Messages

I voted, for all but the image importing one.
You can import more than one image into AGS at a time. If I had, for example, 9 frames of a walking animation, I would select the last one first (this is important, or it won't import them in order) and then, holding shift, select the first one (assuming they all in order, from 1-9 and they are the only images I select). Then select import.
You can do this manually by putting the image names in double quotes and separating each one with a comma. (E.g. "ScoutWalkSouth1", "ScoutWalkSouth2" etc).

Or does it refer to something else that I'm unaware of?

Oh, I don't think Jared is irritated with someone suggesting that it need polishing, but that his words were:

The graphics are nice but they need a LOT of polishing.

That "a LOT" suggests that the project isn't ready to be fine-tuned yet, perhaps it's not what ALPHA2T meant, but it carries the connotation that Dervish's work is far from ready to be released. I think it's just that little addition that Jared is reacting to.

I personally like the style and can't wait for it to be released.

In terms of theatre and cinematography:

Take a movie, for example "Reservoir dogs". In the movie, there is a scene with Mr. White and Mr. Pink, they are talking in the bathroom and the camera is in the other end of the hallway through the doorway. This physical distance in watching them as if you are a voyeur is one of the key concepts in theatre. The concept that the audience is watching what unfolds out on stage as a voyeur looking through an invisible fourth wall, it's a key element in that its adherence is what determines story structure. As every story, in both theatre and movies, starts off expecting you to not know who any of the characters, because you don't know, because you're watching this as a voyeur who slowly understands what's going on and who the characters are. This is all slowly introduced to you (or quickly, depending on the story), but the point is that you are treated as a voyeur, only getting so much information and expecting to enter the story with none (information that is).
For example, take my Reservoir dogs example and Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
In Reservoir dogs you have that scene in the hallway, they are talking to each other and ignoring the camera because the fourth wall makes you the ultimate voyeur. Slowly, over the course their conversation, and the entire movie, you begin to understand what happened with Mr. Orange. But you know nothing at the start, and even then, the beginning only really introduces you to the characters.

The same occurs with Hamlet in the intro. Two guards talk about a problem, then Horatio enters and you begin to learn about a problem with King Hamlet, in particular, his ghost. Over the course of the movie, (and much like Reservoir Dogs, this is a pivotal



Also, in theatre you have something called "levels" which is the physical height from the ground and suggests status. It's not in all theatrical productions and is mostly used at the discretion of the actors and directors. For example, a king would stand higher than a lowly maid, and this may be given backstory. Maybe the maid has a bad back in cooking and cleaning for the king, and because the king has many luxuries he need not strain his back and thus stand taller. It might even be seen in someone in a position of power yelling or otherwise displaying an act of power and those who are lower than s/he would take a step back and slightly crouch, becoming immediatley in lower status to the person of power.
But what has this got to do in cinematography? Well, in cinematography they have things called low and high-angle shots that are used on exactly the same principle. Low-angle shots are used to suggest a character/s have high status or power, and high-angle shots are used to suggest the opposite. They both use the same principle of a significant difference in height (either literal in theatre or suggestive in cinematography) to create the same effect.

For example, in the beginning of The Dark Knight you have the Joker talking to the guy from the bank who got shot in the leg. The Joker walks over to him and takes off his maks and says "I believe that whatever doesn't kill you makes you ... stranger." The shot of him taking off his mask and saying that is a low angle shot, albeit from the perspective of bank teller guy, but still used to achieve the same effect. To suggest a power over the bank teller by the Joker.
In theatre, this may be seen in Ruby Moon. It starts off (once again, in the very beginning - maybe I have a thing for intro's) in which "Sylvie [sits] in the armchair" and “Ray stands”, Ray then “shakes his umbrella” which startles Sylvie and she quickly asks in fear “What was that?”. The short scene demonstrates that, even for that short moment as Sylvie sits and Ray stands, that Ray has the power, as his physical level his higher than hers. In a production, one might even have Sylvie stand as she gets startled, and the fear takes her question, and her status, to that of equal to Ray, forcing him to answer “It’s only me, baby. I’m home.”

I hope that helps.

But you have to admit that most 3D games nowadays are stealing with full hands from their older pioneer 2D brothers. And since visual effects can't make want to play a game, there's nothing to offer. One gets tiered of the same stories coming again and again with the only difference - visuals.

I do not understand your point. Could you please give me examples of some modern (maybe even next gen) 3d games that are clearly stealing from older "pioneer" 2d games.

If what your saying is that 3d games are stealing from 2d games because 3d came second, then that's like saying all movies now are stealing from the first few silent movies. There have to be similarities, because it's a form of media, but that doesn't make it outright copying.

Games nowadays are like a balloon - shiny and cool to watch, but with nothing in there as substance.

Clearly, you've never played and finished Kane and Lynch (and finished it with the good ending). It's got an excellent story about a broken man fighting to protect those he loves, and the ending is just a perfect fulfilling end to it.
Also, Far Cry 2's main antagonist (the Jackal) is what makes the story of Far Cry 2. Admittedly, the game itself isn't as heavy as K&L, but the Jackal brings to it a uniqueness that is starting to be found in videogames.

What I'm trying to say is that games 'were' like a balloon, and all though there are still plenty that are just like that, not all are as stale as you make out. There are some ones that shine, and their numbers are increasing.

Congratulations Akatosh.

I'm honestly surprised someone didn't for you, your work had a great flow.

Moonlight drenched the dock and glistened in the calm waters. Its presence signified little change to the agent, his eyes emitting a slight glow as they modified the stream of information that sparked to his brain by adding light to the somewhat dark scenery that surrounded him. His emotionless face surveyed the jetty as he slowly stepped toward his brother.

The agents steps made slight low echoes into the sea below him, the sound reverberating off into the night like a dying heartbeat. The terrorists took no notice, feeling nothing to fear. They believed they had control of the island, their numbers were far superior to whatever this government decided to throw at them. Although they walked like terrorists, held guns like terrorists and even fought like terrorists, they were fighting for a human cause. They were still human.

It was something the agents brother sought to remind him of, all throughout his training. They were still humans, treat them as you would any civilian. They deserved your compassion. The agent himself hadn't yet come to a conclusion about how he felt about these terrorists, as yes they were human, but the question arose 'did their aggressive actions belie their humanity?'. Troops he'd worked with in training believed in following orders to the letter, and defending truth and liberty with all heart and soul. But, as the wise armourer to the agents organization once replied "It's all meaningless if you lose your heart and soul in the process".

The agent considered what it all meant; truth, the soul, humanity, terrorism and wondered what he was fighting for. Could he really make a difference without losing his humanity?

Group theory in maths has nothing to do with how groups of people behave - that sounds more like behavioural science.

No, not directly. But it can be used to, after applying variables to either people or their actions, mathematically correlate what will occur (by the group, that is) next.
Although I do agree that my personal application of it is more of a behavioural science thing.

Prepare for LeChuck PI;
Pirate Investigator.

[Or rather,how does the universe affect you and how do you affect it?]

Well, not really. Group theory is a mathematical theory (useful for talking about how to solve a Rubik's cube, among other things, but nothing to do with manipulating the universe) and the hundredth monkey effect does not exist, according to the Wikipedia article. So I'm afraid I don't see how they are at all relevant to the point you were making.

I believe you yourself refuse to believe it because you are experiencing cognitive dissonance.

As you believe:

Life is empty and meaningless - just ask an existentialist. But the good thing, as Darth Mandarb says, is that this means you can just go ahead and enjoy it.

It has to do with:

How do you see the world around you?Are you a believer?what do you expect from your future?Do you see a reason and do you find sense in the things you do?
Or rather,how does the universe affect you and how do you affect it?
Its a rather wide area of discussion,but i was just wondering how people see their life
in a modern world.

My explanation of them:
Group theory is a set of mathematical functions and groups to define and solve equations. It's specifically to do with groups. What I meant by bringing it up is that unlike what Akatosh believed, there aren't too many variables to predict what a group of people will do. You can lessen the set of variables in human action by applying logic, such as the hundredth monkey effect. The hundredth monkey effect, on one side, states that a set number of similar beings, once performing an action, makes innate in all other similar beings. On the other side, it states that similar beings will imitate and learn from one another and slowly adapt similar traits and experiences as more experience that trait.
On either side, it states that by introducing one variable to a set of people, and due to human nature, a number of those set people, that they will adopt it in time. However, what it forgets to address is that, particularly in the human race, this variable must be something considered desirable. E.g. if you have ten people laughing in the middle of a public park, and a number of people walk through the park, you can calculate how many will start laughing for no definable reason other than those ten people were laughing. Hence the concept why laughter is contagious.

But, the question will arise "what has this got to do with this thread". Here:

the world, and the universe, can be manipulated.

In terms of God, the world is all a horrible joke and we're the punch line. This is because God in only thing that has the final word, if the word is horrifying.

However, the world, and the universe, can be manipulated. Ever heard of Group Theory? Ever heard of the Hundredth Monkey Effect?
It's not too difficult, but it's not a cakewalk either. Such manipulation and ulterior motivation is source of corruption, not that many will believe it's even possible, or plausible. They don't have to.

I also believe that some people are destined to do things, and others aren't necessarily constrained to a particular destiny and have a little more freedom. It's a bit complicated. What I believe is ... think of life as a canyon you have to cross, you can see the other side and the only way to cross is by crawling along your large tree branch. Now, you can go down the main tree branch and gurantably reach the other side. Or, you can go down one of the many branches that divert off your main branch, but with the risk of not reaching the other side of the canyon and falling off. The further you go, the thinner your main (thickest) branch becomes and the less diverting branches are on it. In relation to point about manipulation, that is like (while sitting on top of it) grabbing your main branch and slowly heaving it to the left or right, altering where it ends up and changing whether or not the diverting branches reach the end or not.

I hope that all made sense.

Prepare for satanic depth! Literally another dimension to it.

I certainly enjoyed it, and the starcraft reference .

I liked the puzzles that were hinted at in the computer, it made for a very enjoyable experience.

Congratulations SpacePirateCaine, and thank you buloght for giving me pointers on how to do better.

I think it's if you want to make your own walkable areas mask and import it into AGS.

Misj:

We'll have to agree to disagree, because I really don't approve of having a friendly, no pressure competition built around rating a person's concepts and sketches toward completion rather than the end result.  It's just more effort than I'm interested in with a competition about having a bit of fun, and if not everyone does (or can do) it they are automatically placed at a disadvantage. 

I'm agreeing with ProgzMax.
I don't think that sort of competition would work very well. It's a good concept but ... to judge how well someone can make a sprite based on their concepts and sketches is very subjective. For example, one person may be a brilliant pixel artist and only need the stick figures mentioned in Misj's previous post before making something worthy of being sold. However, the concept art of just stick figures is not very impressive compared to, say, someone who has thirty sketches, and all them showing some sort of development for the character.
Although I agree it will get people to think and really try to make concepts (and get those thirty-five sketches), it does stem down to sort of "who has the most/best developed character" as opposed to "who has a character that isn't overdeveloped and suitable for an interpretive lead character". As the latter is more often than the former used in amateur adventure games to give the player a sense of their own personality into the character.

I'm rambling on, so I'll stop now, but I guess I'm just against such a subjective concept.

Steel yourselves for the somewhat symmetrial samurai!


- 16 colours

On a side note, while doing this, I found out that things drawn on my laptop may look good on it, but are horribly contrasted and saturated on any other machine.

ALPHA2T, had you bothered to read the previous posts (from page 11 onwards), you would've seen that this has already been discussed.

My point is, I disagree the suggestion to make another extra competition, unless it can be proven to be vastly popular.

We don't actually know how many hi-res people are out there as they're rarely allowed to participate. The sprite jam is by all measures a pixel activity, so just like myself, people might not even bother checking whether they can submit a regular entry. To make sure I wasn't basing this on a false impression, I checked the introduction of the last 50 pixel jams to check with reality:

50 rounds - 6 allowed hi-res/hi-colour entries.

The Sprite Jam is for all intents and purposes a pixel art activity; I'm just asking for a character activity where everyone is allowed to join the fun.

I don't see the harm in adding another competition; if nobody's going to participate, it's going to die like the other ones. If people do contribute, we gained a popular competition.

Do I think excluding people is right?  No.  I don't think it's particularly fun to be able to do something and be excluded because it's not what other people are good at, but I also don't think a competition should be a 'boy's club' with 2-3 regular entrants and no one else.  I suppose you could still take this to mean I don't care, but I don't think most people would see it that way.

I agree with Loominous's idea - its worth a shot. As somebody said earlier if there are not enough entrants it will die, but it offers an opportunity to be creative

Aside from the miniscule amount of space it would take up on the server i cant really see any disbenefits. it would be fun and interesting to see what people can do beyond traditional pixel art. Call me a minority but I would definitely enter if i had time.

Oh, and I agree with you about 'boy's clubs', but we can't really know the level of interest, as people have never really had a proper chance of joining in, and by doing so establish a "tradition". I'm actually thinking mostly of 3D folks here. It's kinda like a radio station, where they always seem to be playing music that you dislike. It may very well be that they play your kind of music every 10th night, but it's most likely that you won't be tuned in to notice.

I'm going to quote everyone who was in favour of a theoretical "low-res competition", because that would be superfluous. As has already been discussed, most people here who participate in the sprite jam generally use pixel (or "low res") art.

[Water]

Well, I've failed to live up to my attempt to make you feel dismay at the length of my entry, being as I wrote for an hour, then found I ran out of idea's before even getting to two pages.

So, here's my entry:

Water
Water is a generally liquid substance that is often consumed to satiate thirst by beings in the galaxy, however, many beings find buying bottled water so expensive that they have to resort to dry water substitutes. Dry water being exactly that, a seemingly dust-filled sachet of water that has been dried to remove the liquid components. The original method of making dry water consisted of drenching stars in water and taking away whatever was left, but many species became very cranky at the lack of sun on their planets because it made it impossible to get a good tan. As such, a petition forced them from destroying suns, to just a species.

The Flatart species, to be precise. The Flatarts consist of heated plasma and are grown in pens before themselves being drenched with water, as they do, they make dry water, however, they also exert more energy to their plasmoid exteriors, known as their not-cores by entomologists, making them hotter in natural self-defence. This goes on for several more hours until the Flatart is finally extinguished and, with enough water, becomes dry water itself entirely. Dry waters motto 'The only screaming water' comes from the fact that consuming dry water causes the very dust-like particles to scream in abject horror, most beings enjoy this screaming, particularly as it enters their stomach and intensifies, becoming a massaging vibration on their internal organs.

There are also beings which die from consumption of water or dry water. Similar to the Flatarts, the Promoxy Miscius of Slaptoid X are a fire-based species which consist of exactly that, fire. The only difference is that women are red, and men are blue. Due to the fact that they so closely resemble real fire, many beings have often found prophetic words given from fire, which was actually a Promoxy Miscius screaming out to help them move from getting stuck in the branches of a tree, vine or other flammable substance. This is because the Promoxy Miscius get suck and feed upon anything flammable, 98% of the known universe, 68% of the unknown universe and 34% of the don't-go-there galaxy, and find that they automatically eat whenever they reach something flammable. They are also considered intellectual beings by the rest of the universe as being the only things to have ever expanded on the development of the towel by developing the only ever existing fire-proof towels.

Water itself is procured in large quantities from the Mixyplikts of the Sluhr galaxy. They produce them in large quantities for the universe from their industrial power plants which produces water as a waste product. Water isn't actually a waste product of the power generating process, but is actually the excrement of Mixyplikts. The power generating process merely being very hot, forcing the workers to consume more and excrete more. Although water is a valuable commodity for the universe, Mixyplikts see it as more of a disease infested pile of germs, this is due mostly to them being hypochondriacs who live in thick metallic suits and even have their planets coated in a thick chrome substance. In fact, water is the only waste product they actually produce, which is entirely for their economy, everything else being perfectly self-sustaining. They have not shared this technology with any other species due to them believing anyone that doesn't wear space suits being tribal cannibals, anyone that does as mocking them and anyone with a big nose rather annoying.

Although water is produced in large quantities from the Mixyplikts, that does not restrict planets having their own water supply, in fact, it can be quite abundant, such as in the recently destroyed planet Earth and the Flatart homeworld of Bowelowulf II, which, in the Flatarts case, made them very unhappy. Bowelowulf II actually consisted of only 10% landmass and 90% water, which made the Flatarts consider that no God would do such a thing, and they became atheists. Even when God came down and said "It's a joke, dude." And they replied "But I don't think it's funny." To which God finalized "But it's my vote that counts." And then promptly disappeared only made them more of atheists, considering the entire thing to be a mass hallucination that occurred due to not enough pain from traversing water, and so made them masochists. As such, they haven't, and have no plan, to complain about their currently lifestyle, or even how they die and become slowly consumed by other beings.

Scientists of the universe agreed that water was also a good way to measure the temperature of somewhere, as it changes according to the temperature. They agreed that if water evaporated where you were, than it should be considered rather hot, and if water solidified, then it was rather cold. Through this, they developed a scale of universal temperature according to what happened to water on a particular planet. This was met with criticism from the hippy Gleshumptibumpts from Slimdimmit Prime who argued that "Nature is … people man. You … evil ships … bad." To which the scientists replied "Nick off." To which the Gleshumptibumps promptly did so. It was also met with criticism from other, more radical, scientists, who believed that the only method to truly test the temperature, of a planet or otherwise, is to take a red hot poker and move it toward yourself until you feel your flesh being seared off. The sooner you willfully main off your flesh, the hotter the planet is and vice versa.

(it looked better in word)

I think we should have them in free range, and kill them in the most humanitary possible way

The problem with that is that killing is inhumane in itself.

And isn't that belief that we should be "killing animals in the most humanitarian way possible" an act of Goddism that you suggested? Purely because of my above point.

I don't mean to sound harsh and I do agree with a lot of what you suggest about Goddism, it's just that this doesn't add up for me.