. Maybe politics don't interest you enough. But the fact that you took this test means they probably do. I'm gonna give you the benefit of the doubt. Did you know that many of the smartest Germans departed prior to the beginning of World War II, because they knew some evil shit was brewing? Brain Drain. Many of them were scientists. It is very possible you could have been one of them. Conclusion: born and raised in Germany in the early 1930's, you would not have been a Nazi. used to be : Just for fun.. redid the test.... same result.. :P You are 7% brainwashworthy, 9% antitolerant, and 19% blindly patriotic
  8. flyby

    What Was Your First Computer?

    A Tandy 1000 TX the first real pc with coulour graphics (16 colors). 8mhz, iirc and a whpping 10mb harddisk...
  9. flyby

    Tank Development In Wwii

    [ First thing i can observe is that the vehicles do not really have the same time frame. War time years do make a far bigger difference as the pace of development is drastically accelerated. So comparing them isn't quite "honest"... Another point is that each of the countries had a different environment (strategically, economically, politically) in which the development took place. These do have an impact on the design possibilities that is often overlooked. a final question mark ; what are we actually looking for, by comparing them? I put question marks when comparing vehicles and designs that do not have the same "environment conditions". It is not a straightforward exercise, as these external factors often have a profound impact on the final result... And how do we look back on WWII tank development? Through the perspective of late 20th century tank development? all judgement we have on that period is always clouded by our current perspectives... Now, back to the topic... I do tend to agree with the general notion of the above statement, but i do not wish to end this in a better/worse scenario.. I have little knowledge on the Centurion, so I’ll steer clear of commenting anything on that, although my general impression of the British tank development is one of a rather stiff and difficult bureaucratic decision making organisation, that suffered from internal competition and self interests... I have no knowledge on Russian tank development at all. All I can say is that the IS-3 did indeed hold some of the key elements that became the development direction of the 60-70 and 80's... I can however compare US tank development and the German tank designs... Germany started with a clear advantage in tank designing at the beginning of the war, especially on the organisational and technical aspect. But somewhere along the road that advantage got diluted and eventually squandered.... By reading the book on Kummerdorpf, one of the main German testing grounds, I got a clear insight on how German design and testing philosophy changed during the war. Germany was the first to have a very rigorous military testing program. Just as the later USA testing programs it was a very methodological approach and resulted in excellent end results. It was completely in hands of the military... but then things started to change when the nazi's got control over the army. An ever growing political influencing started to interfere with the normal process of testing and decision-making. It completely eroded the quality control system of the German army. Once the testing grounds in hands of the nazi's, you also saw several manufacturers shortcutting the normal testing procedures and get their approval directly from nazi high command. The testing program then became a mere formality and results got deliberately skewed to suit political agendas. The Panther program already suffered from this political interference and was pushed into production way too early, long before the any rigorous testing was performed. With catastrophic results, which gave the early panther versions a bad reputation… One of the weaknesses of the German tank development is the lack of including the strategic situation of Germany in their concepts. Mid war tank engineering lived in a bubble, disconnected from any reality. Understandable, in a way, as at that point Nazism, with their arrogance of being superior, was intolerant to any criticism on strategic (resource) decisions. In combination with the shortcutting manufacturers, this leaded to excesses and wasted energy in tank design. By the time German quality control started to slide into oblivion, Americans had rewritten their obsolete tank doctrines and installed a similar rigorous quality program… But where the German testing programs started to falter, due to political interference, the Americans were able to keep any political interference out of the system. As a result their testing parameters were held high and as Logan correctly indicated, only the best functioning designs were put into production. what's more, Americans were very sensitive to the strategical/economical aspects of tank design. Combined with their impressive production capacities, it became one of the key elements in winning the war.... The reversal in the german production mentality came too late and the by then, the increased pressure to produce more tanks, seriously hindered any tank development... Jenz's "panzer tracts" is full of design variations and testprograms that never made it due to cramped production capabilities... (like the sloped Pz IV fe) US development somehow lacks a certain degree of continuity; where as in German design there seems to be a more progressive approach. I’m not sure what is best, tbh… I’m inclined to say that American design was, because it just had overthrown its old tank doctrines, was still trying to discover what would work best. However, that uncertainty did not prevent them to formulate adequate design requirements and pick out the best design that suited those tasks. It took them till the development of the Abrhams to really find an answer to the Russian tank design. We’ll never truly know to what German tank design would have been capable off for the late 50s and 60’s, were it not for the catastrophic nazi interference and the simple fact they lost the war, leaving the country completely in ruins…. All I can notice is that 3 of the 4 nations were heavily involved in research big nasty machines, either during the war (Germany) as post-war (USA and UK)… a path that turned out to be a dead-end in tank designing…
  10. flyby

    Tank Development In Wwii

    I'll respond later this week on this interesting discussion.. don't have the time atm...
  11. flyby

    Bear Stearns

    I love this one.... http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_5vkPiCEjjdg/Sali...s1600-h/9.9.gif "this is a bank... we don't HAVE any money...."
  12. flyby

    Bear Stearns

    Wait till more eastern Europe countries collapse....
  13. flyby

    British And French Navies Clash!

    Very often submarines are involved into a game called "cat and mouse", just to test the abilities of their sub and crew. It often involves risky behavior to simulate real situations and can occasionally lead to incidents as this. recall this one? http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-49...-red-faced.html I believe the 2 were engaged in a cat and mouse game, but as they are both performant subs things got a bit messy... You either blame both or no one.. These things elude the normal traffic code where any accident can be traced back to an infraction and consequently receiving a blame for the accident...
  14. flyby

    Us Auto Bail-out Fails

    One thing you have to keep in front of your eyes... the bailouts are not there for the fat croporates , but to prevent from thousands of ppl sliding into poverty. by not (unwillingly) supporting companies the state will end up with the cost of unemployment on its table anyway... One way or another money will be lost..... Personally i think it is better to keep the majority of companies upright, but not without some serious and rigerous guidelines... Reactions like "screw fuel efficiency" show that a large part of world citizens has not yet got the message... The illusional low price of oil atm, will not last long and will rise sharply with the first signs of economic recovery, making it very hard to get upright again, for all of us...
  15. flyby

    The Year Of Darwin...

    For heavens sake man, this is not about Americans... But it scares the hell out of me, because there is only a thin line between Christian fundamentalism and Muslim fundamentalism. It worries me that such a large portion of western oriented ppl are not even tempted to question the world they live in... Fundamentalism (whatever religion it may be) has not a history of being tolerant and open minded, but has a serious tendency to prove its superiority by imposing others how to think and act. At the very base of fundamentalism there is a notion of "we're right, they're wrong". and that is exactly the same condition that fuels every war that has ever existed. I said it years ago, there are 2 religions that are most prone to get entangled into war rhetoric’s : the Islam and Christianity. Both because they start with the premises of good and bad. the good , being themselves, the bad , usually being the others... Religion does not have to be a negative factor and is , when properly performed a very positive and stimulating factor in a society. It starts to get dangerous however when every common sense and in this case, scientific logic, is pushed aside. The real journey of a religious man or woman these "modern times" should be on how to unite "progress and science" with the core values of what their religion teaches them. People who reject the evolution theory do that only out of religious preservation, out of fear and not out of common sense or pragmatism. 95% of the Muslim immigrants here in Europe rejects the evolution theory, because they do not know how to integrate it with the Koran and is met with great hostility and intolerance. Religious fundamentalism is in almost all cases: fanatical, intolerant and indifferent to those who are not part of their religious group ("they will all burn in hell" and are considered lesser beings or demons). It seriously worries me that after the growth of Islamic fundamentalism for decades, Christian and Jewish fundamentalism are also gaining momentum...The growing rejection of the evolution theory, on the premises that it does not match with the Bible or Koran are alarming signs. And the fact that the US is still the strongest nation in the world does not soften my consternation on the issue... The Bible, just as the Koran, is written by men, adapted by men and transcripted through many generations. It has been prone to changes and dozens of interpretations. those "holy books" were written to help forge a coherent society but are increasingly less adaptive because our fast evolving modern times and science. Unable to give these changes a place and structure in the existing religious dogma's they are simply attacked and rejected as false and blasphemy... It is the growing aggressiveness that should worry you, and just as I said that the Iraq war was based upon false premises and that the there a possible economic collapse coming, I’m increasingly uncomfortable with the growing fundamentalism everywhere in the world. America having 45% of its citizens rejecting the evolutions theory, I find that worrying as it considerably increases the chances of a confrontation, when mixed with the hardship of a worldwide economical regressions and growing nationalism and protectionism…
×