Messages

Barcik, you say that you feel safer now that the treat from Iraq has been removed, and that Israel has been facing terrorist threats for a long time, and I wouldn't dispute that. But while you feel safer, shouldn't you be concerned that the Iraq war was (apparently) fueled by two key issues: the threat of terrorism and the threat of WMD?
Neither of those dangers have been removed, your statement shows that terrorism continues and WMD appear not to have been a threat from Iraqi quarters to begin with.
Perhaps you are more secure following the fall of Iraq, but isn't that something of a side effect? And isn't the fact that the US and Britain can win a war without resolving any of the issues which started it more worrying?

we (the people watching in the stands) can't really do anything to stop the player from doing something 'stupid'

The football analogy parts with reality here because we SHOULD be able to, that's the essence of democracy. But as long as U.S. elections are crooked, I guess that's true.

I think by now, Blair is quite safe because, the whole issue becomes duller and moves further from the point by the day.
The Hutton Inquiry has almost fully directed the media and the public's attention away from the war itself, and towards Dr Kelly's mystery suicide and the '45-minute claim' in the September Dossier.
Watching national news, you'd think that Kelly's death was more significant than the casualties of the war, and that the inclusion of the 45-minute line was the only mistake this government made.

http://www.longestjourney.com/help/faq/

Have you been here? It has some answers to technical questions (includng minimi's sound), and an option to write to the makers for help.

The Longest Journey ought to run on 98, it was designed to, and it worked fine for me even in XP. It's a great game which you should be able to enjoy. good luck.

I like the broken 'tato' sign"!

The only thing I'd note is that the projecton is off on the traffic light. The walls move away at at about 30 degrees (I'd estimate) from the vertical, while the lines of the sides of the traffic light are at about 50. They ought to be the same angle, or the traffic light won't look like it's lying on the road. I hope that makes sense.

Also, If you want a higher quality image, why not compress it to jpeg?

I'm not sure this technically meets the specs .... but I felt like it.

Vincent is fantastic! I think it's the first thing Burton directed and it also had the same designer, Rick Heinrichs as TNBC. Having paid for Vincent Disney wouldn't release it, but when I went to the cinema to see a late showing of The Nightmare, they showed it! It's a blend of Edgar Allen Poe, Doctor Seuss and campy (Vincent Price style) horror.

Dagooh's right, the trailer really reminded me of Vincent, the style of rhyming is just as bouncy as Doctor Seuss. It's great!

In film, the main light in a scene (often the sun) is often called the key light. In this scene the key light is inside the shop. If this is a night time scene, that's fine, however the outer walls are too well lit: they need to be far darker with only the window frames well lit.
Also, while sunlight will cast a window-frame shaped shadow on the floor of an interior, light from an interior will rarely cast this sharply on the ground.

Age: 19
Gender: M

1)   Name three characteristics of a typical adventure game
Plot driven gaming
Character interaction
Non-level-based evolution.

2)   What makes it easy to identify an adventure game from any other genre?
Greater emphasis on the solving of mysteries and puzzles thoughtfully, rather than by the skillfull manipulation of a physical simulation, as in many action games.

3)   What makes you choose a game? (e.g. screenshots, reviews, description etc…)
I'm mainly infuenced by a plot synopsis, but visuals are also very important. It's not the most advanced graphics which necessarily win me over, but those with most character and atmosphere.

4)   When buying a game what information would you like to see on the product or display?
Relatively low specifications (my computer still runs off a mill-wheel), and a well composed box image. Being eye catching is important, but I look out for boxes which look more like good film posters, communicating someting about the game's atmosphere of characters.

5)   Name three characteristics of a typical super-hero
Great big muscles
Great big gun
Underpants on the outside

6)   They say an image can speak 1000 words, would you buy a game just because of the images displayed on the box? What type of impact do images give to you?



So to summarise: pictures make me buy things. If you were to show me a picture of a tractor, I'd be at the farm-shop before you could say 'don't buy a tractor'.

I think this sounds like a really great idea. As Igor points out though, the puzzles making up for a mistake would have to deepen atmosphere, enhance the linear narrative or expand the player's understanding of the plot in order to be valid artistically.

My only reservation is in relation to disabling save and load functions. I think this kind of game might be better suited to automatic saving, with the option to restore earlier chapters and re-cap dialogue and cut-scenes. This would have to work better than the auto-save in Atlantis (which sends you back to the start of a chapter or an acton sequence) but I think it could make a game quite exciting.

The player would carve a meandering route across a linear plot with only one shot at every target and no option to 'try-that-again'. They would have knowlege that they couldn't die or get a bad ending, but would not have the security of knowing where they were in relation to the 'correct' path. Isn't this close to how real lives are led?

I think your idea could really add a dash of reality and risk to a straight plot. Excellent!

British schools also don't get sponsored by soft drinks companies, and we don't have our kids pledge allegiance...

Although British (Edit: not Welsh) kids still have to take part in one act of worship a day over here, so America is ahead of us on that front.

EDIT: I know lot of schools don't follow the rule too strictly, but I think it's still floating around the English education system somewhere.

I'm sorry if I've slandered the Welsh. I feel like Anne Robinson and the weakest link both at the same time.

Kidney Dialysis Man:





"He's there when urea-lly need him..."

The alien force is often what drives a plot like this (by invading earth, genrally). Why not turn it on its head and have the humans disrupt the planet/dimension/plane of their observers? It could be quite dramatic if, by degrees it was revealed that the protagonist's investigation and exploration was threatening to the alien species and was the reason for any retaliation.

Hmmm. Are there any non-ficticious works of fantasy???

The war on Saddam?

I hope I don't upset anyone here, but a few thinkers are arguing that there is such a thing as non-fictitous fantasy.

I know it's not quite what you meant, but here's an interesting article called 'welcome to the desert of the real' by Slavoj Zizek. He shows the way the US dealt with an attack upon it's fantasy world - not by acknowledging the truth, but by abandoning it.

http://www.venus.co.uk/weed/current/zizek.htm

Sorry if I went off topic a little there ... Ahem ... fantasy cliches: Heroine with low cut and figure hugging armour which offers little defence and is probably quite chilly to wear.

I can't find much information about strings and I need some help.

I'm using a list box. The list box is object 0 in GUI 3.

I have this line in the script:

ListBoxAdd (3, 0, string message);

EDIT: Thanks! I didn't realise I needed to totally replace 'string message'.

On the enemy front, fantasy/sci-fi villains are all too often:

English,
Intelligent,
Ironically polite,
Theatrical/artistic,
Well read,
Of indeterminate Sexuality,
Wearing black.

I mean, I'm English, polite and wearing all black, but I'm quite nice. George Bush isn't any of those things and he's the most dangerous man on the planet. Let's see some villains who are stupid and brutal, like in real life.

Heroes are always:

American.

The more heroic the character, the more American the accent. Check out the (no longer from Baghdad) Sinbad the Sailor.

The house is well modelled and the models for the trees look excellent, though they might look better smaller - if you compare the size of a leaf to a single pane of glass in the window, it looks a a bit large.

This scene looks very sunny. It'd be great to see it with less saturated colour, dim light dark clouds and diffused shadows - because the impetus to explore the house (and find the wardrobe) comes from a wet day preventing the children from exploring the grounds. A yellow glow from the porch light would then look extra warm and inviting.

I'm not sure if this is any use, it might be too far from your style, but here's a rough example of what I mean:



I hope you don't mind me playing with the image, the rain is just drawn on as an example.

If by

ali

you mean me, then I'm pleased to have helped you, though I can't think what I have done...

...either way, best of luck with your troubles! Bye for now.

That's so lifelike BOYD... eerie.

Julius Caesar:





He's thinking: "What the heck are the Ides of March?"

Hi, I was bored and so I thought I'd try and make a bar or cafe sound, but it just sounds like a cafe filled with bored people rattling cups.

I thought I'd post it anyway because I think it could be used as the basis for a cafe sound, if you decided to make it yourself. It doesn't quite loop properly but with tweaking it could.

http://themonkeyhut.tripod.com/bar.mp3

Clicking this link won't work, but dragging it to the taskbar, or clicking save-as should.