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I don't know if anybody else is in the same position, but I've spent a long long time now sketching out little rooms and concepts, trying to think of a plot that will hold and good puzzles, and it just isn't working.  After some consideration, I thought maybe it's best to ask what you want to play for some inspiration.  What I'm looking for is just some idea of what sort of adventure game you like.  Lots of people liked the DeFoe quadrilogy - what scares you about horror games?  If you like fantasy or medieval or anything, why?  What do you hope to gain when you download an AGS game?  Any help is greatly appreciated, my ideas really are running dry.

I really think there isn't enough focus on actually making AGS games.  Sure the activities help, especially things like the BG Blitz and Sprite Jam, but the MAGS is the only regular games activity.

I'm quite aware that the MAGS doesn't get many entries, and I think that's simply due to it being very long and demanding.  Most people work alone, and the motivation to plough in several hours of work a day for a month, with no encouragement (in most cases) and a looming deadline is hard to find.

I'm suggesting a new game making activity similar to the ATC that runs once every 2 months.  A team of 3 people is given 2 weeks to produce a game.  Here is the timeline:

• Day 1: First day of month.  Participants have until the 10th to post in the activity thread to sign up.  All entrants names are collected and teams of 3 are randomly selected.  People may not form their own teams.
• Day 11: Teams are announced.  Team members are encouraged to contact each other during this time and check that they are still active.  Any members AWOL must be reported by the end of the 12th or the team must make do without.
• Day 13: Each team is given 2 quite strict sets of guidelines governing game theme, characters, puzzles etc.  Think MAGS but not so broad.  Each team in the competition has been given different guidelines (not sure about this).  Work, and planning, may now begin.  Some teams may prefer to spend more time planning.
• Day 29: Deadline.  Entries are posted in the activity thread by one team member.
• Day 30: Voting opens.
• Day ~ 40 (second month): Voting closes.  Winner announced.

I think this timescale might work quite nicely because people who begin a MAGS entry and give up can still apply to this activity if they are early enough.  With any luck they will have just been using AGS and their graphics/music programs for their MAGS entry so they are well prepared.  This competition differs from the ATC by being shorter and having randomly chosen teams, so hopefully more and less experienced members will be mixed together more evenly.  Newbies will learn from more experienced members and hopefully try their best to keep a high standard, but I'd like to add that this shouldn't be a fiercely competitive activity.

I remember being in an ATC and really enjoying it.  We had a randomised team (since those remamining without a team were grouped up) but had 2 AWOLS, which hopefully should not be able to happen so often here.

These are very nice, you obviously are consistent in your style.  Keep it up, it'd be great to see a game with these backgrounds.

I like the shading, it reminds me a lot of Another World, or a Flash game.  The simple style works very well as long as you can keep it consistent, my only suggestion would be to add something on the mountainsides - a town, river, chasm, something.  Otherwise the picture is focused on a blurry seam between two mountains.

What is the unit of power?

Two birds were sitting on a perch and one said to the other: "Do you smell fish?"

Two men walked into a bar.  You'd think one of them would've seen.

How do you get a blonde to burn her ear?  Phone her while she's ironing.

How many times does 4 go into 20?  As many as you like, the answer's always 5.

Back on topic.
Certainly not easy listening but I like it, I think of something with mystery and suspense like 5DaS when I hear it, or a black and white film.  I see the title "Interactive Music" - is this written for something in particular?  Keep it up, you know your strings (and your scores!)

Try these:

http://search.techrepublic.com.com/search/microsoft+word+and+toolbar.html?&c=1&s=0&m=20&o=0&i=0=0
http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-11192-0.html?forumID=42hreadID=162190

EDIT: See * below

I'm no expert with technical support, but I've had more than my fair share of problems.  Here's my advice, but remember that half the stuff I'll say is probably a load of crap.

To access the BIOS, restart your computer and early on in the boot you'll be prompted to hit a button (usually F8 or DEL) for setup/BIOS.  Just hammer the button as soon as you see the message or it might ignore you.  Someone in the BIOS you should find a boot order (CMOS settings or something) and it'll list your CD drive, floppy, harddisks and anything else.  If it isn't already, move your floppy drive to top and CD drive below, then your harddisk at the bottom.  Don't change any other settings.

A stupid point to make, but make sure you have no floppy or cd in your pc since they can stop booting.  Also find your harddisk manufacturer+model (either from boot screen, manual or reading off the actual harddisk) and look on the manufacturer's website for a harddisk scanner.  They usually come on a form you can stick onto a floppy and boot off of, and it may give you a little extra essential information.

Another thing to try is simply to switch your computer off and flick the isolator switch (a button near the top on the back of the computer, or if you don't have one switch the PC off at the wall).  Pull out all your cables going to your harddisk (IDE are the long ribbon ones, SATA are the little red ones if you have them and the white one with multicoloured wires is the power cable).  Check the pins on the connectors aren't bent (don't worry if you have 'missing' pins, lots of connectors do).  Now plug the cables back in again.  You'll also find on the back of your harddisk that there is a little grid of pins with possibly a plastic bit covering two of them.  That plastic bit is the jumper, push it in all the way if it isn't, but keep it on the same pins.

If you're still getting trouble, or you don't feel it's worth doing some of those things, google for 'Knoppix'.  It's a type of Linux that you can boot off a CD.  You'll need to download what is called a disk image, or .iso, and burn it to a CD.  Your burning program should have a separate option for burning an image.  Make sure your boot order (see first paragraph) is set up correctly, then restart your computer with the CD in.  You'll probably find yourself waiting 10 minutes or so for everything to load off the CD.  Skip past the boot options.  When you're at the desktop and loading's done, you should find your harddisk partitions on the left-hand side.  Open them up and browse through to see if any damage has been done, but remember that you can't modify anything (or you can modify either NTFS or FAT32, can't remember if that's true).  If you're planning to reformat/reinstall, at least grab some floppies or a USB drive if you have one and make some backups under Knoppix.

*Actually after reading your first post again, it probably isn't a harddisk problem, although the harddisk might be affected.  Giving your BIOS a good run-through is my best advice.  If you can find your motherboard manual there should be a good section on configuring the BIOS, otherwise see if you can find a version of the manual on the manufacturer's website.

I really like the style you've used for this game, and the videos on your site look very promising.  I liked especially the bottom-left gate closeup screen, the colours feel very cold.

I also bought it recently, but I'm assuming Lucasarts have resold it - it says 'Lucasarts Classic' on the cover (I assume still published by Lucasarts though).  Installed on XP machine fine albeit slow, and the game worked good as new.

Thanks very much for these, they really were some classic games.  I hope they will be remembered for years to come.

I've hardly even seen pinball machines around either, I think it was just once I saw one in a games room in a holiday resort.  If you're looking for computer pinball though, I too recommend Pinball Dreams and its family, just seeing those screenshots above brought back many fantastic memories.

Got to level 37 by:

Spoiler

Putting all upgrades into interest.Ã,  I was raking it in until the 30's when even covering every tile wasn't nearly enough

[close]

I bought what was apparently a better quality plastic recorder about a year ago for about £12.  I don't remember much of a difference in sound compared to the £1 recorder, but it was a long time ago since I played that.  That aside, I'm as crap as ever.  Are the wooden ones notably better compared to the plastic?

Discussion on HoTU forums about stopping FGD leeching http://www.the-underdogs.info/forum/viewtopic.php?t=46858&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

Very short snippet about FGD spamming Wikipedia
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Spam_blacklist#free-game-downloads.mosw.com_and_accomplices

I couldn't actually find much else.  I hate the fact that these people are raking money in partly from amateur developer's freeware titles.  Some people release things as freeware because they don't want to charge money, but in fact they're inadvertently taking money from the public and dropping it straight into fraudulent pockets.

I believe the site is infamous for leeching off of HoTU, ie pointing downloads towards HoTU servers, and charging on top of that.  HoTU have added measures to prevent this and continually warn about the site, it seems that even once you've paid a successful download isn't guaranteed.  Considering the size of HoTU it appears that shutting down FGD isn't a simple task or they would've done it long ago.

Had exactly the same card while playing HL and mods.  Works fine.

11 colours


2x

First jam.
Killer piano:


2x:

Should that be 27.7 - 3.8?