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Lots has happened over the past five years, too much to mention. The highlights however:

- Surviving secondary education with moderatly poor A Levels
- Venturing down to a small campsite to meet some folks who I had previously only spoken to through the magic of ezboard and eye are sea.
- Doing the same above the next year, only in nicer surroundings with better weather. And then again in New York, Agia Anna and Benidorm! Every penny spent and every travelling mishap was worth it a hundered times over for the good times had.
- Conquoring University with a first class honours degree, an air of pride and a tear of sadness, because the real world sucks in comparison!
- Meeting the love of my life and subsequently dragging her to strange and foreign places such as Wales  to see what I was really up to when I went away with these crazy internet people.

More over, I have grown up a lot over the last half-decade and continue to get ever-closer to my elusive dreams. Hopefully in another five years time I will have reached my goals, and perhaps released a couple of games along the way.

Well Skyfire is fooling no one of course, but just let him get on with it. It's only making an already vehemently silly thread even sillier, but what do you expect from game console discussion on the internet!

He's just a guy on the internet that occasionally makes games for fun. Um, case closed?

The existance of 'white' and 'dark' magic as you describe it is total fantasy, which is what Eric forgot to say before pointing you to places that explain why. The human imagination is good at rationalising something completely ficticious when there is a lack of understanding - and it's especially easy to dupe people with illusions and clever psychological tricks (even moreso if they're young or easily impressionable) - so you're better off worrying about where your next meal is coming from than the existance of 'magic'

Btw, I fully blame parents for the problems the videogame industry has. FULLY.

This is clearly the main point though. It's easier to make a scapegoat out of Doom and "Video Nasties" and Maralyn Manson than it is to come to terms with the fact that if your child does something terrible, it's more likely down to your own failure as a parent.

And the palette effects are going to blow your freakin' minds!

By the way, this thread got resurrected by Nipper in his current trolling spree. I'm going to send this zombie-thread right back to hell!

The perfect team are a group of friends working together and enjoying it!

Three golden rules:
1. Is your post interesting, helpful or funny? If not, don't post it.
2. Post in a mature manner. Remember, the minimum age here is 16 - if you're unable to act that age, don't post.
3. If you're not a moderator, don't pretend to be one. If a thread needs to be moved or locked, the moderators will deal with it.

I believe this post violates the first two rules.

Dan, if you want to continue to be part of the forums you must reconsider your demenour. The majority of your posts are either rude or immature, and neither of these attributes are looked highly upon around here.

For now I shall lock this thread, as it's beginning to go around in circles.

Also Hammerite, you should consider adjusting your attitude to one that is more suitable for a mature, friendly forum, as such a tone of post is completely unnecessary here.

I would also like to add my support to this request, as it would make my life much happier too!

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

I can understand that this might seem much more threatening from where the Himalaya Studio developers are sitting, but I don't personally think a quick parody game hosted on rapidshare - which is enough of a deterrent itself to stop the causal browser downloading it - is going to affect the release of your game at all. You'll probably do more harm drawing attention to it than if you just let it bury itself amongst the depths of the internet as it will surely do on it's own accord

But whether it's malicious or not, I'll at least edit the title to denote more clearly that it's a parody. I'm not crazy about deleting something that's mostly harmless for now, but I'll discuss the situation with the rest of the moderators.

Sorry to cause such a stir with my post, it's unfortunate that the textual delivery made it sound like I felt more deeply about it than I actually do! I had discussed it with Becky a bit when we left which is why it was at the forefront of my mind, and as Matt has said the context gets lost a little after the event. Everyone has made some fair points in defense, it's a shame there wasn't anywhere more comfortable that we all could have gone to talk away from the campsite (I don't believe anyone would have chosen Home From Home over a proper Mittens Campfire if there'd been a choice!) as I do feel like I missed out on chatting to the folks who spent more time in bars than me - mostly the brits actually. It probably doesn't help that we missed the trip down and Thursday evening too, otherwise my brain would have probably felt more satisfied with the time spent in everyone's company!

The small niggles we've experienced ths year - and we've had 5 years without a single frownline so far so we're doing pretty damn well - will be forgotten in weeks and we'll only remember all the great bits such as 6 storey yellow enema slides, bone-shaking rollercoasters, spinning hammer rides of joy, flipping people over on the rapids, waterslide races, Eugene and his Bionic Arm, The Adventure Game Movie (lost in production), Exorcising Kings Quest 7, Bohemian Rhapsody vs. Acceptable Noise Pollution Levels, CJ's face as a memorabilia cereal bowl, Insane bus drivers and their ticket despensers, fun with curry, Italian Music Video critique (it's the same frigging drum sounds!), Arse Arse Arse, discovering water is secretly highly flammable, taking a boat to the island (Red Cross version), taking a real boat to the island, Bar Celona, "All you CAN eat, not all YOU WOULD LIKE to eat", Cow Trading, The AGS Male Low-Note Drone Choir and countless other nuggets of greatness that can only happen at Mittens - I'm sure there are many more people can add.

I hope no one feels there's any tension or bad blood - certainly not from me anyway - if this thread has given the illusion that there is! Things tend to appear more serious in writing than intended. But hey, that's the internet for you
At least next year we'll be better prepared to deal with organisation issues and planning, especially if we have our own cozy central living quarters as a base of operations.

This leads me to some confussion. What is it you want from Mittens, Adam? You yourself can see that things become more difficult as the group gets larger.

Don't let me mislead you into thinking that I didn't get what I wanted from Mittens this year, which was to have a great time! I did enjoy it, and I'd do the whole thing over again - horrible journey included - in the blink of an eye! Things are surely going to be difficult when there are 21 people with nowhere to go to be loud and Mittensy, but we coped. The issue that I have is the atmosphere that came through the much higher ratio of drunk-to-sober moments than previous Mittens - and as I've said it was not detremential to my overall enjoyment of the event, but it was apparent to me and several others enough to want to raise the point. 

No worries, I don't want to make a big deal about this either because it's mostly incosiquential, but I do want to let people know my concerns. There was a greater emphasis on drinking than previous mittens, and CJs photos clearly show this It certainly didn't impact the enjoyment of Mittens to any great extent for me, but it does make me think twice about my future participation in these meets if the amount of drinking/drunkenness continues down the same path as this year. (Edit, especially if you're saying that this is what Mittens is evolving in to).

Edit: Actually, perhaps a large part of it was down to not having anywhere close that all of us could go and not annoy people. In Sweeden we were in a secluded location anyway (but there was also not much alcohol, but still an emphasis on fun) so there was no problem, in New York we had the lake to go to (and also not much alcohol), and in Greece we spent most nights on the beach. And there was more alcohol at the Greece meet, but only when we were together as a group. I guess if we had a similar situation in Benidorm there would have been less of a rift made by those that wanted to go to the same pub all the time and those that just wanted to enjoy each other's company.

Despite missing the first two days due to horrible airport anti-fun, I had a great time at Mittens as always. It's always a joy to meet up with folks and see new faces every year, and although many of us were tired of the camping aspects I'm sure we all had a blast. I know I did! Many thanks to Nacho and Lorena for going to the trouble of organising things this year.

Unfortunatly I do have some concerns to raise about the increased role that alcohol played at this years Mittens. We're all adults of course, and people can drink as responsibly or irresponsibly as they'd like at these meets, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who was slightly disappointed by the social rift caused by those who appeared to see this meet as a chance to get pissed at every oppertunity rather than to spend time with the entire group. Perhaps the increased emphasis on drinking was a product of the location we were in, but this is the first time I've ever come away from an AGS meet with any misgivings. I see these events as a way to meet people from all over the globe that I'd not usually get chance to socialise with and spend time in their company, and if those people are drunk or hungover or miles away at some rubbish bar then it makes it difficult to do that, and for me it defeats the point of the whole occasion.

I hope that attitudes towards drinking are re-thought for next Mittens because I'm not so interested in flying all the way across the Atlantic to find that everyone's gone out boozing. Sorry.

Hurrah then!

Hi folks, is anyone able to pick me and Becky up from Alicante airport on the 17th? The folks with cars won't be able to see this probably, so if someone could pass on this plea we would be quite grateful! We have mobile numbers so we can text whoever's lovely enough to voulenteer when we touch down (at around 7:15 pm) or organise things closer to the time.

The reason we ask is because we're getting in quite late, and the next bus isn't going to be until two hours after we land which will make setting up our tent a little difficult! It'd be a huge huge help if we could get a nippy lift to the campsite.

Could someone explain why exactly such a content advisory system needed here? I've read over the thread a few times now and I can't see this as anything other than superfluous. Is this to protect children or to help catagorise games? If it's the latter then a game synopsis is much more useful for notifying a potential downloader as to what content they might run into rather than using icons to overgeneralise things (to whoever was mentioning DVD style ratings - have you ever picked up a DVD and been more influenced in your purchase decision by the plot blurb or the content advisory at the bottom?), and if it's the former then it's surely no hassle for an adult to come to the decision themselves whether a certain game is suitable for a child to play.

I'm not against content advisory in general, but in this context I find it completely pointless. If a creator is concerned about the content of their game offending then they'll take their own steps to warn people, and if they're not then an Ethical Amateur Game Makers Association won't make any difference.