Messages

I only saw the opening game but golly, what gorgeous goals were made. I haven't seen that kind of eyecandy in a long time. Excellent entertainment indeed!

Since you now can preview animation in AGS, I think copy-pasteing is suitable for quick alterations and tweaking of sprites BUT, this only works with highcolor sprites and not 256 color ones. Since AGS remaps the sprites indexes, how come?

Well let's face it, Lordi is oldschool metal, the singer former head of finnish Kiss-army, and this is now publicly accepted enough to compete in the first place and therefor win since nothing could be compared with it. My mom protested vividly and so did my grandmother (which stem from the northen forests of Finland). I and my little sister along with her friend were in total agreement - Finland should win. They have had enough of sad tangos and melancholy, the only musical prejudice left to be presented to Europe was metal. But did Lordi win by music or show? Metal fans across Europe may have found this their cup of tea, but I doubt it. Musicwise, Lordi aint much hard rock, not in my ears anyway. Having experience with monster makeup, I highly appreciate their effort in masking so my vote were for the show rather than their musical efforts.

+15°C Ã, 
Does not get warmer than this in Finland.

+10°C
The french tries desperatly to get the central heat up.
Finlanders plant their gardens.

+5°C
Italian cars refuses to start.
Finlanders cruise in a cab.

0°C
Destilled water freezes.
The water in Vanda gets slightly thicker,

-5°C
Californians nearly freezes to death.
Finlanders grill the last sausauge for the season.

-10°C
Englanders put on the heat in their houses.
Finlanders puts on a flannel shirt.

-20°C
Aussies flee from Mallorca.
Finlanders stop celebrating midsummer - autumn has arrived.

-30°C
Greek people dies.
Finlanders starts drying the laundry indoors.

-40°C
Paris cracks. Finlanders cue at the kiosk.

-50°C
Polar bears evacuate the North Pole. Finnish army postpones their winter survival training due to lack of proper winter weather.

-60°C
Korvatunturi freezes. Finlanders rents a movie and stays inside.

-70°C
False Santa moves South. Finlanders gets frustrated that they can't store Koskenkorva outside. The finnish army starts their winter survival training.

-183°C
Microbs in food does not survive. Finnish cows complain that their milker's hands are cold.

-273°C
ALL nuclar movement stops. Finlanders start saying "Perkele, it's cold outside".

-300°C
Hell freezes over
Finland wins ESC

Yup, the RON website afaik..

ron.the-underdogs.org

However, that server has gone through some heavy downtime so it might not work..

Internet is easy to control. But there is a project of untracable transactions of information in the works, much like the Bittorrent system. That every piece if info is multiplied and hacked up so it is impossible to see what you surf and who got what info. It is all goodies for mathematicians, but then my mom for some reaosn gave me a novel about Soviet union and a struggle to create voice encryption telephones, which basically worked in the same way. The same ideas in new mediums. Kinda cool when you think about it.

Indeed, the sudden move of buttons might be a pain in the arse, but as scripting go, I see only a trend moving closer to forwards core programming and that makes our life even easier, even if we do not know it. Yes, it is hard to teach an old dog new tricks, and I am only 21 for crying out loud but we've been through harsch changes before and survived. However, the "new" AGS is trickier to get into; and we might scare newcomers with the now more complex and rigid scripting, and the GUI just does not feel as straightforward as it used to. Hell, roomedit, that was the schizzle fo' rizzle..

Is AGS becoming to flexible and complex for its own good?

How come "liberal media" is frowned upon in the land of LIBERTY..

As all styles, wonders can be achieved with proper devotion. If you are new to isometric gfx, perpare to spend a month of practice getting the hang of things, a lifetime to master it.

Pft, who needs sprites. FMV is the schizzle fo nizzle..

I dunno, ballsy or not.. it is good satire but still, imo nothing outrageous. I have only read the transcript, the actual expression may do the difference between brass scrotum or simple plywood.

Yea, I had a classmate that had fiddled around with the engine, but sadly never made anything serious with it. It wasn't until the second year I discovered he knew about AGS, or he discovered what I had done with it.

Not at all.

Aliens and zombies can be found in many time periods. Medieval times, present day, the far future. Neither of these games had to have a retro style. The fact that they both do is a very telling point.

Ashen made a good explanation on my point.

The relevent point, however, is that both games have this feature just as both games are set in a retro style.

Here we have the main issue where both games are very much alike since....

Taking each point individually and trying to explain them away is missing the forest for the trees. Where each game intersects with the other and how many intersections there are between both is what is convincing that one game ripped off the other.

...taking each point individually makes you judge each point by itself. This point being not very original, infact, featured in a buckload of games, and should therefor be excluded from the other points. It is not how many intersections there are, but how many of those intersections are quite unique gaming-wise; and would therefor be warranted as ripped off material.

Forgive me, but it sounds as if you're doing the debating equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears ang going, "La la la la la...!". You're essentially saying that you see the points and even agree with them on their own, but you still don't think the overall point is valid? *boggle*

No, I agree on one of the above points, which is a 50's retro sci-fi scenario, with a playable classic monster added to it, not as a point itself, but part of the relevance of the original point (Again, see Ashens post). This is not unique for DAH nor STZ, but infact a nostalgia popcultural phenomena that has been in the air since the millenia shift. I don't think I phrased it that poorly. I rather think that you found the gameplay itself, rather than conceptual designs, to be very similar, and therefor thinks STZ rips off DAH - even though actual gameplay is impossible to mimic without playing the game itself. And since both games were created simultaneously, I strongly doubt this happened without some heavy industrial espionage.

- Both main characters are classic movie monsters
- Both games have a retro feel, one because it's set in the 50's, one because it's set in a 50's-style vision of the future

These are kind of tied together; since the first point gain its definition tied into 50's style sci-fi. I think both games here adress a nostalgia trend of modernist sci-fi that has been around for quite a while, especailly in the independant scene (Sky Captain, Signs, Code Red). I can see how STZ unwantingly cashes in to a trend here, since I'd rather put zombies in late 60's, but since the sci-fi of that era was more Flash Gordon and Barbarella, I can see how this was undesirable.

- Both games allow the conversion of ordinary humans into your evil minions that do your bidding

To control your opponent has been a gaming feature for quite some time (Abe's Odyssey one of the more obvient ones). And, as mentioned, Psi-Ops and Second Sight took it on. I'd rather see it as different aspects of gaming comes and goes in trends; right now, the idea of manipulating your foes instead of just shooting them comes up in actionbased concepts, and people find it interesting. "Hey, I know a different way we can do this.."

- Both games feature humans as your enemy

This point loses all relevance excluded from the others. Even if the foes are regarded foes merely because they are human, the horde of games adressing this feature, whether it be merely to change the veiwpoint or for a laugh, are to immense to ignore.

So basically, I can see how STZ takes on the 50's theme somewhat unmotivated, a conceptual design most likely based on trendscanning, but as a whole, I still disagree that STZ rips off DAH.

Wouldn't it work to clear the cache?

"Room with a view" if that is the correct title in english. Rendered immobilised, the full game is basically dialogue, telephone tricks and note writing. Spy on a neighbor and put people in inane and life threatening situations All what modern life is about. Oh, and paparazzistyle snapshots.

Could easily be translated into a pr0ntwist if M0ds got hands of the idea..

I ares teh ROBOT..

..and so would any scandinavian be..

Pfft.. girlscouts? Hah! Do it like the greeks, do goats!

Doesn't matter how I sound. The core issue is that you claim a specific game is ripping off another game and I disagree. Therefor I present the arguments that makes me disagree. I would appreciate you attack my arguments rather than my methods of argumentation. I might very well be wrong, but I have not yet seen a satisfying argument on how STZ is ripping of DAH. Both titles pays homage to popcultural phenomenas, which ties into my views on postmodernism, and gameplay can not be plagiated without the developers actually playing what they rip off.

Enlighten me, please--

I read this on the telly and was amused down to my rotten heart which amediatly sent an urge to tell my highly animal rights awared, vegetarian sister. She reacted in the desired way, which was disgust. Joy oh joy.

But seriously, I am but a bastard nihilist so few things rock my world. Actually, just earthquakes, and we never have them. But the sheer genious of making organic tissue visually trackable was beyond my wildest expectations of the genesplicing lunatics. Even though I spontaneously pictured the genetic engineer in South Park, presenting two assed monkeys, I was very impressed by how someone came up with such a straightforward and simple way of genetically tagging organisms. You only need a lamp and your own eyes to pinpoint the desired feat. It may not be great science, but SMART science.

Las: But it is oh so much more fun to maintain the illusion of this being simply glowintehdark piglets with no purpose whatsoever. We ignore all aspects of reason and factual statements, this is the American Goat Society after all..

It is ofcourse more beneficial to have a newborn doing the actual sucking. It will hate you for the rest of its life however, since you made it suck your hairy nipple.