I understand your issue, but I have to somehow protect my work.

Previously I made previews that were excerpts from the songs (not more than a minute). This time I thought it could be an advantage to be able to listen to the whole song, so I watermarked it. The whole song without any protection would be easy to record, so that's not going to happen.

But for future songs I will go back to the short but not watermarked previews. Thank you for pointing that out!

Assassin — Now for sale in the Scirra Store!

https://www.scirra.com/store/royalty-free-music/assassin-1163

<p>The orchestra sneaks in and suddenly attacks you with all of its power!</p><p>24-bit wave file for best quality.</p>

Use this topic to leave comments, ask questions and talk about Assassin

Hi all,

you have the chance to get 1 of 3 redeem codes for Angels, a wonderful uplifting song dedicated to our everyday angels.

To win, just post here why you could be considered an everyday angel. I will choose the three winners on July 31, based on how impressed I am (be it a heart-breaking story or the greatest laughter ever - just be honest). Don't wait and get Angels for being an angel

I'm not actually sure to what extent this is really true, when it comes to memory use. OpenGL specifies non-power-of-two support in terms of rendering behavior, and AFAIK it's perfectly spec-compliant for a GPU to actually allocate a power-of-two texture, paste in a non-power-of-two image, remember the size of the image, then act as if the texture was really that size (such as by calculating texture co-ordinates relative to the image size instead of the surface size). So I don't know if "NPOT support" actually always translates in to "memory efficient NPOT textures". On top of that mobile GPUs tend to be simpler/more limited so do have NPOT limitations, and I think the square power-of-two limitation does still apply on some hardware as well. Even if non-square power of two-edges is supported, it's still hard to tell that's not using an in-memory power-of-two surface without knowing what the driver is doing.

I understand quite well that regarding C2 it is better to trust on a known working way that is true for all platforms/gpus. It's a shame that gpu vendors don't publish inner workings. I tried to find something about it to no avail.

However, the oldest graphic card I can talk of is the GTX 460. It is almost 5 years old. From tests I made I know that it supports non-squared POTs natively. No memory is wasted. Assuming that NVidea wouldn't change the driver's behaviour to the worst for newer cards, at least non-squared POTs are supported for all NVidea GPUs in the last 5 years. I then just assumed that AMD and Intel wouldn't want to fall behind.

The rendering support is a strong argument. Indeed you can't tell if supporting them does also mean storing them memory efficient.

The texture size is always a power of 2. Even a thin line of 400 x 1 pixel becomes a texture of 512 x 512 pixels.

That's not quite right. Yes, on older graphics cards the texture size is padded to a power of two. But they are not forced squared. So, in your example, the 400x1 pixel line would become a 512x1 texture.

For older graphics cards, 32x64, 128x8, 16x1024 are all valid formats that won't be padded, but taken as is. (Just a few examples)

Modern graphics cards don't have any of these restrictions anymore. They deal with non-power-of-two textures natively, and graphic languages like OpenGL (which WebGL is based on) also support NPOT textures. WebGL's only limitation is that mipmapping and wrapping is not supported for NPOT textures. (See https://www.khronos.org/webgl/wiki/WebGL_and_OpenGL_Differences#Non-Power_of_Two_Texture_Support)

Well, if it were just about using pictures, I wouldn't have asked. No, I meant, if it would be worth the effort to do, what is described in the video (and used in the game that I referenced). Creating 3D-assets with that technique, that are then "baked" (I think that's the term used for it), and made into 2D-sprites/objects, including normalmaps or similar to create an interactive response to lighting/shadowing, etc.

I was wondering, because my first thought was: "I would never be brave enough to face that challenge." It seems to just take too much time, not to speak about the money to be invested in software/manpower, etc.

Found this open letter of a well known game studio that started out as a very small indie project. An open letter to our PC fans

After reading about the difficulties and the time needed, all I thought of was: "Never heard of Construct 2"? Seriously, until today I didn't find anything in the series that they couldn't have realized with C2. Minus their issues.

Here are example images of a 2D game using photorealistic assets:

http://www.realworldracing.com/perch/resources/rwr_shot_03-1-w1280h720.jpg

http://www.realworldracing.com/perch/resources/rwr_shot_19-1-w1280h720.jpg

http://www.realworldracing.com/perch/resources/rwr_shot_01-1-w1280h720.jpg

Don't be shy

Tell me your opinions about such efforts and expenses. Worth it in a 2D game?

Saw this interesting video:

Is this of interest in 2D games also? And if so, would anyone dare to try it, or do you think it's beyond your capabilities (time-wise)?

tulamide some people actually wants to share their goods and not have a reward for it, I am kind of ashamed to think I will be paid when I will work at a full time job, just for my knowledge and time. And I have kind of a bad feeling when I think about not paying a content that I could pay for, and I do not think I am kind of an unique holy representant of honor, like I am the only one thinking like that, pretty sure others also think like that, and I do not believe in life after death so I do not have this kind of motivation either, so this "wanting it freely" is not an as accurate description as it may sounds at first (but again, some people are like that)

Glad to hear. I'm also one of those who share, as I have stated in my post. But this doen't affect my statements about piracy. I mean, if someone shares his own goods for free, then no piracy is involved, when I copy and use them.

I stay to the statement that people using pirated software want it free and immediatly. That's the main motivation, despite all their sayings.

Also why nobody mentionned the fact some people have to download a pirate copy to make it work sometimes? (Drm not working correctly makes us sad).

And this is an example for the last sentence above. Why do you think so? Why do they "have to"? If your smartphone doesn't work, you wait for the manufacturer to repair it. And if it doesn't get repaired in an acceptable amount of time, you have the right to get refunded. The same is true for software. But why waiting for an acceptable amount of time, if one can get a pirated version that works, for free and immediatly. There we are again. It's morally wrong. Do you see my point?

Heureka!

The fixed proportions issue is solved. And the solution is so silly, that I am really ashamed. When activating that option, the tablet will always send proportinal info, completely seperated from the rect setting in the driver's configuration window. Stupid implementation, but at least it works now.

it sounds like you want to use the pen with your left hand and simultaneously control menus and such with your right hand, correct? That is not possible without some third party application that would enable a second cursor on your screen and even then, i am not sure the applications would support multiple actions anyway.

Yes, that was my intention. Well, I will try to get comfortable then with my left hand controlling the screen via pen. It's more difficult as I thought. Just like you said, drawing with a tablet to a display isn't the same as drawing on a paper. Unfortunately. But I will train hard!

Thanks once again, without you I would still try to figure it out!

It's interesting to read all the opinions. I don't know how old you, how wrote here, are. I assume pretty young. But reading DatapawWolf 's "confession" reminded me of something.

I'm 47 years old. I grew up in a world without computers or cell phones, internet or even video cameras. At the age of 11 I heard of something mysterious called "Pong". I was hooked.

But since the very first "home computers", in contrast to consoles, there also was piracy. I remember my very first C64. A few days after I got that one ("Just to have an advantage in school, Dad. See, I can easily plot graphs of functions with it and calculate so much more complex than any pocket calculator could ever do!"), a datasette full of games fell miraculously into my hands. None of them were bought. And guess, what? We argued pretty much the same than you today, 30 years later. The excuses are so old as the pirated industry. And anyone bringing in almost philosophical aspects is just doing balony. It's a try to distract from the fact that one uses for free what he needs to pay for! It's morally unrighteous. At least back then I didn't pretend to be on some holy mission. Instead I was very aware that I was doing wrong. But it felt so good.

And that's the point. It feels so good. All the freedom of getting anything you want, when you want it, where you want it, without paying respect of another one's good. By pretending there is no "another one's good", but "everyone's good". Yeah, right. Like you always shared your Halloween candy with your family.

Sister: "Oh that's nice. I like it. Give it to me."

Brother: "No, you can't have it. It's mine."

Be honest and smile while remembering the scene. No, you just want other's goods to be shared. And the feeling of getting anything is nothing new. It's what people made to believe in higher entities. No matter the religion (yes, even buddhism), there always is some kind of overly rewarding situation or place. Christians know it as Garden Eden, ancient Vikings as Valhalla, ancient Egypts as the afterlife, the Koran tells of "Jannah", etc. All share the same concept. A place or feeling of everything positive in abundance.

Piracy is just a try to shortcut to Garden Eden.

Back in the stone-age. Gro has a flintstone axe. What a wonderful axe. Sharp and strong. Cuts through meat, can kill animals. A must-have for the up-to-date stone-ager! Sesh is an untalented follower of his tribe. Never had much luck in axe building. But he wants one!

Sesh: Tonight I will use your axe, Gru. You won't miss it while you're sleeping anyway!

Gru: No, you can't have it. I worked a week on it and is very valuable to me.

Sesh: I don't care. I'll take it when you are asleep. You won't even notice it.

Gru: I don't permit it! But you can have your own axe. For all the meat of a mammoth I will craft an axe for you.

Sesh: Mammoth? I don't have that much meat. That's not fair.

Gru: Then keep hunting until you get it. The axe is worth it.

Sesh: That takes way too long! I want it now!

Gru: Well, then you're out of luck.

That night, Sesh waits for Gru to fall asleep, then takes his axe and plays around with it. He throws it as hard as he can. But unfortunately the axe misses the stone Sesh was aiming at, and instead hits Gru's sister, who was sleeping just behind that stone. She dies. Sesh takes the axe, cleans it and puts it back in its place near Gru, who was sad the whole rest of his life, without ever knowing who had killed his sister.

Now tell me, and be honest: Who's right here, and who's wrong?

Oh, and back to the C64 datasette with lots of pirated games. I got it from a close friend at that time. And it had a great influence on both of us. My friend later published a german magazine all about Apple Macintosh, called "MAClife", soon followed by a lot of other magazines and businesses. He became a serious and cunning businessman, making sure to get all the money he could get.

And me? I never forgot how satisfying it was to get something without having to pay for it. It is so deep in my veins, that I since then always published for free whatever I created.