The Big Thread of Information and Ass

[Las Naranjas]

He did write the fart jokes in Hamlet though.

That's what really puts him above the rest as an artist.

[SSH]

Sometimes a bit of comedy helps relieve the tension of a totally dramatic situation. Take the marvellous "Les Miserables" musical. Gavroche and the Thenardiers are the comic relief, and "relief" is right, as without them we might just get depressed.

HIM: Master of the House
HER: Master and a half!
HIM: Comforter, philosopher
HER: Don't make me laugh!
HIM: Servant to the poor, butler to the great
HER: Hypocrite and toady and inebriate
HIM: Everybody's boon companion, everybody's chaperone. Everybody raise a glass
HER: Raise it up the master's ares
ALL: Everybody raise a glass to the master of the house

[plasticman]

what annoys me the most with amateur games is the lack of diversity when it comes to the background settings of the game. when i first contemplated creating an adventure game, i thought "i wanna make a game with vikings !" then i changed my mind to "what about a story taking place during the prohibition ?". but anyway, there are so many possibilities, and still, i don't see them being exploited.

[Matt Brown]

what? are you telling me that murder mysteries, pirates and space games get old?

[Evil]

SSH: That is true. I loved Les Miserables. Is it just me or does "At the end of the day" sound like The Brave Little Toaster song?

I do think that comedy has anything to do with it. It is all suroundings. You cant have a serious conversation at, lets say, at a clown strip club. Yet you cant have a funny conversation at, lets say, a funeral. But see if you combine the two it works. Like a funeral for a clown that died in a freak stage fall at a strip club. That you can have both. But you should be careful about some serious comedy. Like JFK's funeral. You can make jokes just be careful. Like buying a house what are the 3 rules?

Location, location, careful with JFK's death jokes...

[Jimi]

I find backgrounds quite easy to do. The one I hate is doing the frames for the character's walking animations. It always looks strange. But scotch gave me the idea of putting each body part into its own layer, and then just rotate it. It is soooooo much easier. You rotate them first, then save them as a bmp, and clean it up.

[Goldmund]

Which reminds me how I love the sense of humour of the ancients.
Take Aristophanes, the greatest comedy writer of ancient Greece, the full-fledged classic.
I especially remember one immortal one-liner which goes something like:
"He is coming this way!"
"We will poop into his mouth!"
Ha ha ha ha ha!!!
There's also a cool latin joke about Diogenes meeting a young nude man who was asleep on a meadow.
"Be careful, young one", said Diogenes, "so that nobody will insert a spear from behind!"
I guess ye olde ones laughed so hard that their pants got soyled.

[Miez]

I guess ye olde ones laughed so hard that their pants got soyled.

Apart from the fact that ye olde ones didn't really wear pants ...

[Goldmund]

Ha ha, thanks, I thought that all those krazy greeks and latinspeople ran around in Levis jeans! Lol, how stupid of me.
I should always check stuff in google before posting, but sometimes I'm just to lazy.  

Sorry to those who got misinformed.

[rodekill]

The problem is that serious, thought provoking stories are hard to write, and usually come off as cliche and/or cheesy.

I know. I've been trying to write one for a few years now.

[Andail]

I haven't been reading through this thread, but let me add a few things about seriousity vs comedy...

What Rodekill said applies more or less only to adventuregames...it's easy to write comedies because all goofy puzzles are easier to get away with if you blame the unrealistic plots, whereas serious games tend to be a bit tedious with pretty stiff puzzles based on ordinary logical things...

allright, that wasn't anything new really...what I meant was that it's easier in general - i.e like novels and shortstories and whatever - to write serious stuff, since it takes a genious to write something really humurous without making it rather far-fecthed and strained, or simply imitate some other writer who is funny.
It's right though that the serious genre is pretty unexplored within the ags, which is my primary reason to make such a game...

And Goldmund, Aristophanes was a hell lot funnier than that!
Once he impersonated Socrates by sitting in a basket sustained by wires from the ceiling. I don't remember exactly the gig, but the crowd found it hilarious.
Anyway, were was I?
Oh yeah, serious games. Hm...I rest my case.

[Ginny]

I think animation isn't crucial (as it is very hard to do), but if you can, by all means, do it, it really enchances the gaming experience and improves the graphics. I also reccomend idle animations and background animations, like a leaf flying past etc (and these are actually easier to do than walking).

Also I think many games might benefit from voice acting. I know many people disagree but I think voice acting can be very nice and it isn't that hard to do IMO. Though bad voice acting can be a very bad thing for a game, so umm.. Anyway, it's also important to provide an option to turn off voice acting, or provide a seperate smaller download without the voice files, and a zip bundle with the files in it.

Umm, about humor, I think there should be a bit in almost any game (unless it's really out of place and out of character), but not the kind of jokes you see sometimes, humor that comes from the situation, humor in dialogs, and sarcasm. It should come naturally and not be forced...
Ok, I'm done repeating what was said already lol..

Art: Indeed, not everyone can achieve great art (and don't I know it ), but staying consistent and making sure characters and background fit together is key. That's why photo-backgrounds with drawn characters are a bad idea, they don't fit in, unless the characters look really photographic and realistic.