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Syllabi and school libraries are limited by necessity. I think it's better to be arguing for the inclusion of a writer rather than against the inclusion of another writer. But in many cases, adding one thing means taking away another. Saying, "lets have more black writers" is no more "banning" texts than saying "no, let's keep it the same" is.

Here's one of the tweets they're talking about: https://twitter.com/nenagerman/status/1333449963401924609 It has fewer than 200 retweets.

Here's one of the other teachers, refuting the claim that she celebrated the "banning" of the Odyssey: https://twitter.com/MrsHLevine/status/1343404408684617730

Obviously, the women quoted in this article are now receiving abusive and racist messages. This is pearl-clutching at best. At worst, it casts school teachers of no particular influence as Stalinist totalitarians, and puts them in the sights of some of the most unpleasant reactionary racists on the internet.

I agree with Babar that you're on shaky ground when it comes to natural aptitudes in men and women. Women studying computer science grew and grew until the early 1980s, when the numbers started to go down. Plausibly, because the marketing of home computers exclusively to men and boys put them at a disadvantage.

Nevertheless, Roberta Williams and Jane Jensen were prominent adventure game designers at a time when video games were widely regarded as a boy's thing. I would hope that adventure game communities are more welcoming to women, and others who are often deliberately excluded from 'gamer' spaces.

I guess the real Trumpmageddon was the friends we lost along the way.

On topic, I still find it extraordinary we have ostensibly sensible commentators quibbling over whether the word 'coup' is appropriate. No, it hasn't gone that far and hopefully it won't. But it's naive to imagine it's impossible. The very idea of President Trump used to be impossible. What Trump is doing is such a blatant perversion of democratic norms, I can't see why anyone is continuing to normalise his narcissistic excess.

Contribute nothing? I told you to prepare to support Joe Biden when none of your talking heads would dream of telling you that. I don't care about his political fortunes, I just hoped to have a chance to see you do it.

What does this mean? Who are you addressing? What talking heads?

Congratulations on predicting that one of the Democratic candidates would become the Democratic nominee, I guess. I don't think anyone thought Biden's selection was an outlandish prospect.

You will fail to understand this too, but just because I'm not foaming at the mouth, does not mean I'm a fan of Trump. I have basically no respect for him, but I have to recognise his social acumen, a lot of which is probably the work of some campaign guy. He exploits ancient archetypes that has a huge effect on stupid people especially. Before you snicker into your soy milk, look in the mirror. On the imageboards they say he lives in his opponents' heads rent-free, and that's the truth. You have Trump on the brain. Have you ever heard the expression "there's no such thing as bad press?" If you did, maybe you didn't really understand what they meant.

I don't think you're a fan of Trump. I think you're a fan of making aloof generalisations, semi-ironic insinuations and contributing absolutely nothing of value.

Trump is purging the Pentagon and replacing everybody with ass-lickers.

He's replacing the ball-suckers with ass-lickers? Invest in the tic-tac company.

Maybe he should flip over all the couch cushions and see if he can find the 2.3 Trillion dollars Donald Rumsfeld "lost" in the pentagon.

I can't tell you how much more readable this thread would be if it weren't for the constant barrage of portentous non-sequiturs like this. What does it mean?

"Donald Trump is trying to steal the election? Ho, ho, ho, well 19 years ago some other thing happened."

We're hosting another 2-week game jam starting on Nov 13th! If you're interested, join up here:

https://itch.io/jam/advxjam2021

Teams and individuals are welcome. Any engine and any interpretation of narrative game is cool with us.

That's a huge shock, I had no idea he was ill.

And Ali for confusing me into thinking "Hey, another muslimbro on the forums, I'm not alone!". SO MANY YEARS I WAS DISILLUSIONED

Not the direction I thought this thread was going! Sorry for not being a Muslim, everyone.

I'm sorry if I offended you by remembering something you wrote a month ago that was relevant.

I think it's weird for BarbWire to lament the decline of the forum, while recently being really unwelcoming to a new member making an honest mistake.

Reading that thread, it seemed to me like a joke that didn't come off. But in that case, the decent thing to do would have been to explain once it became clear that it was being taken seriously.

Yeah, I was uncertain and the lack of an explanation threw me. I hope it was a joke!

I'm not sure it's fair to say that m0ds was bullied out, bearing in mind the bullying behaviour he exhibited before he left. I take no pleasure in criticising m0ds, but I do think it was he who changed and not everybody else.

I think it's weird for BarbWire to lament the decline of the forum, while recently being really unwelcoming to a new member making an honest mistake. But I don't think that's new. Helm wasn't particularly nice to me when I joined. What I have noticed in the last years is increasing prevalence of conspiracy theories with a sprinkling of ethno-nationalism. But I think efforts to tackle that make the forum more, rather than less welcoming. I still think the tech support is faster and more helpful than any other site I've visited.

But, if we're being honest, the forums are less busy because they are forums dedicated to a 2D game engine that specialises in adventure games.

Want to run a successful game company? Well, this is not the community to get any useful input because the ones with no idea bullied out the people who could provide insight or guidance. Mentorship is out of question.

Perhaps I missed this? Who's been bullied out?

Yeah you're probably right, it's hard enough to sell a game these days. Best to focus on trying to get the word out. I still wonder if anybody ever buys soundtracks because I tend to see a lot of them offered here and there.

The good thing about soundtracks is they cost almost nothing to create, they appeal to superfans/completionists and they can give you an excuse to make a new announcement and push the game on Steam etc. Also, hopefully, it means composers getting royalties they might otherwise not see.

I don't plan on doing a Kickstarter, but as a fan of adventure games would you consider buying a collector's boxed edition for about $20 USD (with artwork/booklet and map) if quality were on par with LucasArts classic era boxes? This would be in addition to the cost of the game itself. I know this depends on whether or not you're interested in the game to begin with, but if some of your favorite modern adventure games offered this, do you think it would be something you'd probably buy for your shelf?

Everyone I know who's done boxed / collector editions (including me) has regretted it. If you've made a game that's enough of a smash hit to warrant merchandise, then I imagine it would be fine. But on an indie scale, physical products end up costing way too much in terms of time and money. Also, don't underestimate Kickstarter's value in terms of marketing. It's a good way of finding people who (if you treat them well) will be loyal fans and advocates for the game.

I've come up with a few puzzles I like, but it's not the thing that attracts me to making adventure games. I certainly don't have the right kind of mind for creating proper puzzle-puzzles, like the machines in Myst.

I think this is a particularly good video on the subject, even though it's not about adventure games.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsjC6fa_YBg

The idea of catching the player in a trap is nice. It's not just about finding 100 keys for 100 locks. It's more like: The key to chamber A is in chamber B, but when I take it, the door to chamber B slams shut. Now I'm trapped in chamber B until I return the key. What do I do?

I think it can be good when puzzles have consequences that feature in later puzzles. E.g. you alter the irrigation system to power a generator. But later there is a river to cross where there wouldn't have been had you not redirected the flow. So the next challenge doesn't seem like an arbitrary obstacle.

Yeah, this was obviously an honest mistake and clearly isn't spam. We like adventure games, the most derided and despised art form after English folk dancing - the least we can do is be welcoming to developers who are making new ones.

Based on Laura's issue, I'm going to add a couple of known issues which are work-aroundable.

If your character changes view from a tall to a short sprite, the module screen will snap into a new position. This is because it's aiming for the 'head' of the sprite. To get around this, switch targetCharacter to a dummy character (at the same co-ordinates) while you make the transition.

If you're playing as a different character to the player character at game start, and the module has been off, then when you switch it on you the camera will pan from the old character it was following to the current character*. To get around this, set the targetCharacter to the player before calling ChangeRoom, so the camera starts out looking in the right place.

Similarly, if you change a player's X and Y position in room_load, the module will pan from where they used to be to where they are now. If you can, include the desired co-ordinates in the ChangeRoom function. If not, try using a Dummy character who's already in the right place.

*This would be desirable behaviour if you were using it to pan between characters in a cutscene, etc.

I'm not sure why that's happening, but I'm glad you've found a workaround! Sorry I haven't been able to keep this up-to-date.

Is the target character (by default, the player character) in the room? If they are, then I'm not sure. If you want, you could PM me the room and I could have a look. You could also check whether the newer module Rellax works for you: https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=57489.0

Yes, you can post it here for exactly that reason. The module is a little out-of-date now, but I'll help if I can.