Messages

[1st]

I have counted the votes and here are the winners:

1st
Relativity by Kumpel                     
You receive the gold trophy:



2nd
Girl with a pearl earring by Babar
You receive the silver trophy:



3rd
Self-portrait by Avirosb
You receive the bronze trophy:


I wish to thank you all for your votes and participation!

[The Hangman]

The Hangman by Maurice Ogden feels as relevant today as when it was first written in 1951.
In 1964 it was also turned into a short film.

Into our town the Hangman came,
Smelling of gold and blood and flame.
And he paced our bricks with a diffident air,
And built his frame on the courthouse square.

The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
Only as wide as the door was wide;
A frame as tall, or little more,
Than the capping sill of the courthouse door.

And we wondered, whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal, what the crime,
That Hangman judged with the yellow twist
Of knotted hemp in his busy fist.

And innocent though we were, with dread,
We passed those eyes of buckshot lead;
Till one cried: "Hangman, who is he
For whom you raise the gallows-tree?"

Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:
"He who serves me best," said he,
"Shall earn the rope on the gallows-tree."

And he stepped down, and laid his hand
On a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for another's grief
At the Hangman's hand was our relief.

And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn
By tomorrow's sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way, and no one spoke,
Out of respect for his hangman's cloak.

The next day's sun looked mildly down,
On roof and street in our quiet town
And, stark and black in the morning air,
The gallows-tree on the courthouse square.

And the Hangman stood at his usual stand
With the yellow hemp in his busy hand;
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike,
And his air so knowing and businesslike.

And we cried: "Hangman, have you not done,
Yesterday, with the alien one?"
Then we fell silent, and stood amazed:
"Oh, not for him was the gallows raised."

He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:
"Did you think I'd gone to all this fuss
To hang one man? That's a thing I do
To stretch the rope when the rope is new."

Then one cried, "Murderer!" One cried, "Shame!"
And into our midst the Hangman came
To that man's place. "Do you hold," said he,
"With him that was meant for the gallows-tree?"

And he laid his hand on that one's arm,
And we shrank back in quick alarm,
And we gave him way, and no one spoke,
Out of fear of his hangman's cloak.

That night we saw with dread surprise,
The Hangman's scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute
The gallows-tree had taken root;

Now as wide, or a little more,
Than the steps that led to the courthouse door,
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
Halfway up on the courthouse wall.

The third he took — we had all heard tell —
Was a usurer and infidel,
And: "What," said the Hangman, "have you to do,
With the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?"

And we cried out: "Is this one he,
Who has served you well and faithfully?"
The Hangman smiled: "It's a clever scheme
To try the strength of the gallows-beam."

The fourth man's dark, accusing song
Had scratched out comfort hard and long;
And "What concern," he gave us back,
"Have you for the doomed - the doomed and black?"

The fifth.The sixth. And we cried again:
"Hangman, Hangman, is this the man?"
"It's a trick," he said, "that we hangmen know
For easing the trap when the trap springs slow."

And so we ceased, and asked no more,
As the Hangman tallied his bloody score;
And sun by sun, and night by night,
The gallows grew to monstrous height.

The wings of the scaffold opened wide,
Till they covered the square from side to side;
And the monster cross-beam, looking down,
Cast its shadow across the town.

Then through the town the Hangman came
And called in the empty streets my name -
And I looked at the gallows soaring tall
And thought: "There is no one left at all,

For hanging, and so he calls to me
to help pull down the gallows-tree."
And I went out with right good hope
to the Hangman's tree and the Hangman's rope.

He smiled at me as I came down,
To the courthouse square through the silent town,
and supple and stretched in his busy hand,
Was the yellow twist of the hempen strand.

And he whistled his tune as he tried the trap
And it sprang down with a ready snap—
And then with a smile of awful command,
He laid his hand upon my hand.

"You tricked me, Hangman!" I shouted then.
"That your scaffold was built for other men.
And I no henchman of yours," I cried,
"You lied to me, Hangman, foully lied!"

Then a twinkle grew in his buckshot eye:
"Lied to you? Tricked you?" he said,
"Not I. For I answered straight and I told you true:
The scaffold was raised for none but you.

"For who has served me more faithfully
Than you with your coward's hope?" said he,
"And where are the others that might have stood
Side by your side in the common good?"

"Dead," I whispered; and amiably
"Murdered," the Hangman corrected me;
"First the alien, then the Jew...
I did no more than you let me do."

Beneath the beam that blocked the sky,
None had stood so alone as I -
And the Hangman strapped me, and no voice there
Cried "Stay" for me in the empty square.

Looks cool, and great animations in the last GIFs!

The rain looks impressive even in GIF-form, and I love the bright green grass,
to many artists make everything blueish-grey when it rains.

How nice!

I nodded off and had a rather weird dream.
There was a great white shark swimming in the ocean, but then the shark's daughter (which was a white beluga whale for some reason) was taken by chinese fishermen
who wanted to make shark-fin soup. And then the shark took up a cellphone and said "If you let my daughter go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you." just like in the Liam Neeson movie. Then I woke up.

Dreams are weird.

The really sad thing here is the swathes of society who genuinely should have been outraged by what Trump said on the campaign trail not turning out to vote.  About 51% of the US population is female, which alone should have lost Trump the election.  But it is an indisputable fact that many of those women just didn't seem bothered enough to vote against him.  Indeed, over 50% of white women supposedly voted for him (source).  Although not as large a segment of the population, the same could be said for target minorities (same article).  I don't want to be the guy that blames the victim, but if someone treats you worse than dirt and then you vote for him, then you're kinda the author of your own misfortune.

I've seen this sort of thing before, and it keeps baffling me. For instance, in my country we have a (tiny minority) religious conservative party that, among other things, wants to revoke women's voting rights. And somehow women still vote for them. How strange is that?

Maybe they've convinced themselves that everything will be better for them that way, if they want to be housewives with lots of kids and married to a rich man and cannot possibly imagine a woman wanting something else?
There are many historical examples of people working for causes seemingly against their rights, for example I've read that some of the house-slaves in the south was actually for slavery, because they were clothed and fed and allowed to order around the plantation slaves working on the fields. When the Nazis occupied Europe, many locals collaborated with them, even in the Slavic countries despite slavs being considered inferior by the Nazis. Some people will be content in servitude as long as there is someone below them to kick.

But for all his flaws, at least Trump has never said that he wanted to take away women's voting rights.

Fred Five and Selmiak, those are some nice, beautiful entries both of you!

Converting the file to OGV format helped,
but confusingly enough Windows media player won't play it.

Thank you!

In case anyone is wondering, the last sentence in the screenshot of the error message is
"The pins cannot connect since they are not supporting the same transport" in English.

Please, does anyone have any idea what's wrong?
I wanted to add a FMV to my game.

Atelier,
While I think that a lot about Trump have been exaggerated and taken out of context,
one of the most important parts of any democracy is allowing people to criticize their government,
and even receiving a majority of the votes does not put anyone beyond critique.

Another one of the great problems with American politics is that their system has split everything into two opposing teams with the "If you're not with us you are against us" mentality with little to no room for middle ground.
It's all so polarized, and makes people vote on which group they identify with rater than which policies they agree with.

Great art, love the clean colors ans sleek designs!

If anything, this shows how very broken their two-party system where the winner takes all is,
when the election comes down to two candidates that few really liked, and it's a very even result.

Americas political system was a modern, equal and democratic system in 1776.
The problem is, their political system was a modern, equal and democratic system...
...in 1776.

The election relly reminded me of this Simpsons clip.

Trump may be an idiot, but I think the "WW3" doom-mongers that have appeared are worse.

It's so easy and fashionable to jump on the Trump-hate bandwagon. Social justice warriors have mobilised in force today. Someone I know is joining a demonstration outside the US embassy in London to protest against Trump being elected. Protesting a democratically elected leader in another country? I actually can't understand the stupidity of things like that. The only explanation has to be to gain personal sanctimony points.

The world still turns, and at this stage people should judge him on what he actually does and is politically able to do, rather than what he said to get votes. One thing is for certain though, the cold Russia-US relationship will thaw. Trump rightfully respects Putin.

Even if Trump will not have absolute power as president, he will still have an impact on the public debate climate and how the rest of the world views USA.
And I'm not sure Trump being friends with Putin is a good thing, looking at what Putin did in Ukraine.

Hate crimes against minorities will increase, as a bigoted president has been elected, validating the views of awful people and empowering them to attack even more frequently than they already do.

Muslim, Black, Latinx, LGBTQIA+ and disabled folk will suffer, and it'll be an awful time.

I find it disconcerting that someone sprayed a swastika on Trump's star on the Hollywood walk of fame, and nobody can tell weather it's by someone who opposed or supported him.

Hi!
I know that the AGS engine can play different video formats, but I can't figure out how.
I did a movie in MP4-format in Windows movie maker to try this, but when I use this script:

Code: ags

PlayVideo ("mymovie.MP4", eVideoSkipAnyKey, 1);}

I get an error message in the game once the script is triggered:

The video worked in windows media player.

You don't necessarily need a traditional "bad guy" (who doesn't need to be a guy, and doesn't even need to be bad), but you do need to figure out what your story is. It shouldn't just be a series of events â€" it should mean something to your characters.

Actually, you can have a story that's just a series of events. In literature there is a genre called Picaresque which has a random events plot and little to no character development.
Examples of these stories are Don Quixote, The Adventures of Baron Munchhausen and The Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy. However this type of storytelling usually best lends itself to satire and comedy.

Perhaps the most important thing to decide is the tone and feel of your story, and know exactly how serious or humorous you want it to be.

Thar last GIF made me laugh out loud and the autumn leaves outside the antiques shop look stunning.
And it's nice that you can see all the cool paintings inside the window.

Those last pics look great, all those bopping neckties, jackets and 80s hairdos are fun to watch!

That is completely true which brings me to my dilemma.  In some ways, I feel as if the game I am working on needs a bad guy/gal, but in others, I feel as if I am adding one just to add one.  It's the traditional...going after a treasure story.  I guess maybe the conflict can be whether the hero/heroine wants to keep the treasure for themselves or reveal it to the world.

There are many ways to go with a going after the treasure story without having a bad guy, and having the hero/heroine be in conflict with themselves is an interesting idea, but with treasure hunting there is also the conflict with nature the environment too, the main character can struggle against traps and puzzles placed out to keep them away from the treasure.

Furthermore, all conflict doesn't need to be openly violent or even hostile, you can also have characters simply and calmly explain to the hero/heroine why they think that they shouldn't go for the treasure,
it's too dangerous, the treasure can't be real and is just a legend or some things shouldn't be found and so forth...

Thank you, it worked on the first try!

[Man versus Man]

I've heard that all conflicts can be boiled down to three alternatives:

Man versus Man - A conflict between two persons, this can be anything between a friendly chess-match between two old men and an epic tale of a hero defeating a tyrant and his armies

Man versus Nature - A struggle against an unthinking and unreasonable force, like hunting an animal or trying to survive in a harsh environment

Man versus Self - A person trying to overcome their own flaws and shortcomings with focus on the mental and emotional journey of the protagonist

However, there must almost always be some sort of conflict to keep the audience interested, even in abstract games like Tetris and Bejeweled there is a conflict between the player and the game system.
And you can also have an antagonist who isn't a bad guy, there are many stories where there are no good or bad side, simply people on opposing teams, and antagonists who have good justifications for their actions.