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Oh... LOTS of them. Really. Also a lot of one-star reviews from people who didn't even play it, just because they were angry that "suicide is not a joke".

And yet, I love making jokes about suicide. Well... failing to commit suicide, usually.
I commend you on your bravery for both making and publishing such a game. Personally, I'm too much of a coward to show off my dark humour to this extent.

But I once got a mail once from a person who found the game while he was looking for ways of committing suicide, telling me that the game helped him vent off suicidal thoughts for a bit. That made it all worthy 

That's heartwarming. 

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So *I* am supposed give *you* money for the privilege of testing your game so you can save yourself the cost of hiring beta testers? Did you go to the Tom Sawyer Business School?

Am I the only one who finds this mind-boggling (and gear-grinding)?

(Disclaimer: I don't think the dev in question is identifiable from this, but in any case this is meant to be an example of a tendency I'm seeing all over the place, and not me pointing my finger at any specific individual. In fact I actually like their games a lot.)

Well in their defence, they probably need the money just to be able to complete the game, and probably don't have anything spare to hire proper beta testers.

Then offer some actual reward to backers, which is kind of the point of Kickstarter and Patreon, and with that money, hire beta testers. Simple. But don't make them pay for the "privilege" jfc.

But the ability to play the game or games early IS the reward. I know it's hard to believe, but a lot of people for some weird reason, like to play games early (even though they're incomplete buggy messes).
Now I'm not one of those people. I like finished working games. But even I'm able to understand the very simple concept that that there are a lot of people that like playing games they're looking forward to, as early as possible.
The thing is, if you're playing a game early, you're technically a beta tester. There's no way around that. That's the entire concept behind early access, and is one of the reasons why Minecraft became as successful as it did! (I still remember a Dwarf Fortress thread where people were complaining about this new "early access" thing that an increasingly popular indie game called "Minecraft" was doing, and why it was so stupid. Little did they know everyone would start doing it.)

Ok, assuming you somehow still don't understand the concept. Let me reframe it, so maybe you can.
Let's say you have a Patreon. Ok. And you get demands that some people want a reward of having early access to an incomplete buggy version of the game. (I'm not saying that this has happened for the guy in the example you gave, but I'm sure it's happened for someone.)
Would you do it?
If you do, you're technically making them into beta testers that are paying you for the privilege to be beta testers? (The thing that grinds your gears.)
If you don't, you're not giving your patreons a reward that they're actually asking for, and you may be losing out on some extra cash flow as a result.

Now it's not that I don't agree with you. Paying for the privilege to beta test someone's game is dumb.
But people like playing games early. And while I don't agree with those people, I can at least understand that concept. So why can't you?

Now I know we're talking about Patreon, which means people aren't just paying for the privilege of being beta testers. They're paying continually for that privilege. Which let's face it, is pretty damn stupid. But even then, what I've said still kinda applies.

Here's an example (warning: big, ugly image ahead):

Kinda reminds me of an extreme version of some of Midway's early arcade titles:

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[imgzoom]https://vintagearcade.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Rampage-screen-2.png[/imgzoom]

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[imgzoom]http://www.classicgaming.cc/classics/tapper/images/tapper-screenshot.png[/imgzoom]

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Although these have sprites that are twice as big as the background, they look quite nice.
Your example though, shows that four times as big is clearly a bad idea.

So *I* am supposed give *you* money for the privilege of testing your game so you can save yourself the cost of hiring beta testers? Did you go to the Tom Sawyer Business School?

Am I the only one who finds this mind-boggling (and gear-grinding)?

(Disclaimer: I don't think the dev in question is identifiable from this, but in any case this is meant to be an example of a tendency I'm seeing all over the place, and not me pointing my finger at any specific individual. In fact I actually like their games a lot.)

Well in their defence, they probably need the money just to be able to complete the game, and probably don't have anything spare to hire proper beta testers.
Besides, if it's a game you're really looking forward to, and you're going to buy it anyway, wouldn't you want to help in its creation?
Of course it depends on the game, but still.

It's when big budget AAA titles do it, that it really grinds my gears. And the problem is, all big budget AAA titles seem to do it nowadays, and everyone considers it the norm! As a matter of fact, I've had people call me out for being the weird one when I complain about it!

Use this: https://www.color-blindness.com/coblis-color-blindness-simulator/
To test your image with various types of colour blindness. You can upload your image, then try each option to see what it looks like.

I just did it, and in my opinion, it's actually nicer to look at and more readable if you HAVE colour blindness.

Hello everyone! I figured I should introduce myself here as yesterday I submitted my first ever game! I've been looking into AGS for a while since I have always loved point-and-click games, and when I saw this month's MAGS topic I had a fully-formed idea pop into my head almost instantly. So, I decided to finally buckle down and make something myself!

I have absolutely no experience when it comes to scripting, art, animation, or anything else game-making related so these forums have been extremely valuable as a reference. Between the AGS manual and the posts here I have been able to teach myself a lot! I'm really looking forward to getting to know all you lovely people (and the software!) a lot better over the coming months.

Well from just looking at the screenshots of your first game, I can safely say you've done better than I did when I first started off. I look forward to seeing more of you in the coming months. 

Welcome to the forums!

I'm surprised someone here made dummy accounts to cheat the votes.
I had no idea we had a big enough community for someone to even consider that.
It's almost flattering. 

But I digress. Congrats to the nominees.
Also, how did AGS Awards Ceremony 2018 get nominated? 
Either I've misinterpreted what that is, or we've just been trolled.

I love how there's a whole topic about how to make a game with sub-pixels on a forum where I'm fairly sure most people hate the concept of mismatched pixel resolutions.
It gives me this warm feeling. 

If you set character scaling to 50% with Direct3D9, then you get mixed resolution

I that still true? I thought this had been "fixed" a million years ago?

Yeah, it's true. Firstly, it wasn't that long ago that it was "fixed" and secondly, I distinctly remember arguing that it should always be available to everyone from the external setup menu, rather than being left up to the game developer. Mostly because like you said, it's feels like a luxury option. Some people might hate it, but others rather like it.
Besides, I've never been a fan of artistic vision. But that's getting off topic.
I think it's only available from the general settings when you're making the game. So I lost that battle. But at least it's an option.

- Fonts for complex translations (Chinese characters)

Hey, like the FM-Towns version of Zak McKracken!

Also, word of advice. If it's smooth scrolling you want, make sure to turn off the moonwalking fix for the characters. You know, the thing where they only move every time the frame updates. I've done it with all of my games, and even made fun of people who don't in my latest game (which I don't think anyone noticed). If you get the animation speed and the movement speed just right, it looks smooth, and doesn't look like they're moonwalking.

The movie "Crawl" REALLY ground my gears.

Especially because it has an 83% critics rating and 75% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes...

Here is what I wrote on their audience critic section (SPOILERS)

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Now, I realize movies aren't supposed to be 100% realistic, but when I see someone chomped on by gators, on arms and legs, shoulder and torso, like 5 times but they can still swim and move at full speed, without any broken bones, nerve damage, torn muscles, or just body parts freezing up from the shock of the injuries, I just have to assume that their skeleton is made of adamantium and their wounds heal about as fast as Wolverine's do too.
At this point I know they are going to be just fine no matter what happens to them and all suspense is lost.
Which is a shame, because I really cared about the two characters at first, but once I realized they were indestructible, that all went out the window.
Movie, less is more.

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Holy crap! Was that guy Jason Voorhees?
I don't expect a movie to be realistic, but there are limits, especially when it comes down to what the main characters can survive. 
(Unless it's done for comical effect of course.)

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I kind of enjoyed the first of the two of the recent trilogy of films but they didn't feel like Star Trek, I think JJ Abrams wasn't really a trekkie and wanted to make more of a Star Wars film. Karl Urban nailed McCoy in my opinion.

Speaking of that trilogy of films, is it just me or did all three kind of blend together?
I honestly can not remember what the third film was about! 

You can only do this by getting specialised software that lets you access deleted files, so you can remove the flag that says the computer is allowed to overwrite it.
But that's complicated, and might require a bit of luck, since your computer might have already overwritten it.

STD, yeah. Like so many films these days they seem to be put together by a focus group from whatever was popular the previous year.

You've just described 90% of popular media, ranging from music and films, to TV shows and video games.

There is plenty of good stuff out there, it's just that you're likely to only ever hear about the focus group crap, because it makes the most money. You need to actually look for the good stuff. But it is there, and there is plenty of it. 

After being on the fence right until entering the voting station, and voting leave in an eeny meeny moe fashion, some time afterwards i realised it was a terrible mistake to have done so. It seems as a left wing person, I should have voted remain. But nothing was clear or particularly helpful when I tried to research it. I'm not very good at politics but this whole thing has shaken my belief in always voting, if I don't know what I'm doing.


I did vote for Labour in the recent election.

I know exactly what you mean.
I also voted leave in that initial vote. Not because of the obvious lies regarding the NHS, or even the clearly racist immigration thing. My reasoning was because of how taxes work for small businesses here in Britain vs how the EU was enforcing them in order to prevent big businesses from cheating the system (in short, they clashed hard). This along with the selling of certain animals which would be bad for some countries in Europe, but completely harmless in other countries (including Britain). Not great reasons, I know, but better than most people who chose leave I think.

All other votes though, I chose to abstain, because of how much information came out about how nuanced the situation was. 
I understood that I didn't know enough to make an informed decision.
And I'm sure there are people here who can tell me how even choosing to make no decision, was a bad decision. But that's a damned if you do and damned if you don't, kind of thing.

I do wonder how things will play out though. 

What I'll never understand is how Watership Down is rated U in Britain and a mere PG in America.
I've watched horror films that were less violent.   

And speaking of Americans and their fear of cursing. Why do they worship the word "cunt" as though it's some sort of messiah of all swear words?
Here in Britain, "cunt" is no different than saying "dick" or "git". And one of those words is so well accepted in American culture, that they named a well-known website after it. 

And what is inherently wrong with swearing anyway?
The only reason I have ever been able to figure out as to why we make certain words taboo, is so then we actually have strong words to say when we get really annoyed. If everyone says it all of the time, then it loses its punch.

Oops. I missed that post somehow. Interesting. The screenshots really look like they're from an Animal Crossing game.

Magician's Quest: Mysterious Times?

You got it. A surprisingly decent Animal Crossing clone.
And trust me, if you think it looks like Animal Crossing from just these screenshots, then keep in mind that it also sounds and plays exactly like Animal Crossing as well.

Your turn. 

Huh... I wouldn't have thought an Animal Crossing game would be that obscure. Apparently I haven't looked in this thread in over a week.
I can't say which Animal Crossing game it is, though.

You're on the right path, but as I've said before it's not a part of the Animal Crossing series.

Alright, so it seems like I've accidentally killed off this thread with too obscure of a game.
So here's a screenshot and a hint:

[imgzoom]http://twentyquidamusements.thecomicstrip.org/files/name_the_game/namethegame03.png[/imgzoom]

It was published by a game's company, that now seems more interested in selling pachinko machines than video games.

I'm not sure how useful you'll find it, but one of the simplest tools I found for making music was Bosca Ceoil.
It's very simple and easy to use, and perfect for inexperienced beginners. While giving you plenty of freedom to make your own music, instead of making randomized remixes of pre-made samples.

I also hear good things about MilkyTracker.
It may look complicated, but even I was able to make a terrible little song in a few minutes using it. And I both have no experience using it, and almost zero musical knowledge.

Looks like Zombieland, but Luke Wilson wasn't in that I don't think?

Close enough, it's Zombieland: Double Tap. Just came out this past October. If you liked the first one then you'll definitely like this one.

I can't argue with that, but it's nowhere near as good as the first one either, so keep your expectations in check.
I personally think that pilot episode for that Zombieland TV series was better. (I still don't understand why people hated it so much.)

Is it one of the Harvest Moon games, or its spin-offs or spiritual successors?

Nope, it's completely unrelated to Harvest Moon and Story of Seasons.

Here's another screenshot:
[imgzoom]http://twentyquidamusements.thecomicstrip.org/files/name_the_game/namethegame02.png[/imgzoom]