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Fellow members.
The games database will soon offer more features. Along with more classifications and genres, there will also be new ratings, carried out by an "expert" panel. The old users' ratings will still be there.

We now need people for this panel. They will be handpicked from the applicants by CJ and his moderators and work anonymously on a special board, where they will rate all AGS games according to guidelines in official documents.
The members of the panel will rotate each month, kicking out the oldest member and inviting a new one. After half a year, the entire panel will have been changed.

In order to apply for this very special position, you need to meet the following criteria:

1. You must be at least 18 years old.
2. You must have been an active member of the community for 2 years or longer.
3. You must not be known to misbehave or break forum policies.
4. You must have played most games in the database, and preferably all the canonical titles.
5. You must be prepared to spend quite a few hours per week playing and rating games. Lots of spare time is essential.

If you meet the criteria and wish to apply, PM member Application (below). Applying does not mean you automatically get picked. Only apply once. If you get selected, someone will PM you. This procedure will begin after a while, to allow plenty of applications.

Thank you.

This is a relatively short game, featuring a young diplomate sent to solve some problems on one of the admiral's ship.
It features some language-based puzzles as well as some more traditional ag-puzzles and hopefully a laugh or two.



Visit download page here.

Unpack all the files into one folder, then open 'capricorn.exe'.

This is a short, relatively rushed game which was constructed as a part of my examination project. It's meant to have a strong pedagogical aspect.
The game is finished, but too short and conceptual to fit the completed games' section. It should still provide some amusing gameplay, I hope.




Download here!

I would be thankful for feedback regarding the game's difficulty and playing time. Also, since this will be judged heavily on its language, such reviewing would also be appreciated.

I'm just about to start working on the examination project for my teaching degree.
My goal is to investigate the usage of computer games/programs in the English-teaching classroom, and if possible design my own pedagogical game.

I think people have had similar projects before. Any thoughts on this? Are you familiar with any ongoing research when it comes to computer-aided teaching? Do you use any programs/games in school? Do they work well, and if they don't, what improvements would you like to see?
What would the ultimate 'edutainment' software look like?

Thoughts and opinions are appreciated

Demo available here:
http://www.andail.com/capricorn.rar

[YOUR DAILY SONG TIP THREAD]

With all these loose music threads tossed out sporadically on the board, I thought we could organise it a bit.
So I present to you

YOUR DAILY SONG TIP THREAD

* You pick a song which you've listen to recently (though not necessarily for the first time), a song that the mainstream audience might not be already too familiar with.  Preferably, it should be something you came over by chance. A serendipity discovery.
* It doesn't have to be your favourite song, or belong to your favourite genre etc, so don't be affraid to post something non-representative. The only requirement is that you can write something personal about it, if it affected you in a good or bad way, etc.
* Write a little comment about it, how you discovered it and, (optional) some fun fact.
* You may post in this thread max once per day. You may only post in this thread if you can contribute with a song! If you wish to comment on a previous poster, separate the feedback from your own song with a horizontal rule [ hr ].
Posts in this thread that don't provide a Daily Song Tip will be removed!

Example:

Song: Nosebleed Section, by Hilltop Hoods (available on Youtube, albeit with a non-original video)
Comment: Definitely not my typical kind of music. Very corny, of all things Australian hip-hop! But this song is simply so corny it's good. Made me all giddy inside. Apparently, they are the shit in the Aussie hip-hop scene.
How I discovered it: My girlfriend played an old CD last night which she had got as a present during her stay in Australia, long time ago.  We listened to the song several times and giggled over it.
Fun fact: The sampled song is Melanie Safka's "People in the front row", which I, to my great satisfaction, reckognised immediately.

Now you go ahead! You can write more lengthy than I did, or half as long if you wish.

Well some of you know that I tend to draw my backgrounds rather sloppily. I wonder if this is enough for a "good" quality AGS game, or if you would expect more cleaned up backgrounds?

Imagine a few characters and some sporadic objects.

The process of cleaning up is so lengthy that I tend to stop working on my bg's roughly at this stage.
Feel free to give advice on how I can improve it in any direction, too

http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/learning.now/2007/01/teacher_faces_40year_prison_se.html

40 years in prison for working with a computer that suddenly showed pornographic pop-ups in a class room

I mean, god damn, 40 years! It's hilarious. Now, I can't possibly believe that she will actually   be sentenced to that, but the mind boggles...

I sat with this one last night and today instead of preparing my lesson for tomorrow as I ought to be doing.

I wanted to create something old-school, like a comic book cover illustration or something, with a handpainted feeling.
Something corny.
Latest (scroll down for full version):

Original:



Still not done, but I'm posting it here to get some ideas on how to go on with it from here. There are probably heaps of anatomy issues, as I couldn't be bother to search for good reference photos. Also, the imperfection of pure freehand sort of fitted the style, in a way. Maybe.

An email I got a few days ago. First read that it's non-comissioned work, then check the link...tempting isn't it?

How's it going there?  Thought I'd send over an email to you since I saw your nice artwork on epilogue.net.   Was wondering if you'd like to use me as a reference and use my face in a future painting?  If you were able to and could make the face in the illustration look like me then I'm also working on my 3rd book that should be published all in good time …  If this piece that you'd do of me comes out good , I'd like to publish it in the book.

Let me know if you want to take on the task.. Its non-commission but you'd get your work and name in my book that will be sold across America.

Jason Baca

http://www.jasonbaca.com

I can be a star!!

Got a neat idea for a new activity or competition? Post a description of it here, and await approval from the moderators.
Check here http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=5477.0 to check whether your concept does not already exist, or is currently resting.

Include in your post:
* Title of activity
* A thorough description of its concept and purpose (educational or entertaining?)
* Periodicity (how long each round will be and how often it will occur)
* Type of competition: Will there be a winner, who will elect the winner (if there is a vote, how long will voting go on)
* Thread administrator: Will the activity/competition be maintained by the winner of the previous round, or by the same person every time?

You can also post here if you have comments or suggestions regarding the rules of already existing competitions or activities.

There have been debates over the efficiency of our sticky threads in this forum, the Offer your Services and Recruit a team.
Maybe a thread isn't the perfect form for this kind of activity? Maybe some sort of noticeboard, where people will update their "adds" and edit or remove them accordingly.

The site could have two major departments; "Recruitment" and "Offer service". Each department will be further divided into areas such as Sprites, Backgrounds, Sound, Programming etc, which can be easily searched and browsed.
Every advertiser must update their adds regularly, or they will disappear. This will prevent lots of old junk.

The problems with the current thread-based system are:
* They are rarely browsed; the linear order makes it unlikely that people pay attention to older posts, even if they are still relevant.
* They aren't sorted by the field of activity, nor by workload or time-span.
* They cannot be easily edited, updated or removed
* Old posts are not automatically removed (the new system could update the archive e.g. every month).

Any ideas, thoughts?

What is it with the world today and cancer?
Last year, both my cousin's mother (my cousin was aged 12) and my best friend's mother died in cancer. Now my girlfriend's mother is dying from a brain tumor, deteriorating rapidly out of medical reach.
This is partly why I'm leaving Brighton sooner than I first planned - I'll be out on Thursday this week. Hopefully my thesis won't need any further adjustments. Unfortunately, my girlfriend had loads of stuff, papers and exams, which she just had to skip.

Is it the radiation? The mobil networks? All the chemical shit we cram into our food these days? Is it just here?
Three young mothers, needed and beloved.

[top]

My time here is coming to an end, as I today handed in my final 6000 words thesis. If anybody has any questions regarding mythological references in the poetry of Keats, just let me know.

Here's my top/bottom-five lists about Brighton.
top
1. Clubs. Just great and they are plenty. The music is usually ace.
2. Campus. Good teachers, seminars, lectures and tutors.
3. Pubs. You can play pool and darts and destroy your liver any day of the week.
4. Wheather. Not good anymore, but it was warm and nice during the winter/early spring. Now it's SHIT.
5. Clothes, shops. Nice cool shopping areas with lots of junk.

Bottom ten
1. House insulation. Heard of this? This is when you make sure there are no one-inch gaps between the window/door and the wall, to prevent sub-zero stormwinds from entering your home.
2. Carpets. I understand that this is to address the issue of terribly cold floors due to bad insulation. I'm talking these all-floor carpets which cover the floor in every damn room and have collected dust and dirt during the last two centuries.
3. Chav kids. They come out of the woodwork where I live. You see them in gangs, with hoods and sneakers and trainers, smooking, shouting. Everywhere are 17-year-old mothers with their poorly clothed kids and prams full of snacks and candy. Also, did you know that the funniest thing ever you can do is to scream in somebody's ear in order to scare them. This is the main occupation of white trash in Brighton. They just love to scream at you.
4. Limos. Limos are the shit in Brighton. They are ridiculously long, pink and probably very cheap. One thing you can be sure about is that they never contain any celebreties. Just chav kids, and they lean out through every window and whoop.
5. Buses. Campus-buses are rumoured to come by every 6:th minute, but since a) they manage to somehow come in groups, leaving great gaps in between, and anyway what good are three buses in a row? Only one is necessary, b) the drivers just LOVE to stop and chat every single time they spot another driver. I mean, busdrivers can hardly experience so much during a day to warrant a ten-minute conversation every darn stop.
Also, they drive to fast and wobble.

Bob Dylan's birthday is on May 24:th, so I hereby announce a music competition to honour this great artist.

So pick a song and make your own cover of it. It can be the traditional singer songwriter style or something more experimental, or just a midi-track.

The deadline is may 24:th. You have to host your own files (or at least don't ask me for webspace).
Please include in your post title, year and album of the original song. It would be cool if you made up a band/artist alias for this competition to sign your contributions with.

Good luck!

Just sketched this up as a concept for a tattoo for a friend of mine.
It is based on the Vitruvian Man by DaVinci, only in top-down perspective and a bit more sketchy.



Any c&c? If it gets to be a tattoo, I'll clean it up a bit, thicken the outlines etc.

[advice]

(Sorry if this has been discussed or covered before.)

These are some thoughts about puzzles in relation to locations. The way I see it, there are two main structures when it comes to game worlds, and these structures pretty much govern the way inventories are gathered and used and puzzles are solved.

The first model is the Monkey Island-model, where practically all locations can be re-visited and where access to them is granted via an overview map or similar. By acquiring new inventory items, puzzles in old locations can be solved, new dialogue options appear and characters/items can be gathered.

The second model is the Space Quest-model, where most locations are linked in a straight chain, and follow the plot in a way that seldom allows for returning to old locations. Most puzzles - and the equipment necessary for solving them - are confined to one or two rooms.

In the first model, which in literary terms could be referred to as the syntactic model, there need never be walking dead situations, since there is always a point of return, and parallell puzzles can be solved simultaneously.

The second model would consequently be called the paratactic model, since the majority of puzzles and locations follow eachother in a simple chronological order. The main objective is often to just continue to another location. Space Quest games are for instance mostly about progressing/escaping through a series of locations.

In terms of narration, for a plot to progress in an exciting and non-humourous way, it's hard to construct a game based on too much syntactic gameplay. The ability to return to a location previously escaped (like a cell or a place where peril or extreme hardship has been overcome), especially if this location is poorly altered to the changes in the plot, takes away from the serious atmosphere, and destroys the feeling of relief of having escaped there and survived.

In a grand epic game where the geographical locations change a lot (like a long journey) this model is simply impossible. ("Yay, I made it to the shoores of The Lost Island of Forgotten Dragons. - But wait, I need to get back to my kitchen thirty screens ago and bring the bottle opener in order to solve the next puzzle").

So this is where I need your advice. How do I construct good inventory-based puzzles if most locations can't be re-visited, and I wish to avoid dead ends?

A few options:
* The inventory items necessary for future puzzles are automatically acquired after having solved earlier puzzles (left-over items).
* Leaving a certain area is impossible until all items are acquired. This solution is illogical. Why pick up items that are seemingly useless at the moment? And how do I justify the inability to leave the area?
* Puzzles only involve items that can be gathered in the immediate neighbourhood. This model is rather boring, since the gameplay will be pretty straightforward and simple.

Any thoughts/experiences you wish to share?

[Only]

For quite some time now, the overall attitude here at the CL has grown a bit tiresome. The Rules-sticky is old and people probably don't read it, so here's a reminder.

So:

* Only publish material if you think you can handle potential criticism!
People publish pictures on which they have spent less than two minutes of work, then become upset when they don't agree with the c&c.
* If you can't improve your material accordingly, don't re-post old stuff! Refine or quit! Bumping is a sin!
* Don't hijack threads! It's bad in gen-gen, but in CL it's a disaster of disrespect. If you can't help the original poster, don't reply!
* The age limit applies here too! Below 16? You might wanna hang around and just lurk for a while. You don't need to start your own threads to learn!

Thank you.

Got some creativity flowing and tossed up a few backgrounds for a possible new game.



It's a little dark perhaps, since my monitor always shows stuff too brightly. It's drawn in 320x200, so it appears a bit smeared now.
Opinions?

I had no idea what this movie was about when I went to see it, but some friend had read the comic and wanted to give it a shot.
I expected another repetitious comic-book hollywood-ization, and was immediately disappointed after V's speech (the V-monologue) some minutes into the movie.

Then it just kept getting better, and in the end I considered it a very refreshing concept, altogether a brand new movie experience compared to the countless Marvel mainstream movies they spit out on regular basis.

I give it 7 out of 10. It was unrealistic and a tad dramatic, but the message was relevant and the acting superb, and the toned-down effects and settings (reminiscent of A Clockword Orange) were atmospheric and quite a relief after the Matrix extravagance.

Lately we've seen like a million superhero movies in my house, since one of my house mates owns dvd's of cosmic quantities. Most of them have been of inferior quality, although I liked a few a lot.

So I have pondered much "what would my special superpower be?"
It shouldn't be too vastly omnipotent, like Superman's powers, preferably something more subtle yet very useful, maybe something you're already good at but greatly amplified.

Ideas?