http://www.franknaggies.com/rss/rss.php FrankNaggies.com news http://www.franknaggies.com/test_56k.php?p=homeWelcome! ...on my personal website :) Well, as you can see it all looks a "bit" like a construction site, and it is actually. The website is still an early beta, so don't wonder or worry why there are only a few images around. I'm aware of he current webdesign not being accessible because of that, but there will be many nice images when the site goes final. If you find any bugs or problems, feel free to contact me! I hope you like this website - Have fun looking around! :) Frank 'ORION' Naggieshttp://www.franknaggies.com/test_56k.php?p=about%20meI'm Frank Naggies, but most people know me as 'ORION', which was my nickname at first, but has now evolved to being my 'trademark' and logo. Being 22 years old, I live in Mönchengladbach, Germany, and I'm studying Gamedesign at the Mediadesign University in Düsseldorf. I created this website as my personal exhibition of graphical artworks, but it's also an experiment as I tried to find out what's possible with nowadays' web technology. Starting this website project as a novice, I used online references in order to teach myself and find ways to realize my conception. After one year of freetime work, the website was completed and I had learned a lot HTML, CSS, PHP and JavaScript, aswell as a webdesign theory such as "accessibility", "ease of use", etc. All code was written by myself and in notepad. I can now safely say that Firefox simply is the best, fastest, safest and most reliable browser you can get. Opera is not bad either. As you can see, I like to find solutions for problems by teaching myself, and it's a thrill to see something develop and evolve. I'm often a bit of a perfectionist, loving to go into the small details, while not losing the focus for the whole thing. You always have to take a step back and ask yourself: "Is this still the thing I want to make? Does it fit? Does it feel real?" Of course, a game design student like me is also a good team player, being member, admin and co-team-leader of zt-racing. One of my main conceptions is taking everyone for what he is, which makes life a lot easier. Don't moan about others and their quirks - talk to them and help them improve! If someone asks what my greatest talent is, I never answer "I'm good at this or that". I think it's my passion to walk through the world with open eyes and a sharp sight that makes me differernt than many other people. Observing and trying to understand my environment gives me the skills you need for any kind or art. 2d or 3d Computer Graphics, animations, character design, webdesign, drawing, whatever - only if you know how the real world works, you can create a perfect emotional experience and illusion in a virtual world. "Intuition", "imagination" and "passion" are the keywords really. :) I guess I'm even a bit of a rarity for enjoying and being good at both arts and math. My skills are evenly distributed and I am proud to be capable of fine arts aswell, knowing how to hold a brush or a pencil. :) I am using mostly 3dsmax and Picture Publisher, but also a lot Photoshop, Paintshop Pro and some other programs. I often use many different programs for one work, it all depends on what I need, and usually no program can do everything. :) In my opinion, a good artist isn't only a guy with good knowledge of certain programs, which is obviously required for effective work, though. Because if you have understood the real world, it doesn't really matter which tool you use. It's just like programming - if you have understood how it works, you can learn any language. However, Perl doesn't seem to fit into my head at all, and I'm far away from calling myself a good programmer, when I look at others I worked with :) Recently, I bought a Wacom (Intuos3 A5), and I'm already loving it a lot, so you can hopefully expect some matte paintings in the future. Baisically it makes all CG a lot more fun. A couple of my artworks are related to cars from Live for Speed, which is a Racing Simulation Game I love to play, but I'm also involved a bit in it's development and thus credited ingame. I designed the LFS statisics website LFS world, which is an essential part of the game as it is - together with the forums - the heart of the community. In addition to this website, I also made a couple of wallpapers for LFS, which were/are used by a lot of people in the LFS community, which encourages me to heat on :) Just take a look at my gallery and you will easily spot the cars from LFS. My dream is to work as an artist in the games industry, and I feel a desire to bring "higher" artwork to games, which means: Playing a computer game must offer an emotional experience, and not only be a way to spend your freetime - it must be MORE. I want the player to stop playing and stare on the screen saying: "OH MY GOD!!! WOOW!!!!" Frank 'ORION' Naggies http://www.franknaggies.com/test_56k.php?p=blog%2C%20news 06.01.07 - v0.52b New background iamges that save about 10kb at the same quality. High quality png images are (like before) available if you open the page with ?xtreme=true as query string. 25.12.06 - v0.52 Just a quick update to show the "last modified" date for each article in it's window header. ".exit" is now called ".stats", and I made some cleanup (removing old and boring articles). 22.12.06 - updated "about me" I updated the "about me" text as it wasn't really me... It's a bit longer now though. I will not be online from 26.12.06 to 05.01.07 as I'm going to go skiing in Austria. Well, maybe I can find an access point somewhere to check by every now and then ;) 19.12.06 - v0.51 + new gallery pics! Well, I added a couple of new and cool drawings I made in the last uni module, I hope you like them :) Besides this, its now possible to also view the original size of the images by pressing the "Highres Version"-button under the image. Some other small fixes in the code that are noth worth mentioning. [UPDATE] Now fixed a bug in the gallery/reload_content code, that would endless loop the browser when pressing back, if the previous page was gallery_v3. (thx to DoN) 16.10.06 - v0.50 - done for now Most things are working, so I guess I can call the version "final" for now. Mabye I will add some small features if I find some time, but I'm really glad that I can try some new things from now on :) 03.10.06 - Gallery v3 is ONLINE! :) Finally, after hundreds of hours, the gallery is ready for the first public release. I think it turned out very well, even though Internet Explorer users have only a light version, due to a huge bug in the png rendering code... If there are any bugs or problems, PLEASE let me know. 02.10.06 - Updated "About Me" text I have updated the main section of "about me", which should give a better overview over myself now. The new gallery will be released later than expected, thanks to the bad PNG support of Internet Explorer 6... 19.09.06 - Gallery v3 preview screenshot! This is the first info about my new gallery that I made public! See the screenshot here: G3 first public screen! Please post your comments in the comments section (on the right), or in the guestbook. Besides this, I also added a little photo to the about me text, which is hopefully not as crappy as the first one... :) 09.09.06 - 404 tracker supports query string The error script can now use a query string, like this: You enter an url in your browser like: www.franknaggies.com/blah.php?a=1andb=2 In the old version, the script was looking for any blah.php. Now it can find blah.php and actually load blah.php?a=1andb=2. This avoids losing variable data from the url when triggering a 404 error. 06.09.06 - email script fixed and new alert I have fixed the email script which wasn't working thanks to a typo which I didn't notice... Aditionally, I have rewritten the alert popup window code - it's much nicer now :) 27.08.06 - holidays now Finally some days off, and I'm already working on the page again. Added "add bookmark" for FireFox users, and mouse wheel scroll for IE users (not tested on other browsers except Firefox, which doesn't support the onmousewheel event). Besides this, I have worked a bit in Flash lately, doing projects for my university, and figured out that I could have done this complete website in less than a month using Flash instead of 60kb Javascript goodness. Maybe I will actually try to code this sometime, just to see if it's really that easy :) 18.06.06 - comments system The comments system is now online, have fun posting :) 16.06.06 - guestbook updated and email script Been working on the page for the whole last day, thus there are many small optimizations and bugfixes. Also the guestbook should finally work now :) [update] Added a script that allows you to send me one email once in 10 minutes. Go to "about me" - "contact" 10.06.06 - working on the page again I have finally found a few moments to work a bit more on the page code, and I hope to release the new gallery soon, even though there is still a lot work that needs to be done... 19.04.06 - guestbook offline I had to put the guestbook offline, because some spam rubbish showed up there. I guess it's some bot searching for guestbook.cgi files in order to spam them and cause email spam on emails ending with my domain. 17.04.06 - Testing various stuff - version 0.44 now Well, Im currently experimenting with an all-new gallery, as the current one sucks baisically. However, I have also added a basic design for the comments system, but none of these new features are activated in the public version, yet. 17.03.06 - Dynamic Browsing History As you can see in the headline, I have implemented some sort of browsing history, which allows the user to browse through his process of opening and closing windows, using the common browser keys and shortcuts. The windows will load a tad slower, though, and the website will no longer work offline once it's loaded (like it was before). Maybe I will add an option to the config that allows the user to use the old system instead. Just try the new feature, you will like it :) 14.03.06 - 56k / no Javascript version is online This morning I quickly implemented the 56k version, which doesn't use any kind of scripts either, and is XHTML 1.0 valid. It will load ways faster, as the usual size of the whole page is far less than 10KB, which is really nice for 56k users - everything will be loaded after 2-3 seconds. However, the gallery and the guestbook don't work without javascript. You can post messages in the guestbook; viewing them is not possible. see the 56k version 12.03.06 - Gallery preview + many new things and bugfixes I have been experimenting a bit with the gallery in the last week, and it's starting to take shape. Additionally, I fixed some minor bugs, and added some anti-bug features, like a page load timeout, that stops window content reloading after 10 seconds. The guestbook is still mandatory, please use the link to the old guestbook (you can find it easily in the guestbook window). Maybe you have noticed the RSS icon in the browser address bar - it doesn't show any interesting stuff, though. 01.02.06 - v0.39 - no more struggling with XHTML validity I have been working a lot on making the page XHTML valid, but XHTML turned out to be pure crap. No clean possibility to realize elementary things like aligning a div centered in another or in the body; not even setting the body height to 100% will work without special hacks and tricks. I mean... yeah it is mathematically correct that the body tag with a relative height doesn't do anything if the html element has no height specified, but what's the sense in there?? I have now switched back to HTML 4.0 Transitional, and everything works nicely. No stupid CSS hacks, one stylesheet for all browsers - clean, nice, and valid of course. Note that the validator can't check all the dynamically generated code, but I have added a special document.write replacement function in the developer version that allows me to put ALL the code into one text file. Besides this, I have also messed around a bit with the guestbook... my first steps in CGI. Yeah I know it's still very crappy... ;) 19.01.06 - v0.38 is there I haven't been working too much on the code lately, but at least I have finished rewriting the window resize and scroll scripts, so that they are now using absolute values of the mouseposition, relatively to the screen. This makes many things easier, specially moving an object in another frame. The next things on my todo list are the following: guestbook/comments system (writing to server filesystem, not sure whether I should use cgi or php for that), gallery (will likely require 2-dimensional scrolling...), change background picture and stylesheet using presets for every window/article, add "welcome screen" where you can only select quicklinks like: default settings or... directly load the gallery basic config advanced config 11.01.06 - yet another code update (v0.37b) This update is a true milestone! I can now create all the content which was previously stored in text files, with php files. This means I have now dynamic content, which is dynamically procressed :] Everything is possible whee :D. Well, additionally I implemented a link checker which validates any link where I enabled this. It's just a 4 line php scriptie. Invalid links will be red and with a line through the text, and additionally a quickinfo shows a warning. All those updates made the page a bit slower, though. The php files have to be rendered first, which makes the loading time for me (DSL 1024 downstream) approx. 0.3 seconds slower. But it's still quite good (4 seconds), because gzip carves off almost 80% of the actual file size! 07.01.06 - Happy New Year! and code update (v0.37) Well, Im back and skiing was fun due to loads of snow in Austria. Besides fixing bugs and compatibility issues, I have been working on optimizing the code and sorting it better, additionally I added some new array generated context menu script. You can test it here if you want: click 24.12.05 - Merry Christmas! My best wishes for Christmas and the new year, dear visitors :) Note that I will be on winter holidays from the 25th until 8th January. 16.12.05 - code update: scrollbar script updated. The scrollbars showed strange positions when their size went under 3 pixels. Now I have set a minimum scrollbarheight of 10 pixels, which makes it easier to grab and also allows an exact scrollbar positioning at just about any window height and content height. Besides this, I made some minor fixes and tweaks, as usual. 09.12.05 - code update: statusbar replacement info On the left hand side, directly under the blue iframe, you can see various info messages which explain the object the mouse is currently over. 08.12.05 - code update: header resize A new update after quite a long time. The window headers now change their position correctly, which was kind of a struggle to implement. I hope it really works now on all browsers. Well, I have thought a bit more about the general design approach of thie page lately, and I came to the conclusion that it's accessibility is = zero, because it's just plain text :P Thus I will add a welcome screen, which will allow to select things like "quick start", "directly launch gallery", "advanced setup" etc. Of course, the articles and stuff will be illustrated with pictures later, but due to a lack of time, this has to wait a bit. Anyways, the site is still beta and the final version ist like lightyears away... 13.11.05 - code update: fade script 2 The windows are now fading, too. I have only enabled this for opening and closing a window, if no other window is opened, otherwise it would be a bit annoying and "pulsating". 12.11.05 - code update: fade script The fade script was updated, allowing me to stop/start/interrupt fading in both directions at any speed, and in a selsectable amount of calculations per second. The only thing missing in this script is a string in the arguments being executed when the function has finished fading, and maybe some additional verification system that checks if the fading will actually finish in time, avoiding slow performance when the CPU is too slow or the calculations per second too high. You can nicely see the new fading at the 4 icons in the bottom left of the blue iframe. :) [update] implemented execwhendonelist. 06.11.05 - code update I have added some small functions to the site, like allowing to resize the font from any window, and I have finished the iframe resize function (for now). The alerts and the Fullscreen window are now resized correctly, so does the icon div on the bottom left. The windows themselves dont change their size, though. Maybe I will make this if needed... we'll see. 01.11.05 - New article: Game design I have written down my thoughts about game design. It's got quite a long text in the end (20kb), but it's definetely worth the read. 28.10.05 - Added the blog! I decided that my website needs a blog, which will mostly contain some progress info about the development of my website, and general news. Furthermore I am planning to rewrite the gallery as it's not really nice to open a new window, and have a gallery without serious sorting and coordination, and with odd looking 08/15 default scrollbars. I mean... why have I programmed my own dynamic and fully customizable scrollbar script? Of course, the new gallery will be up to the mark with the rest of the page and supply the required amount of eyecandy! :) That is, besides some minor updates and bugfixes, the plan for the next days, and I'm sure you will like the new gallery - implemented into my page and viewed at fullscreen - much more than the old one. Well, if it's gonna look as good as it does in my brain right now. ;) http://www.franknaggies.com/test_56k.php?p=questionaireAbout Me Part 2 - Sort of a questionaire Name: Frank Age: 22 Birth date: 01.04.1984 Astrological sign: Aries Nickname(s): ORION Country: Germany Favourite..? Colour: blue, red Food: ICE CREAM :D Zürcher Geschnetzeltes country?: Norway Book(s): my notebook :) Author(s): hmm Movie(s): Actually all Action and scary stuff, but also Columbo and James Bond, The Professional Actress: Catherine Zeta Jones, Natalie Portman Actor: Torrence Hill and Bud Spencer Best TV show: Pimp my Fahrrad^^ Worst TV show: Big B(r)other Board Game(s): 4 wins!!! Magazine(s): PC Games Newspaper(s): don't really read one Drink: H2O Alcoholic Drink: Blitzkrieg (insider :P) Ice cream(s): Everything except Lemon Poet(s): I can't say that I have ever really liked any of the stuff we made in school Artist(s): Leonardo da Vinci Musicians / Music Styles: Rock, Metal, Hardrock, but I also like keyboard elements, BUT dont ask me why ;D Female singer: Evanescense (however thats spelled) Male singer: dunno Favourite digit/number: 1337 ;> Slogan(s): Feel the Speed. Be inspired. Pink Flag noobs on track!? :) NFSU? STFU! Keyboard Powaaa!! About Games PC game you have played most hours: Live for Speed PC Games TOP TEN: 1. Live for Speed S2 2. Day of the Tentacle 3. Live for Speed S1 4. Mafia 5. Max Payne 6. Half-Life 2 7. CS 1.6 8. Need For Speed (v1) 9. NFS Porsche 10. KEEN PC Games FLOP TEN: 1. Counter-Strike Source 2. World of Warcraft 3. Warcraft 3 4. Warcraft 2 5. Warcraft 1 6. Diablo 2 7. Diablo 1 8. Need for Speed Underground 9. Need for Speed Underground 2 10. Need for Speed Most Wanted Best Gamedeveloper: LFS Team (Scawen Roberts, Eric Bailey, Victor van Vlaardingen) Worst Gamedeveloper: EA Blizzard EA Blizzard ....... Blizzard EA? HMM cant say who is the uberworst ;) PC Games or Gamestar? PC Games, Gaystar suxx How many Computer Games do you have? many Percentages of Originals? very high, I'm not one of those nubs who steal and burn everything favourite LFS car?: GTI A or B Roller-Coasters - Deadly or Exciting?: Don't remember having ever been on a serious one, but I love big G-forces, thus they can only be exciting! Pen or pencil?: Stift^^ Thunderstorms - Cool or Scary?: Love the atmosphere! And it's mostly cooler then before. Cool = good :) Summer or Winter? Winter = Snow = good Summer is also nice, unless it's really hot, because I hate that! White or Chocolate milk?: Milk?! Im not a cat... Righty, Lefty or Ambidextrous?: doing everything with my right hand, but Lefty is cool nontheless =P Coke or Pepsi: Afri Cola =D TV or radio: TV, but I dont really watch much PC or Console: PC Paper or plastic: Paper Bedroom windows - open or closed?: open, otherwise I would suffocate :P Videos or DVDs?: DVDs Type of watch - LCD display or hands?: hands (white bg, Sports Car style) Water - still or sparkling?: sparkling Pasta or rice?: both Red or Blue Neo? eerhhmmm... Can't I try both? Together, that would be PINK then :P I think it would be nice to know how things would be if you had chosen differntly in the past. various stuff If you could meet one person, who would that be?: me as a kid or as an old man probably Is the glass half-full or half-empty?: It can't be half-empty because you can never be sure that it has actually been full before. So if it has never been full, how can it be half-empty? How many books do you own?: books? w0tz th4t?! Do you type with your fingers on the right keys?: Not really. What's under your bed?: nothing - it's massive Dream vehicle: Raceabout GTR Your most prized and important possession: Art, LFS Your biggest accomplishment: realizing I will follow my goals. Your greatest talent: gfx stuff I guess Do you use dictionaries?: Almost every day Do you wear glasses?: Yep How do you wake up?: well, I open my eyes, no? Most hated vegetable?: ZUCKIII oo_00 Worst thing you’ve ever eaten?: Some tunny, which was baisically not much more then dust :) What habit do you wish you could give up?: driving in 3rd person in LFS FWD, RWD or 4WD? FWD and 4WD best website?: lfs world what is Art?: The greatest but most difficult language in the world. if you were an animal, what would that be? a bird (maybe an eagle) way to relax?: Sleep :D vacation spot?: In your mind :) Have you ever...? used Tobacco (smoke or chew): BAH nev4r drank Alcohol: yes smoked weed: no done drugs: no thought you were going to die: no broken a bone: no, even the worst crashes at skiing didn't even scratch me Are you... a rebel or do you follow all the rules: I will follow rules if they make sense. a leader or a follower: leader a good friend: dunno, you gotta ask the others I guess :) a good listener: Yes, unless you are talking crap shy or outgoing: a good mix I guess introverted or extroverted? both, but more introverted rather fat or thin: average I think /me... likes: sleeping, relaxing, fresh air, cars, good computer games, ice cream, snow, light, observing my environment, art, cg, creativity dislikes: mobile phones, cigarettes, bad computer games, EA, people without a brain and an own opinion, peolpe who want to make trouble, wreckers, hip-hop, rap, temperatures above 30°C, prople who think they are better then others, casting TV shows, Talkshows. http://www.franknaggies.com/test_56k.php?p=contactSend an email: message There should be a little popup window that tells you if the email was sent correctly...http://www.franknaggies.com/test_56k.php?p=gallery%20v3 http://www.franknaggies.com/test_56k.php?p=gallery%20v3%20infoInformation filename: Umbrella, pencils original filesize: DIN A3 sheet of paper created: December 2006 description This is my umbrella, that I have in my bad each day... We had to paint some objects for uni, so I chose this... About 15 hours of work maybe. NEXT!Information filename: Evil me original filesize: DIN A3 sheet of paper created: December 2006 description A self portrait, using a mirror. I did this to understand how the human face works when showing a bad mood. You can't imagine how much my whole face was hurting after grimacing for like 2 hours... NEXT!Information filename: Pumpkin, watercolors original filesize: DIN A3 sheet of paper created: December 2006 description Painted with watercolors using 2 main layers - first one black and white, 2nd colors. NEXT!Information filename: Me as Baby original filesize: DIN A3 sheet of paper created: December 2006 description Another drawing, this time from a photo though. I wanted to capture myself as a young baby, so I had no ther choice than using a small photo (which was a bit unsharp aswell...). -Unfinished- NEXT!Information filename: Fahrplan CD cover design original filesize: 1600 x 1200 px created: 30.04.2005 description Just a quickie for someone who needed a CD cover. NEXT!Information filename: Feel the dust original filesize: 2048 x 1364 px created: 23.04.2004 description This is another edited photo in which I incorporated a screenshot from the computer game LiveForSpeed. It shows the XF gti with rally setup, which is one of my favourite cars. This picture wasnt as much work as you might expect, looking at the nice dust around the car, because the original car on the photo was white. additional shots: The 2nd picture is the screenshot I used. NEXT!Information filename: Ferrari Logo with my name (school project, watercolours) original filesize: 20 x 30 cm created: January 2001 description This is a painting/drawing I started in January 2001 when I was still attending school. Our job was to put our name into a popular company logo. I chose Ferrari and I made some others with Ford and Faber-Castell, but I liked the Ferrari one best. :) NEXT!Information filename: ZT LFS skin (car texture) original filesize: 2048 x 2048 px created: 2005 description This is the FXR teamskin of ZT-racing. LiveForSpeed skins are used as car textures in game, and everyone who is driving on the same online/lan host can see them. If you want to see them in-game, get the LFS viewer at www.liveforspeed.net and put all the files into the data/skins/ folder. In addition to these few skins below, I made many complete skinpacks for the teams ZT and MPT, alltogether many hundred unique skins. I'm not going to post them all here, I have just chosen one I liked best. I started skinning just a few days after getting to know LFS in 2003, and I'm still having fun doing it (both creating new skins and updating the old ones with new sponsors). NEXT!Information filename: FZ50 GTR silver original filesize: 1024 x 768 px created: 10.01.2005 description This render is still one of my best ones. NOTE: The female was modeled by Marek Denko! Carmodel by Eric Bailey (c)LiveForSpeed. NEXT!Information filename: FZ50 GTR white original filesize: 1600 x 1200 px created: 12.01.2005 description The same car from above and in crisp white. The render took 9.5 hours due to the skylight with shadows, which makes the Scanline Default renderer really slow. Carmodel (c)LiveForSpeed. NEXT!Information filename: a cupboard original filesize: 2560 x 1920 px (digital photo) created: 16.03.2005 description Just a test pic with my digicam with a bit post-processing for the atmosphere. NEXT!Information filename: LFSworld website original filesize: 1024 x 768 px created: 2005 description description will come later. I also planned to write a making of a while ago. view live demo! click here to open the LFS world in your browser! NEXT!Information filename: How to get rid of an Audi RS6 - a little cloning experiment original filesize: 1024 x 768 px created: 20.05.2004 description This work is a freelance fun picture I made just to experiment/practise a bit with cloning. The picture at the bottom is the original photo. NEXT!Information filename: ORION logo original filesize: 688 x 400 px created: first quarter of 2002 description I designed this logo just out of an idea, experimenting around a bit on a piece of paper. Later I rendered it in 3dsmax. Most important for me was that the logo will look serious, appealing, be easy to memorize, and have some cool style of mystery in it. I think its up to the mark :) additional shots: The 2nd picture is a scan of the first ORION logo sketch. NEXT!Information filename: Porche 911 GT3 sunset painting (watercolours and pencils) original filesize: 41,5 x 29 cm created: 13.02.2005 description This is a painting/drawing I started in 2002 or 2003 when I was still attending school. Sadly, I never found the time to finish it, until February 2005. Most parts of the background were already done, so only a bit polishing was needed. I must admint that I was a bit afraid of not screwing the whole pic when I had the brush in my hand and wanted to start painting, because I had not done any drawing/painting for almost 2 years. But against all expectations, I started off as if it was nothing special, as if I had never stopped painting at all. The feeling for the material was still there, and I was actually surprised how fast I could paint. I did all the background tweaking in 1 day, and then I wanted to start with the car body, confronting mw with the first problem: I was absolutely not able to get the right colour temperature for the body. It looked either pink or too warm. I decided to have a break and experiment a bit. However, I got the idea to use a bit white (nacre) watercolour, and suddenly it looked perfect :) . Finally, the car had a gloomy, metallic-style looking base colour. My idea to paint the car was using watercolours for the colour tempereature and tint, and pencils for the details and shading. This worked out marvellously. When the car body was finished, a new problem showed up: the wheels. Due to the tiny size of the car (length only around 22cm), the wheels had a height of 2,5 cm and I had to push the pencils to their limit, sharping it again and again, because the lines had to be extremely thin. I had to make longer breaks because by fingers got knotted and my eyes felt fraught because of staring on the pic from a very low distance all the time. After another day for the wheels the picture was finally finished. Of course a painting is never really finished unless the artist decides to call it finished. So I did. The car took me approximately a week, but I worked neither on all days nor 24h each. I dont remember how much time I spent on the background in school (maybe 3-4 weeks for the whole picture), but time doesnt interest me much anyway when talking about painting. I am the artist and I take the time I need :) additional shots: WIP pictures and a high res version. Sorry for the bad quality and reflections on some pics, but the digicam I used had only 1Mpx. o_0 Furthermore, I added some shots of the palette and the paintbox. NEXT!Information filename: How a 24h race in LFS S3 might look like... - collection of 8 pictures original filesize: 2048 x 1364 px created: 09.10.2004 description I had the idea for this pic because my team (including me) won the first LFS 24h race with both of our two teams achieving the best result that was mathematically possible! :). We thought how LFS would look like with changing weather and lighting conditions. additional shots: The 4th picture is the original screenshot from LFS. I sorted them by dailyroutine: night, sunrise, morning, midday, noon - clouds show up, later it starts to rain, evening: clouds fade away and a nice sunset shows up, evening. gotta upload those aswell as tumbnails under these lines NEXT!Information filename: A WIP race version from the Raceabout 03. Based on the RAC model from LFS, (c) Eric Bailey. original filesize: Many different sizes and formats are available created: 18, 19, 20 April 2005 description I created this carmodel based on the Raceabout model from LFS, but almost all components except the interior were changed completely. I love the design, it's very special and unique. :) collection of files: WARNING: most links will not work yet... The public Raceabout GTR release, including all you need to render the car The Raceabout Texture, rendered in 3dsmax (resized to 1024²px) A screenshot of the unwrap window that helps you when skinning. 2 small videos: 800x600 test vid (3,4 MB) NEW video - 320x240 test vid 2 (1,8 MB) highres images: RAR from above in 1600x1200 RAR front in 1280x1024 RAR from behind in 1600x1200 RAR_bg2 RAR_wire RAR_bg1 RAR_bg3 RAR_A RAR_B some renders: RAR_race_500 above pic in 1600x1200 (jpg) above pic in 1600x1200 (bmp - winrar req.) RAR_race_front_800 above pic in 1600x1200 (old crap version) RAR_race_front2_800 above pic in 1600x1200 (new version) NEXT!Information filename: A WIP race version from the Raceabout 03. Based on the RAC model from LFS, (c) Eric Bailey. original filesize: Many different sizes and formats are available created: 18, 19, 20 April 2005 description I created this carmodel based on the Raceabout model from LFS, but almost all components except the interior were changed completely. I love the design, it's very special and unique. :) collection of files: WARNING: most links will not work yet... The public Raceabout GTR release, including all you need to render the car The Raceabout Texture, rendered in 3dsmax (resized to 1024²px) A screenshot of the unwrap window that helps you when skinning. 2 small videos: 800x600 test vid (3,4 MB) NEW video - 320x240 test vid 2 (1,8 MB) highres images: RAR from above in 1600x1200 RAR front in 1280x1024 RAR from behind in 1600x1200 RAR_bg2 RAR_wire RAR_bg1 RAR_bg3 RAR_A RAR_B some renders: RAR_race_500 above pic in 1600x1200 (jpg) above pic in 1600x1200 (bmp - winrar req.) RAR_race_front_800 above pic in 1600x1200 (old crap version) RAR_race_front2_800 above pic in 1600x1200 (new version) NEXT!Information filename: RB4 cabrio original filesize: 2048 x 1536 px created: 25.04.2005 description The main aspect of this picture is was getting rid of the roof to let the sun into the RB4's heart. This edit is one of my absolute favourites, I just LOVE it! Sadly, the LFS developers have not (yet) implemented this special version of the car into the game, but as long as S2 final isn't out, everything is possible. (I doubt they will impement it though). additional shots: The 2nd picture is the screenshot I used. NEXT!Information filename: RB4 vs. FZR Logitech original filesize: 2048 x 1536 px created: 17.03.2005 description I guess this one will be my new wallpaper! It is one of my best renders so far. I placed boxes around the car with tree textures on them to realize the reflection on the car. I created these textures from the trees in the background of the photo. Carmodel (c)LiveForSpeed. Logitech used this image as wallpaper for their computers on a German Expo. There is also a 4Players edition and one in Black and White. additional shots: add pic links for 4P and bandw, and original pic here (maybe...) NEXT!Information filename: RB4 speeeeeeeed!!! original filesize: 4252 x 3334 px created: 30.08.2004 description Still my wallpaper :). I placed boxes around the car with tree textures on them to realize the reflection on the car. I created these textures from the trees in the background of the photo. Carmodel (c)LiveForSpeed. NEXT!Information filename: LiveForSpeed DVD cover (the cover design was made by DoN) original filesize: 1280 x 1024 px created: 23.10.2004 description I made this DVD cover render from LiveForSpeed for the online shops where you can buy it: www.live-for-speed.de and DriversEmporium note: I only rendered the picure, the LFS racer DoN designed the cover. NEXT!Information filename: a sunset photo original filesize: A4 something (classic photo) created: Very old, I was 12 years or younger when I made it :) description This image was taken in France about 10 years ago, when I was approx. 12 years old. I must admit that I'm very infrequently turning to photography, I don't shoot more then 10 pics per year, which is actually a shame :X. This photo was the first one I have ever made with my mother's Canon camera. Until then, I only used my own camera, but it can't keep up with the brilliance of my mother's. A couple of years ago, my father bought a Digicam, allowing me to create some textures. NEXT!Information filename: What's that? Abstract art! original filesize: DIN A3 created: 2000 description Our art teacher asked us if we know what abstract art is. I took a piece of paper and a big black marker and made these 3 lines. Almost everyone in the classroom was laughing. A few seconds later I said "VW Beetle" and the whole pack was deathly silent. :) NEXT!Information filename: ZT website original filesize: 1024 x 768 px created: 2003 - 2006 description After I joined ZT racing back in 2003, it quickly turned out that the team was missing a website. As nobody else in the team had decent webdesign / -coding knowledge and was thus afraid to get started, I decided to get something going and just started off. I had not a lic of a clue about webdesign, so I started to browse the source code of other websites that did things like I wanted them on my page aswell. After a couple of weeks, I completed the website. When I'm taking a look over the code of the first version today, it looks horrible! But it makes me proud a bit to see how much I improved in the last couple of years :) The ZT website was completely re-coded from scratch in the beginning of 2006, which made it load about 9 times faster! view live demo! click here to open the ZT website in your browser! NEXT!Information filename: ZockerTempel logo original filesize: 4096 x 4096 px created: 09.06.2004 description I designed and rendered this logo for the ZT racing team. NEXT!Information filename: BF1 Waldfee (fairy queen) skin original filesize: 2048 x 2048 px created: 2006 description This is a private skin job for a friend for the BMW Sauber Formula 1 car. LiveForSpeed skins are used as car textures in game, and everyone who is driving on the same online/lan host can see them. If you want to see them in-game, get the LFS viewer at www.liveforspeed.net and put all the files into the data/skins/ folder. NEXT!Information filename: A mage modeled with supersculpi original filesize: about 30cm high created: December 2006 description I created this model in an uni course about creature design and modeling. We started off with creature design theory and concept paintings, before we started to model the creatures, using the scetches as reference. The material is called supersculpi, and it was very easy to use even for a beginner like me. I guess the result isnt bad at all for the fact that this is the first creature I ever made :) NEXT!Information filename: A nightcrawler painted in Photoshop original filesize: 2356 x 2739px created: 07.07.2007 description This is a digital drawing I colored with my wacom in Photoshop. Its one of my first steps with the wacom tablet so be patient ;) The sketch was not done by me - the black lines around the body were made with pencil and then scanned. For the flames I used a few reference fotos, even though they didnt really help me much as the main difficulty when paiting flames, turned out to be creating a realistic flow. The physics of fire are far more complex than one might think in the first place. NEXT!Information filename: A chess program original filesize: 22MB created: June 2007 description This game was developed by three people (2 uni mates and me). The client was made in Flash9, using actionscript 3.0. I made the graphics coding and modeled and rendered all the figures in 3dsmax. One of my mates did the client side logic and netcode, and the other wrote the server. Because Flash is really slow and we wanted to have a 3D engine, I came up with a trick in order to fake the 3D chessfield by using pre-rendered png images from any figure, on any position on the chessfield, and interpolate the positions in between. This results in MANY png images (961 to be exact), so we needed to think about a nice way to manage all this data - a recursive texture loader was implemented, and I wrote a script for Photoshop in order to resize/crop and save all images at once. The rendering in 3dsmax was also done with a little trick, allowing me to render all positions of a figure at once, rather than having to render each figure manually. (simply set up an animation and render as single png files) When the first version was up and running, everyone was impressed how cool it looked! Too bad that I cant provide a downloadable version right now, because we havent found the time yet to get the authorization from our uni, which we need when making things public. The server, calculating the AI, was implemented as a standalone application, written in the language D from Digital Mars. The AI server communicates with up to 2 clients over network (by using 2 ports and 2 cores), and it turned out to be pretty good as it won against a former German junior chess champion :) NEXT! http://www.franknaggies.com/test_56k.php?p=articlesIn the articles section, you can read about many different things such as webdesign or computer games. game design This article is about game design, and describes many ways that can destroy the player's fun, or make it grow. It is interesting for both players and game developers! The second part of this article (which I haven't written yet) will concentrate more on actual gameplay ideas and describe why Tetris is so much fun. about this website This is a bit of a blog where I wrote down everything about developing this website, including both the programming work and the design idea. webdesign A "flop-10" list of webdesign showing the biggest crimes commited by nowadays' webdesigners. Actually it has become a "flop-11" list. :) http://www.franknaggies.com/test_56k.php?p=game%20designGame design - what is it, and how does it work? Well, "game design" - this is not just about making games - actually it's about making good games. :) But who decides if a game is good or not? The Developer studios, the publishers, or the guys from PCGamer? And what does the sketchy word "good" mean? The answer is as easy as complex: A good game is fun to play, and only the player himself can gauge whether it is or not. Now what makes a game fun to play? 1. Publishers and marketing First of all, a game must be as bugfree as anyhow possible, simply because a game which doesn't work can't be fun. Of course, no program will ever be part of a perfect marriage or surpass Alice's wonderland, but it's always possible to find a compromise between time consumption for bugfixing and playability. Sadly, many of the latest games already fail the first test, and this is really a tragedy. Not only for the player, who, curiously awaiting overwhelming eyecandy and never-ending felicitousness, will find himself watching at a black, blue or whatever screen, and waiting for the "BAANNG - uncaught exeption"-message. That is, if he has actually managed to convice his DVD-Rom of not spitting out his 50+$ DVD over and over again. I think many of today's players wouldn't actually be players, if there wasn't google, because there would be almost no way to circumvent all the bugs by helping each other. Most people will now want to ask why gamedevelopers don't just fix these bugs. Isn't is all about time, Mr Freeman? Yes, it is! The publisher wants to see his game in the shop shelves at day x, no matter if it's as good as promised or not. People only have to buy it. Nobody cares a shit if they also like it, as long as the bucks keep flowing in. Publishers equal quality and profit. Even bad ratings from games mags or websites can't help much there, the core of the target group are fans of the series and buy "their game" anyway. Most of the rest can be influenced though, but there comes along another problem: The press people don't want to hazard too much by "devaluating" a top title, because this will rapidly cross their names off the publishers' "friends list", and they will no longer get anticipated information about upcoming games or even beta versions to test themselves. The result of this is clear: Who buys a mag or visits a website to read things, other sources have already published weeks before? But what can we - the players - do? Simply not buy the bad games? This might work in theory, but in reality it will hurt the developer studios instead of getting the publishers back onto the right track. And we don't want to hurt the developer studios, because they make our games! A player should always decide himself if he likes a game, or not, and this can only be done by testing it - no matter if it's a demo/trial or a cracked or leaked version. Cracking a game is good as long as you buy it if you like it, that's my opinion, even though I am just about always satisfied with the demo versions in order to rate a game. Thus the amount of originals in my shelf is far above 90 percent. Also, gamedevelopers will mostly not be angry if you crack their game, because they want you to play and enjoy their games - the publishers only want the money. So if you like a game, buy it! I do seriously doubt that big publisher companies like EA will ever change - they are forced to maximize profits, because their stockholders want to see a continuous upwards trend, and EA is doing this very well compared to many other companies. But something must be changed if we want to play really good games again. One way is small development teams going their own way without publisher, which is very risky, but a few of them don't go bust and manage their breakthrough releasing a Blockbuster. A great example is LiveForSpeed, developed by only 3 people, and it is definately the best racing simulator on the market. Developing a game on your own doesn't have to be as dangerous as it is, though. I have always been wondering why big companies don't sponsor the industry, like it's usual in many other branches. I mean - how many graphics cards would ATI and nVidia sell if there were no games? In my opinion, publishers and both games-related companies and other sponsors can find together and reanimate the games industry. With more time for the same money, game designers can do a much better job and the quality of the games should increase a lot. But also the general way of thinking must change, because it does sound a bit nonsense at first to delay the release in order to make the game a bit better, which will cost a lot of money though. But game designers should not forget that they are artists, and imagine a Mona Lisa with an ordinary smile like on any other painting. In the end, the best product will make it's way, and the additional work will pay off. 2. Play your games, devs! Of course, the publishers are not the only reason for bad games. Many developer studios don't even understand how their own game works and why people like it, but why? Some game designers might be surprised that people like totally negligible characteristics of a certain game, which might not even be noticed by the devlopers, but exactly this is the thrill of game design! You can't make the game exactly as you have planned it, game design is a very dynamic process and it can change totally within a few days! When developing a game, you never know how the final product will be. The most significant default of many gamedevelopers is much, much more simple though: They just don't play their own games! I guess this is not because they are too bureaucratic - actually I doubt this ;) - it's rather a lack of time. 2.1 Accessibility If you actually concentrate on playing a game, you will notice completely different things and find very minor disadvantages incredibly annoing. A good game is smooth, not only performance-wise, but also it must have a good handling, easy accessibility, and react very quickly on the user input. Input is much more than just the joystick or mouse interface. The user must be able to change anything, anytime, anywhere - exactly as he wants and without having to wait. He must have the feeling that the game is excatly doing what he wants it to do. The perfect game also DOES what he wants to do. Some examples: not being able to change all settings ingame while playing, which can be changed in the menu. Nobody wants to stop playing just to assign some keys differently or change the screen resolution. slow menus: A good menu does not obviously need stunning gfx effects, if it doesn't even work. long loding times: The player wants to play and not to wait. The perfect game menu in a prefect world is only used once. Then you have the ultimate setting which works exactly as you want, and you don't need to change it anymore. But this only works if the player and the system will not change, and in these days of incompatibilities, the gaming world is everything but not perfect. You are using the menu all the time in order to tweak things to improve gameplay. Online players will always want better performance and quicker responses, because it gives them the tiny advantages that can decide over victory and defeat. In my opinion, the controls and their customizability have a huge influence on the gaming experience - it just sucks when you press a key and it takes like half a week until the game notices it. The ultimate example here is the Splinter Cell series. The nice and smooth animations of the character make the response slow, and you often feel that the character does anything but not what you want. In "close combat situations", there is only one thing that counts - quick reactions. If the player has to wait for the game, there is something wrong. The game has to wait for the player. The player should also be able to change all settings, because he knows better than any gamedeveloper what works best on his machine, simply because he can test it. I don't want to see things like "optimizing shaders for best performance" like in Battlefield 2, because those settings are not, and will never be the best. Even some gamedevelopers seem to think that the eye can't see more than 25fps. Well, you need to consult an optician if you think so, too. 2.2 understanding Gameplay Besides the accessibility, there are many other thigs like balancing issues, or mapping faults. If you play a game, you will directly notice them. Those are the small things that can be incredibly annoying, as I mentioned above. Just to give an example: In Counter-Strike: Source you keep getting stuck in weirdly acting so-called physics objects (which are not needed at all, but they are there), and you can't even walk along a wall without getting strange stuttering. A while ago, the player size was increased (nobody knows why), with the result that you can now hide behind crates being able to watch over them and see what's behind. You yourself are almost invisible though, resulting in completely destroyed gameplay. Additionally, the maps from CS 1.6 were changed a bit while being ported to the new engine, showing that the editors haven't even had a lic of an idea how the game actually worked, because those minor modifications changed the gameplay totally. For example, you can hide behind any corner due to the far higher amount of detail. Thus you are almost always shot from behind, which decreases the fun rapidly. I don't want to go into detail here, as I could write a whole book just about bugs in the source engine, but if you have played this game, you know exactly what I mean, and you will agree that this is so damn annoying that many people, who have bought CS:S, have switched back to CS 1.6. 2.3 Performance The second point of this example is less the disadvantages of Carmack's old BSP-Engine in 2005, rather than the place where it's used. Half-Life 2 Singleplayer is a lovely game, just a great work from the guys at valve software - indeed one of the best games ever! But CS:S requires a completely different game engine because the game works totally different, simply because you play against real people instead of AI. "No need to be perfect if you look good" doesn't work for an online FPS game, because the most important part is that it DOES work perfect. This means the netcode must be extremely powerful, and the "internal engine delay" should be very low. The faster the game reacts on your input, the better it is. Of course this can be achieved by high fps, but don't forget about the mouse input, frame caching (vsync), etc. And engines are far too complex that I could write more about that, and of course they differ a lot either. Performance is the reason why almost all the successful online gamers use the very lowest quality setting in any online game that requires quick reaction times. Thus a game must also be developed to suit this target group, and eyecandy stuff should only be the cherry on the cake for people who just lurk around within the game. But on the one hand, this doesn't really make the game easier to sell, as many people buy games only because of the graphics. On the other hand though, good performance doesn't imlpicitly mean bad graphics. Some old engines like the Quake 3 Engine are still looking very nice. Actually, a Quake 3 engine at maximum details looks much better than a new engine at the lowest settings, even if the fps are identical. I guess you are quite surprised to hear something like this out of my mouth, me being a true graphics freak. :) But with every more minute you play a game, you will notice that it becomes less and less important how it looks. 3. Ingame advertisements Due to recent discussions coming up in various German games forums, I have also added a bit about ingame advertisements into this article. Well, if you have read my article about webdesign, you will know my attitute towards general advertisements very well: I hate them! If there will ever be any ads that interrupt the gameplay flow, or are obviously supposed to influence or be noticed by the player, I will stop playing within hundreds of a second. The worst case is scanning for user actions in order to find out how long and from what angle the player has been looking at certain surfaces. Ingame ads can even have direct influence on the gameplay. For example, there are a couple of CS1.6 servers from the UK2 network, which can display sprites textured with ads, resulting in players hiding behind them and thus being absolutely invisible. The result is obvious: The game becomes unfair and people will likely stop playing it. Despites, there is a nice way to implement advertisements into a game without erasing the user's experience: For example, LiveForSpeed allows to change the car textures and track banners, allowing teams to present their sponsors online, visible to others! This is a great step towards spreading the word about e-sports, and it will help a lot to make people accept it as a serious sport. I wouldn't mind if there was a Coca-Cola automat instead of one with a fictional name. It will only increase realism and not annoy the player. For many games with fantasy trademarks, there are almost always mods available which replace the ingame ads with their real patterns. As you can see, you only have to make your games as the real life, but of course this doesn't mean that you shall add commercial breaks into your games, simply because they are not there in real life either. TV is fictional and doesn't represent reality in any way. It's only the part of reality that survives the frenzy of our so-called sensation-addicted reporters. But the press business is hard - only the most sensational stuff can survive. They have no chance to do serious reports. And we don't want the games industry to become like that! It already is on the wrong lane, and it can and will not heal itself, simply because it's all about money. All? No, not all. There was a small group of people defending against the roman superiority in person of the huge publishers. And accoring to Asterix and Obelix, they won in the end. :) But who is or wants to be this group in the games industry? 4. The press To get back to the press people: Of course there are also reporters specialized in games, and they must be supported either, as they are a major important part of the industry. If you are not sure whether to buy a game or not, you get some mag from the kiosk around the corner and read the test to help you decide. Many players even buy those mags on a regular bias - once a month or so. Those reporters are doing a though job usually. The expos are rather discotheques with stuffy air where you can't understand your own words even if you scream like an Orc, with bad sight and maybe even billions of 12 year old fanboys running for the stuff you can catch at many of the stands. The E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo, in LA) has become a huge party for kids interested in games rather than a source for the press to get knowledge about the latest technology and products. Thus at least one day only for the press people is required. The disco environment must become a working environment with "livingroom feeling". Therefore, silence, many seatings and good air are needed. It would be nice to have places with public internet connections, allowing the newswriters to plug their notebooks in and update their websites as soon as possible. Let the press do their work themselves, and they will earn more money with a better coverage instead of using connections and publishing faked and payed crap articles. Information about new products must be published at the same time for all, and be available online. Additionally, the shows from various big companies should not be at the same time and spread all over the world. No-one can buy all the airplane tickets, except for the big news agencies, of course. But they don't need to visit those shows anyway, as they are provided with special information and hardware even months before the ordinary reporter even gets to know about the existence of them. Another story is the content of official booklets about new stuff, especially hardware-related. It seems to be usual that they are written in a way that only people can understand them, who know about the details anyway. The result is, that the player will never know what he is buying. Example: nVidia's ugly image quality in the new 7800 series, caused by flickering low quality Anisotropic Filtering. And actually we don't really need those huge Expos like the E3, because we are living in the 21th century - we have this thingie called "internet". Have you ever thought about making a digital show which can be viewed by the press people at home, if they are authorized by the according online systems? People could even set some rows of chairs and a beamer into the largest room of their press office and build their own cinema, following the show live and being able to discuss things and exchange emotions and experiences on the fly. THIS is what I call newswriting. The process of developing a game can change like that, too. There is no need to get all people into one office - they are picked 'n' mixed from all over the world, and they could work more effectively staying at home. You will be stunned if you see how far communication can be optimized when exploiting the seemingly endless possibilities provided by the internet. The developers should have regular meetings, though, because it's still important to talk to real people and feel their emotions instead of looking at their webcam stream or just plain text. Also, we need more ways to buy a game, like it has been discussed on the last GDC (Gamedevelopers' Conference) already: Currently, almost the only way to buy a game is going into a shop and buy the DVD box. This box doesn't only include the disc and the manual, but also the incredible amout of money spent for advertisement, good ratings and cocktails. You won't notice this, until you take a look at the price of the game. It can't be that a current top title costs 50 bucks or more - and some gamedevelopers even think about increasing them even more - LOL! Not everyone earns 20k+ $ a month. 5. last but anyting else than least: Gamedevs, talk to your community! If you can't play the games yourself, it makes sense to ask those who can. Apparently, almost all the current developers don't collect feedback from the people who are playing their games though, resulting in following releases of a certain title being worse than the previous ones. In my opinion, game designers who don't want their game to get at least a rating of around 90%, are not worth to be called game designers, because this title has something to do with art, and art as quite a lot to do with passion, perfectionism and emotions. 6. That is Well, I have written a lot now and before I started writing I didn't even think about what to write. :D This article comes directly from my mind, and I hope I can at least make the current gamedevelopers, publishers and also players think about what's going on in the games industry at the moment. In the end, I wrote more about what makes games bad rather than what makes them good, but while writing I noticed that you can't really describe how game design works, not only because all games are totally different, but also because gaming experience is also very subjective. Otherwise we would all like the same games, and this would be damn boring. As I'm an upcoming game designer and game design student myself, I am very interested in comments from known people in the business, and would be glad to see some posts below! Thanks for reading, keep playing guys :) http://www.franknaggies.com/test_56k.php?p=about%20this%20websiteI got inspired by a sheet of paper lying on my desk, which was nicely illuminated by a lamp - just as the background behind these lines here. Of course, the paper wasn't blue, but in my imagination it turned out blue after a quick thought. I started directly with getting the page alive, because I was curious how it will look like. 3dsmax was my way to go: Created a plane, set up some nice blue default material, added a light with falloff, and rendered it - looked good already. After tweaking the light color a bit, I saved the render and opened it in Picture Publisher to play a bit with the actual webdesign layout. Testing that stuff with a GFX program can save you a lot of time, because it's just faster aligning things. In html you need to create tables or use CSS to move the objects to their intended postion, which is quite complicated and slow compared to the easy layer/object moving in a GFX program. The white font I planned to use looked very nice, and I didn't even think about changing it. :) I played a bit with the background for the windows, and I decided to make it transparent, which turned out to make the webcoding not really easy. The main problem was that I had to use a table for the bg, and set it's opacity to 20%, which resulted in transparent font in FireFox, since it doesn't support attribute overwrite in sub-objects. Thus I thought about making the whole background as a div and place it underneath the text div, confronting me with another problem: The divs will always resize the table surrounding themselves, even when their position is completely different. I thought quite a while about how to solve that problem, and I didn't see any other possibility than placing the whole website in an Iframe. This allowed me to still have the whole page centered, but I didn't need to set a relative position for the divs anymore - I could place them anywhere on the page, without affecting or resizing any tables. It wasn't the most elegant solution, but it fixed all the problems at once. :) Later I implemented support for a nested menu layout with sub-categories. All the content is now being generated by a php script, which reads the data from text files, based on an array to sort everything, and creates the menu. Everything works automatically, you only have to define an array to get the menu structure, and create the text files for the content :) Easy adaptability! I also had to add special tweaks for FireFox, because this browser had big problems with the transparency. Everything should work nicely and smoothly now also on Mozilla based Browsers :) Currently, the whole scrolling script is being re-written to make resizing of the windows possible, which will give the user much more freedom to align the windows as he wants. Also, I'm thinking about a new window management, which will allow to have more than only one window active, whereas the active window will be fully visible, and the inactive ones will be placed in the background and be only barely visible due to a high amount of transparency. In the last 2 weeks or so, I have done a lot of work on the page and most things are working very well now. Many bugs have been fixed, fullscreen was added, the submenu-loading was improved, it's now possibe to open links via the url, the content of any window can be reloaded, quickinfo_onmouseover was added, but it sill has to be tweaked a bit to not stop the other mouseposition-related scripts, and many optimizations that make browsing nicer, faster and save your CPU power. http://www.franknaggies.com/test_56k.php?p=webdesignThis small guide is about to show you how many things you can do wrong when creating a website. It's rather a "top ten mistakes of webdesign"-list [Update] Now it's a "top eleven mistakes of webdesign"-list 1. Advertisements. Your website is not the Times Square. NEVER add ANY kind of flickering, blinking, always-on-top advertisements on your website. They are annoying, look incompetent, and will only result in distracting the user from your site. Furthermore, they can ruin the user's experience of the webdesign, because the viewer can not fixate his eyes on the main design and content, if there are flickering ads flying through the screen all the time. Don't even add banners that only LOOK like advertisement, even if they aren't. By the way, web advertisements don't work. Have you ever clicked on one out of interest? 2. Sounds (often used within ads). Someone who is browsing the web isn't looking for a disco-like sound theatre. Your website should not play loud sound unless the user has selected to play it. Of course, nice sounds give websites a special touch and atmosphere, but nobody wants to blow up his ears or his soundsystem, thus you should set the default volume to 0, or at least very low. Because you will not use ads anymore from now on, I don't have to write that you should remove ads which include sound. 3. Popup windows. Everyone knows them, everyone hates them. Actually, those silly ad-popups have ruined the users webbrowsing experience also on good sites, which might use popups to open a search window for example. Many people will close the window even before it has loaded at all, or use a popup blocker instead. But even "good" popups are not always nice, especially on small screens, where the main window is already in fullscreen, and the user will most likely not notice any windows popping up in the background. Also, a new window interrupts the browsing flow, because you can't use the "back"-button to return to the previous page, which will mostly end up in confusing the user, who will surely close the wrong window every now and then. Everyone who wants to have a new window, can and will open one himself whenever he wants to. Of course, you can ask the user if he wants to open a link in a new window, but always keep the choice to stay in the actual window (make sure that this works cross-browser). 4. Delaying or blocking the "back"-button. This is not the way to keep a user on your site, because you can't block the x in the top right of the window. :P I would recommend that you attract the user with good and interesting content, and he will surely come back on his own, instead of building a one-way jail around your page. 5. Dead links. It just sucks when you click a link and get a 404-not found error. The user can't use what is not there, thus I would recommend to check all links regularly. Changing urls all the time is equivalent with a dead link, unless you keep both urls active for a while, and notify the user of a redirection taking place in the background. Despites, you will still lose many visitors coming from links on other sites, and hurt your referrals with dead links. In addition to that, you should always keep archives, because this will avoid dead links, and the user will not be searching for things which dont exist anymore. [Update] However, there is a very nice solution that can help the user to find a file he needs. If you can edit your 404-Error file (google for "htaccess" and you will find the solution, or wait for my totorial ;)), you could create a php file that searches any files which are more or less equal. Of course, you cant compare the content of the files which don't exist, but you can try to find the file in a different folder or look for equal filenames, or you can ask archive.org. Another thing that has been annoying me in the last couple of days was the well-known "no direct linking allowed", which blocks access to a file under special circumstances, such as the referrer domain not being identical with the one of the webspace hosting the image. I'm using the google image search quite often, and mostly the cool files are blocked, resulting in me muckraking through the page to find it. I would prefer to be informed about the hoster, instead of running against closed doors. A message like "file kindly hosted by XYZ" is much nicer than a more or less dead link, as both the user and the hoster will be happy in the end! The visitor finds what he wants, and the hoster will be delighted to have a positive advertisement which will be well-recieved as it has actually helped the user by hosting the file, instead of annoying him. I hope I don't have to mention that this advertisement should be a simple and plain text to ensure that it's actually read by the visitors. People will be very thankful when you help them, so why not do so if you can even advertise with this? 6. Long loading times. If the website is very slow, it will challenge the user's patience and at some point, he will just leave. Get a faster webserver or optimize your code. Using Gzip can be nice, too. 7. Graphics: Images. Many images will overload the page and increase the loading time and traffic. No images can result in an empty looking page, but it doesn't have to. CSS code is very powerful, but it can also make things complicated. Sometimes you can use a simple gif instread of compex table arrangements or CSS-aligned objects. I don't want to write too much about graphical webdesign details, but the most important thing is that your website looks clean and provides a good overview, resulting in a satisfied user who will find what he needs. 8. Graphics: Fonts. Some people seem to be confident of websites using many different fonts being cool, or they just want to show how many fonts they have... Seriously, using more then 2 or 3 fonts looks really silly. You should try to use max. 2 fonts, and only a very small amout of different sizes. Also, use font decorations (bold, italic, etc.) with caution, and never underline something unless it's obvious that it's not a link. [Update]Another very important thing, which is forgotten very often, is that the user will likely not have the same default settings as the developer/designer of a website. This means that the user might have set the background color to black, and thus your website using a Cascading Style Sheet which only sets the font color to black, will be unreadable! This is, of course, the extreme case, but there are many websites out there which look weird just because of the font face or color not being the same as intended. To avoid this, all you have to do is define ALL colors, and please do not use the font tag, as it's incompatibilities are endless. CSS is definately the way to go! You should at least define the background- and font colors for the following tagnames: a:link, a:visited, a:hover, a:active, html, body, td. 9. Using Windows-GUI elements that don't work like the ones in Windows (Flash mostly). Consistency is one of the most powerful usability principles. When things always behave the same, users don't have to worry what will happen, because they KNOW what will happen. For example, ad banners often use select elements, but they are just part of an image, which will only direct you to the website of the advertiser. Also, the Windows user knows that he can check more items when using square checkboxes, and only one item if they are round. The last example will usually not be caused by simple html code, but I have seen many flash websites which seem to work without any logical sense in their navigation. In addition to that, you can often not select text on flash websites, though the user may want to. Would you open notebad and start to typewrite a whole site from screen to screen? [Update2] Another Flash-specific problem is the contextmenu which usually appears when you right-click on a Flash-element which will block the brower context menu, and a Flash-specific one without any useful functions will show up, resulting in breaking commands like "Open in a new window" or "Open in a new tab". This is one the major reasons why the page you are viewing right now was developed with classic HTML and Javascript. 10. Never use pdf files to view them online. PDF files will load extremely slow, especcially when there are many different ones, and the user has to open a few files until he finds the info he was looking for. Of course pdf files are not bad - actually they are very good - but only if they are downladed on the user's disk. 11. Avoid abbreviations. Don't write what the user will not understand. Not everyone knows the meaning of common abbreviations, and he will most likely not understand parts of the website. I am now especially thinking of common chat words like "lol", "brb", etc. Never use abbreviations in headlines. http://www.franknaggies.com/test_56k.php?p=tutorialsThe tutorials section baisically is about to show you some small tricks I found out by either experimenting a bit or asking google. Don't expect long guides here, which will make you learn 3dsmax in just a few hours. It's impossible anyway :). You can be happy if you've found out about half of all the features 3dsmax offers after some years of usage. In my opinion tutorials can help, but they can't teach, because you must understand why you are actually doing things in order to find out how the program is supposed to work. The easiest way to achieve this is learning by doing. Of course, this is more or less the same for any other program such as Photoshop or Picture Publisher. I hope my tutorials can help you anyhow. If you have questions or don't understand something, feel free to contact me. http://www.franknaggies.com/test_56k.php?p=3dsmax%20-%20wireframeTutorial 1: 3dsmax wireframe How to render a solid wireframe model: Have you ever wondered how ppl make these nice renders showing a model with wireframe? 1. First of all, you need a model! ;) 2. Select it, and press CTRL+V to clone it (select "copy" in the popup box). 3. Now apply the multiplier "Push" to the cloned model with an amount of 0.3. 4. Then apply a material to the cloned model and enable wireframe. 5. Set the wire size to 0,3px (extended mat params). 6. When you render it now, it will look like that: Here is a link to the *.max file of my example: wire.max http://www.franknaggies.com/test_56k.php?p=3dsmax%20-%20dublicate%20verticesTutorial 2: 3dsmax dublicate vertices How to remove duplicate vertices in meshes: The exported models from LFS are not solid, because there are many duplicate vertices, which prevents you from getting a smooth surface even when all faces are in the same smoothing group. The reason is that they dont adjoin each other. Of course, this tutorial works for any other model, too. 1. First of all, select all objects you want to fix. 2. Convert them to Editable Meshes (right click -> convert to...). 3. Now enable the Vertex Sub-object mode and select all vertices (Ctrl+A). 4. Go to the Weld box in the right menu and click "Selected" 5. Now all vertices will be welded with others in the distance of the value in the field right to the "Selected"-Button 6. Increase this value, if not all vertices have been welded. 7. A value of 0,1 is good for the LFS models, but some other models may need a lower value due ot their lower size. LFS models are really great. :) You can also use the collapse function if you want to weld a few vertices. Just click the "Collapse" button in the same menu on the right, and all selected vertices will be collapsed to a single one, which will have the average position of all selected vertices. http://www.franknaggies.com/test_56k.php?p=3dsmax%20-%20car%20paintTutorial 3: 3dsmax car paint Some tips about car paint material: (This tutorial was made using the Scanline Default Renderer) 1. Create a new material (Raytrace). 2. Now you can set its colour, which should not be too glary (Diffuse). 3. The Specular level should be something around 80, the Glossiness can be set to 60. 4. For the reflection, click the small button next to the colour and select Falloff. In the Falloff options, set Fresnel. If the material shall look like metallic car paint, you can set different values for the Specular level and Glossiness: Specular=200-300 and Glossiness=20-30. some examples of metallic car paint: Raceabout GTR FZ50 GTR http://www.franknaggies.com/test_56k.php?p=3dsmax%20-%20viewportTutorial 4: 3dsmax viewport How to change the background picture in the edit window(s) ("viewports"): 1. Switch to the viewport that shall get an image as background. This will allow to adjust the object positions and the camera settings easily 2. Press Alt+B and click the first button on the top left to browse your disk. 3. This window allows many other things like animating the background if you set a video as source. 4. Click ok ;) 5. Now you may want to use the same background also in the rendered pictures. To realize that, click either the shortkey "8" or go to the menu: Rendering -> Environment 6. Last but not least, you should increase the Background resolution: Customize -> Preferences -> Viewports -> uncheck: - Filter Environment Backgrounds - Low-Res Environment Background http://www.franknaggies.com/test_56k.php?p=3dsmax%20-%20object%20center Tutorial 5: 3dsmax object center How to set the object center to its real center: When cloning polygones into a new Object, its center will be the origin. This is really bad if you want to animate the object with rotation for example. A way to set the object center to its real center, just follow the steps in the pic on the right. http://www.franknaggies.com/test_56k.php?p=guestbookINFO: The messages from the old guestbook will be copied into the new one later. message http://www.franknaggies.com/test_56k.php?p=links references: http://www.zt-racing.com (my first website - both code and design) http://www.lfsworld.com (I made the webdesign, Victor van Vlaardingen made the code.) http://www.franknaggies.com version 1 (The old design of my personal website) http://www.franknaggies.com version 2 (My latest project) 3d stuff: http://www.3dtotal.com http://www.cgtalk.com http://www.marekdenko.net (Marek Denko) LFS related: http://www.lfsworld.com (official LFS website) http://www.liveforspeed.net (official LFS website) http://www.sir-vukodlak.de/ http://www.rldb.de.vu/ (Ricardo Hohmann) http://www.morrowdesigns.eu/ (MorroW Designs) http://don.vn.cz/ (DoN) some uni mates: http://www.extrawurstgames.de/ http://www.yashu.de/ (Yaga-Shura) http://www.starcat-dev.de/ (Starcat) misc: http://dict.tu-chemnitz.de (great online dictionary) http://www.escapistmagazine.com/page/archive (the escapist) http://www.econ.kuleuven.be/public/ndbaf47/Wallpapers/ (great car wallpapers) important legal notice: Using this non-profit website and any of its consequences are completely at your own risk. Though selecting all links carefully, I am neither responsible nor liable in any way for their content or anything else, especially including unauthorised usage of trademarks and copyrighted material. If any of the links contain "bad" content or material, please contact me so I can remove them from the list. Thank you. If you do not agree to that, leave the website now. :Phttp://www.franknaggies.com/test_56k.php?p=config Select a pre-defined font style... tiny small medium/default large huge ...or make your own! Font-size (max=16): Font-face: Font-color: Line-spacing: Change iFrame dimensions: x / y setup fading script v2: Test your settings (hover or click): TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TESTTEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TESTTEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST')" onmouseout="this.classname='hide'; hide_quickinfo()" style="cursor: pointer" onclick="var a='TEST TEST TEST TESTclose'; alert2(a); return false;" /> background image url: