Messages

I have a lump in my right ear lobe.  It varies in size between days, so sometimes you have to feel hard under the skin to find it and has no feeling; other times it swells up and is painful to touch.  Had it a long time, I assume it's just from irritation like wearing headphones.  Of course if it worries you then tell someone.

It's Vince's site, and I'm getting it too.  How strange.

I always loved a good game of Risk or Monopoly, but alas, my brothers and parents were too old and busy to play it with me.  Still a laugh to play with your mates though.  I like a game of chess too, particularly with a nice wooden set, and a high quality chess set is something I'd like to get eventually.

I remember hating Trivial Pursuit when I was very young since the questions were so hard (I think it was some special hard edition too).  That took up most of one Christmas..ugh 

Nah Stupot mine doesn't save either after a reset.  I think Tetris came out before saving was invented 

Cheese with holes is called 'holey cheese' isn't it?

I have to agree about English not being taught properly in schools.  I've been taught how to analyse fiction, non-fiction and poetry but not where to use a semicolon or a hyphon, and these are the things people use every day.  Sure, reading deeply into text and finding hidden meanings has its uses, but I don't find it as important as putting a sentence together properly.

Regarding mistakes, I can't stand it when people put apostrophes into plural's.

Hi luk,
I'm not exactly a great animator but I've picked up a few tips with walkcycles.  I find these bases quite useful for making walkcycles:

http://kafkaskoffee.com/tutorials/walkcycletut.shtml

They're not perfect but you can fix them up as you paint over them.  I find it easiest to draw one frame of the character with full details to get the look I like, then resize the walkcycle bases to match its proportions (don't worry if they look ugly).  Then I turn down the opacity of the bases so they're quite faint and with the reference lined up next to them I draw the outline of my character on a seperate layer, making sure to keep the character in the same proportions as the reference.  Then I repeat for each frame, block in the basic colours (ie 1 colour for skin, 1 for each piece of clothing, no shading) and ditch the layer with the bases.

Cut up all of your frames now and test them as an animation, keep tweaking until it looks right.  Using the reference work through each frame until it is complete, using the previous frame as a guide for shading.

That was a brilliant game, Macon!  A good length but I beat it in the end, and almost had me stumped when

Spoiler

I had nothing to break the castle floor, and deciding to sink below the quicksand at the end as a last resort.

[close]

The style was pretty faithful to the Dizzy games too, good puzzles and plenty of places to roll to your death!  The only things I have to criticise is having a bit of trouble on the lifts trying to jump to the screen above, some graphics that don't fit in very well and perhaps too much fruit/lives- I beat it on my first (albeit long) try.

Thanks for sharing this, is there a chance of a second game?

This looks fantastic!  Very nice graphics and perhaps the first of it's genre for AGS.  Those stars..are they ratings of the women?  Haha  .

Only ever heard of Guitar Hero in the UK, but I've just tried out Frets On Fire and it's fantastic.  There goes the rest of my spare time..

I've been secretly hoping this might get resurrected.  Consider me very interested (despite our team's spectacular failure last round  ).  Is this the wrong topic to mention the OROW too?  It always had lots of entries and good quality too, would be a shame not to see it again.  Another one seemed about to go ahead but finding a good time and host didn't happen.

I get the problem too from playing Half-Life, perhaps some DirectX issue?  Anyway you can fix the problem by resetting the icon cache (WinXP):

1) Right click on desktop and select Properties
2) Click Appearance tab
3) Click Advanced
4) Select Icon in the item list
5) Increase the Size to 33 and confirm changes
6) Now do the same and change the size back to 32

Only problem is you'll lose the arrangement of your icons.

If you've posted in a Tech forum they'll probably see you through just fine, those guys really know what they're doing.  Anyway, some more pointers if you need them:

Follow LimpingFish's links, in that order, since the first two you just download and run without having to post on a tech forum (don't forget to update them first).  Also download AVG Free and give that a go.

If they don't fix the problem, pop open the Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Del) and check all processes against a list online like http://www.tasklist.org/.  If you find any nasty processes then Google them and you should find instructions on removing them at popular anti-virus sites.

Some things don't show up in the Task Manager.  Go to the Start menu > Run and type 'msconfig' without the 's.  Go to the Startup tab and make sure nothing there looks malicious.

Of course, once this is removed make sure the computer is protected well.  There is a bunch of free tools that are very popular (Ad-Aware, Spybot, AVG, ZoneAlarm) and Microsoft updates.  Remember, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

700 Days a Spaceman?

Screen 1: I agree with Babar that 'Get' and 'Use' are hard to recognise, and that AGS and info should be combined.  Otherwise though it looks like a very nice, fun to use GUI.

Screen 2: Saved game screen is fine, nothing to criticise myself.

Screen 3: I like the font and the styles, but the options get lost in the background.  I'd suggest greying out the background (or tinting it with any colour) to take away its focus.  Also, just to be nitpicky, option's should be options.

Great game so far, I am really enjoying it.  A few things I noticed:

The bug Ali came across happens when you:

Spoiler

Read the PR manual

[close]

I was stuck for a while until eventually like Stupot I clicked 'up' in the inventory and there were all my items, I thought it was a bug at first that they appeared.  It would be better if the inventory wasn't on a blank page after the cutscene.

The scrolling jungle room tends to occassionaly move the player to the left of the river.  It does this sometimes when you look at the river, or if you're walking along, I can't pinpoint exactly when.

I will save the comments until I finish, just thought I'd post about bugs as soon as I find them.

My mother signed up to it quite recently, and has had great success.  Before she signed up I only knew of my relatives within the house and knew of relatives in Scotland and Australia, of which I have seen or remember nothing.  Now we have replies from cousins, aunts etc that live in places we didn't know we had relatives in, and are starting to gather addresses and build an extensive tree.  I'd very much reccomend it.

"Blue cup sold seperately"
"Probably the biggest cup you'll see in a long while"
"If your splash screen actually stays long enough to read this text you must be a die-hard adventure fan"
"We all love you"
"This program runs best under dingy bedrooms"
"May not be compatible with cool people"
"Now every day is an adventure!"

Idea - Andail
Atmosphere - Bohnito
Design - zyndikate
Composition - zyndikate
Functionality - zyndikate
Technique - zyndikate

Very good turnout, and all quality entries.

Good points Khris, what a terrible answer that was!

Ah those good old Windows disks.  I've had to use the very same ones many many times until I gave up trying to work out why my computer kept destroying Windows and pretty much got a new one instead.

On topic though, I've always like the sound of floppy disks.  I grew up with an Amiga as a child and disk swapping was just part of the fun.  It's exciting when you've gotten further in a game than ever before, and you're prompted to insert the next disk.  There's something very satisfying about having a whole collection of disks for a game, it makes it feel like you've got your money's worth.  The Amiga drive made a more pleasant noise than a PC disk drive though, like a soft inkjet printer.  Of course floppies are so damned unreliable, I'm sure everybody has seen their favourite games stop working, and the stuttering from the floppy drive while you cross your fingers hoping that blowing on the disk will make it load this time.