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Allright, let the creativity flow again, pick up your paper and pens, ready your keyboard, etc.

Until two weeks from now, all are welcome to contribute with a short story that is less than 5 pages using 12p and single spacing (minimum one page, three pages recommended), and is about what could happen while you construct an AGS-game. Preferably made up.
I guess a supernatural theme is suitable, for instance being physically effected by things in the game.

Also more realistic plots are possible, like somebody who gives his friend a game that, if played well, will lead to some sort of discovery concerning himself or whatever.
I'm gonna be pretty liberal here; it's enough if some of the story's elements is AGS-related, the whole bloody plot needn't be just about.

Thriller, fantasy, comedy, I guess everything can be done.

Just sign up in this thread, and send me the stories when you're finished with them. Whether we want to declare a winner, or just create a nice collection of stories, is up for discussion.

So, dead-line is friday 22:nd.
Good luck.

[When I was a newbie]

As somebody said, we kind of need to solve this little situation, and I thought I could write a little paper on the issue.

What we have here is the case of:
1. Newbies not respecting forum policies
2. Oldies not respecting newbies

On which follows a certain desperation among new people to not be referred to as Newbies, as well as oldies being over-defensive.

Now to start with, this community isn't like most other communities, where you gain status and aquire new titles if you just post alot.
To get the AGS "green card" and be fully respected, it's necessary that you contribute to the community in some way.
If you can't make a game, you need to find something else to do.

This community will collapse if we can't keep a balance between feedback provided and feedback received.

While you are new here, it is understandable that you will crave huge amounts of assistance. Making a game is a big project.

Because of this, people who have been here a long time - let's call them veterans - have most likely provided a lot of assistance, not only to newbies but to eachother in fields they are profficient with.
Many of these get no feedback back, sometimes not even a thank you. I see lots of threads in the technical forum that end after some of the veterans solving the problem. Not even a small note whether it worked or not; not the smallest thank you.

A veteran who has spent some years in this place have experienced thousands of newbies starting their carrear with a "Big project, need artist, send me an email"-thread.

Most moderators will have moved a hundred misplaced threads, locked a hundred inappropriate threads and edited a hundred posts with errors in it.

The techies will have provided thousand lines of sample-scripts, searched through thousand lines of scripts that are not theirs, just to find the faulty script line, and they will have a thousand claims in thank yous that they never recieved.

This community is not a workshop or a collective of game-creators anymore, it has become one big help-desk, one big FAQ.
It's a one-way procedure; newbies demanding help, then leaving without a trace.
As it is now, only one per hundred newbies arrive with a good game under their belt.
As it is now, the best way to make sure nobody reads a thread is to call it "Read this before posting".

so....

Everybody has once been a newbie.

When I was a newbie

I was a newbie in June 2001. I pissed of some people, but since I released my first game the day I joined, I don't think I upset too many people.
  Even though I was older than many other members, even though I considered myself a better artist than some others, a better writer than some others, a better political debater than yet some others, I actually had big respect for the oldies. And they were plenty already.
  Summer 2001 is nothing to speak of. Most big titles were already released. RON had several titles out and the Aaron's Epic journey-thread was running.

  Yahtzee had just left. Spyros posted in threads that were not only technical.
  The chit-chat forum was much bigger than the general forum.
  While working with the engine, you pressed the down-arrow to reach a higher number of hotspot or walkable area.
  It could take days before you got any replies on a thread. Visiting the forums more than once daily would have been ludicrous.

  Nobody considered Chrille the prime game-creator.
  Every newbie wanted to do something in the style of Permanent Daylight.
  Helm had more posts than any other with 3000 something; him and Sylpher had already been members for years, along with Gilbert, Spyros and Cornjob, and of course several people that are not with us anymore.
  Pessi wasn't very good an artist.
  Very few people had met in real life.

Then there came a few newbie-waves. The first one early autumn 2001, when many famous members joined (pardon me if I'm mistaken) - AGA, Evenwolf, Dark Stalkey etc.
Next christmas a new wave.
The whole summer 2002 people joined like never before.
But none of those waves reminded of what we are seing now - people joining and leaving in a pace the likes of which none of us have ever seen.

When I was a newbie, I thought to myself "Yes, I am a newbie. Let's not dwell on that too long. Let's hang around, be as little a nuisance as possible, and release more games."

This is how I did not think:
"Bloody stuck-ups, treating me as a newbie. I've been member of dozens of communities before, I don't deserve this."
And I didn't think like this:
"Hm, I'm being treated like a newbie. Let's post alot to get attention. After a while, they will all be so used to see me, they will treat me like an oldie."

Nowadays, I am a semi-oldie. I have some games under my belt, I have provided lots of support, I have carried out several projects, and I have met more AGS-members in real life than any other. I have many, many very close friends within the community.
But I will always know that there is an inner circle that even I am not a part of, and that's the circle of those who were oldies when I joined the forum.

It's the way of the forum.  

Anyhow
Now we have sub-groups, branches of the main community, hords of anonymous faces and new avatars looking back at us as we browse the forums. A forum of strangers, all yearning for recognition, all craving attention, all wanting to be veterans.

As DG stated in a certain - allready infamous - thread; recognition is not about attention or number of posts, it's about of what you have achieved and contributed with to the community.
Secondly, if you really are working on a good game, that would consume time enough to heavily reduce your posting here.

Once, someone said that the best way to start working on your project is to say fare-well to the community, at least for a while.

We were all once newbies, and only time and efforts brought us out of it.
You must accept it. And you must show respect to the veterans, because they built this place.

No, newbies don't have many rights, sadly. No, they can't speak as freely as an oldie, and if there is a fight, the oldie will have the sympathies.
Yes, perhaps newbies are lawless.
Don't cry; this forum is much more newbie-friendly than most other forums out there. This forum is on the contrary rather socialistic.
Your only way out is by work, not by noise. By contributions, not by posts.

You will also be a veteran sooner or later, but in the meanwhile, post less and work more.

Or at least, post less.

My sick mind spawned a weird idea last night.

Let's have an entire day where everything is flipped...people changing their names, trying to act opposite to their normal behaviour, posting in the wrong forums, everybody rants on CJ but praises Kikme, Mods releases games, Jimi stops posting etc etc.

This day could be this Sunday (July 13:th), counting forum-time. Of course, all posts this day are deleted afterwards to save bandwidth.

I don't know, is it just too messy, or is it a good way to release some energy and frustration, and an opportunity to be really wacky?

Don't know if this is already implemented, since I'm pretty behind when it comes to the updates and newest technical stuff, but as far as I know, there is no function that triggers when any character is on the region - or hotspot - just the player...

wouldn't it be very handy to make this available for other characters as well?

This is pretty technical stuff, but hey...

Anyhow, I've always been impressed by the system in Lure of the Temptress, where characters are walking around the settings all by themselves.

From Revolution Games' homepage, they comment on it as follows;

From this came the Virtual Theatre engine. VT allowed in-game characters to wander around the gameworld indepently of each other, living their own lives and doing their own thing. Another feature allowed the player to give direct orders to Helper characters - in this case Ratpouch - who would then go off to perform the task

AGS is basicly another deal...as the player exits a certain room, no scripts can be run in that room anymore.
Will we ever get there, or are the engines so fundamentally different that it's simply not possible?

Yes, it's me, live from Malta. After they awarded the swedish song in eurovision with the highest score, I though I'd better go there and thank them personally.
Well, not really.
Anyhow, I'm here until wednesday, but you know how hard it is to too keep away from the forums more than a couple of days.

I'm also planning for Mittens and I promise to send the details to Mods as I return. Nothing new, except my sister promised to bring her friends and come by on the wednesday, so that we can toss up a decent party. It was her idea, and I have no idea what made her take that initiative.

I know it's my turn to write on the writing project, but I'll take care of that next week.

So, I hope everything is well with you and that everything runs smoothly when I'm not there to look after you.
                                   Cheers

Just a report from the swedish night-life, not necessarily interesting.
I don't know whether it's fun or sad that most of my nights out look like this.

I worked until nine pm yesterday, and went directly to a birthday party, although I have this big schoolproject to hand in tomorrow and am going to work all day today. Me and time just don't cooperate that well.
I met with my friend, and as it got late we decided to go downtown, and meet with my sister Amanda and her friends instead. The rest of the birthday people were boring and just  went home, except for a french guy who accompanied em and my friend Tobias.
So we met with my sister and her friends, among them Matilda, with whom Tobias has some sort of open relationship, which all is pretty weird.
They also left their boring friends except for one other girl, Sofia. The six of us went for a good disco.
In a local park, my sister thought it would be fun to push Tobias and Matilda in the fountain, so I helped her carry out this project. It started out as a joke, but ended in Tobias and Matilda actually being in the water, soaked and a bit suprised.
I couldn't stop laughing. But they deserved it, with this open relationship and all.
They went home, and the remaining four went to the disco.

In the line to the disco, my sister suddenly had some ache in her stomach, so she and Sofia had to split. I was left with this french guy whom I didn't know, but we were both
drunk and enjoying the exciting twists of the night so far.

Anyhow, he rapidly got more drunk and turned out to be that stupid kind of dancer who goes for sexual exhibitionism instead of fine-feathered manners like me while dancing.

Apparently he was good-looking, because a variety of chicks surrounded him and seemed happy with that.

At a pillar beside the dance-floor stood a cute girl all alone, so I approached her with the intention of picking her up, more or less. As I started talking to her, she said:
"Trying to pick me up? Allright, you've got three chances to say something I will remember tomorrow."

Although this was a weird thing to do, I was challenged and accepted it. Considering myself pretty witty in these situations, I actually thought I could do it.
But I was completely dumbfounded, and couldn't come up with anything good at all. My first attempt was some sort of parody of the regular cliché lines, like do you often go here or something. I don't remember exactly what I said.
She just said "You've got two more chances".
I don't know what my second attempt was, but it failed again, and here I think I started laughing about how silly the situation was and that she was actually a real bitch, but it was a fun game, so I made a third attempt which resulted in her just leaving while I looked in the ceiling trying to come up with something.

We went home, and since this dumb french guy didn't know where he - or rather the girl with whom he was staying - lived, he had to follow me home and sleep in my room. I actually concidered just running while he was taking a leak, but I was worried I might meet him again.

So here I am today, stupidly hung over, soon going to work where I will spend the whole day changing dipers on old senile smelly people. Then I will spend the whole night writing on my project, even though my student home is having a house party tonight.
I can't call my friend because supposedly his mobile phone broke in the water.

Perhaps the chick in the disco actually does remember me today, how silly I was. At least that's something.

I'm running a face location with the mouse cursor as the position.
I drew eight loops, four diagonals, but these are not used. Am I doing something wrong, or will FaceLocation only accept the four "basic" loops?

Problem # 1:
Whenever I use a hotspot with an "any click"-interaction,
it only reacts to right-clicks.
I have fiddled alot with the on_click functions, so not much is left of the original settings. Left-click is assigned to walk to, right click look at.

Problem # 2:
Whenever the character uses an inventory item on something, after the script "releases" her, she instantly walks to a seemingly arbitrary location in the room. If I have a movecharacterblocking, the moment that function is over, she takes some steps away in another direction.

Any ideas?

Yes, in accordance to forum tradition, the annual debate-competition is once again cancelled.
The slow voting-process post-poned the contest to a point where I now simply don't have time to run it (you should see my schedule this week).

I thank all the competitors, it's always fascinating to see how serious and eloquate my fellow ags:ers actually can be when it comes to it...some of the debates really impressed me. I hope this sensible and mature atmosphere will spread to the other boards and stay there for a while.
Scid and Unilin's mocking duel really made me laugh out loud, so I'm sad that it won't go on anymore.

So, thanks, and sorry. Next year will be much better.
Next year...

Just plain mocking, must rhyme somehow (ABAB is not necessary anymore, any kind of verse meter is alowed).
Minimum 4 lines, maximum 12.

Unilin starts.

[Death penalty is morally wrong]

The topic is
Death penalty is morally wrong

A good old topic.
I'm sorry for the unfair team setting here, but I couldn't really change it this late.

Nellie is against, and gets the first post.

[Heterosexuality is just a social convention. Bisexuality is the natural way.]

The topic is:

Heterosexuality is just a social convention. Bisexuality is the natural way.

Plasticman and Leksutin agree, and get the first post

[These boards would gain from a 18-years old age limit]

Sorry for the delay, something came up today.
Anyway, here's a controversial topic for you:

These boards would gain from a 18-years old age limit

Would they? Netgraph and Esseb thinks so.
Remixor and Ben don't, and they get the first post.

[Multi-culture is bad for the society]

Topic:
Multi-culture is bad for the society

Short and simple.
Jimi & Shattered is pro
Unilin & MrPanda get the first post

go for it

edit: Sorry, Panda, I'm been killing too many braincells lately

[Corporal punishment is an important part of the raising of a child.]

The subject is:
Corporal punishment is an important part of the raising of a child.

Qucikstrike and LGM are pro
Scid and Barcik get the first post

Go!

This is a bit spammy, and probably not even legal, but I just wanted to remind you all that you can head over to the Competition forum and vote for your favourite debators.
As if you'd care.
As if DG and Leks wouldn't lock this thread or just remove it.

[Charity TV has a contra-productive effect]

Match one has this subject:

Charity TV has a contra-productive effect

All the grand TV-shows that collect money to starving children in Africa etc, will in the long run only make the situation worse

Helm and Mitar support this theory, Fuzzpils and Rabbitwithfangs are con, and get the first post.

Let the debating commence.

Update 9/8/03 - Allright, the Sibylla demo is now updated, featuring the new interface, music (thank you chrille) and more animations, as well as some bugs fixed. I also skipped the intro, since it was pretty lengthy without the load-function.

http://www.esseb.com/andail/sibdemo.zip

for more screenshots, visit my homepage.
I would also like to take the opportunity to advertise for a second artist, who would deal with touching up and/or creating new backgrounds and characters.

[What should you Not post in this forum?]

This is the critics lounge, the place where you can show your art, music and writings to other people, and in return look at their creations.
Please pay respect to the rules in this post to help create a better forum.

What should you Not post in this forum?
* Questions regarding scripting or any other technical issue
* A bug-report
they go to AGS Technical

* A question asking if the adventure game genre really is dead
* A link to your new AGS-games-collection page
it will all go here AGS Talk and Chat Forum

* An introduction to yourself, since you are new
* A reminder that a new episode of Friends is on TV tonight
* Your latest joke about Dutchmen
It will go here: General Discussion

* Abusive language
* Critique that isn't constructive in any way, like "Oh, that sux, man"
That won't go anywhere.

Some general recommendations:
* Consider if you actually need criticism. Some people seem to jot down just anything, publish it here and expect a step-by-step tutorial on how to improve it. You can do much of the c&c by yourself! You can put your piece aside for some time, then return to it and see if you can improve it on your own. Don't rush to seek other people's opinions before you have given it a serious, sincere attempt yourself. We're not your private tutors!
* Only publish .GIF or .PNG images here.  .BMP is too bloated and .JPG's have severe artifacting in most cases.
* Check that your links really work. Click the Help button if you don't know how to show your images.
* Try to elaborate any criticism. It's okay to write "Well done, keep up the good work", but even better if you try to tell what is actually good (and what is not).
* When you upload an image, keep in mind that people might want to have a go at editing it for you. That's just a more visual way of explaining how you could improve the image, and is not an attempt to steal your artwork or destroy it. This forum is meant to be a training ground, and not your personal gallery.
* When editing a picture for somebody, try to keep true to the original in terms of atmosphere and general style. You don't want to make a completely new picture, you want to improve the existing one.
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* Please remember that as much as people will enjoy commenting on your productions, they will also appreciate that you comment on theirs. Try to keep a balance between publishing material and reply to other people's threads.
* Note! Keep the discussions appropriate and related to the displayed material. We already have a chit-chat forum, so don't get too chatty. Irrelevant posts may be removed without warning.

Adult material regulation  
You are allowed to publish adult material to a certain extent if you write a warning in the subject field. This is not just because we're a bunch of dried up puritans who think your childhood is ruined if you watch porn, but because we want to avoid situations where our fellow members browse at work, and open a picture whose content could get him fired.

The following rules pertain to the Critics Lounge but may appear in other forums, so read all forum-specific rules before posting to be sure!

1. Unnecessarily explicit and tasteless scenes of sex or nudity. Keep it artistic.
2. Photographs (real people) with explicit nudity, or extreme gore.
3. Material that can be provokative towards a certain ethnic group or gender.
4. Necroposting, or the revival of old threads, is highly discouraged.  Posts left more than two weeks without a reply should be left alone unless you are the original poster.  If you need to ask the original poster something or suggest something, send them a PM and encourage them to revive the thread.
5.  Double posting is to be avoided unless a few days have passed without a reply, otherwise edit your post and add the appropriate new information/comments.  This helps condense your comments and keep the thread as uncluttered as possible. 




Otherwise, have a nice day and enjoy all the wonderful art and music and inspiring ideas that pass through this forum daily