When I received the Innovation award last night I was too frazzled to express my thanks properly, and it was a bit awkward after the big crash, so here goes a really long post:
As cat said, they really tried to make the award for Innovation a surprise, and even though I found out on the night before the show (when I was double-checking all the graphics for the nominees), they absolutely succeeded: seeing it there so unexpectedly, I was stunned and confused, and soon turned grateful and touched. Thank you for this award!
The proper credit for the AGS Awards client – the original idea and original work (much of which is still the core of the client to this day) – is by no means mine.
JimReed made the first proof-of-concept of a "virtual café",
Wyz took the idea and built it as an IRC client, and
Dualnames took that platform and created the live interactive AGS Awards ceremony as we know it (at least, that's roughly how I understand the history).
The key innovation was theirs, and they really should have been recognized for it years ago.
Then it became a community effort, with people adding all sorts of things. It's true that I've put a frankly ridiculous amount of work into it, but so many others have also contributed over the years...
I think everyone agrees that the “live” show by Ghosts of the Ancient Nothing (the DJ duo consisting of Abel and the mysterious Synth II) performing “Wired to a Dream” was a big highlight of the event. LostTrainDude (music) and Kastchey (animation and coding) actually put this together for last year’s show, and had to wait a year to see it performed. Thanks for your patience, and great work! And shoutout to Noa Vana and Pixel Hunt, who also did a “live” stage performance for the 2014 awards.
Graphics! We have some great backgrounds by Ali, Daniel Thomas and Andail. Thanks to Ali (The Interdimensional ABK) for updating the main hall background for us this year to add the balcony and stuff! Kastchey has been doing a ton of other graphics, from the GUIs to the Girl Scouts to the trophies. He also did almost all the special nominee presentation screens (you know, "Best Character", "Best Animation"...) this year, and has been an invaluable support in the development. Thank you Kastchey!
And not to forget selmiak, who makes all the 3D intros (which have to be updated every year!) and animated backdrops. He's also done a bunch of other cool transitions and things you haven't even seen yet, but which might be coming in a future version of the client. I should also mention that the design of the Best Game trophy (and so, indirectly, the others as well) is based on concepts by danvzare, CassieBsg and JimReed.
Music! Mark Lovegrove composed the main themes and most of the music cues, and to me they are a signature part of the awards. After so many years and endless testing there are many other tracks I've become completely sick of, but these ones are not among them. Other cues are borrowed from here and there; I'll just mention the fanfare by Handsfree (taken from an Oceanspirit Dennis game, I believe).
Porting! This year for the first time the client is also running on Mac and Linux. Main credit for that goes to Wyz, who rewrote the sockets plugin this year, both so it works for other platforms and to improve performance and robustness. A Mac port wouldn’t have been possible without vga256, who created a working Mac build of the AGS engine, or sonneveld, who figured out how to get the sockets plugin to work on Mac. And in the same breath I would also like to mention Crimson Wizard, who over the years has made a number of updates to the AGS engine specifically to address the needs of this client.
And of course all the other
people who have contributed avatars, graphics and music from their games. This is what I’m thinking of when I say the awards show is by the AGS community, for the AGS community. I love having all the characters from all sorts of different AGS games: low-res, high-res, 3D-rendered, photo-based… from fairly crude drawings to beautifully painted figures, all hanging out together. That community spirit is also shown by all the people who have participated in testing, and the people who have offered feedback, suggestions and ideas. Special mention to SSH, who many years ago created the first in-game AGS Awards (as a non-interactive, single-player cut-scene) and inspired what it has become, and to Jack, who insisted on the awards client making the jump to high-res and showed that it could be done.
Finally,
a huge thank you to cat. You see her doing the AGS Awards forum threads and hosting the ceremony, but I don’t think most people know how much work she does behind the scenes to make it all come together. Including on the client side, making sure we have all the information and assets we need to present the show, collecting it from all the nominees and putting it together in easy-to-import format.
So I’m happy to accept the award, but it’s really on behalf of you all!
Oh, and also… while the AGS Awards client is the main motivation for the award, it also seems to be based on some other little things I’ve made, like the TotalLipSync and SpeechBubble modules, and the Clipboard plugin. For TotalLipSync I’d like to thank Calin Leafshade, whose code I worked off of, and Grundislav, who contributed a speech view to test with and who used the module in Lamplight City, which is very exciting to me. For SpeechBubble I am happy to thank bx83, who hired and
paid me (generously!) to make it, and monkey0506, whose work on AGS color handling was very helpful in the development.
The Clipboard plugin is all me, though. I'm sharing that credit with nobody.
Thanks!
