Messages

Hey folks. I suppose I was nowhere to be found for a while! I have, however, put up a web site that I intend to keep around pretty much permanently, so I've updated the games page about this game and uploaded the newest, most complete version to my web site and provided a working link to it. I'm really pleased to see that people are still playing this game almost two years later.

If you want the most recent link, here it is:

http://davidproctor.ca/?page_id=27

Huh, crazy. Guess I'm famous? (Thanks!)

When I was making The Vacuum I used a program called Pixen, and it sufficed, but I'm not sure I would reccommend it - it was extremely buggy (it crashed a lot, and the eyedropper tool selects a color that is slightly greyer than the color you tried to select, and so on) but it had a good interface and the animation tools were excellent. I have been looking for a better one, because the program has not been updated since 2006, but I haven't found anything yet.

If you do get it, I would suggest looking for older versions; maybe they'll be a bit more stable.

Interesting, this game was available on one of the Swedish PC Gamer DVDs. I played it of course and I really liked it! This was one of the few PaC games I've finished, it was a really fun experience I tell you, and the story was nice! I can't remember how many murders I prevented though. ^^

Are you serious? You'd think they'd tell me about that before they just slapped it on there. You think you might be able to send me a .iso file or something somewhere so I can take a look? I'd like to see what they had to say about it. Was it just on the CD or was there something in the mag, too?

Thank you very much for the fanart, too, seeing something like that is an awesome feeling.

L3NZ FL4|23 4EVAR!!!2

...did you add the flare coming out of my beer or did the lens flare just happen like that?

I've never done this, so here we go. These are my favorite pictures from a retreat I went on this weekend; I went to rural British Columbia with the other people who are involved with my university's newspaper. The dog's name was Yoko; she belonged to the people who owned the place, which was sort of a bed-and-breakfast type thing.

My favorite audio player for Windows is definitely Foobar 2000. It's super-compact, and it does everything you want it to.

Hahaha...that made me think of something:

<Blah> and the noisy neighbours?

Actually, any territory that has been infamously invaded would be a good name for an 'and the nosy neighbours' band. Poland, Russia, France, Belgium, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Gaza, Pearl Harbor, Kuwait, and Darfur are all off the top of my head.

Additionally,

Immanuel Goldstein and the Thought Police
Rick Santorum and the Mother Fuckers
George and the Imitators
Kellen and the Detractors
Antonio and the Hegemonic Powers
Reverend Fred and the Hellbound Faggots
Hera and the Horny Ducks

Hahaha...that made me think of something:

<Blah> and the noisy neighbours?

Ireland and the Nosy Neighbours

Richard and the Nosy Journalists

Margaret and the Reaganomics

Ray Charles and the Not Sees.

(Seriously though it really depends on what kind of music you play. Got any samples for us?)

Indian Independence: It was 1947, Ghandi was making a fashion statement and cheating on his [salt] taxes.  Muslims and Hindus make massive migrations to the new religiously homogenous states of Pakistan (east and west) and India, resulting in many a bloody encounter.  Bollywood is still in black and white.

OK, there's this guy who won an election to become the new head of state of his country.  He is 42 years old, and is considered one of the most charismatic politicians to come along for a long time.   He is taking over from an old guy who was the supreme commander in a war that ended fifteen years previously.  Who is this guy?

This might be too obvious to even answer, but it's Barack Obama. Let's see what the next poster remembers about the Cuban Missile Crisis.

nihilyst - thanks so much for the interesting charts! It goes to show, at least in Germany, that more gamers want less graphically violent games.

If anybody else can come up with some more charts, that would be great!

Germany might be getting more heavily localized games than the rest of the world, but video games are a global medium and they most certainly are not getting different games altogether. E's and T's are much more common than M's in the ESRB's stomping grounds:

I don't really see why it has to be one or the other. Theatre is really under-appreciated - I have seen a lot of really stuffy, boring and pretentious plays, but I have also seen a lot that were fantastic and completely entertaining. People who think everything can be done better on the screen obviously haven't seen live physical comedy.

I think the whole concept is silly, and the trailer looks even more cheesy. I just can't see what's so "cool" about men in tight pants flying around. But I guess that's just why Donald Duck got so popular in Finland. All this batman - superman stuff just sounds a bit if not retarded, then immature to me.

I can understand you saying this! Most of the time, I would agree with you - the superhero genre is usually about as boring and simple as it gets. Watchmen, however, is different - it's a complex and compelling morality play. It's not about flying around and fighting crime, it's about who has the right to do what to whom and for what purpose. It's an exciting action movie, but more than that it's a compelling commentary on morality and superpower politics.


I'd also point out that I was surprised by how graphic the movie was - I was expecting a 14A movie, but Watchmen definitely deserved its 18A. I didn't have a problem with any of it, however. The sexuality was tasteful, and the violence wasn't celebrated, it just made you take the violent story more seriously.

I saw it last night, having never read the book, and I thought it was absolutely fantastic. Superhero movies have been absolutely incredible over the past year - first Iron Man, then the Dark Knight, and now Watchmen. I think Watchmen was the best of the three.

Can I comment on how incredible the opening credits were? After this I am never going to want to watch another movie where the opening credits are just text on a blank screen ever again.

I have heard a lot of complaints about the music, but the only part that made me pause was 99 Red Balloons. Everything else was, I thought, perfectly appropriate.

I have always meant to read Watchmen and just haven't gotten around to it, but it's pretty much at the top of my to-do list now. What a fantastic movie.

BIG spoiler:

Spoiler

Why did Rosarch have to die, why?!! I loved that character! He was so cool and twisted! And okay so the evil mastermind type guy who killed few to save many.. well I'd still liked to have seen him perish. And Dr Manhatten, that guy scares me.

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Spoiler

Never would have worked. That would have been far too neat a Hollywood ending. A black-and-white "this guy is evil so good has triumphed" ending would not have worked at all for this movie - the ending is there so that you can decide who was right and who was wrong. Rosarch had a completely black-and-white view of morality, and as a result he could not continue to exist in that world.

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Is your game in 320x200? Because if it is, the co-ordinates that you have specified are beyond the edge of the room. It is doing exactly what you are telling it to do; you've probably just put the wrong co-ordinates to move to.

EDIT: This might even be the problem if you're using a larger resolution but you haven't set up the game properly. I know older versions of AGS still use 320x200 for game co-ordinates, even though it's showing a larger number of pixels than that in higher resolution modes. I'm also pretty sure that there's a setting to keep that type of behaviour somewhere, but I don't have the manual handy so I can't be sure.

I'll chime in and say that the chances that I would use this program would decline severely if there isn't a Mac version. If you had a Mac version I have no doubt that it would become a hell of a lot more popular since the only decent free pixel-art program available for OS X is Pixen, which appears not to be in development anymore and is alarmingly buggy.

Thank god for this thread, I've been itching for a chance to tell the AGS forums in detail about my sex life!