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Sorry I didn't make it. I could've, the opportunity certainly arose. But I chose something slightly more important..
I hope I didn't miss anything too important.

At least tell me someone wrote "cough" at some point though. 

So... Any programmers wanna comment on it's accuracy?

Python:
Building the horse was easy
But boy is it slow

Picard, Data, Han Solo, John Connor, etc, etc, etc. The new "writers" have a need to destroy all these characters.

Is it all that surprising? I'd say it is almost necessary if they want to continue:

Really? 
Firstly, Star Trek is the type of show that doesn't need the original characters, as proven by the success of the spinoffs.
It's the universe of Star Trek that's interesting. It's just too bad writers can't recreate that universe anymore. Probably because it was an optimistic look at the future, and writers like being edgy.

Secondly, the Mandalorian and just about every Star Wars game that has ever come out, has proven that Star Wars is also about the universe and not the characters. Thankfully it seems as though there's been more success at recreating that universe than with Star Trek.

Thirdly, removing John Connor from Terminator is like removing Guybrush Threepwood from Monkey Island. He's the main character, it's his story. The universe of the Terminator films never really got much added to it, so he is the universe. (There's a reason why Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers were eventually brought back after disappearing from one movie in their respective franchises.)

Fourthly, if you want the easy money you get from making something that's part of an established franchise, then you've got to accept the cost of having higher expectations. It's as simple as that.
Companies keep making stuff that's part of already established franchises, because they know that it'll sell. But the thing is, it has a price, and that price is that people will expect more.The bar will be raised. The mediocre will no longer be acceptable. If a company can't accept that, then they should've made something original.

Unfortunately everyone only seems capable of seeing things from one point of view. Either from the point of view that "it's got the name of a popular franchise, therefore expectations are higher" or from the point of view that "taking it as it's own thing, it's at least average", which results in petty arguments such as this.

Was thinking of reading a Discworld novel, but I'm not really sure where to start. Can any fans of the series suggest a good starting point?

Congratulations on the 16 year necropost.
As for where to start. Why not the first one? The Colour of Magic?

In terms of character movement, I found keyboard controls give much more immersion and worked well in the "Cat Lady" for example, because having to keep hold keys to move character around gave more connection with her. I never tried playing adventure game with joystick or gamepad, so cannot tell about that.

I actually remember someone telling me that the only adventure game they liked, was Escape from Monkey Island, because it had those type of controls. The guy felt a disconnect from the character in most adventure games due to having to point and click to move, and as such preferred even the tank controls over it.
While I don't share his opinions, I did find it quite interesting. Perhaps direct control of the character could be the future for adventure games?

The City of Lost Children. (I think this is the fourth time we've had it on this thread.)

Hey, I recently bought the video game adaptation of that.
It was a bit of a blind buy. I saw it, it looked interesting, it was cheap, so I figured why not.
Overall, pretty nice game... it hasn't aged well though. It's really REALLY clunky.

You definitely have a point here. I've spent SO much time in my game painstakingly drawing walkable areas, walkbehinds and setting object baselines so that there's no clipping or characters walking through stuff, etc etc, just to realize, like I mentioned above, what you just said: most of the time, players aren't going to simply walk around doing nothing. They're going to click on hotspots and objects, and whether they walk up to those hotpots and objects will depend on whether I've coded that behaviour for that interaction or not.

Still, Snarky has some good points: scrolling rooms, positional puzzles, event triggers, player identification, etc. In the end, the Walk interaction is just another tool in your belt, and there are lots of ways in which it can be used with a purpose. I don't think it's ready for retirement just yet

On the one hand, most people usually just click on things to interact, rather than simply walk around with no purpose.
On the other hand, being able to walk around, is very immersive for me. I've played a few adventure games which didn't have the ability to walk around, and you just clicked on things in the room, and the character would walk over, interact with it, and maybe walk back. It felt very static and simplistic, like I was simply staring at a screen full of clickable things rather than playing an actual game.

Immersion to me, is being able to do the little things that serve little to no purpose. The ability to open and close doors was only helpful on one puzzle in Day of the Tentacle, and to my knowledge, wasn't useful in any other LucasArts adventure game. Yet, I love being able to do that. (It's how I solved that puzzle to start with.)
It's like putting the hamster in the microwave. Sure, it's useless, and most people aren't going to do it. But that's why it's there, for the people who do, so they can enjoy the extra bit of freedom that they sought out. 

Adventure games have slowly become more and more streamlined in an attempt to make them more accessible. In other words, reduce the complexity in order to help the player. But this loss of actions in turn makes everything less immersive. If you go back to Zork and look at the sheer number of things you could do in that game, and compare it to a modern graphic adventure game, you can clearly see how everything has become more simplistic. What's surprising though, is that this is in stark contrast to other genres, which have become more complex as technology has developed, not more simplistic.
In the original GTA, you couldn't store cars. But in GTA III you can. Like walking in an adventure game, it's not the most useful feature in the world (especially with how likely your car was to break in GTA III), but it added to the immersion. It gave you something else to do. Why would you take away something so simplistic, just to streamline the game further, when the only people who are likely to notice it missing are the ones who appreciated it the most?

So how is everyone keeping busy from home these days?

Wait? I'm supposed to be doing things differently? 

I'm in the lucky position of everything being the exact same. (I'm not even exaggerating.)
My biggest problem recently is keeping my dad sane, since he's used to being out all of the time. But that's about it really.

Dune?
(Is there a Dune movie?)

I always say I can't make it, and then I do. So... who knows. 

Lost in Space?

The problem with looking at sales numbers is that a large (but hard to estimate) proportion of users are using older screens/devices. For example, I'm typing this on a laptop from 2013 (resolution: 2560x1600), which I see absolutely no reason to upgrade for probably at least another couple of years, as long as it doesn't break.

My monitor is from 2009 I think. It runs at a maximum of 1440x900 resolution, but it sometimes bugs out on some games when I run it at that resolution, with the monitor saying "frequency out of range". It seems to be random on whether or not it'll bug out, and it's only a very small subset of games that does it. Prison Architect and ZDoom are the only ones that currently come to mind.

But yeah, I've been using this monitor for years, and I've got no intention of changing it. The picture is clear and it works. It'll likely continue working for several more decades as well.
And don't get me started on the monitor from the 90s I have in the attic. Because I'll gladly switch to that thing if this monitor breaks. I think that monitor has a maximum resolution of 1280x1024.

5X for 1920x1080, 6x for 4K. Resolutions heavy majority of players will have.

If by "heavy majority" you mean just above 20%.

Will someone please tell me how on earth 1536x864 is fourth place?
I've never even heard of that resolution until today!

Ok... moving along from that surprise.
Hmm... if I had to take an educated guess, I'd say that 1366x768 is number 1, simply because people prefer laptop computers over desktop computers.
1920x1080 is a close enough second though, so it would makes sense to have that be your target resolution. But I guess it depends on who you expect to be your audience. If you consider that the number 1 most common resolution for mobiles is 360x640, and that is perfectly scalable to 1920x1080 (when in landscape mode). I think it's safe to say that the best resolution for a modern pixel art game would be half the phone one at 320x180. A resolution I've actually heard a few people use.

Personally, I'm more of a fan of 320x200, simply out of a sense of tradition more than practicality.

384x216... uh... yeah, sure. If you love it, keep it. 
Don't ever let anyone tell you otherwise.

Ooh, looks like it'll be rather cinematic.
I really like your artstyle by the way.

I just went on that Name Generator Website and got : BLASPHEMOUS SEX FACTORY

A more NSFW title I've never heard. Also, a game I'd want to play!

Make it! 

Everything is fine in Britain. Thanks to Brexit, we're too plucky and independent to be affected by things happening in the real world.

I know right?
Everyone's been carrying on like normal here.
And it seems like the panic-buyers here think that supermarkets are the only stores that exist.
So it's been life as normal for me.

I am not afraid of the virus (even though I'm in a special health situation myself now), but I'm afraid of turning into police state and loss of basic rights.

Same.  This is what really scares me.

What scares me is the potential death of my loved ones. I know more than a few people who are almost certainly going to die if they catch it.
I'll be fine (at least, I should be), my grandparents though...  that scares me. 

Soylent Green?

Yep, you got it.
As for what everyone else has said. I'm in the same boat. I've never really watched either, at least not all the way through (I watched the last twenty minutes I think). But I've heard it referenced countless times. Heck, those references are the only reason I even know it exists.

[imgzoom]https://pds.exblog.jp/pds/1/201710/11/79/f0377679_14222039.jpg[/imgzoom]
I think this is a popular film, although everytime I bring it up, people have either never heard of it, or are surprised that I have. 

It Chapter 2?

Ok, assuming you somehow still don't understand the concept. Let me reframe it, so maybe you can.

I stopped reading right here and I don't care what comes afterwards. Next time you might want to keep the condescendence in check if you want people to care about anything you might have to say.

Sorry about that.
It's not much of an excuse, but you annoyed me with how you completely glossed over the point I was trying to make earlier, because it seemed like you didn't understand something that seemed obvious to me. So I over explained it as a result.
As for what came after that part you stopped reading. It was exactly the same as before. Just repeated three times in different words. So there was no reason to read it if you already understood what I meant in that first paragraph, which I think you did. 

Also, just so you know (because you skipped it), I agreed with you.

You have to ask how many of those backers/subscribers actually end up helping with testing and how many just wanted to see an early version of the game because it makes them feel special.

That's a very good question.
I guess you could include the stipulation that "I'll ignore any bugs you point out, so you're not technically beta testers!" but that would just be stupid.
I get the feeling that most people won't actually help with the testing. Other than pointing out some game breaking bugs, I suspect everyone will just play it once, then forget about it. But I've been wrong about these kinds of things before. So only the people who does this kind of thing can actually answer that question.

In my opinion, it's a bit of a nuanced subject. I've seen some people offer a free trimmed-down early access version, usually with less content or crappier graphics. So you aren't paying to beta-test, as that's free. You're just paying for an early version. That is the only time I can say that early access isn't synonymous with paying for the privilege to beta test. But it's hardly applicable for most games.