The Download Munkey : Tracking the Treasure Down …

A profilic illustrator specializing in predominately the anime female form, first featured on The Elderly Gamer in October 2006.

This illustrator known only as RYU has his own website RYU’s Form Site (WARNING: some images are NSFW) featuring currently 374 artworks – some fan art for various video game characters, as well as his own character designs. Tried contacting RYU for permission to feature his artwork here, but haven’t received any response for close to 2 months so I guess I will just stick it up here

  
  
© RYU

Clockwise from top left :#152 Dixie Clemets, #216 Sgt.Clemets, #213 Candy Cane and #206 Benikage.

Some of my favourite game characters on RYU’s Form Site.

  
  
© RYU

Again, clockwise from top left:
#280 Hibana from Nightshade/ Kunoichi – ooh, female ninja , #266 Morrigan Aensland from Darkstalkers, #317 Vanessa Z. Schneider from P.N.03 and #342 Jill Valentine from Resident Evil.

My favourite character design of them all #283 – woo hoo Rocker Grrrl!

© RYU

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
Mirai Suenaga – Blog Mascot
Warren Louw – Illustrator (Anime & More)
Alessia Zambonin – Dusted Game Character Designs
Steven Stahlberg’s CG Girls
Junny – Cool Japanese Illustrator

Have to admit first that I’m a very late starter in the genre of tower defense games I only heard of Desktop Tower Defence (DesktopTD) by Paul Preece / HandDrawnGames when gHacks announced that version 1.5 of DesktopTD was available.

Since version 1.5 is not playable offline, I tried out the 1.21B version of the game to see the differences to see if I can make do with the older version. I know there’s a brief list of changes at the official site but I can idenify the changes and improvements faster when I play them both.

The interface in 1.5 is definitely much less cluttered and looks a lot better.

The turret placement cursor is now updated in real-time so you can select the turret you want even when you have insufficient gold (cursor turns red) and it will automatically turn green for placement when enough gold are available. The turret selection panel on the right side also automatically light up in green for those turrets that can be built.

The best addition to the interface is the ability to place the same type of tower multiple times without needing to select the type of turret again, which is a real game-saver at time

Additions include a powerful new ink tower which has a very restrictive firing area (which I also hardly use) as well as new morph and dark creeps which are extremely resistant to damage (there must be a easy way to destroy those dark creeps!) as well as new modes of play which I haven’t even started since I’m still stuck at medium mode (I really suck at this type of games)

The new creeps and the lower amount of gold makes it more challenging in 1.5 too.

My best effort so far

Still hoping for a offline version from Paul soon ;p

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
Nanaca Crash Flash Game

Recently, there’s been quite a few visitors coming over to this blog in search of a Rogue Status wallpaper due to a comment on this post.

If you’re looking for the official Rogue Status wallpapers, it’s at the Rogue Status blog. Look out for the AWOL Paper link at the bottom left corner of the page.

    
    
© Rogue Status

The same design in six different colour schemes with the background being a modified version of the x Diamond Supply Co design (taken from the catalog at Rogue Status.

© Rogue Status

When I have time, I will attempt to identify all the firearm silhouettes featured in the x Diamond Supply Co design

BTW, if you’re looking for the Spiky Baby Series 02 papercraft designed by Shin Tanaka and illustrated by Rogue Status, click here to download it from my GooglePages site. This PDF was graciously given to me by a reader by the name of Jordan. Thanks a lot, Jordan

© Shin Tanaka / Rogue Status

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
Shin Tanaka’s Spiky Baby Paper Toys
Art Lebedev Illustrations
Simone Legno – Tokidoki
Elphonso Lam – Artist / Toy Designer / Punk Rocker
Asian Artists Showcase @ Tiger Translate 2007

A handy PDF reference for selected miltary hardware around the world without referring to costly Jane’s military guides.

This 2001 edition of the OPFOR (Opposing Force) Worldwide Equipment Guide (414 pages) provides a overview of infantry weapons (assault rifles, sniper rifles, RPGs, etc) as well as vehicles like APCs, IFVs, tanks and other recon, anti-tank, artillery, air defense and engineer assets likely to be encountered by the US Army as either allied or enemy forces. Selected fixed-wing and rotary-wing (helicopters) aircraft are also covered to a lesser degree.

I’m very curious about this vehicle found on Page 259 – a Russian 220mm rocket launcher TOS-1 “Buratino” that can fire a salvo of 30 fuel-air explosive incendiary rockets to distance of 3500m to 6000m in 6 seconds. Reminds me of the rocket launcher unit in the classic RTS Dune 2.

Comparision with a Jane’s Guide

The coverage is by no means comprehensive unlike a Jane’s book as most of the equipment featured in this guide are those currently in service or in the inventory of Russian or ex-Warsaw Pact states.

There are very few fancy photos in this guide as the bulk of this PDF covers each weapon in a single page along with a simple lineart profile and detailed specifications of its capabilities. Jane’s Recognition Guides usually follows the same format but usually with additional info and high-resolution photos for each featured weapon. I much prefer a detailed line art profile over a photo because of I can usually pick out details from a line art more easily than from a photo.

Overall, a very handy PDF to have at hand when a casual overview of common equipment but a Jane’s guide is better for its more complete selection of equipment and more detailed information.

As of printing, this document was approved for public release (i.e declassified). Download it from the Federation of American Scientists at www.fas.org (7+ MB PDF).

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
Airborne Combat Engineer’s What The Firearms
Assault Rifle Basics
Free Miitary History Books @ Focal Point Publications
Max Popenker’s Modern Firearms

I use the freeware version of TreeSize to keep track of where my precious harddisk space are allocated. Since I download a lot of stuff everyday and tend to keep them all over the place, I run TreeSize once in a while to find out which directories take up the most diskspace and delete those unneeded directories hiding on the harddisk.

Found 100 MB worth of useless files yesterday which were not removed when I uninstalled Lego Digital Designer a few months ago. (Screenshot taken with a older version (1.78) of TreeSize Free)

© JAM Software

It can also be launched via the context menu in Windows Explorer to view the harddisk space occupied by a particular directory and its subdirectories. Another nice time-saving feature is the ability to open any folder in Windows Explorer or do file operations like deleting the directory directly from TreeSize.

Details of the professional version of this software can be found at the official TreeSize page at JAM Software.

Download Treesize as a zip file (723 KB – No installer, no shell integration and no readme.txt) or with an installer (1.1 MB – optional shell integration and readme.txt)