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I now realize that I had this post all ready to be posted a couple months ago, but I never hit the post button.

Over the Thanksgiving holidays (end of November) I finally asked ScubaChicVB to marry me. She said yes, and everythings great. My weekends over the past couple months have been filled with marriage planning, reception places hunting and house hunting. We're not getting married until May 09, and as for the other things we still haven't finished any of that. (I say we just go down to the courthouse and get it done.)

Here's a pick of the engagement. I was able to have her cousin just happen to be at the waterfall in a strange coincidence.  :





All in all, I'm sorry I've been away. I'm sure one of you all missed my witty-banter.

So what do I have to show for my absence? Absolutely nothing! I can say that I have been putting effort into finally creating my own cartoon and game studio, but that's years away, so until then I'll have to continue with my current job.

See you all around, and maybe at Mittens!

EDIT* I was able to get my hands on the book I wanted. Thanks anyways.


This is a message/request for any AGS'er who lives in Japan. I am looking for a hard to find anime book. There was a rather good anime called Outlaw Star on Cartoon Network a couple years back, and I loved it. I'm not normally into anime but this one was fantastic for me.

Anyways, I've been trying to get the books that the series started as, even though they are somewhat different from the series. I have the first two books and am looking to get the third one. I'm looking for "Outlaw Star 3rd Star: Loud Minority"

If anyone can browse a bookstore in their own time and happen to see it, if they could pick it up I would gladly pay for the book, the shipping, and your time.

Edit* Oh yeah, I'm also looking for an anime by the name of: "Future Retro Hero Story". It's supposed to be a prequel to the Outlaw Star story in some respect.

I'm working on adapting Ron Gilbert into pixel and was wondering what people think so far. I was imagining finishing the body in a BigHead-LittleBody style.

I wonder if the front view is too circular or not.

Any ideas on how to improve this would be appreciated.







OMG, who's that next to Ron?!?! Sooo jealous. 

I'm back but I decided to leave my laptop in canada. why would I want it?
but for now, is sleep. and as for jacuzzi pics... they may be nsfw... for those of us actually in the jacuzzi.

As I sit here trying to re-install Windows XP, I had to use a Boot Disk to jump start the process. Not just one boot disk, as you would think it would be as they refer to it everywhere as "Put in the Book Disk at this point."

No! It's six boot disks. But that's beside the point. I'm really enjoying this right now. Not because my computer is on the verge of death, but the little tinker/clicking/loading sounds coming from my forgotten A:/> Drive. Oh, how I've missed these sounds. I was immediately brought back to a simpiler time. When adventure games came on 6 disks and nobody seemed to care about loading times or switching back between disks because the area you wanted to go to was saved on another disk.

And I've often thought as to how something like this could be implemented through AGS. It seems like its one of the only things that can't be emulated through AGS. Sure, you could have a silly pop up GUI that says "Please insert CD 12 into your CD tray" but it just doesn't have the same feel. The loading sounds for these 5 1/2" and this 3 1/4" disks were much cooler. So, I may be showing my age and definitly being taken over by nostalgia, but I do miss these sounds and their part in my gaming history.

http://adventurecon.org/

AdventureCon is America's first convention for adventure game fans by adventure game fans.

Hmm.. I seem to remember a Mittens USA in 2004, but the only special guest was me. 

If we do host a Mittens in the DC/Maryland area, I should be able to get Sid Mier and some other local developers, but if you all can go to Vegas for this convention you can hear their guest speakers such as Al Lowe and Jane Jensen. Even more exciting for the non-Lucas babies here. [Looks at his forum name]  Enjoy ya Sierra-babies.

Today, in the mail, I put an end to my 11 year battle to obtain one of my last desired LucasArts rarities...

Why, if it isn't the Full Throttle Bandana. In original packaging! I'll open the packaging when I get it framed.



Although I will buy downloadable games, such as the new Sam and Max games and Bone, there really is just something to holding the game on hard copy. And then there are the feelies. If I were to ever release a game, I would most certainly pony up the money to procure some good feelies to throw in the box. Even the real newspaper that LucasArts used to put out, The Adventurer, was real nice; but when they "upgraded" to a glossy small booklet, it took some of the charm away. It must have been more expensive to produce, but the newspaper had charm. (It's crazy to see that games like Monkey Island were sold in these newspapers for like 60-70 dollars! And we complain about next-gen gaming going up to $60. It's already been here, somewhat.)

Anyone have their favorite feelies; or on a quest to get theirs? Perhaps my favorites are the Mix-N-Mojo wheels of Monkey Island 1 and 2.

By the way, if you are wondering what the last things on my LucasList are:
Maniac Mansion 1 cork board
the Sam and Max Floaty pen, and of course,
the Day of the Tentacle Tri-Box.
(why, oh why didn't I buy this when I was 14 when it was right there on the store shelf of Babbages!?)

So whenever I start up my own games buisness in a real office building, I'll have my office lined with these goodies, in my fire-proof vault of course. And it won't be an easy adventure puzzle to get it open. I'd make the would-be thief work for the treasure. (Hint, it involves a newspaper, and a key... )

[Ron Gilbert]

So Computer Gaming World Magazine releases 100 of their old issues online in PDF forms. Why does this matter to you, you may say? Well, because we're all a bunch of nostalgic gamers, thats why!

There's a bunch of Sierra goodies, like ads, previews, and reviews... but I'm not a Sierra fan, nor do I know which ones are the best, so I didn't save them. Plus I wouldn't know what to talk about.

Now that is out of the way, lets get to the goodies that I care about, because hey, this is my thread.
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First up, Adventure Game creation programs! What features are we missing out on?!?



Here's some Indiana Jones pages, mostly for m0ds, but I guess any Indy fans can look.



Here is some information on Indy's IQ point style:


And here's an ad from an Indy game. I do hope to see something just as thrilling for your FoY game, m0ds.


Next up, Maniac Mansion. Come read the review on this game, and see what it took to steal the hearts of many, years before.



Zak McKraken has a review up as well.



A monkey island review has got to be somewhere in these pages, but I had already looked at around 20 issues and grew tired.

But here's a Monkey Island 2 review! Oooo!



Notice the attention to the detail of the tweed backgrounds. Suh-weet!

And last, but not least, an article by Ron Gilbert on why Adventure games suck

Hello everyone. I am re-designing the Maniac Zombies website (Maniac Mansion/Day of the Tentacle fansite) and am turning to php for its benefits. I have a mock-up site of how it will look, and I found a tutorial on how to imbed the php news of wordpress into the site, which is one problem I'm having, but I can't seem to have a vertical scrolling box for the news section.

Here's the mock up to get a better idea of what I'm saying.

http://www.lucasstyle.com/mzombies2/index.htm

Yes, I know the comic viewer is overlapping. i'm going to recreate that bit and have it fit better.

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So basically, is there a way to have just that small news box be scrollable and able to be updated easily. I once considered having a flash document that would be loaded into the window, but that wouldn't be that easy to update, plus adding hyperlinks and such wouldn't be easy either.

Wired online mentions that the wonderful "Choose Your Own Adventure" series are back in production. They are reprinting old stories with updated parts to relate to this generation. And to make the news even better, the Wired newspost is made in the tradition of choose your own adventure.

The first stage of the phrophecy is complete. Eleven more stages until Adventure games shall rule the day!

http://wired.com/wired/archive/14.06/start.html?pg=3

Another article linked to, from Digg.com that I've found quite interesting is in the comparison between the Hollywood industry and the Games industry, and how there is a place for independents in Hollywood and how there may be a time when we'll rule the world.

Just not now. But keep on working and developing your skills. One of you may be the one to bring innovative ideas back into the games industry and take away the need for 8 million dollars to develop a game.

http://www.slate.com/id/2142453/

To Farlander, or whomever can readily contact LucasFan, or perhaps if even LucasFan is browsing the boards, I want LucasFan and the team to know that this one guy is selling this free product of Maniac Mansion Deluxe on eBay.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Maniac-Mansion-Deluxe_W0QQitemZ8288063934QQcategoryZ62053QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

or you can find it by: Item number: 8288063934

I was checking out digg.com every hour like I normally do, when I saw an article entitled: How to set up your own gaming company (part 2)

Part 1 deals with production of the game,where as Part 2 deals with the buisness end of things and keeping costs down.

Within Part 2, you are linked to a previous article, and by far the most fun to read, HOW TO SCREW UP A PERFECTLY GOOD GAME COMPANY IN TEN EASY STEPS.

Enjoy the read.

In my opinion, it's been quite awhile since our last "Release Something" week, and with the recent E3 madness, I suggest we prepare for another Release Something party to have our own little celebrations. Each post would be like having our own booth at E3, but like E3, no .gif booth babes dancing within the post. (with exception to StarTrippers  )

So perhaps come June 15 - 17th, we could celebrate several days of AGS RS3 (It would be our third RS, if I'm not mistaken.)

http://society.adventuregaming.co.uk/index.php?title=Main_Page

I surely hope our English AGSers will storm the gates of Canterbury!

I am working on creating the prologue to Tim Powers "On Stranger Tides" on film for a college film class. It's just a five minute movie but I'm trying to be as professional as I can be.

There comes a time during the scene where a man in the 1800's starts chanting what would be semi-magical chants in "archaic Hebrew".

I just ask for someone to come up with one or two short lines of dialog, along with spelling it somewhat phonetically for non-Hebrew speakers, for this film.

It should have something along the lines of:

come out ghosts from your hiding,
we want to see one. we want to take one.

Any help would be most appreciated.
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The film also asks for a bocor, a somewhat witch doctor, to speak the above lines in a "dialect that combined the tounges of France, the Mondongo dialect of Africa, and the Carib Indians". I would appreciate any African dialect and words, seeing as how I don't even know how many African AGS'ers there are, along with knowing any African languages and not just English.

Thank you for your time.
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After thinking about it... if you would feel more comfortable just recording the lines above on your computer and just sending them to me, that may work even better. I could just import that into the movie as a voiceover and wouldn't have to worry about getting my actors to articulate the words correctly.

[TOPIC IS: If Purple Tentacle Ruled The Earth]

Previously, on X-Men Photoshop Phriday:

Photoshopping isn't drawing a completely new image -- It's editing images to create a new image, such as editing one image or combining several images. The contest usually lasts for a fortnight. Also, you don't have to specifically use Photoshop -- Paint Shop Pro, MSPaint, or any other programs can be used. Please make sure your image doesn't exceed the width of the screen.

See this link:
http://www.somethingawful.com/photoshop/

And for other examples, see here:
http://www.worth1000.com/

-------------------------------------

TOPIC IS: If Purple Tentacle Ruled The Earth

Show us your post-apocolyptic world if Purple Tentacle succeeded when he "Took on the World!" It could be a devestating image, or perhaps he would be a successful ruler and the world would be wonderful, except humans would be pets. Maybe it shows the future pets fighting back. I don't know, you tell me. You're the one with the window to see the future.

Bonus points for having the tentacle flag somewhere in the image.
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I will shortly add some images to photoshop from, if you don't already know about Day of the Tentacle, and if you don't, shame on you.

Now that there is a beta version of this conglomorate that is AGS + Wintermute = WMGS we'll need a better splash screen image. I want everyone to think long and hard about this, because this will become an official splash screen image for the engine as given permission to do so by the elustreous CJ himself.

Using found images of deadcode, wintermute, and ags's ol' blue cup, combine for a specialized screen that can be used as a loading screen for the first official version.

I expect perfection from this group, so get cracking!

Hello. There is a song out there that it impossible to find in purchase form (practically), well, not in the US. It's a song by Joy Zipper, "Go Tell the World". I first found this song on a Nike Soccer commercial awhile ago.

On Joy Zipper's myspace page, they have the song available for playing on the myspace Standalone Player. I've used several recording programs, such as Hi-Q Recorder, as well as Creative Labs recorder. I really don't know how I can listen to this song on my own until I can get the import cd which has this song on it. If it was on itunes, I would have bought it earlier.

http://www.myspace.com/joyzipper

Any help?

Who wants to watch that? I first noticed their new "Watch" prefix to their news articles that have video footage awhile back, like when that poor girl lost her life to a peanut allergy induced kiss (which is now been retracted, she died of other causes). I'm sure that its more to do with a newscaster talking news, rather than watching people set on fire, but come on, it's really odd to read that to yourself as you browse the page.

For a Time Based Media class of mine we had to create a simple flipbook and then later scan all of the images in and make a digital flipbook. I have a boy and girl character that I created in Flash, with character design mostly by Chris Georgenes
( www.mudbubble.com
www.keyframer.com )

My characters are this boy and girl here:



Well, I'm uploading this to the net mostly as a backup copy in case my copy breaks on the way to class, and for people to enjoy.
So enjoy. You'll have to refresh your browser to view it again, sorry.

http://www.lucasstyle.com/media/002srn.mov

It is short and the transitions are there so that the next student transitions from your flipbook to theirs.