[CaptJosh]

MarkN, that's because people are idiots and don't know the difference. A rail gun is rather much simpler than a coil gun or other form of MAC. A conductive projectile with a high electrical resistance is placed between two rails. High voltage current is applied. The projectile, due to its high resistance, accelerates down the rails until it's flung out the end. Major drawbacks are the same as with a chemically propelled projectile weapon's barrel, wear and tear. A coil gun or other magnetic acceleration cannon is at least an order of magnitude more complex.

[Snagger]

MarkN, that's because people are idiots and don't know the difference.

That's a harsh coment to make, isn't it?  If someone doesn't understand one element of what you know, they're an idiot?  I bet there are a lot of experts out there in other fields that you have no knowledge of, but wouldn't categorise you ans an idiot, beins a little more adult and less arrogant than to make such vitriolic remarks.

[Meleardil]

Whoever is giving detailed speech about something he has not the faintest clue how that works IS an idiot. No smoothing required.

[General Battuta]

Calling folks idiots is generally a bad plan on the internets.

[Fish]

Dudes, thread topic. Have the courtesy to take your other discussions elsewhere.

[Vip]

Generally speaking, going offtopic is not welcome. So, the Almighty Devs of Diaspora, perhaps in accordance to the topic, could we get a few new eyecandies ? Pwetty pweese...

[BigDamnHero]

The more eyecandy they give us the more time is taken away from R1.

... and I want R1

[karajorma]

I don't think a few screenshots a week are really that big a distraction. If you can't spare 5 minutes to press the PrintScreen button a few times while testing, convert to jpg/png and upload then you're obviously doing something wrong. There are things that can easily become a distraction from making a release (arguing/explaining on the forums, PR work/pimping etc) but a simple screenshot update shouldn't ever be one for a well run project.

So if we don't update for a while it will mean that either we have nothing new we haven't already shown you several times (We can't build new ships every week after all. A lot of our work is to do with balancing and mission building) or we're up to something big.

Guess which one we're doing now.

[BoneMonkey]

Its not the fun one.

[BigDamnHero]

Dang... masters of suspense!!

[Thaeris]

Hmmm... I was just browsing through the old project (aka Beyond the Red Line), and I'm wondering about the light rendering. It just seems that it was somehow... more substantial in BtRL. Is there a reason for this?

-Thaeris

[Lt.Cannonfodder]

I'm not sure what you mean by substantial.

The lightning in the game is affected greatly by various command line settings. We for example tend to prefer low ambient light levels that leave much of the ships not directly hit by sunlight in the dark, increasing the dramatic contrast. That, and it better hides the fact some of our ships still have placeholder textures in place 

Changing the command line settings is easy enough however, so everyone can tweak them to their liking when the game is out.

[Kazan]

[re:trailers]

Quicktime?

QUICKTIME?!

what's wrong with you.. use a STANDARD friggen mp4 container...

[Zacam]

MediaPlayer Classic with good old K-Lite MegaCodec plays Quicktime just fine. OS X plays them. I think a few linux players support it too.

And I think QT _is_ an actual standards listed format. Just may not be popular.

Me, I like Theora. And at least it's not MKV.

Mind, this isn't a serious post, I'm just heckling Kazan a touch since he's been absent a while.

[Lt.Cannonfodder]

Because .mov can be played easily enough on most computers. Almost everyone has quicktime (or alternatives) installed.

[karajorma]

Besides it was the only thing I could get Adobe Premier to export properly.

[Kazan]

Because .mov can be played easily enough on most computers. Almost everyone has quicktime (or alternatives) installed.

so can the mp4 and mpg containers since they're open standards

i detest having to install proprietary apple bull****

I didn't have quicktime installed, i had to install it simply to watch those trailers

the idea that .mov is somehow more widely supported that TRUE standard containers is simply silly.

Besides it was the only thing I could get Adobe Premier to export properly.

use VLC?

[karajorma]

To export a movie from a program?

Besides, you've got the HD youtube videos if you don't want to use Quicktime.

[Kazan]

To export a movie from a program?

to convert it to a format that isn't proprietary pants

[karajorma]

With loss of quality since it's been re-encoded.