Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

That`s right my friend. I`m way ahead of you on that one.

I used to play the Delta Force BlackHawk Down game online with a couple of my buddies. However, the software was too old to maintain and wasn`t consistent with my system.

So I found Combat Arms (a FPS) which to me, is absolutely the best. It`s free to play and me and my buddies get together sometimes three times a week to play against each other and other folks. We use Skype to talk on our headsets while we play and laugh, cut-up, and have a grand old time while we are playing.

That also helps when your team is playing against other teams. They have teamspeak out built just for these games but I find Skype is a more user-friendly software and less complicated during game-play. And computer to computer is free so it works.

Combat Arms is fairly new and has great graphics. The effects are good and game-play is smooth (most times).

Thanks for your comment!

Dan

lol this is great - will definitely check it out. thanks to stores like gamestop!  these toys are not as exp as they used to be. hence the ever growing strong sales in the video game sector, all that while the economy is collapsing generally speaking

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Is that crazy or what? You make a very valid point.

Not only the video gaming industry (we`ll have our fun even though we`ll be living on the streets with our laptops) is going strong, let`s not forget the cell phone industry. I would imagine folks are fighting tooth and nail to keep these. My wife and I have one each but only for emergencies. And we don`t use them for anything other than each other. No one else has the numbers. lol.

I had a friend once who obtained a phone from Nextel. Somehow his phone bill got up to $900 and he fought to pay the bill off just so he could continue using the phone. Of course, I think he didn`t have a proper long distance package and was talking to a girl who was living quite a few states away. It`s funny now that I think about it. We were land surveyors at the time and he actually told me about the job. So we`re working the first couple of days and I see that Mike is spending a lot of time on the phone talking to this girl. He would blow up into a shouting contest with her and storm off leaving me and the crew leader to do the rest of the work.

One day this happened around 8am and we didn`t see Mike again for the rest of the morning. We got ready to go to lunch and found Mikey sitting in the truck talking to the girl on the phone about his favorite type of mayonnaise. I mean come on! Four hours of talking to a girl you`ve never met about mayonnaise? We were both ready to kill him that day. Needless to say that he got kicked off the crew within the next couple of weeks. He screwed up so many times that he ended up getting fired by the guy who owned the company. That was an achievement. The guy who owned the company would take great care of you if you worked hard for him. I only knew of two guys who were fired by him during the three years I was there. I had to leave due to my health and he took great care of me even after I left (my boss). He knew how to treat an employee.

Anyways back to subject. Maybe we should look at some of these industries to see which ones are still going strong to find out what the folks are doing even during the recession. My business has slowed down but it`s still consistent. I haven`t looked at the records for 2008 versus 2007 yet but would imagine the sales are about the same.

Dan

u know ive followed the video game industry for some time and nothing seems to affect this puppy. it shows you where our priorities lie (cell phones, video games, buying cigarettes etc etc)...isn`t that something..

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Well, the cell phones are to call the girlfriends and wives. The video games are to distract us from the cell phones. And the cigarettes are to be able to handle the cell phone calls and the intensity of the video games.

Jeez. I`ve got a cell phone, play video games, and smoke. lol. So I`m one of the main contributors to the vices. Of course, my real fun is in playing with my 3D software creating images. You may have to pay for a model once but then you have a model at your leisure to create any type of scene you`d like. I`ve gotten into the modeling aspect of it too which is pretty satisfying. Thought about producing some lower resolution models for the video gaming industry. That would be pretty fun.

Here`s some of the models I`ve created so far: DanGer`s Models

Oh yeah. And here`s the link for Combat Arms if anyone is interested. Can`t deny it`s fun once you get involved. You know, that is one of the things I try to preach to folks who are starting a new business or even trying to maintain an existing business. Always make time for yourself to have fun. You`ll get burned out too quickly on the business if that`s all you focus on day in and day out. A little diversion is good for the soul.

Well, time to get started for the day. We`re relocating warehouses (moving from a smaller warehouse to a larger one) and someone has to do all of the moving. lol. I`ll definitely have to have a diversion tonight.

Later!

Dan

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Similar for the models?

I`ve got an eCommerce site I`m putting together for the textures of the models. Textures are the images used to give the colorations and look for the models. However, since I can`t create a .cr2 or .pp2 file for my models (.cr2 files are character files, meaning models with bone structures and .pp2 files are prop files not necessarily containing a bone structure and used as a prop) so I distribute my models for free. The eCommerce site I use only offers 100MB of downloadable storage so I`ll have to manually send every purchase via a large file transfer. My models are saved as importable wavefront objects which, the point of the matter is, there is work involved in gaining access to the wavefront object versus a clickable icon in the software using the .cr2 or .pp2 files. Plus my models are made using primitives and contain a lot of polys sometimes. When creating a model, it`s best to try to maintain as few polys as necessary since this affects load times. The longer the load time, the less fun it is to use the model.

The reason I would have to send the files manually is that the texture packages are comprised primarily of images. Larger images. So this can create a larger file to download. Thus a few zip folders can kill the downloadable storage. I`ve done this before but had to kill the site due to illness and wartimethings.com getting busier. Now, I have the want to do it again but still lack time. So it`s not a pushed project. Besides, I generally make all of my textures for my own purposes and some of them, I just don`t want to part with. Regardless of being paid for them. They are a unique set that unless someone creates a matching texture, it will remain a unique file for me. I`ve had folks tell me my ACU Digital Uniform textures look the most real they have seen.

At any rate, it`s a lot of fun. But it`s a lot of work too.

Dan