Messages

First, I think you should list the images in a column and not in a row.

Second, the images are indeed scaled to 640 pixels, but sometimes it's the height and sometimes it's the width. Since you claim that you have set the "weight" to 640 pixels it's extra confusing what you have intended to do.
The width of a background isn't extremely important, since it will simply scroll if it exceeds the screen resolution. The height is - unless the background should be vertically scrollable - more important to have constant.
If you settle for 640x400, at least make sure the height stays 400 pixels throughout your images.

And I think you should save the salesman-talk for the GiP board; "cool-ass facts" don't really have a place in an artistic analysis.

As for the photographs; I guess some of them are visually intriguing, although I'm not sure the editing you've done has improved them much. The problem with using photographs instead of handpainted backgrounds is that the demands are much higher. Handpainted backgrounds must be good to work; photos must be excellent, or the whole thing will fall flat.

At least some people have the guts not to be politically correct!

I think Dune the movie still deserves some praise for a fair amount of visual ingenuity and a whole lot of bravery.

Having said that, I really look forward to a new adaptation that might care more about capturing the atmosphere of the novel. And I look forward to seeing proper youths playing the sons of the rivalling families instead of a greased up Sting and a stiff McLahlan in his thirties.

For some reason, the mini-series - or the very little I've seen of it - has disappointed me even more; instead of movie's highly innovative gigeresque steampunk you get the typical horrid, chatty costume-drama with some computer rendered backgrounds and soft days-of-our-lives lightning.

EDIT:
I also must say that save for some few weird choices, the casting of the movie was excellent. Really cool actors in their prime.

EDIT 2:
Wait, I've already talked about the cast before!

If you think Obama will - at the end of the day - benefit from being black I don't think you know your country. I think there's an enormous amount of people who claim they will vote Obama just to be politically correct and then vote Mccain since they still have a streak of prejudice in them.
There's so much latent racism we will never know about.

I think you have a good eye for shapes and lines, and the composition is clean and nice.

My advice would be to use light and shadow as a way to express depth. The scene is pretty flat right now; for instance the table would take a much more 3-dimensional form if you applied more light on the top and let the sides remain darker.

Also mind that a surface that is being lit with a coloured light must still be rendered brighter, even though the light has a hue. The areas around the blue light above the door and the red light on the fridge seem painted rather than illuminated; you need to make them first brighter and then apply just a soft hue.

The foreground; make the silhouette sharp.
And add some texture to the floor, it needs some details.

Over all, good job so far!

I think of this as "the great fanboy myth": The idea that what's wrong with movie adaptations is that they take liberties with the source material, and that everything would be alright if they just put the book/comic/game/TV show on the screen the way it is.

You're misinterpreting me.  I'm not talking about people like Kubrick who had respect for the original and did touch-ups here and there or LOTR, which had some glaring differences I didn't agree with but overall enjoyed the film;

I beg to differ. Kubrick didn't just touch up parts here and there, he made his very own piece of art; it was different and King wasn't too fond of it (which is why he re-made it himself later) but it worked because Kubrick was brilliant and original and King is at best a decent main stream writer.
LOTR is another story in my humble opinion; Jackson didn't have very much of his own artistic agenda; he simply turned it to a story that was easier to follow, more modernised and not so lengthy. LOTR isn't exactly layered or full of messages or symbolism; if you get through all the poetry and the abundant descriptions and the extensive backfill you can enjoy an epic story about good and bad, and that's pretty much it.

I'm all for people being creative with their own creations, but I really do despise people taking creative license with established and loved works, especially when they massively dump over it or miss the point of the book/game entirely.

All good adaptation is original artwork. A book translated to another language is a brand new piece of literature.
No movie can stay perfectly true to a novel. A novel isn't a story waiting to be filmed; we're talking two vastly different media here.

Blade Runner is a superb movie.
Fight Club is a superb movie, and the novel is rather mediocre.
Dune is a graphically interesting but pompous movie not at all true to the novel, which was different in almost every aspect save for its pompousness.

I agree that filmmakers without a genuine interest for the original book/comic/whatever, but who only want to ride on a well established franchise and make quick money are horrible. But it's not the fact that they alter the story that is horrible; it's how they do it.

I think a lot of Americans who supported Bush - or at least not opposed him - and now see the results develop some sort of indifference as a self defense.
"It's the same shit anyway, who cares, nothing matters".

Well, the two democratic canditates who competed with Bush might have been utter bores, but they weren't glaringly incompetent. Bush is now breaking new records in terms of low approval ratings on a weekly basis. He's run both your economy and your global reputation to the bottom and no, history will not prove him right.

And for crying out loud, now you've got the chance; you have a candidate who's young and dedicated, eloquent and intelligent. Don't give us the "same stuff same shit" argument, for it is flawed. Take a step back, open your eyes. Believe in your system. It's not rotten to the core, it can be salvaged.

I'll try - again - to be there, especially since the dates seem to fit me much better this time.

And I'll drink as much or as little alcohol as I find fitting.

Apparently the entertainment industry is immune to stock market fluctuations.

* MrColossal dramatically wipes his brow

PHEEEEWWWWW

For a while there Eric thought he'd taken all those tap dancing classes in vain.

And how much do you get to advertise here?

When it comes to the full length category, quality plays a big part as well.

The time length can best be measured by playing the game in normal pace (without clicking away dialogue or skipping scenes) with a walkthrough. That is, no short cuts but no getting stuck either.
As Ghost said, one hour is a reasonable minimum time for a full length game.

Many games, even professional (read Sierra) tend to increase the playing time by introducing walking deads, and also by letting the character travel back and forth repetiously to perform mundane tasks. Especially if you can't "teleport" or fast-change screens, such methods are very time consuming and also very annoying.

Can you make one of those "better" games and not post until you've done so, please?

Can we quit feeding this atrocious troll now

Smumm; you're simply wrong.

I understand the worry about the public rating being vulnerable to corruption, but the few scumbags that are gonna cheat will do it nevertheless

They can't cheat the cups rating, since it's done by a panel. Game authors cheat through user rating and over-downloading.

only thing that can be done is to hinder them with technical limitations (ie. limiting one vote per IP, one vote per user account.)

Such limitations are already in effect, but cheaters go to great lengths to circumvent them.

But it's not like the AGS panel rating is free from being biased to one way either. We can trust that that they try to do their best, but sometimes their own personal preference differs too much from an average opinion.

The rating panel works transparently and their decisions can be discussed, appealed and reversed. Their job is monitored by moderators.
There can never be perfect neutrality or objectivity, but we have reached a functional compromise.

In the end it's a good thing to have both public and critics rating.

We do have both. We've just chosen not to sort the games by public rating. Which is a good thing for a number of reasons listed already in this thread.

I wish people could read up on previous discussions on users' rating and why they're not reliable.

Game authors, shamefully, have a tendency to pimp their own games by giving them the highest score multiple times, while lowering the score of competitors' games systematically.

Users don't have criteria to follow, their votes cannot be discussed, appealed or reversed.

Even when we only had users' rating, we still didn't sort the games by them, because it just caused problems.

When there is a thread dealing with this exact issue - namely the one you spend most of your post quoting - why on earth start a new thread about it?

You're getting a bit loud, Stan

I dunno, there is this quite annoying girl I know who isn't very bright and bit "blonde", and she keeps mentioning her boyfriend's job all the freaking time. He's a pilot by the way.

But yeah, Manicmatt with his game shop is a decent runner up.

Awesome awesome awesome

Never even heard of this guy before but this is so good. So good.

It's true they can reject you for whatever reason, but at least in Sweden the discrimination laws are pretty strict; if there are reasons to believe that you were denied entrance e.g. because of your skin colour, the establishment is likely to be fined or at least warned.

There have been plenty of such cases in the recent years in my city, immigrants being refused although white people both before and after in line has been let in. I was even a witness once, and I quite bravely inquired the bouncers why the person in question wasn't let in, to which they first replied that he was too drunk (which he wasn't) and then that he had a false ID, which there was no reason to believe, but then I quite un-bravely forgot about it and went inside, not wanting to lose my own right of passage due to bad attitude...

I've been rejected a couple of times due to my appearing too drunk, which is largely because of my sleepy eye lids - I then have to explain in my most sober voice that I suffer from a minor facial imperfection which is not all related to intoxication. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

you play as a guys shadow and the guy gets murdred so you haveto find the killr by slidin under doors and avoiding lamps.

Not bad at all, but I hope you find a proof-reader before releasing this one