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No but we can test whether or not the paitient is *better off* with or without.

You test a group of people with the treatment and a group with a placebo. If both groups perform about the same then the treatment has no effect.

all supporting evidence for reflexology is anecdotal which is essentially worthless. Just because someone saw a reflexologist and was magically cured the next day does not mean the treatment works.

The fact is we are all human and alternative medicine has highlighted some decent treatments. Aspirin for example has been around for a very long time. Natives chewed willow bark, which contains a derivitive of aspriin, and it alleviated pain. It also gave them pretty bad stomach cramps some of the time since willow bark is also poisonous.

No one doubts that 'alternative medicine' has something to offer. So we tested it all to see which treatments work.

The stuff that did work we kept and it became mainstream medicine. The stuff that didnt we abandoned.

Yeah, I didnt forget I was supposed to be making a black and white game half way through...

The use of certain colours (most notably red) is deliberate.

Lets consider the dangers of 'Alternative Medicine'

What if an impressionable woman has cancer and she does not like the idea of chemo since the side effects are awful.

So she goes to a practitioner of alternative medicine who claims he has cured cancer in the passed with zero side effects.

She dies.

Q E D

Reflexology is indeed pseudoscience and is not accepted as a valid treatment by the majority of national medical bodies.

2 issues..

firstly it hasnt been shown to work consistently in double blind tests.

secondly the mechanism by which it is said to work requires a belief in Qi, which has also never been shown to exist.

Dude, just wait until i think of something else which entirely pointless but looks awesome.

You have truly excelled yourself this time.

Dualnames what exactly about my last statement could you possibly disagree with?

I said all developers should try and make their work as professional and 'non-amateur' as possible.
and yes its fairly obvious that amateur games will ALWAYS exist but that doesnt mean we shouldnt try and better ourselves.

All yahtzee needs now is a cape.

and a fucking bow-tie.

I see that in this community there are people that always shoveling for the bad things in the games. And even word for the good things. I don't know why? We all are making amateurs adventure games. We have to support the game developers! We are not professionals. If we are, we shouldn't be here in this community.

This is not amateur adventure game studio and we are not 'here' to do anything except what we want. Some people who are in this community have no interest in making games they just want to play ones other people make, which is fine.

We should all try to transcend this idea of 'amateur' anyway... if you are going to do something, do it well.

I think we should remember that the 5 cup rating has to span a very broad spectrum.

AGS has created games which are barely playable and masterpieces of fiction.

In my eyes 3 cups can only be considered 'good for an amateur game' and things dont really start to be 'good' until the 4 and 5 cup mark.

I have only released one game and only been here around 5-6 months so my experience of AGS games is limited but if the scale is linear and the benchmark is trilbys notes (which got 5 cups) and shifters box (which got 4) then i would rate the vast majority of games I play as 2 cups or even lower. And that includes my own.

The resolution of the cup rating simply isnt high enough to be as useful as you guys seem to want it to be.

You should use the cup rating more like a basic technical benchmark to answer a few simple questions.

- Is this game fun
- Is this game buggy
- Does this game make basic logical sense.

beyond that I fail to see what you want from the rating system.

A proof reader would be welcome thank you.

I'll get in touch when I need you.

damnit i need to fix that.

and no, just the credits.

I think essentially what they were saying was that the gameplay sucks but the pretty dialog makes it bareable :p

It's akin to saying that a movie is basically bad but the special effects are good i think.

Ben doesnt do self promotion.. 

Luddites.

[Best Original Story]

Go on then..

For your consideration my friends!

The McCarthy Chronicles: Episode 1



The game was largely an exercise in really getting to grips with the AGS engine (in preperation for the big project) so it's not perfect but may i humbley suggest it for the following catagories.

Best Original Story - Having never written an adventure game before I battled with gameplay/story elements for a while. I think its clear I really chose story far more often than I should but at least the story is there!

Best Dialogue Writing - I think the dialogue in McCarthy is certainly a strong point. Although I may have let narrative voice slip a little with certain characters, other characters really shine through (Victoria for instance)

Best Short Game - Well if there's a catagory for it i might as well put myself up for it...

Best Player Character - I consider McCarthy to be something of an 'Anti-Trilby'. McCarthy is self-deprecating and meek with very little confidence in his abilities. Its difficult to judge his progresion from the first episode but I think he'd like some recognition for his efforts.

Best Animation - Mordalles' work on McCarthy was stunning and I think he should be rewarded for that.

Best Sound Effects -  As a sound engineer I tried my best to make the sound effects 'fit' in with the atmosphere. Whether i succeeded or not is debateable.

Best Voice Work  - I consider my cast to be one of the best ever seen in an AGS game. They did excellently despite my poor attempts at direction  . Tabitha's and James' actors gave stand out performances.

Best Programming in an Adventure - Technical excellence was a goal from the start. There are very little game play dynamics which required any advanced coding but some of the graphical effects were quite complex (mainly the puddles)

Thank you for your time, may the best game win.

Spoiler

Shifter's Box

[close]

^^^^ Agreed.

if a single person cant be objective then neither can a group of people.. you just get an amalgamation of lots of subjective views.

But frankly thats rubbish anyway. A single person CAN be objective and follow a criteria.

but even if that WERE the case its still incredibly bad form to silence a negative review.

I have no more to say on the subject

well they werent insulting you were they?

If the characters are bland you say they are bland.

Reviews arent constructive criticism for the dev they are information for the public.

So essentially it WAS just to avoid a bad review?