Messages

[will]

Well, as I'm not prone to say things I can't stand behind, I'll say that I do prayer healing, alebit it has some angles, if you are sick, just PM me and I'll se what I can do.

Then get thee to a university. They'll be pretty excited to have proof that prayer healing works. Oh, and while you're at it, I'm short-sighted. 

Well, I don't know about different material clothes being covered in the ten commandments, but if you would break any of them, bad things will happen.

It's not in the ten commandments, but it is in the Book Leviticus, Old Testament.

I can't seem to rember that it says: Thou shall not kill, it's bad.

That's almost literally the wording in the ten commandments: "Thou shalt not kill".

I hope you understand.

Not really, I'm afraid. But if the saying means that large bodies of mass attract smaller bodies of mass, it's a very smart saying indeed.

I don't know who could have gotten in the mind of an animal to comprehend what do they recognise, as it is a thought, and I don't know that it is possible to know what others think.

Well, it's not possible to read thoughts as of yet, but they do things like examine spots they couldn't normally see and all that. For example, the article I read said that the chimpanzee in question scrutinized the interior of its mouth and used a straw to remove some food rests from between its teeth, so it's quite likely it did, indeed, understand what the reflection meant, and has to have at least a shadowy sense of self-awareness.

In this instance, I am yet unable to prove it's truthfullnes, but I will say that, as the other knowledge that I gathered in the same way (from a the same, more knowedgable man) was truthfull, I think that this one is truth, too.

Appeal To Authority isn't a valid argument, I'm afraid. I'm willing to believe what my Computer Science professor has to say about, say, the Von Neumann architecture, but I'd take his comments on, say, classical literature with as much of a grain of salt as those of average Joe.

Yes I am serious, and I believe this is the way things work.

Seriously? You believe that an innocent child would be punished for what somebody completly else has done? How would that be just? Sorry, I'll have to call Poe.

I saw prayer healing work, many times

[citation needed] - so far, all (valid) scientific studies have shown prayer to have no statistically significant effect on, say, cancer mortality rates. But yeah, science is utterly helpless against the awesome power of CLAIMS and ANECDOTES! Also, all that praying while rejecting blood infusions sure does Jehova's Witnesses a world of good.

going against God's rules is very bad for health

Leviticus states not to wear clothes made of two different fabrics. So far, wearing cotton/polyester combinations hasn't caused me to go up in flames. In fact, it's pretty comfortable.

As for certain people living over hundred yeras, I vouch, if they actually lived so long, that they sinned less than people that lived less.

The job of a soldier is, basically, to kill other soldiers.

According to the Bible, killing is a sin. (And a bad one at that!)

There are still some soliders around from WWI, being among the oldest living human beings  at ages (~)103 and upwards.

Huh.

The nature laws, are the same ones as God's

Last time I checked, the ten commandments didn't include "And the value of pi shall be impossible to calculate exactly, but approach 3.1415926535 and so on". Or "in reactions, every elemental shall strive to obtain a certain amount of valence electrones".

they can't think about themselves

Dolphins and certain subspecies of humanoid apes (I think it was chimpanzees) have shown signs of self-awareness, such as being able to recognise themselves in a mirror, and understanding what the reflection meant. Does that mean we'll meet dolphins in the afterlife?

Since it has been NEARLY FIVE YEARS since then and bicycle-for-slugs is still dead as the metaphorical doornail, you may have to ask Leon.

It's sort of like watching two chicks mudwrestle, but instead of chicks, it's random strangers from the INTERNET (echo), and instead of mud, they sling arguments and the occasional logical fallacy/ad hominem.

... coming to think of it, actually, it's not like mudwrestling at all.

[Write a short story - or rather, the "expository chapter" to a longer story - that engages in worldbuilding]

(The topic is a little more challenging than usually, thus the three-week duration. Unless there's little or no interest, of course, in which case we'll switch to a "normal" compo.)

Ah, yes, the fictional world - while it's definitly neccessary for a story (you need sort of a backdrop for your action), it's often woefully neglected by non-utopian literature. Well, it's time to shine the spotlight on the background for once!

The task is thus: Write a short story - or rather, the "expository chapter" to a longer story - that engages in worldbuilding - by which I mean a text that shows what kind of world the story takes place in, what it would be like to live in there, what made headlines recently; that sort of thing. Remember to show, not tell - we do not want infodumps here, although it's ok to briefly pause the narrative, as long as you can work it into the flow of the story.

For inspiration, take a look at the first two pages of Penny Arcade's ongoing Automata standalone comic (here and here). Virtually no exposition and little explanatory dialogue, but it does a very decent job at showing what that world is like.

That said, good luck! As usually, there will be trophies if there are four or more entries.

Yaaay! Thanks for the votes, everybody! 

I'll try to think of a topic for the next compo. Expect the thread in the evening (around 7PM GMT).

Of course, that "innate" sense of morals stems at least partially from what we've been taught in our childhoods (plus some instincts), which probably involved at least slight amounts of Christianity (I know mine did). So you figure it out. 

I had this sort of problem with my last laptop. A raised ventilation pad can help a bit, but it depends on the severity of the problem - it didn't do the trick for me, but it may work just fine for you. And no, there is no sound or anything - just a momentary freeze, two knacks from the speakers and shutdown.

Well, you could always just utilise the repeatedly_execute_always function for code that should be executed even while the game is "blocked".

(Also, nice avatar there. Yay for Trope-Tan (...if I recall that name correctly) )

I'm going to go with Phemar. AG's ballad really wasn't that bad, but the end came a bit too abrupt (sp) for my taste, and the focus of the story was far more on the "buildup" than the actual up-the-creek-without-a-paddle situation.

Oh, and thanks for the praise... although I don't think I've actually written a story that isn't mostly from an AI's viewpoint for a writing competition so far... 

Heh, you're welcome. Although it's less "genius" than "having spent way, way, way too much time with AGS". 

Good luck with your game! 

That's strange indeed. Did you set all all fonts' OutlineStyle to Automatic? And did you import the font into the right "slot"? If you want to use it as character speech font, it needs to be font number one (not 0), by default.

You can change the font slot used to display speech, but it's not that easy. To quote the manual:

"NOTE: Font 0 is used as the normal text font, and font 1 is used as the speech font. To use any additional fonts, you can set the Game.NormalFont and Game.SpeechFont properties in your script."

... xyzzy? 

Do you happen to have set the font's OutlineStyle property to "UseOutlineFont" (the default setting for some fonts, if I recall correctly)? If yes, changing that option to "Automatic" should do the trick.

Your English is alright, by the way. We get a lot worse. 

First of all, wrong forum.

Secondly, you may find something in the contribution thread, but most people prefer to draw their own characters.

Have you tried switching between full-screen and windowed mode? I know it sounds crazy, but I had a problem like this with some old AGS game once (I think it was... Platformerius?) and that fixed it.

It’s a common saying that one can learn more from failure than success, and that what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger.

Unfortunately, all this misadventure had taught me so far was that you should be careful around prototypes, and that having to rely on early beta builds was a poor place to be indeed. I had, however, managed to evade all but two bullets, so maybe the additional strength would make up for the arm I wouldn’t be able to use anymore.

I could hear the monstrosity making its way through the corridors behind me. I supposed I had about two minutes left before it would catch up; I had never been very good at estimating distances, but I could easily tell the nightmarish sound of its steps was increasing in volume. The killer of my colleagues was obviously made no attempt to move quietly – it did not need to.

The whole project had seemed like such a good idea at first. We had been studying the topic so intensively, we were sure it simply couldn’t fail. Long (and quite painful) story short – it did, and our creations turned onto their… well, “masters”, for lack of a better term.

I struggled onwards. In all likelihood, I was lost. I have seen these… things take down a dozen of our best guardians with as much ease as we would add one to one.

Still, no use in giving up. Maybe, just maybe, others had escaped the sudden assault, and if I could distract it for long enough, my end would have not been in vain. Pathetically, I shambled on, around a corner, deeper and deeper into the subterranean part of the installation… and nearly bumped into another creation of ours. Seemed like my pursuer had already freed its “comrades”.

It seemed… surprised at first, possibly not having expected someone to have survived in these parts. It quickly recovered, however. The last thing I saw in this world was that disgusting self-satisfied expression, that “grin” - a horrible flash of white and yellow in a soggy red-pink mass - as it pointed its weapon at my central processing core.

We shouldn’t have played Creator. The robot civilisation should have never tried to utilise soldier humans.


---


*Twilight Zone music plays* 

/EDIT: Gotten rid of some purple prose. "Horrible monstosity"? "Nightmarish sound" of "thunderous steps"? Ugh, what was I thinking?

Lookin' pretty good too me. Judging by the terms used, you've been hitting tvtropes a bit (well... in as much as you can hit that one "a bit", it's like trying to eat a single potato chip), so here's hoping you won't fall victim to the next archive binge before you finish the game. 

So much potential for complete whackiness, wasted on mostly sane persons... 'tis enough to make one weep for the possibilites denied.

Did you hear that?

You make grown men cry.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I've gleaned, it works like this:

- secfile.vgm contains serial number cyphers, probably with quite strong encryption. This one is checked against; I suppose the .exe uses the same algorithm and key when you enter something in the text box, and checks whether the cyphers are the same. This would prevent serials of other people from working, and with reasonably strong encryption, it would hardly be feasible to try and "force" the key (although it could probably be extracted from the .exe).

- secfile.dat probably stores... additional information.

- Additionally, I guess a "hidden" file is created somewhere when you 'unlock' the game. Maybe there's something about those save files automatically created, I don't know.

Now, when you enter the serial number correctly, a flag is set in secfile.dat and said hidden file is created. Therefore, you can't just copy the contents of the folder over; if you do, SecFile detects that the flag is set but the "validification" is missing, and doesn't allow the game to start. The trick is that once the game has been unlocked, your copy is "marked" and you can't distribute it (that was what tripped up my first crack).

Am I far off track?

(It's really not a bad system btw, especially not for an amateur solution, but it needs a lot more checking and redundancy if it's supposed to be more than a minor inconvenience.)