Call for Submissions: The recipe for eye candy
by Lisa Poisso 
Sep 17th 2010 at 3:00PM
I've really been enjoying Derek's articles on choosing a video card and what to consider when building a new system. They prompted me to take a good, hard look at my system, and I discovered that my video card was capable of much more than I thought. Consequently, I purchased a new 24" high-def monitor and now I understand the meaning of the term "eye candy." I had no idea my older monitor was so dim and dingy.
Consequently, this caused me to actually look at the video settings for the game which I honestly probably haven't looked at since Wrath came out. With my new monitor, I thought I could "tweak" a few things; however, to my horror, I discovered that I don't even know what more than half of the video settings mean. Multisampling? Wassat? Specular lighting? Is that good? Vertical synch and ground clutter density? Do I need those?
Obviously, people have different computers with difference components and different monitors, and there is no right answer for what your video settings could or should be set at ... but perhaps someone can explain what the video settings mean? (And I don't mean the cryptic little explanation Blizz gives, but what they mean to tech ignorant players.) Also, is there some kind of prioritizing? Which video settings are important to the eye candy factor, and which can be safely scaled back if the hit to the frame rate is too high?
When I fire up Cata on release day, I want to be mesmerized and see all of Deathwing's handiwork in its full glory!
Details on this article assignment, after the cut.
Your article should run between 750 and 1,000 words. We will not accept proposals submitted under player names or pen names; please use your full, real name and email. Please include your email address again at the bottom of your synopsis in the body of your submission. Links should be included as full URLs in the body of the copy; no active links, please.
Artwork is not mandatory, but any you choose to include must be your own work or from Creative Commons. Images should be exactly 580 pixels wide and no more than 350 pixels tall. Please include a description of the content and attribution details at the bottom of your article (along with your email address). If you would like to include multiple images with this post, please include a list of images you would include at the bottom of the body of your submission.
The Seed program currently only accommodates submissions from individuals living in the United States. As much as we love sharing our readers' voices on a broader scale via guest posts, submissions outside of the context of Seed are simply not a viable option for us at this time. We appreciate your enthusiasm, but sorry, no exceptions. If you live outside of the United States and would like to comment on Seed's availability or keep tabs on the status of international submissions, please visit Seed.com.
To submit an article, read up about our guest post program, then sign up for Seed. WoW Insider articles are not listed among Seed's publicly listed assignments; click here to view this assignment and submit your article. (You won't be able to see it unless you have a Seed account.) We'll accept submissions for this assignment until 12:00 midnight EDT on Wednesday, Sept. 22. If you have further questions about this assignment, drop us a line at seed@wow.com. Good luck and good writing!
Have you ever wanted to write for WoW Insider? Your chance may be right around the corner. Watch for our next call for submissions, and be sure to sign up for Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider. The next byline you see here may be yours!Filed under: WoW Insider Business, Guest Posts
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
JC_Icefox Sep 17th 2010 3:07PM
Well, the first rule is the retinas absolutely have to be fresh. It never turns out unless they're fresh.
Then you...oh, wait.
(cutaia) Sep 17th 2010 3:13PM
Oh, Good lord that's disturbing. :D
Rakah Sep 17th 2010 3:41PM
http://media.onsugar.com/files/ed2/192/1922664/43_2009/d68621f21d88ea2f_Monster_Candy_Eyes.jpg
Ingredients
1 1/2 cups creamy peanut butter
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, at room temperature
1 (1-pound) package confectioners’ sugar (about 4 cups)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 (12-ounce) package semisweet chocolate chips (2 cups)
2 tablespoons solid vegetable shortening
1 package M&Ms
Directions
1. Blend the peanut butter with the butter, sugar, and vanilla in a medium bowl. It may be easiest to use your hands (kids love doing this).
2. Line a rimmed baking sheet with wax paper. Roll the peanut butter mixture by teaspoons into small balls and place on the baking sheet. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour to firm up the eyeballs.
3. Put the chocolate chips and shortening in a microwave-safe bowl and melt the chocolate in the microwave: Heat on high for 60 seconds, and then stir well. If it’s not quite smooth, heat in two or three 10-second bursts, stirring well after each burst. (Alternatively, you can melt the chocolate, stirring frequently, in a double boiler, over just-simmering water. Avoid overheating, which can cause chocolate to seize up into a stiff mass.)
4. Take the sheet of balls from the refrigerator; use a fork or a toothpick to dip each one most of the way into the chocolate, leaving a round or oval opening of undipped peanut butter on top. (This opening in the chocolate will be the cornea.) Hold each ball over the chocolate to catch the drips, and then return to the wax paper, cornea side up.
5. Place an M&M in the center of the peanut butter cornea to make an iris. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour before serving. Store the eyeballs in the refrigerator or freezer and serve chilled.
bit too far...?
thegatherer Sep 17th 2010 3:44PM
Do go on, as an Undead, I do delight in learning more recipes for my newly late foes.
Drakkenfyre Sep 17th 2010 4:13PM
Take a can of sliced almonds in water, add red food coloring, soak overnight.
Take biscuit dough, roll into finger-like shapes.
Press an almond slice at the top of each dough stick.
Bake until golden brown.
Lady fingers. Yes, they look exactly like it.
Jorges Sep 17th 2010 5:22PM
Uprated for cleverly disguising a first comment in a funny and disturbing way :P
ducss750 Sep 17th 2010 8:15PM
@ Rakah
If you grew up in Ohio, they're Buckeyes.
Can't ever really escape your youth...
dodgeballer2005 Sep 18th 2010 3:56AM
The topic is candy, not shoes. Get with the program, Itk.
JasonD Sep 17th 2010 3:45PM
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=11824304544
icepyro Sep 17th 2010 3:49PM
Why am I thinking this is better done as a video of Raid Eats?
I think I need to cut back on how much I watch Good Eats... to think that style would be best for describing something technical in 1k words, and the added bonus of it being about Eye Candy. Since it's WoW, it translated to Raid Eats, but still I'm scaring myself.
Dementedioser Sep 17th 2010 5:40PM
Recipe for eye candy:
Bloom effects, more an more bloom effects, bloom till your eyes bleed.
brian Sep 17th 2010 7:14PM
I run windows 7 64-bit and have to turn my settings down to keep from crashing ... it is apparently a known issue for comps with more than 4gb of memory (i have 8gb in my gaming pc). if anyone knows some tweaks for this ... or the best possible settings without crashes, i would love to hear more about it
Agerath Sep 17th 2010 9:51PM
Firstly, there is literally no reason to have more than 4gb of ram in a gaming computer. Moving on, have you run memtest? Are you overclocking?
Sinthar Sep 20th 2010 11:12AM
As a Win7 64 bit user myself - im a bit shocked to learn of the 'known problem' - esp as i have been running with 8GB mem myself for longer than Win 7 has been officially released (I was in the beta). I would advise updating your BIOS of your MB, as well as all your drivers if you havent done already, and as the previous commenter stated memtest.
Lastly I would also say, that running with 8gb means you can have any addons you like - without significant lag in game, with ultra graphics, in a aoe fest in icc or WG. My load screens are quicker than nearly anyone elses (just both take a portal to dal, and see who moves first - often i have time to move at least to the fountain and mount before others can move) - although that may also be down to installing wow on a striped drive for max speed access.
vanillabean Sep 17th 2010 6:16PM
Silly me getting my hopes up that the move to a new domain would bring with it a new guest writer platform.
Also, there is nowhere to "comment" on the availability of Seed on their website.
WTB global thinking.
Al Sep 17th 2010 9:28PM
Good luck, the program and the move are both AOL-mandated.
ShadowPriest Sep 18th 2010 12:52AM
Im just curious if they fixed that whole, not paying for articles they use thing?
dodgeballer2005 Sep 18th 2010 3:57AM
just using this comment to hopefully lock in my user info so I don't have to sign in again, feel free to downvote as much as you please, as least I'm not advertising the greatest thing since sliced bread...
Merus Sep 22nd 2010 11:31AM
Because I'm Australian, and because they won't pay you anyway:
VIEW DISTANCE: The point at which the game stops drawing the landscape. The larger this is, the more land you can see, especially when mounted. Cranked up to maximum, you can see Icecrown from Dalaran, and it's absolutely spectacular. (On some systems, due to a bug, you actually want to keep this off the maximum, or else WoW will try and load too much and choke. 64-bit systems specifically seem to have this problem.) This is mostly a function of the RAM, the memory, in your computer.
ENVIRONMENT DETAIL: While the View Distance controls how much of the landscape you can see, this controls how many buildings and trees you can see. WoW uses what's called a Texture Map, which basically means that the hills, roads and mountains are built separately to the buildings, which are then pasted on. Like with View Distance, this depends on how much RAM you have.
TEXTURE RESOLUTION: This option actually only has two states; putting it on high makes the world look less blocky. This depends on how much graphical memory your card has - the more it has, the more room it has to give everything a nicer paint job.
TERRAIN BLENDING: This controls how smooth the transitions between, say, cobblestones and grass, or snow and grass, is. This is done by making the transitions higher res - and, like with texture resolution, it depends on how much graphical memory your card has.
GROUND CLUTTER DENSITY: If you look at a grassy patch in game, you'll notice it has a bunch of little tufts of grass stuck on the solid polygons that make up the ground. This makes it look much more messy and realistic. Because it's making the ground more complex, this depends on how efficient your graphics card is - the newer your card, the more polygons it can push at once. (This is generally fairly low impact, so feel free to crank it up.)
GROUND CLUTTER RADIUS: Related to the previous item, this controls how far away you have to be before ground clutter like tufts of grass appear. It, too, depends on your graphics card, but you can safely set this to around the midway point without really noticing any drop in graphical quality.
TEXTURE FILTERING: This controls the anti-aliasing of textures in game - a technique to make them look less pixellated when viewed at an angle. This requires horsepower, though - either your card, or your CPU, will be handling this calculation, and if it can't finish the calculation quickly enough, it's going to drag down your framerate.
PARTICLE DENSITY: Many fancy effects in the game create 'particles' - for instance, the water bubbles you see when you go swimming, or the swirls and leaves that appear around your character's hands when they use their hearthstone. The higher this setting is, the more of them there'll be, and the better spell effects will tend to look. This requires a beefy graphical card, though - and, for some effects, a good CPU to keep track of where each particle is and how it should be moving.
WEATHER INTENSITY: This controls how intense the weather effects are in zones that have them. This is actually done through particles, but they're generally less intense than spell effects, so if your computer can't handle particle density on maximum, you may be able to turn weather intensity up higher.
SHADOW QUALITY: When this is high, the game will make more of an effort to work out where shadows should be cast. If it's low, the game will take shortcuts, like putting a black dot under your character's feet. The newer your graphics card is, the more likely it'll have special routines to do this quickly.
PLAYER TEXTURES: Some high-level armour sets have a special high resolution paint job. Setting this to high enables this paint job. Mid-level pieces of armour probably won't be affected by this setting.
SPECULAR LIGHTING: This setting makes light bounce off of certain surfaces, like snow, making it look more realistic.
FULL-SCREEN GLOW EFFECT: At some points, like during certain Northrend quests or when dead, the light takes on a weird, otherworldly quality. This setting is what controls that effect.
PROJECTED TEXTURES: This setting allows terrain to be painted with other textures, for example spell effect circles. Some bosses will paint areas that they're about to drop things on - this painting is done with projected textures. Only turn this off if you computer simply can't handle it.
MULTISAMPLING: Like texture filtering, this is a kind of anti-aliasing; however, it's more comprehensive, trying to handle the entire screen instead of a wall at a time. This makes, for instance, your character's shoulders look more rounded - but at the cost of trying to redraw the screen twice per frame. It makes the game look really good, but you'll see a big performance improvement if you turn it off.
VERTICAL SYNC: Have you ever seen a monitor in a movie or something that looks like half the screen's behind the other half? This is the problem vertical sync is designed to fix - it makes the screen update only during specific moments, so that you don't get that tearing effect. If your framerate isn't rocksolid, though, vsync will only make it worse.
TRIPLE BUFFERING: Which is what triple buffering is designed to fix. Triple buffering stores an extra frame in reserve for when the screen wants to display a frame but the game isn't ready. The disadvantage, though, is that the game is keeping a frame in reserve, and so there's a very slight lag if the game never needs that frame in reserve.
HARDWARE CURSOR: This gives control of the game cursor over to your computer's operating system (Windows or OSX, depending on if you compute with fruit or not), which makes it more responsive because there's entire teams in both companies dedicated to making sure the mouse feels silky smooth. Sometimes, though, they can go too far - if the game's not handling the mouse properly, switch this off, but otherwise the game will feel better if you leave it on.
I think that's everything that isn't self-explanatory and/or hopelessly arcane.