Menu

Show posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.

Show posts Menu

Topics - milkanannan

#1
I was going to start a thread dedicated to Umami's Interface (see below), but when I got to writing this opening post I realised what I really wanted was to ask this community for other interesting relics encountered online. So just for some fun - please reply to this thread with the weird, inspiring, spiritual, confusing and/or thought-provoking projects you've come across on the world wide web. Could be any build type -- a game, movie, bit of writing, photo collection, website, community, art collection, etc -- I think we should be OK to share most media so long as it doesn't step outside the forum's content guidelines (for reference: https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/faq/).

OK so a quick step back to Interface. I came across this project during COVID lockdowns when its creator (Umami) was building it in short snippets and publishing these as the project was being made. I just found (and still find) the art style, original characters, slow pacing and music to be intriguing and a welcomed break from reality. Umami also did some cool live streams that let you peek behind the curtain and see how everything was made - all of this as-it-happens media put a very cool meta spin on the work. I really enjoyed feeling like I knew the creator and knew the process that went into the build.

For those interested, the project has been threaded together and published as a whole to YouTube:


Even threaded together, the narrative can be a bit hard to follow (at least for a dense person like me), so if it's helpful this Redditor's grouping of the themes and interpretation of the story gives a good point of reference:

Spoiler
"Without going too in-depth with exploring the many deeper meanings, contexts, imagery, symbolism, ideas, and interpretations of the series, here is my attempt at a summary of the objective story plot of Umami's Interface series.

In 1943, a military vessel in Philadelphia tested what was described to the crew as an experimental stealth cloaking technology, I would assume it was likely quantum mechanical in nature. The device malfunctioned in some way, having massively unintended effects and consequences for the crew and the world. This device triggered some cascading event that revealed a new force to the world, "cerebral electricity". This cerebral electricity can be thought of in a few ways, as lifeforce, as a soul, but primarily, it is essentially the physical energy of consciousness. It is generated by living things, and released when they die. It is not known whether this event was local to the Earth, or perhaps a shift of a universal scale. As a result of the 1943 incident- The Philadelphia Experiment, most of the crew was fused with the ship and died. There were three survivors, Henryk Niebieski, Percy(Mischief), and Joseph Greetings. Percy technically died in his original human form and instance, but was able to "regain his physicality" and became a new form of entity composed of and emerging from cerebral electricity- Mischief. Mischief, however, was not the only one. These spectral cerebral entities began to manifest all over the earth, and the world was plagued by ghosts and monsters, and the skies and seas changed to alien colors. One of the survivors, Greetings, founded the Greetings robotics corporation, which studied cerebral electricity and analyzed its nature. With this, they created KAMI, a machine to hunt cerebral entities, harvest their cerebral electricity, and catalogue it. Its next task was to upload this data to a flying database called the mechanical saccorhytus (and presumably into the lighthouse, which might have come first). Humanity used technology to harness the new force, and drove back the specters, though some found ways to integrate and hide within the city(ies). Henryk was left in an odd state by the incident, trapped somewhere between life and death, and now immortal, lost in time. It is unknown whether his being mute is voluntary, or a result of this transformation. Many of these cerebral beings had various powers and properties, such as Mischief's shapeshifting, and more importantly, his ability to absorb cerebral electricity. These powers once taken into the Greetings Robotics database can be replicated, hence the mass-production, and utilization of ghost-hands that takes place in the series. The rest is how Henryk, Mischief, and Greetings' pasts and personal lives tie into the entire saga. Greetings has some vision of merging all cerebral electricity into a single form, perhaps to ascend or evolve to something like godhood, or perhaps to "save" all the minds that had been lost. Thus, he builds the vessel, KAMI collects, and eventually, Greetings dies and allows his own cerebral electricity to be absorbed as well. His creation is born, an amalgamation of a million minds, his homunculus god. The irony is, he purged the world of perceived monsters, only to create a greater one- it can be extrapolated that it would continue to seek out all sources of cerebral electricity, which may mean destroying the city, and even killing all life to absorb. Ultimately, Mischief sacrifices himself to sabotage it. The two gods collide, though the exact outcome is left ambiguous. As far we know, the world returns to some sort of normal, though it is still forever changed."
[close]
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/umamiyt/comments/q9pub9/an_explaination_of_interfaces_plot/



Looking forward to seeing what other projects people care to share....
#2
Just curious what everyone’s dipping into this season. At the moment I’m both inching and ploughing (sorry, pun intended) my way through Arabian Nights. My son and I start his first read of The Little Prince tonight, which should be fun. We recently got through a few comic book/novels by Raina Telgemeier (you’ve seen them, they’re the ones with emojis on the cover: Drama, Sisters, etc).

How about you? What’s on your bedside these days?
#3
Without hints or any other support. Mine was Quest for Glory II, but I must have been playing it on and off for over a year before I finally made my way through it. At the end of the game, there's sort of an assembly where all of the characters you interacted with along the way speak about how you impacted them (there were multiple ways to win and tons of side quests, so this crowd changed depending on how your progressed). Felt pretty awesome to finish it!

How about you? What game did you first complete start to finish?
#4
Great interview! Brings back so many fond memories.  :grin:

#5
Like a lot of us here, I grew up playing ALL of their games and staying abreast of upcoming company projects/endeavours (as much as possible) through their publications and the tidbits you could glean from a few places on the internet in the 90s. Their repeated hit titles and general prominence in PC gaming made the seemingly ‘sudden’ disappearance of Sierra quite shocking â€"how could a company pushing tech boundaries in gaming for two decades burn up faster than Roger Wilco on Ortega without his thermoweave underwear?! (laugh)

Despite what I could read online at places like Ken’s blog, the story of Sierra’s final act has always been kind of murky. For anyone else interested, this Vice piece sheds a really interesting light into what happened: https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3vem8/inside-story-sierra-online-death-cuc-cendant-fraud
#6
I’m interested to hear about games that deeply resonated with AGS members and/or provided them with what might be described an almost spiritual or deeply emotional experience. I don’t think this necessarily is the same thing as a ‘favourite game’. I’m more interested to hear about a gaming experience that deeply connected with you in some way, regardless of whether you think the game, as a game, was good or bad.

In my own case, and I’m aware this is a bit cliche, I’d have to say the Minecraft demo, where you essentially have five ‘days’ to build a little shelter and explore/carry out simple errands before the narrator announces you last day as you watch the sunrise. The whole thing opens some sort of emotional connection to the tree fort building days of my childhood, especially when you can do things in the game like build a little shelter and then rest in it and watch the afternoon clouds float by from you window, then swim way out in the water and look back at your shelter as the sun sets.

I also found the plot and character depth of Lisa: The Painful to be something I will never forget. I’m really not crazy about the game, but the way it grapples with the subject of redemption, and the truly tormented, self-loathing protagonist is really unique compared to anything I’ve seen elsewhere.

Finally, I’d list Fez only because I got so invested in the Phil Fish drama long before I ever played the game (the game is excellent, btw). I got to have this very meta experience while playing such a great game which was deeply enjoyable in some weird way I have not encountered with other titles.

How about you? Are there games you would say changed your life?
#7
Just a thread to aggregate some of the AGS titles for varying age groups. Please feel free to suggest something. (Bonus for games with voice tracks!)

I'm going to shortlist some of the findings in this initial post for the other parents out there:

Games for very young children (mostly just click around the screen)
Apple Farm https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/1475-apple-farm/
Mr Bear Teaches English https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/2369-mr-bear-teaches-english/
Play Xylophone https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/2419-play-xylophone/

Games for roughly 5-year-olds+ with speech tracks or very little/age appropriate reading
Number Rescue https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/2024-number-rescue/
Doors https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/2437-doors/

Games for roughly 5-year-olds+ with lots of reading (i.e. need to play through entirely with mum/dad)
How the cat saved Christmas https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/2316-cornelius-cat-in-how-the-cat-saved-christmas/
The Uncontrollable Pest https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/1963-cornelius-cat-in-the-uncontrollable-pest/
Let's Cook! https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/1990-let-s-cook-with-koala/
Mess Goblins https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/1881-mess-goblins/
Toffee Trouble in Creamville https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/2047-toffee-trouble-in-creamville/
Be Your Own Hero https://byo-hero.itch.io/byo-hero

Kid friendly platformers
The Decorcist https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/1887-the-decorcist/
#8
The Rumpus Room / Pictures of amazing foods
Tue 16/06/2020 18:13:41
Share a pic of a really cool food you'd recommend. If you feel like it, share some background on what it is, where it is from, etc.



Here's dahi puri. I won't pretend to be an expert on it, but it is a South Asian dish my wife and I tried out here. It is sort of a crunchy shell filled with diced onion, chick peas, mint, spices and yogurt (and some other stuff, perhaps a little magic too). You can get them made fresh in the supermarket here, but they're a bit off bounds at the moment (coronavirus ruins everything :~(). Fresh and spicy at the same time ~ amazing!
#9
Sounds like they've got a few legal hurdles in their future, but I hope this gets released. 8-)
https://www.seinfeldgame.com/







#10
General Discussion / Discworld?
Sun 05/04/2020 12:00:06
Was thinking of reading a Discworld novel, but I'm not really sure where to start. Can any fans of the series suggest a good starting point?

[This topic was split from this. â€"Snarky]
#11
General Discussion / Christmas 2019 open chat
Thu 12/12/2019 17:13:59

"Christmas time is here
Happiness and cheer
Fun for all that children call
Their favourite time of the year.
"


It's that time of year again! This is an open chat for posting anything Christmas related - music, recipes, traditions, movie recommendations, photos of your Christmas tree, a drunken rant about your close-minded uncle Bob, Christmas sales on Steam we should all know about, what you got in your Christmas cracker, Christmas crafts, anything snow-related, and of course...selfies with Santa. :-D

Christmas comes but once a year! Let's do this!
#12
I thought it might be cool to have a mobile space through which to interact and share articles, jokes and trivia with other AGS'ers. Would this be something others would be interested in?
#13


Video by Blinkworks, same crew that did Indie Game: The Movie. The original link to this work is here (I couldn't embed this so I went with the above YouTube link from the actual game awards 2015): https://vimeo.com/147144804

Dune 2 has to go down in history as one of the greatest games of all time. The level of innovation for its time - to me it seems to have leapfrogged what would have otherwise been several evolutionary stages in turn-based strategy, plus merged with an awesome premise.
#14
I know the Netflix library varies country to country, but nevertheless I'd like to start a thread for recommending cool Netflix finds. Hope others want to participate!

#15
OK so this thread is inspired by that recent Yahtzee interview (see here: https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=57003.msg636603172#msg636603172), a guy that seems to create a superhuman amount of material in any given year.

I'm just curious what others do to stay productive in their work, private life, game design, writing, artwork, audio recording, film making, etc? How do you keep yourself organised and ensure every day pushes incrementally towards your goals? What programs/apps do you use? What music? What stimulants? What sources of inspiration?

Basically: what is your recipe for productivity?

Me? I use a program called 'Scrivener' (it's a word processor geared towards writers; really structured) to sort of file everything I do, and I save this file to DropBox so I can access it from anywhere. I keep lots and lots of physical pocket notebooks of just general ideas, doodles and the like, and I find it helpful to add to these books while I'm in public somewhere (i.e. doctor's office or waiting for my wife to do some shopping or whatever). I'm completing a graduate program while also trying to write and record videos for a small YouTube series while also holding down a day job while also being a dad. I would love to write a book or make another game, but it's unfortunately something I need to put off for the time being.

I get into 'the zone' through lots of homemade Starbucks coffee (yes! it's good!) in a French press with milk and sometimes I'll put on some background music that I'm unfamiliar with, such as the softer tracks shared at this thread: https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=48569.0 When not at my day job, I'm up at 4:30am cranking as much work as I can. I really enjoy just generally working on something, but I sometimes feel like I'm not being as productive as I could be.

Anyway, would love to hear how others keep themselves productive. Maybe we can learn a few things from each other!
#16
I'm assuming others catch this show once in a while. Often I hear guests talking about one subject or another and I think - 'hey I'd like to chat about that myself!', so I thought I'd start a thread within which this can happen.

The episode I listened to this morning was with Brian Cox, who is a physicist that shared some interesting thoughts on the subject of the universe's expansion. A lot of it was over my head, but I thought it was cool that light from the original Big Bang can be today viewed from Earth using special instruments. Also the idea that if you were to fly into a black hole, space and time at some point switch, so you are essentially travelling further and further distances even though time isn't progressing relative to the outside of the black hole (as opposed to standing still and time still carrying on) - or at least that's what I thought he said. Too much for my brain to compute, honestly.  :P

Anyone else catch this episode or want to discuss a subject or guest from another episode?
#17
I have a bottle of rum and no cola. What else could I mix this with?
#18
Just curious what others are aiming for in the new year. This post inspired by my own boxed thinking ~ having trouble expanding my goals beyond the typical 'work harder/live healthier' thing.
#19
The Rumpus Room / World history quiz thread
Sat 07/10/2017 05:13:52
Similar to the Guess the Game/Movie threads, I'd like to propose a world history thread where we can exchanges some trivia. The person that gets the answer correct asks the next question.

I'll ask the first question: What 20th Century British monarch reigned as king for less than a year?
#20
Stumbled across this randomly. Wow, could listen to these guys talk about Sierra's golden era all day! That sounds like such a cool company to have worked for back in the day. I remember writing them for hints on how to solve X problem in Space Quest 2 etc (laugh)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmNCFtAlYN0
SMF spam blocked by CleanTalk