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Yes, of course the bogus allegations happened! But since they were bogus, I was right to say that the "ethics in game journalism" scandal was imaginary. I don't know how you can find it suspicious that some people in the gaming press took the side of an innocent woman who was the target of a hate campaign.

I don't want to hog this thread, we can all enjoy conspiracy theories. But some of these wacky theories do real harm, and hurt real people.

Jack - every single thing you've written is bollocks.

A game dev's embittered ex-boyfriend making unfounded allegations is not evidence of a scandal. The journalist she allegedly had an affair with didn't even review her game! If he had, then HE would be morally compromised - not her. And yet she was the victim of a sustained campaign of harassment, by sexist twats. And the morons they suckered in.

(I don't care if you don't like Quinn's game. It couldn't be less relevant.)

Cultural Marxism, on the other hand, is merely a revival of a Nazi conspiracy theory about (mostly Jewish) left-wing academics and degenerate artists destroying our traditional culture. It doesn't refer to a recognisable ideology, or a social movement. It's an anti-intellectual lumping together of disparate movements and academic disciplines.

GamerGate is weaponized, defiantly ignorant misogyny. Cultural Marxism is a phrase for alt-right half-wits who want to sound clever. If you're taking either of them seriously, I encourage you to reflect a little.

I've been accused of discrimination against women since all people were talking about are the male botanist and homosexual male characters. Omitting the fact that I have announced 5 strong female leads in the game since 2014.

That sounds annoying, but it's not quite the same as people criticising games because they have prominent female characters.

GamerGate's harassment of women was 100% real. The "ethics in game journalism" scandals that allegedly kicked it off are totally imaginary. Just like the scandal of Sarkeesian "stealing" people's money by doing a Kickstarter to make 5 videos and then going on to make 20 videos, and then several other series of videos.

Personally, I sometimes feel like it's going backwards

I think there's a deliberate attempt by miscellaneous bigots to pull culture back to a completely imagined "good old days". If Jurassic Park were released now, people would say "Oh, they made the hacker a girl? She's a total Mary Sue." If Indiana Jones were made now, people would be yelling, "why did they make the baddies Nazis? Talk about virtue signalling! Keep politics out of entertainment!"

I'm not sure the adventure genre is immune either. I recently wasted a morning arguing in this Facebook P&C group https://www.facebook.com/groups/230349270493876/ with a few idiots who make it clear that CERTAIN people aren't welcome in nerd-dom. Last week someone posted the feminist frequency video where a trans woman journalist criticises Leisure Suit Larry because of the scene where a trans woman "hilariously" rapes Larry. Most people were NOT happy, deliberately misgendered her, were homophobic towards me for POLITELY telling them to "fuck off and die", and then started to talk about GamerGate and Cultural Marxism, as if both those scandals weren't totally imaginary. The same thing happened when Chuchel turned orange and they were FURIOUS that developers would deliberately try not to seem racist. Free speech, etc.

It annoys me, not only because P&C games were pioneered by several women devs. But because weird niche interests attract people who feel like outcasts. How dare these twats start gatekeeping? It infuriates me to see these emotionally stunted 30-year olds putting up a "no girls or gays" sign on their treehouse.

I will admit, I do not know what the child from Home Alone's politics are. I'm just aware that Rogan has softball interviewed enough reactionary, bigoted conservative "thinkers" for me to have no interest.

I respect that he's prepared to talk politics with anyone, from the far right all the way to the centre right.

I'd like to watch his videos, but I'm too afraid of being DESTROYED with FACTS and LOGIC.

Sorry for the basic question, but I've been reading through years of old threads about this without finding a clear answer. I'm just wondering if there's a currently functional way to hyperlink to an URL and have AGS open it in the player's default browser?

I think that vagueness might be deliberate. I promised DRM-free when I didn't have a publisher. The publisher wanted to include a pre-DRM style copy protection. I didn't think that counted as DRM, but a few backers disagreed (and I understand why). It would have been better not to make the commitment at all, than seem to walk-back on it.

I hate to be negative - good luck to anyone who's supporting story-driven games. But I don't understand the motivation behind these campaigns. Petitioning Daedelic to sell the IP to another Dev, petitioning a publisher to re-release an old game - those make sense so me. But how many millions of signatures would it take to persuade them to revive a project they've already canned? Why not put our energy into supporting people who want to make a game?

I agree that the info should be available for the people that want it. This reminds me of people objecting to games having easy modes, or story modes, which is particularly selfish when you remember that plenty of people have disabilities which mean that they can't just git gud at some things. Why shouldn't people be allowed to enjoy (or not enjoy) a game any way they want?

I don't think creators should be obliged to alter or censor their games when it comes to adult content. But I think it's thoughtful for devs to consider the different ways people want to approach a game.

Apologies if this is getting off topic but - no one is saying that *only* games should provide content warnings. Movies do have content warnings already and (in the UK at least) TV news regularly warns people in advance if the content of a report is likely to be disturbing.

I've run a few small Kickstarters. The key points for me are:

• Have a GOOD, SHORT pitch video. No one watches more than 1 minute of the video, so you are wasting time and money producing a 7 minute video. Get to the point quickly.
• Make the video, text & artwork as polished and professional as possible. Prove you can do something good on a small (or non-existent) budget.
• Do a proper budget with a contingency. Talk to an accountant, don't forget about fees and taxes.
• Rewards should cost no more than a fixed proportion of the pledge. Always over-estimate the costs of reward production, and don't forget to cost your time in producing rewards. Postage always costs more than you expect.
  
• Write regular updates. Be interesting. It's not marketing, these people have already given you money.
• When things go wrong, tell your backers. Radio silence is disrespectful.

I do remember that scene now. I was a male bartender, and it played out the same, IIRC. At the time I interpreted it as a seduction - with a degree of demonic coercion that I can understand would make people feel uncomfortable. I didn't recognise the scene you were describing because I didn't think of it as depicting sexual abuse.

But I do think content warnings are a thoughtful idea. We worry too much about spoilers, in my opinion. You know everyone is going to die before you watch any Shakespearean tragedy, and it doesn't spoil it.

There seem to be two reasons people want warnings on products, one is so they can keep their kids away from certain subjects - in which case "adult themes" is sufficient. However, I believe that people with PTSD often suffer from specific triggers, and if they're going to avoid those triggers they need to be alerted. It's not about just not liking swearing, tobacco use etc.

That said - and this is a testament to how varied the game is - I have finished the game and I have no idea which bit you're talking about!

Spoiler

I don't remember finding a picture of the demon in a relationship. Does the demon being in a relationship with someone constitute abuse, or is there more implications?

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(Also, congrats to Dave on the recent nomination / world domination.)

In that case, put the same frame in the other 3 and it should work. (I think you risk AGS crashing anyway, unless the character is permanently locked in one direction.)

Does your idle animation have frames in all 4 directions?

Spoiler

Xs are dead people /s are missing/escaped etc.

X next to a line of dialogue means that the line was spoken by the dead person.

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Of the free ones on that list:

Opentoonz is for traditional 2D cel animation. Apparently it can do split-pin animation, but I've never tried it or seen it. It's very idiosyncratic and can be unstable, but it's got some great features. I'm using it for this WIP: https://twitter.com/MisterABK/status/1057956817404379136

I used Synfig briefly a few years ago, and it messed up my save (or did some other unforgivable thing) and so I uninstalled it.

I have my eye on Dragonbones, but I'm not sure whether it's oriented towards games or standalone animation: http://dragonbones.com/en/index.html