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Funny, not long after this thread popped up, I got a forwarded joke email about 'Being British'. Figured I may as well post it for giggles.

BEING BRITISH.

Being British is about driving in a German car to an Irish pub for a Belgian beer, then travelling home, grabbing an Indian curry or a Turkish kebab on the way, to sit on Swedish furniture and watch American shows on a Japanese TV.

And the most British thing of all?

Suspicion of all things foreign!

Only in Britain can a pizza get to your house faster than an ambulance.

Only in Britain do supermarkets make sick people walk all the way to the

back of the shop to get their prescriptions while healthy people can buy cigarettes at the front.

Only in Britain do people order double cheeseburgers, large fries and a DIET coke.

Only in Britain do banks leave both doors open and chain the pens to the counters.

Only in Britain do we leave cars worth thousands of pounds on the drive and lock our junk and cheap lawn mower in the garage.

Only in Britain do we use answering machines to screen calls and then have call waiting so we won't miss a call from someone we didn't want to talk to in the first place.

Only in Britain are there disabled parking places in front of a skating rink.

NOT TO MENTION..

3 Brits die each year testing if a 9v battery works on their tongue.

142 Brits were injured in 1999 by not removing all pins from new shirts.

58 Brits are injured each year by using sharp knives instead of screwdrivers.

31 Brits have died since 1996 by watering their Christmas tree while the fairy lights were plugged in.

19 Brits have died in the last 3 years believing that Christmas decorations were chocolate.

British Hospitals reported 4 broken arms last year after Xmas cracker-pulling accidents.

18 Brits had serious burns in 2000 trying on a new jumper with a lit cigarette in their mouth.

A massive 543 Brits were admitted to A&E in the last two years after trying to open bottles of beer with their teeth.

5 Brits were injured last year in accidents involving out-of-control Scalextric cars.

and finally...

In 2000 eight Brits were admitted to hospital with fractured skulls incurred whilst throwing up into the toilet.

If you don't have an idea for a game you want to make, why is it you want to make a game?

My thought as well. If you don't have a story you want to tell, what are your reasons for making a game? Thinking about that may give you ideas. For example, if you want to capture the nostalgic feel of old sierra or lucasarts games, then go play them! Remind yourself why you love those games, and what you'd like to put your own game. Heck, just play any games - see what others did right, and what they did wrong, and use that experience to your benefit.

That said, there are tons of ideas out there, you just have to teach yourself to notice them. Look at people and places while you're out, and make notes about anything interesting you see. Read news stories or interesting articles and see if they spark anything off. Write about your own memories and then change them into something completely different - change the setting from school, to a magic school; the best friend becomes a magical gnome sidekick. Use what you already know in new and interesting ways.

As Prog says, if you really aren't in the mood to write, don't force it, it won't be worth the effort. But if it's just a matter of figuring out where to start, then just pick one aspect to focus on. Create a setting and try to figure out what sort of characters would inhabit it. Or create the character and figure out what setting suits them. Just write anything that comes into your head (even 'I can't think of anything' ) and chances are, eventually something useful will pop up.

Can you tell I'm taking a creative writing class? 

Are all these ideas here freely available to use? Or is it just a showcase of ideas?

As far as I'm aware, the original idea was a thread of abandoned ideas. Ideas people had thought of but didn't have the time or inclination to make, so put them up for other people to use.

In any case, this one is up for grabs :

Ok PC wakes up from cryosleep on a research space station/ship which is out in the middle of nowhere studying some sort of stellar phenomena. The computer is supposed to regularly wake a crew member to run a few tests, compile some data etc. then put them back to sleep. The PC soon finds out that the last crew member to be woken up went a bit cuckoo and threw himself out of the airlock. (yeah, I know, sounds familiar, bear with me )

PC has to figure out what happened. Could be something as simple as the other crew member was a nut, or something more sinister. Unfortunately, the other crew member damaged a number of ship systems before spacing himself, including the ship's AI. The PC has to either convince the AI to give access to certain areas or permit certain actions, or attempt to fix the borked systems, or just bash them until something happens. The PC's actions also have effects on other ship systems, so taking time to repair one thing, might repair a related system; and bashing something might trash something else. And bashing things too much may cause everything to fail and boom, game over!


Yeah, the plot idea is a bit old, but I liked the thought of indirect effects depending on how you solved puzzles. Still, its rather ambitious for me to attempt at the moment, so loot away if you like. 

hmm... nah, I can see it only filling up with bad ideas or bad jokes or whatever.

isn't take what you make of it. If you keep the seriousness in it could work quite well.

Actually, the jokes might work to its benefit. Someone may make a stupid joke about flying ninja cyborg monkeys going for ice cream, and someone else might make a hilarious game out of it. 

Believe me, I'm not advocating any form of elitism. I'm just wondering why there are so many people on a game-making forum who are not interested in the game making process. That's all. Apologies if I sound like I'm telling everyone to bugger off, believe me I'm not! I'm simply making an observation, not suggesting a course of action. Personally, I would like to see more people interested in and talking about the game-making process, but I'm not saying they don't have a right to be here if they are not.

Me too. 

*sits smugly with winner's icon in sig*

Not being interested in making a game doesn't mean we have no knowledges or ideas about game designing. It doesn't mean we have no ideas of what we liked/disliked and want to see improved/corrected in future games. It doesn't mean that we aren't interested in taking part in the giant discussions and debates that will determine the direction this community will venture next, which boundary will be pushed forward next.

True. But it does seem like some people aren't even interested in the actual game making process, they're just lurking around waiting for new games to be released. If there really were that many people interested in discussing game design wouldn't there be a lot more activity in Adventure talk? If CJ is considering merging it with gen gen... doesn't say much for the volume of posts. Still, I can understand that a lot of stuff has been talked over before and there's nothing more to add to the debate (like GUIs etc.). I guess my point was that I want to see more talk about making games than playing them.

And before you spank me, no offenses were taken, and I do plan to make a game one of those day, or at least die trying.

Awww... but I like spanking.  :'(

[gaming]

Well said MrColossal. And I shall get on with making games as soon as NaNoWriMo is over. Honest. 

For the record, when I came across these forums for the first time, I was absolutely delighted. There was such a mix of interesting people with differing views, and differing ways of expressing those views. I did sense a bit of cliqueness and a bit of an anti-n00b sentiment, but not in a hugely negative way. It always seemed to me, that those who were sensible and willing to learn were treated with courtesy, and those who were not, received some light-hearted mockery. I don't think I've ever had a negative response to any of my posts. But, there was always a natural caution around new people - are they going to hang around, or just post several excited threads and then get bored? So, I was treated nicely by everyone, but I doubt many could say you know me.

Anyway, I disappeared for a year or so (damn addictive MMORPGs), and since I've returned, it just doesn't have quite the same spark.  Though it may just simply be my perception of things has changed (been through a lot in the past couple of years). I agree with Mods though, it does seem like people don't really express their feelings much here any more. Sure a thread of interesting opinions is very nice and all, but what made it great was the really interesting people who expressed themselves as they did so. May not seem it from my posts, but I love making bad puns, non-PC jokes, and lewd comments when I can get away with it, and I really don't mean anything by it. But it seems like there's a lot of over-tolerance now, and I don't think I, or any others with similar humour would get away with such, and its a shame. I always like those threads that hovered on the edge of descending into flames, because people were expressing themselves as well as their opinions. I came here to talk to and get to know people with a mutual interest. Can't get to know anyone if they don't put a bit of themselves into their post.

Addressing MrColossal's point: The point of this forum is that it is a place for people who make games to chat, is it not? And regardless of whether someone releases a game or not, it seems there are a lot less people actually working on games, but a lot more people mooching around and talking about them. More than once I've seen someone say they don't make or have any intention of making games. So why are they here? No offence to those people but there are plenty of adventure gaming forums which might suit them better. And ffs, if someone takes that personally I will spank them, it's just a suggestion!

Erm, enough rambling. I'll just get back into my lurking cave.

Pelican

P.S. When I say make, I mean make solo OR contribute to a team effort.

P.P.S. Keep Adventure and Gen Gen separate. I like it when a nice discussion of adventure game mechanics gets going in Adventure, like a few threads recently, and would prefer it separate to the varied discussions that go on in gen gen.

I don't know if anyone else remembers it, but I got a book of short stories with my copy of Elite 2 for the atari. Each story's main character was a secondary character in the last one. So for example, a man is telling his tale in the bar, the next story might be about the guy who had sat listening to him. It was pretty neat, especially for an extra with a game.

Just past the 28k mark, and wondering how the hell I got this far! It's more a collection of short stories than a novel (think Illustrated Man), but its been fun to let my muse run riot, and I've already got a few short stories from it that I think I can do something with. 50k, here I come!

I'm absolutely loving it! I had fallen into the same trap of trying to get everything planned out in meticulous detail before beginning to write, and that's usually why I never end up doing anything. So with a vague idea in my mind I sat down to write whatever crap came into my head, and it has been a hoot! A lot is crap, and I know I'll be editing heavily in December, but there's some bits I love, and I'm just enjoying the feeling of letting the story run away with me. I'm not bothered if I don't come out of this with a coherent novel, because I know that while 99% of it is probably crap, there's a few gems in there that I can do something with. Plus the community is such a delightful bunch of nutters.  (check out the 'Meanest thing you did to your characters thread', its hilarious).

13,481/50,000 btw.

Ugh, don't get me started. I live in Northern Ireland. As has been said before, healthcare is free for the most part, though most people have to pay £6.50 for prescriptions (I do). It may be just the area I'm in, but the few times I've gone seeking healthcare, it has not been a good experience (and I hate doctors, so I'm usually in bad shape when I do).

I suffer from migraines, for so long now that I can't even remember when they started. Every time I visited the doctor, I was just prescribed increasingly stronger painkillers. No attempt to diagnose or treat the cause, just threw some pills at me. Now painkillers do diddly squat for me, because I've built up such a resistance to them. Only thing that works is heavy duty migraine tablets and they just knock me out, so a bit useless really.

My more recent experience has been extremely aggravating. I injured my arm at work, tennis elbow. I have been fobbed off with sick lines and anti-inflammatory painkillers(which do nothing) for 4 months. Any time I've needed to make an appointment, I've needed to do so at least a week in advance, though if its something urgent you might get one late the next day if you're lucky. Since rest wasn't helping, I was sent for an x-ray. It took 2 weeks for me to get an appointment, which for some reason was in the next town, despite the fact we have a bloody great big hospital in the town I live in. And it took a further two weeks to get the results back. I was advised against trying physiotherapy as the waiting lists are so long (and the doc doesn't believe the injury is chronic and will just go away in its own time). So now I'm waiting for an appointment for steroid injection treatment, which I highly doubt is effective as they try to make it out to be. So I'm very frustrated, and stir crazy at this point.

My basic impression of the health service: there are so many people abusing it, coming in for every little sniffle, that the general response to everything is 'wait and see'. Hoping it will go away on its own so they don't have to anything. In fact, on a couple of occasions, by the time I've been able to get an appointment, whatever is ailing me has sorted itself out. I don't think I've ever been to an appointment that wasn't late (was waiting nearly an hour once). Its a shambles, it really is.

Bitter, moi? Never.

P.S. Despite the tone of my post, a fair few health care employees do seem to be very dedicated to their work, they are just extremely overworked. And with so many charlatans wasting their time, its inevitable that the people who are really sick may not get the attention they deserve. Personally though, I'd rather wait longer for an appointment if it meant I was going to be taken seriously.

Offering my services as a writer and proofreader.

You must have a basic outline of a story. If I wanted to write something from scratch, I have plenty of my own projects to work on. I'd much rather spend my time working within an already existing framework.

I can turn my hand to writing the story, writing dialogue, or even just object descriptions. Again, you must have at least the bare bones outline of what you need. I am offering assistance in filling in the blanks, putting detail into your project. I simply want to exercise my skills as a writer without getting bogged down at the planning stage.

English is my first language, and I'm happy to help proofread your project.

Please bear in mind this is a hobby for me. If the idea doesn't interest me, I would not give it the effort it deserves. However, do feel free to contact me if you have a project requiring a writer, and we'll see what happens.

Edit: Please only contact me if you have a project in progress. I just want to brainstorm ideas and write. I do not have the time nor patience to wait while you sort out team structure and organisation. Have a clear direction in mind for your project!

1722 words so far. Wonder how long I'll keep that up?

Such wonderful games I've missed during my absence! I just loved this game. Finished in about a couple of hours, and enjoyed every moment of it. It really captured that nostalgic MI feel, while being unique in its own right. Great graphical style, and hats off to m0d's music. I did find it mildly irritating having to navigate through the dialogues from the beginning for each different option I wanted to try, but I was too busy laughing at some of the options to be that bothered about it. Very funny, and I dearly hope to see a sequel. 

Short and sweet.
Good graphics and puzzles. Entertaining and amusing, I loved all the little jokes. Keep up the good work.

[Spoilers ahead]

First impressions:

The 'cosmetics' of the game. I really don't like the inspector's animation. I love the backgrounds, but Raoul's animations, while very smooth, just don't really match the style of the backgrounds. Its bothersome to me, when so much detail is put into the conversation close ups, that the PC looks so bland and generic in normal gameplay. I don't know what to say about the music... My general rule of thumb is that the decent stuff I don't really notice, but contributes well to the atmosphere, and the great stuff makes itself noticeable. In the few areas that did have music, it was noticeable. Noticeable enough for me to turn my speakers off. I'm no musician, and I can't really say much more than I preferred silence to listening to that. It just seemed far too upbeat for a murder-mystery.

I must concur that the GUI is somewhat haphazard. There is no consistency in commands, some items have more possibilities than others for no apparent reason, and most don't actually do anything. While interactivity can be nice, being able to play around with things as you explore and try to solve the mystery; in this case, it seems to be solely for the purpose of impeding the player. Particularly when Raoul's responses to certain commands seem to indicate you're on to something, only to find its completely useless and irrelevant. Some simple improvements might be to adjust the responses so they are not so misleading, and actually have use for some of these objects - if not for the main story, maybe some side quest, or just some silly easter eggs. More in depth improvements would involve reworking the GUI; and I'm not really sure what would be the best solution to that. Some consistency at least; why does one useless object have more commands to chose than another useless object? A simpler GUI might be best, considering that many of the 'puzzles' revolve around conversation.

On the other hand, the conversation (interrogation) system is a delight. As you question suspects, you pick up more topics to discuss, and you can then go on to question other suspects about this. After a while, it does get to be a bit of a relay, making your way round the suspects to ask them about new topics. However, I didn't find this to be an annoyance, I did feel like a detective gathering information from suspects and trying to trip them up with new facts. I got a real sense of satisfaction when the clock ticked forward after I finished questioning a suspect. Unfortunately though, the time doesn't progress until after the entire conversation is finished, so it was hard to figure out sometimes which topics were the relevant ones which had progressed the story. My only grievance is there were occasions where I wanted to question someone further on a topic after they made an interesting (to me) comment, but there was no option to do so. Also, you can only question about people you've already met, so despite having several people comment on a character, you can't discuss them until you've spoken to them first. This is only really an issue at the start of the game, you'll meet everyone soon enough, but its a bit silly nonetheless.

Onto the specific gameplay for this segment. Spoilers ahead. Niggling bits first. Couple of pixel hunts so far. The paper from the ashtray looks little different from the ashes strewn around, so its easy to miss. The paper you retrieve from beneath Tom's seat is obvious, but a bugger to click on, as is the thank you note. Despite the fact you can speak with the barman, you can't actually question him, and have to show him the paper to ask about the meeting, even though you can question all the other characters directly about it. The key for the desk, how does it end up so conveniently in Raoul's room? There's a real lack of cause and effect, and direction in the game, its very much, "oh time has passed, lets see what's new!" And the biggest nuisance is the scene with Tom and Rebecca, requiring you to enter the screen from the bow. I had this game for my atari and I gave up at this point. I had resorted to clicking everything in the hopes of something new, and was completely stuck because I had entered the screen every time from the wrong end. Shoot me, but I would have preferred the game to be slightly more linear, rather than wandering around hoping to trip over a clue.

Despite all the niggling gameplay issues, it is actually rather engaging. I really enjoyed grilling all the characters and learning about their backgrounds and gossip about them. There's plenty with motive for the murder, and you want to keep playing to find out who really did the deed.

I think that's all for now. Errr, that was a bit long, sorry. 

Am I the only one who feels this way?

Nope.

I'm finding myself with a similar attitude, to making games, but more so to writing. I have always loved to write, and would dearly love to be able to write as a career and a hobby, but I am also finding a similar lack of motivation/focus/not sure how to describe it. I often feel a burning need to just sit down and write something, anything... and then sit there staring at a blank screen/paper for hours, and get annoyed at myself. I think maybe I need a plan, a framework to break things down, give me realisable goals, but I'd rather just be scribbling away, so leaves me a bit scuppered.

I can't say I've figured out the answer, but I've taken a few steps which I hope will help. I've applied for a study at home course on creative writing, which I hope will teach me some good writing habits and give me something to focus on. I'm also writing for a MMORPG in development with another writer, so I've got a framework there and goals to work towards. It seems to be working, because most of the writing I've done lately has been on that project, I've enjoyed it, and excuse the arrogance, its been damn good.

So I think maybe you've got the right idea, work for someone else, let them do the hard part of planning and such, while you get on with the stuff you're good at. Couldn't hurt to try and see how it goes.

I've read it (all of them actually), and they're rather good. Only one (The Flood) is actually a novelisation of the game. The Fall of Reach is set just before the first game, First Strike fills in the gap between the first and second games, and Ghosts of Onyx follows the other Spartans activities while Earth is under attack. They're very well done books in their own right, they are only set in the Halo universe, not cheap carbon copies of the games' plot. If you like sci-fi, give them a read, it doesn't even matter if you've played the games or not.

[/rant]

I rather see a rating system where you either liked something or you didn't. Or maybe a star system. It's simpler, and both of them are really more of a "how did you like this game?" kind of system instead of "please judge this game by its qualities!"

Totally agree with this. Since we're getting a new ratings system by an expert panel (see here), perhaps we should change the user ratings system also? Seeing as a lot of people are obviously ignoring the categories and simply voting based on their likes rather than the game's merits, it seems prudent to provide a voting system that caters to that. We have the expert panel's ratings to judge games by their quality, and users to judge games by how much they liked them. I do believe there were comments in the ratings panel thread that good games may be passed over because of poor graphics etc. dragging their rating down. This seems like a good way to balance both.