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[Project Crowd-venture!]

Awesome, awesome, awesome!  All these contributions (including the writing I've received so far) are top notch: how do you guys do this stuff so quickly?  At any rate, we're quickly getting close to being able to start some actual production.  If anyone feels that they can spare an hour to improve the main character sprite or the background style please feel free.  Also I'm wondering if there is a talented writer/editor who would like to spend an hour attempting to merge the main plot details of our writers into something resembling a coherent script (note: does not have to be actually coherent, just resembling coherent).

In other news TomatoesInTheHead has volunteered (or was volunteered, I can't remember....) to be our title guy.  He has come up with a working title: Project Crowd-venture!  So that's what we'll call it until he has seen enough of the actual plot to start coming up with actual titles.  I expect he'll come up with an hour's worth and we'll just have all the participants vote on them to determine the actual title. 

   I would also like to say that I'm very happy with how many people have volunteered in such a short period of time.  About 15% of our estimated required labour force volunteered in just the last 2 days, without so much as a screenshot or a confirmed plot!  I'm sure once we can cobble together a couple of screenshots to start a GiP thread and show actual progress we'll have volunteers stepping over each other to participate.

[one hour]

When you originally spoke of it, I thought you meant simultaneous man-hours, which would have been more troublesome (and probably more hilarious) to organise. The way you've got it now, it seems that one person would have to do one bit in the chain while the others in that chain wait for it to become their turn.

For experimental purposes we've had to compromise the simultaneous aspect of it, it's true.  But there will be many chains -are already many chains, I should say -in progress.  Trust me: from your point of view on the ground the fog of war will be thick indeed, so it might as well be simultaneous.  The payoff (the finished game), however, will take several weeks to assemble, so alas there won't be the "instant" gratification this time around.  Maybe if we swarmed a pre-existing project and remade it we could do it all simultaneously, but that would cut down on the opportunity for creative discovery which I'm really looking forward to.  If you have any ideas how we can practically speed things up, I'd love to hear them.

I think room scripting could be started in parallel to all the graphical stuff for rooms: as soon as you know what exits and objects etc. there are, you can script it with some dummy sprites. When the room is finished, the script can be polished in terms of coordiantes, walkable areas etc.

Yes, I think we can have most of the rooms going at the same time, once their usage has been nailed down.  You are correct that much of the project is dependent on plot writing.  It might be fun to try the writing at the end -a challenge to make a bunch of seemingly unrelated actions make sense! - but I think a lot of contributors would get frustrated drawing/scripting/dialog writing into the void.  A few sentences of guidelines can be very helpful, and I'm having a hard time thinking of how we'd get there without at least some writing first.

Well, I'm in for it (obvious from my "So when are you going to start this?" remark). Just to be sure: each of us will only be doing one hour of work right?

That isn't a easy pick but I'm up for writing, music or programming. From my experience with Hourgames I should point out that putting the game together takes an equal amount of time as producing the resources; I guess anyone that is familiar with how AGS works but does not have an obvious talent should enter for the sprite importing, walkables/hotspots importing and interaction writing tasks. Maybe for each room a person that includes finished stuff as it comes, and also codes the interactions. When the room is finished it can be saved as .crm and send to someone who wraps the total game.
The same could be done for characters, they can be saved as an AGS character file. And GUI's could also be stored as a file. That only leaves puzzles, these can not be stored, unless the are contained as a separate room each. Well code by contract could be used: the puzzle designer tell the program what functionality he needs and the programmers write the functions and send in the code as script files.

Indeed a great deal can be done separately without the cumbersome necessity of one large file being transfered back and forth (a nightmare for version control or a huge bottleneck).  I will try to have rooms and characters developed as separate files so that the maximum number of people can be working simultaneously.  I wasn't aware that separate GUI files could be created, but we might as well experiment with that as well (although a conventional GUI is probably a better idea for such a short project with so many different minds working on it).  Using separate script files is also a good idea: indeed, experienced coders might be asked just to write the code for each puzzle "in theory", and then it can be adapted and implemented by one mind very quickly.  Definitely something to ponder.

Thanks to everyone who has volunteered so far, and to all of you who have spared time to put some thought into how a project like this might work.  The more interest the better!  We're still looking for an art director -just one hour writing up some very vague stylistic guidelines and maybe doing an example sketch or two.  It's a remarkably small investment of time to put your stylistic stamp on game!

I told you so! 

Well, I was goaded into it, wasn't I?

Upon re-reading my above post I notice I've not explained very well how I envisage the swarm organizing itself, so I'll try to rectify that here:

   To start the project we need a basic idea, like the one I suggested above.  From there we need plot ideas, a sprite designer and an art director (all described in my last post) to each put in one hour creating what essentially amounts to a basic game design document.  Once those tasks are complete, more swarm members can contribute their hour of effort as informed by the work of the tier before them: background artists use plot, character scale and loose design guidelines to draw rooms, for example, and animators draw actions necessary to the plot.  Based on their work more can move forward, etc., until the bulk of the project is done.  Then the pyramid begins to shrink as editors bring it all together.  At no point does one mind control how the game will develop: it will be an organic venture that will depend on the development instincts of each swarm member at each stage -only the rough guidance of the plot outline and art style will be provided.  So for example an animator might have one hour to make the main character sprite reach out to grab something.  He/she would be provided with the main character sprite from the previous stage.  It would then be entirely up to the animator to decide what the reaching might look like.  Or another example: the plot calls for a secondary character.  A sprite designer would be given the plot outline for the character and the main character basic sprite for scaling/style guidance, and the rest would be left up to him/her.  Again: program a simple puzzle.  The programmer would be given the game files (by that point) and the plot outline, and any relevant variable information.  Then he simply scripts the result and communicates variables for the next programmer to use.

Maybe this works better visually:

I concede that someone -probably me- is going to have to spend several hours breaking work down into manageable chunks and polishing the game in the end (especially if there are bugs it doesn't make any sense for new people to try to figure the whole script out).  But I contend that the vast majority of the work for this project can be done in one hour chunks by autonomous agents with minimal direction.  That is the experimental part, though.

Overall, I envisage the experiment running to a MAGS game length, eating up something like 60 man hours (the vast bulk of which would be one-hour contributions).  There won't be anything radical in terms of gameplay that would require a lot of focus of one mind.  Just a simple point & click.

Anyway, I notice everyone got awfully quiet when this became less a theoretical discussion and more of an actual experiment (well, except for Radiant.... ).  Thoughts?  Suggestions?  Volunteers?

[ONE HOUR (1)]

Tired of slaving endlessly on your game and getting nowhere?  Yearning for instant game-making gratification?  Then this project is definitely for you!

Based on the discussion in this thread, a small but curious band of AGSers is undertaking an experiment in swarm development.  Basically, the idea is that many AGSers contribute just ONE HOUR (1) of their time to the project, resulting in a game that is so much more than the sum of its constituent contributions.  Theoretically we were playing with the notion of this happening mostly simultaneously, but as an experiment in feasibility we're going to spread it out over a couple of weeks to find out a) what kind of project can result from a very loose collaboration and b) where the real kinks in the process crop up, so that we can discuss how to streamline them.  To get to the point, we're looking for AGSers who have ONE HOUR (1) to contribute to this experiment in collective game-making.

This is just a SMALL experiment: the result will no doubt be.... interesting.  But we'll release it nonetheless.  The result will be freeware, of course, but all contributors will be credited.  Remember just spending ONE HOUR working on this project will make you a part of the biggest team in AGS history!

  [Direct Quote from the Swarm Development Thread] So to get the ball rolling I'm going to create a character.  He's a vampire, for no better reason than people want more vampire games to play.  No, he's a ROBOT vampire!  That would be cool.  He's some sort of army experiment that brings him back to his (human) senses, only now he is doomed to obsess over (as well as hunt down and destroy) his lost love, a sexy vixen who seduced him into becoming a vampire in the first place.  They can never be together now, but there's this platonic love thing (at least from his end).  To make things a little disorienting, maybe he's just woken up after the cyborg operation (thus accounting for weird perception difficulties as he moves between rooms with different styles).  Here I leave the torch, since no doubt I will sink well over an hour stitching together contributions, but from here in I want all contributors to exercise enough discipline to only spend ONE HOUR on the project. [/swarm thread quote]

Feel like stringing together a couple words or animating an arm for us?  PM me!

What do we need urgently?

Writers (approximately 3)
Sprite designer (1 right away)
Art Director (exactly 1)
Recruiters (people who can invest an hour getting other people on board!)
-------

What do we need down the road (over the next couple of weeks)?

Background artists
Texture people
Light & Shaders
Object Artists
More Sprite Designers
Animators
Sprite Importers (hey, it's only an hour!)
Dialog Writers
Interaction Writers
Editors
Proofreaders
Code Director
Coders
Sound Dudes
Musicians
GUI Designer
Inventory Designers
Producer
Director
Make up Artist
Marketer
Yes Men
Nay Sayers
Title Guy
Effects Artist/Coder
Custodial Staff
First Aid Responders
Assistant Crack Whores
Security
Back Room Power Broker
Professional Nagger
Voice Actors

...And so much more!  Basically if you've ever done ANYTHING with AGS, released or otherwise, I'm sure you have the skills to join the team.  Remember there is MINIMAL TIME COMMITMENT: the whole idea is that we spread the workload as much as possible.  You need only commit ONE HOUR!  Post in the original thread if you want more information about the project, or PM me if you would like to contribute.

**The Swarm reserves the right to modify or adapt all content submitted in order to fit in with other work submitted by the collective.  Contributors are warned that no contribution is completely safe from adulteration by another contributor.

So when are you going to start this?

   Alright, fine, let's go through an exercise and see how it turns out.  The best case scenario is that we'll change game making forever, and the worse case scenario is that Radiant will end up saying "I told you so!"  In all likelihood we'll end up somewhere in the middle: maybe he'll just say "I told you....", I don't know.  

   So to get the ball rolling I'm going to create a character.  He's a vampire, for no better reason than people want more vampire games to play.  No, he's a ROBOT vampire!  That would be cool.  He's some sort of army experiment that brings him back to his (human) senses, only now he is doomed to obsess over (as well as hunt down and destroy) his lost love, a sexy vixen who seduced him into becoming a vampire in the first place.  They can never be together now, but there's this platonic love thing (at least from his end).  To make things a little disorienting, maybe he's just woken up after the cyborg operation (thus accounting for weird perception difficulties as he moves between rooms with different styles).  Here I leave the torch, since no doubt I will sink well over an hour stitching together contributions, but from here in I want all contributors to exercise enough discipline to only spend ONE HOUR on the project.

   What I am looking for now:

   1) Sprite designer for the main character.  Resolution will be 320x200 to minimize effort, and characters should take up about 25% of this space (so roughly 50 pixels, give or take).  Design means draw forward and side shot (back too, if possible given time constraints).  Something easy to animate would be a good idea, but we'll work with what we get.

   2) Writers, approximately 3.  I need a very BASIC plot and very quick puzzle ideas.  Thinking up some special "power" for the robot vampire would be helpful -otherwise it would be a waste to have such a cool main character.  Maybe he can fly, or see infrared or slow down time or something.  Plot can lead to a suspenseful ending -doesn't have to wind up.  Plot should involve no more than two settings (ie rooms).  For now I'll combine the most compatible ideas into this project resulting in about a 5 room game.  Feel free to write in other compelling characters (with descriptions) and potential dialog snippets (we'll try to get other writers to stitch them in during the wind-up phase!).

 3) Art director (1): All you have to do is come up with a short list of stylistic guidelines for background artists, maybe with a sketch or two (indoor & outdoor).  Remember all backgrounds will be completed in an hour, so limit "style" to drawing and maybe palette: if feasible we'll get other artists to worry about lighting and shading.  Be specific about detail required, so there's not too much inconsistency between artists.  Remember "rough" style is probably better, since we might need quick paint-overs for compatibility reasons.

   Also, if someone wants to co-chair the "co-ordination committee" (ie help me out trying to organize things) that'd be swell.  I'm going to copy this post into the RAT thread and see who I can get to contribute an hour to the project.  Any and all help welcome!

The ease to learn definitely drew me in, but by far the greatest thing about AGS is the community that has gathered around the software.   The forums are neat and tidy, and there's no flaming or gratuitous profanity.  Folks around here are genuinely helpful, often have very interesting and well-expressed points of view, are keen to discuss/debate in a respectful manner, hail from a diversity of cultures and backgrounds, and are always friendly -basically it's like the Canada of the internet, except that it's actually interesting here....

Millions of people get up every morning, feed themselves, and get themselves off to school or work.  People can self-regulate.  Now if you put a lot of constraints on the process, for example everyone had to get up at 6:13 am and make waffles from scratch just the way you like them, then ride a bicycle using no hands to get to school or work; well, then you'd start to run into problems.  The swarm would by necessity have to work by instinct (or the wisdom of each individual's accumulated AGS experience, in our case), which precludes micro-management.  The end result would certainly in no way resemble any pre-conceived game, just as an unmoderated Wikipedia would in no way resemble the authoritative encyclopedia it pretends to be.  But both would result in something interesting and, arguably, something that could not be created through even the most meticulous planning.  Now whether that interesting something would make for a good game is debatable....

But..... Sweet is an adjective.

You've found me out, though....  Latin is not a strength of mine.  What's wrong with a motto in a modern language, anyway?

Interesting thoughts so far.

This is probably a more reasonable estimate. What you're looking at is the Mythical Man Month anti-pattern, i.e. that putting twice as much people on a project by no means makes it twice as fast.

This is a definite problem.  The more people added to the typical collaboration team, the more management/communication/training/in-fighting required.  The problem mostly stems from the "control" aspect, however.  If all the autonomous agents were left to regulate themselves (quality, content, etc.) within loose parameters, and everyone was aware of this fact from the beginning so that expectations of the final product could be adjusted accordingly, I think a lot of the "overhead" in the process could be reduced.  Obviously there will be quality issues, but they may well be substantially offset by the magic of serendipitous creativity in a less-structured environment.  Perhaps afterwards a smaller team can spend more time making the "happy accidents" more prominent and editing out the flops.

This could work well if the "engine" part of the game is created in the traditional way and the swarm designs levels or quests.
Imagine an open RPG where the swarm members only choose how far up the XP ladder their quest is going to be, then design it using some kind of quest designer provided by the programmers.

Using modular design is a really good idea for consistency.  It would take a lot of prep work, true, but it would definitely solve a lot of compatability issues.

I would then proceed to start all the graphics simultaneously, and release the horde of artist on them. Or to keep it manageable, organize the artists into "chains" so each gfx part goes through each artists hands once. Each artist would then draw some of the required graphics, and pass it on to the next guy down the chain. The last guy gives it to the quality control guy, who then decides if it is good enough to be put into the game, or rejects it, appends his critique, and sends it to the beginning of the chain again.

These "chains" of artists each specializing in one very limited aspect of development reminds me of a factory system of mass production.  With scale this would definitely be more efficient, but it's a bit of a departure from the swarm idea.

I don't think it's too much to assume that people can maintain productivity/drive for 8-10 hours to produce a room and a couple of puzzles, especially when they have access to each others music/animation.

I guess 1 hour might be a bit ambitious, but the idea is to minimize drop-outs (i.e. lost man hours).  The shorter the commitment period, the less likely people will lose focus, have real-life issues, or begin to despair that their efforts will never bear fruit.  The swarm model allows for near instant gratification, which should be good for motivation.

You've all given me a lot to think about.  For practical reasons it really does seem necessary to do a considerable amount of prep work in advance, have the mass event, and then have a polishing period at the end.  This makes it more like raising a straw-bale house than a true self-coordinated swarming, but without those hive/colony instincts of certain social insects I do concede it would be very difficult to get a mass of AGSers to behave that way.  Definitely a smaller scale event involving 10-20 as Khris suggests would be a better place to start from for experimental purposes.  Based on the results you could try to scale-up the project and streamline the inefficiencies.

Thanks for all the ideas -keep them coming! 
   

I think Point & Struggle is a good proxy for modern Adventure Games.  How about Conitor Dulcis,  the Sweet Struggle?

[April 30 Edit:]

April 30 Edit:

For those of you just joining the discussion a quick summary is appropriate.  The thread started out theoretically discussing how many AGSers could each make very small contributions to quickly create a finished adventure game, kind of like how a hive of bees will each pitch in their small part to create a hive (page 1).  Then we decided to run a small experiment to test the feasibility of breaking the game development process into one-hour increments of relatively self-directed development time (page 2).  We then spent a while brainstorming lead-sprites (roughly page 3-5) before settling on a composite sprite that fit well with our background styles (page 6).  From there we began divvying up work (originally page 6, now later in this post for organizational purposes), and the rest of the thread is people claiming that work, executing it and discussing it.  
   Project Crowd-venture (our working title, appropriately created in less than an hour by a self-directed volunteer), will be a short game that will hopefully take about 60 hours to develop.  We are therefore currently looking for approximately 60 volunteers to offer one hour each.  Volunteers will be provided with loose guidelines from previous contributors and then encouraged to finish their task using their best judgement or creative whimsy.  The result will be an organic game that will be nothing like what any individual could have come up with on their own.  Read on if you are intrigued, look below in this post for our current requirements or see our Recruit a Team advertisement if you are interested in participating in the project.  

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May 15 Edit:  The following is an updated version of post #104 that details finalized guidelines and work in progress.  For organizational purposes it has been moved to the first post.

So moving on -let's SWARM! Please refer back to the Plot Document Post for background requirements and the Stylistic Guidelines Post for style guidance when drawing background art/objects.  Recall that our Merrick sprite is roughly 50px in height (see below for finalized version) -please use it for scaling purposes (doorways, furniture, other characters, etc.).  I'm going to list all available jobs and people can choose what to spend their hour (ish) working on.  Please claim the job by posting so that we minimize people working on the same thing, and then edit that post to show off your work (and remember to look through to see if anyone is already working on something you're interested in!).

Available jobs:

BACKGROUNDS -background art is priority, do "extras" (colouring, textures, objects...) only if time:
1) LAB BACKGROUND (completed by Grim)
2) HALLWAY BACKGROUND (completed by Scarab)
3) ROBOT LAB BACKGROUND (completed by Corby)
4) EXERCISE YARD (completed by Yarooze)
5) GUARDROOM (completed by Crimson Wizard)
6) Intro Cutscene (completed by Selmiak)
7)Exit Cutscene (completed by Secret Fawful)
8 ) Exit Cutscene 2 (robot monster interior behind talking vampire twins)
9) TITLE SCREEN
10) Crash screen (completed by Secret Fawful)
11) Blast screen (completed by Buckethead)


OBJECTS
1) Objects for Lab (restraining chair, mirror, fridge, magnets, crucifix)(completed by anian)
2) Laser control console (please play rough build to get a feeling for what we need)
3) Fridge Magnets (completed by Ghost)

CHARACTER DESIGN -use Merrick style/size for style
1) Military Doctor (completed by abstauber)
2) Scientists (2) in robot lab (one completed by Yarooze, other completed by Tabata)
3) Preoccupied guard on exercise yard catwalk (completed by Ali)
4) Guards dying in firefight in guardroom (3-4) more or less copies of each other (one completed by Jared)
5) Giant (100-150px) Robo Monster  (completed by Pinback)
6) Vampire twins (completed by JackPumpkinHead)
7) We need a convincing "back" view of Merrick.(completed by Baron)
8 ) Robot Probe (completed by Studio 3)
9) Vampire twin close-ups for final cutscene(completed by Secret Fawful)
10) Scientist closeups for final cutscene (to be based on Yarooze & Tabata's in-game sprites)
11) Cockroaches (completed by Tabata)

ANIMATION -use my robot arm in military colour experiment (page 4, below) for mechanical arm ideas
 -use this basic sprite to work from: try to preserve frames (or frame size) for ease of importing

1) Merrick side walk cycle (complete by scarab)
2) Merrick front walk cycle ( ' ' )
3) Merrick side level take (reach out) (hopefully we can script it that only side views are necessary)
4) Merrick side high take (reach out)
5) Merrick side low take (bend & reach -NOT FOR FIRST TIMERS)
6) Talking animation (sides & front -just bobbing head with open mouth) (completed by Baron)
7) Biting animation (completed by Ghost)
8 ) Merrick back walkcycle (completed by Baron)
9) Scientists idle and being bitten (completed by Tabata)
10) guards being bitten (see page 20)
11) scientist climbing on cabinet and waving broom at vampire (extra characterization for now, to be done if time)

Writing
1) Doctor's intro cutscene rant (completed by Hudders)
2) Merrick exchange with Scientists as he bites them (so that Merrick understands fire resistant properties of pine cones and/or survival capacity of cockroaches)
3) Puzzle design -someone to examine the feasibility of creating an interesting probe repair puzzle for the robot lab.  This would also require writing dialog/messages that would flag the puzzle for the player appropriately cut for time being due to lack of time/interest
      ...more to come.

Interface Design
1) Quick mock up for GUI for the swarm to discuss. (one completed by Studio3).  (We're looking for a one-pane GUI that will pop up when a button or character is clicked (yet to be determined). GUI must have the following buttons: save, load, quit, about and OK (for inventory selection).  Must also have inventory window and character speed slider).
2) Cursor Design (completed by Cat/Tabata/Scarab)
3) Inventory Cursors (completed by Baron)


Music Director
1) Not really my strength, but I foresee the need for someone to direct other musicians to create short loops (MIDI?  OGG?) to suit the various scenes.  Remember the musicians should each only spend an hour, and will probably need some sort of theme/genre to guide them.

AGS Importing
1) Someone to import existing assets into AGS (two backgrounds, three partial characters) so that we can start a GIP thread. (in progress, by Baron)

That's all I can think of for now, but more will drip out over the coming days.  Good luck and have fun!

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Original Post:

I figure it will take me another 1000 hours to finish my game.  Then I got to thinking, if I could only amass a swarm of 1000 fellow AGSers then we could knock the whole thing off in just 1 hour.  To summarize:

        Man-Hours for Project  |  Number of Men  |  Hours to Project Completion
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
               1000                      |              1           |               1000
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
               1000                      |          1000         |                  1
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We all know that collaboration makes it possible to do vastly more than an individual ever could.   But I'm not interested in "typical" collaboration here.  What I'm interested in is the theoretical underpinnings of a new way to create an adventure game: not a collaboration as much as a swarming.  I envisage AGSers scurrying through the artistic and programmatical equivalents of bee-hives and ant tunnels in some sort of wondrously self-organized mass event. One hundred of our finest writers scripting for 500 of our finest artists to the tune of 50 of our finest composers and the code of 200 of our finest programmers (etc. for the smaller jobs).  Think about it!  A full-sized game created in an hour!  Consider the possibilities!

Obviously some thought would have to be put into co-ordination:  we just can't rely on our instincts and hormonal signals (..... or can we???  What might a "spontaneous" project look like with a little polish here and there?).  How might you co-ordinate tasks with mutual dependency on each other -tasks that could take days to play-out in the conventional game-development paradigm -so that they can take place all at once?  Does anyone know if this has ever been tried?  What obstacles do you foresee, and what thoughts do you have to overcome them?

Please bear in mind this is a theoretical discussion for the time being: I'm well aware of the logistical issues of focusing 1000 minds on a single task.  For now I just want to flesh out the idea some more.

From the Recruit A Team thread.....

I will definitely need a beta testes or two for my new game: Night of the Testicle.

He he he.... Definitely not three, right?

You could just commit some sort of phone fraud on an elderly hen....

Or impersonate a suave rooster, marry her, then immediately divorce and sue her for egg custody.  Since you have more financial resources than her it's not a fair fight in the courts, and eventually you break her will.....

Or maybe you have a deflated volleyball and a happy free-range chicken and have to combine the two....

....All this evil scheming is keeping me up at night.  Have you come to any decision yet?

Ah, North America.....  "Send me your huddled masses, yearning to be free!" etc. etc.

Welcome to the team!

How about monstro et conitor: monstro meaning to show or point, and conitor meaning to press upon (the ancient equivalent of "clicking").

Aha!  The internet was down at work today!  IT BEGINS!!!!!!  Well, it was back up within the hour, but hey even the stock market bounces back a bit during a financial crash.  Also my truck made a funny noise on the way home.  Either it's starting to turn against me and the armaggeddon is nigh, or I might have hit a squirrel.  Anyone else see anything suspicious yet?

With all those heroes of yore in the Roman religion there must have been a word for adventure, or quest, or interesting trip where you had to win your fortune and avoid your doom!

This Online Latin Dictionary offers quaestio as the translation for search/investigation (i.e. a "Quest"), and insisto as the beginning of a journey.  Odyssey is an obvious classical equivalent (unfortunately a Greek word....).  I've found no translation online but if Odysseus becomes Ulysses in Latin then it stands to reason that Odyssey becomes Ulyssey.  Argue with that!

The coat of arms is nice, but..... where's the maggot?

Plus, I do think members of the Order should be able to invite other MAGS entrants to join, if their games were exceptional or memorable or just plain brilliant.  We're celebrating creative conquests against the clock here, not just the democratic formality of winning, right?  I intend to propose this at our first secret conclave, at any rate.

 Time-travel and the alternate realities created by meddling in the past are hard to keep up with: logically there can be infinite alternative branches, and who has that kind of attention span these days?  

For example in Terminator 2 Sarah Connor & Co. were able to avert the August 29, 1997 Judgement day by destroying technology from the future back in 1995, but obviously in one alternate reality Judgement Day did happen on that date, since multiple entities (human and machine) representing themselves as from the future seemed to corroborate that exact date as the beginning of the armageddon.

However (keep with me here), the destruction of material and data could only be a setback (serious though it was).  Just as several AGS projects have been resurrected from (hopefully less murderous and explosive) data failures, it is perfectly plausible that research towards developing an all powerful global digitized defense network (i.e. Skynet) continued.  Now back in 1997 if such a creation went rogue we'd probably be alright -maybe a robotic factory in Japan might run amok and start ratcheting people, but nothing on the scale of the apocalypse.  But now it's a well-known fact that the American army has unmanned drones armed and in flight at all times: think about what we don't know!

Now, consider THIS.  In one alternate reality Skynet went online about an hour and a half ago.  In most realities it seems to take a day or two before it goes completely crazy and starts killing us all.  So, over the next couple of days I want you, my global eyes and ears, to keep a look out for strange mechanical occurrences and report back to this thread.  I figure if we make it to Friday without a major incident we're probably in the clear, and hopefully some sort of cinematic explanation will not be far in future.

We're all in this together.....

Baron  

I think the case for trollish behaviour is strong, yet the case for motivated and developing member is probably stronger.  I agree with Mode7 that progress is being made -if slowly.  So live and let live.

If you find the Troll or the Feeders annoying, then don't read the threads (I mostly don't).