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[Reality-in-the-Norm]

Reality-in-the-Norm




Click here to download.

Summary:
Reality-on-the-Norm is a game series where anyone can make a game. This is my installment.

Set in a slightly different dimension to the other RON games, Reality-in-the-Norm follows David Jones at the end of a treasure hunt. See completely different versions of old characters, as well some new ones, as you get to witness a completely different take of Reality.

Now with voice acting, courtesy of the text-to-speech synthesis program 15.ai

Details:

• Sierra interface: left-click to perform action, right-click to change action.
• F5 to open save menu, F7 to open load menu.
• Contains strong language.
• Completable in under two hours.
• Voice over by a text-to-speech program.

Specs:
320 x 200
32 bit color
d3d

If you like the game, why not
play the other RON games here.

Some people use a program and set it to bid few seconds from end of auction..

Where can I find this program?
Um... asking for a friend.   
That friend being me.

My sister has very minor colour blindness due to her dyslexia.
Looking online, it's apparently called "Colour vision deficiency".

As for that guy who said he's never met a colour blind person in his life. Most likely he has, and either the person doesn't realise they're colour blind (because it's minor, like with my sister), or more likely, they just don't go around telling people they're colour blind. I mean honestly, who does?

As for those palettes. Those seem quite useful. It seems as though using the colours 2, 8, and 12, would be best for puzzles which require clearly identifying three colours.

I think it would be even more useful is there was some sort of tool which you could feed an image into, and it would output a version of what a colour blind person would see. Therefore you could see how things look and work within your game. For example, to ensure an important object doesn't blend into the background.

I hate it when I'm bidding for something on Ebay... and I'm winning.
But then someone scoops in at the very last second, so no-one else has a chance to bid again. 

If you're interested in an item, just bid on it!  Don't wait for the last second.  That's a low move!   

You also kind of need to snipe on eBay, to avoid the sellers from outbidding you. You see, in my experience, the seller will want a minimum amount, but won't put in that minimum amount so as to attract people to bid. As soon as someone does though, they'll outbid them with an alternate account until they reach the minimum that they want.
This becomes blatantly obvious when you bid on an item, lose the bid, and then see the exact same item being sold by the exact same seller, the very next day. 

[MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD]

Danzare,

MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD

Spoiler

The point for me of the shrinking was to create a Utopia for humanity and save us from our excess waste of resources.

But, it turned into just a way to "cheat" your way into an extravagant lifestyle so the new Utopia was full of the nouveau riche who had suddenly all the wealth they would ever need and nothing to do.

Enter our smuggler character, played amazingly by Christopher Waltz... He is there to provide the suddenly rudderless society with endless drugs, booze, and whatever else is being controlled by the corporation that runs Leisureland.

He doesn't care about size. In fact he let his own brother remain big as his contact on the outside. He only cares about the opportunities there are in this new "wild west" as he describes it. That being said, he turns out to be one of the most likeable characters in the movie.

Then we see the dark side of the utopia: They still need someone to come in and clean up their messes after that day's party is over.

We go to the poor-town outside the walls where the laborers live and see the moral choice the Vietnamese refugee lady makes when it comes to her dying friend.

Then we go to the original little-people settlement in Sweden and it seems at first that they have a true utopia until we start to see that they are a cult like any other.

The smuggler says it best when the choice comes to survive underground or face the environmental disaster to come: "They'll be at each other's throats killing one another within 50 years and we'll still be here for at least the next 300."

Our main character, who has always been drawn towards helping others, goes back to Leisureland and becomes a permanent helper in the Vietnamese lady's "meals-on-wheels" effort.

He hasn't helped save the entire future of the world like he briefly wanted to, but he is taking care of the living for now. He has found peace... And then she honks the horn for him to hurry up... The end.

I thought it was an excellent movie mostly because it didn't focus on the point of people being shrunk.

It was more like, the more things change the more they stay the same.

I was so glad it wasn't just a movie-long episode of Land Of The Giants.

[close]

I'll hide this part, so as to not spoil it for anyone who wants to watch the film.

Spoiler

Now that's you've described the movie by including the shrinking, let me explain it to you without the shrinking.

Guy divorces his wife and then meets a smuggler in his apartment building who uses illegal immigrants as hired help. He then sees the dark side of the world when he gets to know one of these people. The smuggler turns out to be a pretty decent guy. He then gets invited to go to this place which is supposedly a paradise, only to find out that they're a bit of a cult who has an underground bunker, because they think the world is going to end.
You can literally have the exact same film play out (minus the first fifteen minutes) without having shrinking in it.
(As a matter of fact, I wouldn't be surprised if that film has already been made.)

[close]

I hated the movie, because it didn't focus on what people were clearly sacrificing by being shrunk down. They were literally selling their freedom and security, for money. They were all relying heavily upon big people to accommodate them, and it was clear at the start, that some people had a problem with that.
I wanted to see the inevitable conclusion of it all. The sad ending where it all falls apart for our main character as the shrinking fad inevitably dies!
I wanted to see the passage of time, the lack of maintenance on Leisureland, the increased prices of miniature products. The people who were shrunk and got lots of money as a result, suddenly ending up on the bottom of the food chain. Rats and cockroaches breaking in. Perhaps even a psychopath (who is big) breaking in early on in the movie, screaming about how he hates little people, and smashing half the city under his foot.
I wanted to see them be abandoned, as you got to see the true dark side of reality, when the inevitable bubble pops. And how greed had fueled it all.
You can't tell me that would've made a worse movie.

You said you like how it was a movie about how the more things change, the more they stay the same. Which proves my point exactly, as it is just a fancy way of saying, the shrinking added nothing. You could have just as easily replaced shrinking with anything else (going to Mars for example) and had the same film. Or as I have said multiple times already, you could've easily removed it entirely!
I believe if you are going to add something major into the story, it should be integral to the story. Any film can say "Oh, and it's set on mars in the future", but it doesn't instantly make it better. Could you imagine if they did that to The Usual Suspects or Pulp Fiction? Would it have made those films better or worse? In my opinion, worse. 

That being said, I'm also glad it wasn't just a movie-long episode of Land of the Giants. Or a remake of Honey I Shrunk the Kids. But come on, if you're going to introduce the social changes caused by people shrinking themselves, you've got to follow through with it. Don't just have it as a backdrop.

Ha ha, I love it.
If you made it, I'd definitely play it. 

"Downsizing" is one of the most touching and wonderful films I have seen in years, with unforgettable characters, a unique but perfectly-done story structure, and deeply philosophical while never being preachy. It presents several moral choices and shows the choices the characters make but never suggests these were the right ones, leaving a lot of room for thought and discussion afterwards.

Wait... you liked Downsizing?
You could remove the whole shrinking aspect, and you'd only change the first fifteen minutes of the film!
It's like they combined two half finished film scripts into one.
Here I was waiting for the whole shrinking thing to completely blow up in everyone's face (of which there was plenty of signs pointing to that), and suddenly, the film changed tone and started treating it as set dressing.
There's all sorts of ways they could've handled the film. From big people no longer supporting little people, and rats breaking in, and so on. To a full on apocalypse outside, with the little people all slowly realizing that they depended on big people to survive. So on, and so on. But no, instead they used it as an excuse for the main guy to have a divorce.

I could easily describe the ENTIRE PLOT of that film, without once mentioning the shrinking aspect. Shrinking should not be the least important part of a film, which has shrinking in it!

But let's take a look at it without the fact that they shoe-horned shrinking into it, just to sell tickets. And instead just look at it as the film it is.
In that case... meh. It's alright I guess. If you like that type of film. Personally I've seen it done better.

+1 on Will Ferrel. No idea what everyone was on about.

Same here. I can't think of one film he's been in, that I've liked.

It is rare that I turn a movie off even half-way through but this is the first time that, after 20 minutes watching, I've had to fumble for the control, pray I found the stop button fast enough, and then pop the screen the finger and say, our loud, "Fuck you!".

I present to you: Holmes And Watson. May it be played endlessly on repeat to child-molesters in Hell.

I had the exact same problem with Napoleon Dynamite.
If you think Holmes and Watson was bad, then you've not watched people literally saying "duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh" for half an hour.

I thought "surely this can't be the entire film" but after half an hour, I realized it was.

That is absolutely wrong. The last sentence even said it wasn't My Name is Earl.

Damn, I missed that little note. 

Well, I'm stumped.
I can't even hazard a guess by simply looking at guest roles Erik Estrada has had in television.

I'm pretty sure this is My Name is Earl.

Ok, one last update.
The game is on the cusp of completion. All it needs now is rigorous bug testing, and also for me to finally figure out what I'm going to do about the music.

If I don't encounter any bugs, then the release should be sometime next week.
If I do encounter bugs though, chances are, there will be plenty more I don't know about. So it'll be released in two weeks.
Either way, it's coming soon.

[BUT I NOTICED!]

How about we discuss verbcoins. 

What a clever ploy to avoid the real issue, which is that Roger's hair was brown in the original Space Quests. BROWN!

They quietly changed this in the VGA versions and hoped no one would notice.

BUT I NOTICED!

Let's not forget that Guybrush Threepwood's hair was ALSO brown, in both Monkey Island 1 and 2. And they quietly changed it in the third game!
Some people say that he was "always supposed to be blonde" but I think we all know that's a lie. 

This thread is stupid.

I completely agree.
It didn't take long for Godwin's law to take effect did it?

Hmm... considering this is a thread about controversy. How about we discuss verbcoins. 

I present to you... the title screen!
[imgzoom]http://twentyquidamusements.thecomicstrip.org/files/ritn/ritn3.png[/imgzoom]

So far, progress has been moving along nicely.
The game is playable from beginning to end, with all of the dialog between already in.
All that's left are a few special case animations, and a whole lot of text for incorrect choices. I mean, surely you should be able to talk to a grave, right? Right?

Also from what I could gather, Reality-on-the-Norm derives its name because the town Reality was built on a river named Norm. So I guess in this universe, the town was built in the river... presumably with the use of a dam. I guess flooding must be common.

Some sort of Spectrum port of Rogue?

Yeah, the watermelon thing is common knowledge to me. If you were exposed to a lot of American culture growing up, as I was, it, along with countless other stereotypes, appears in movies, TV (any sitcom with a black character), music, the routines of almost all black comedians of the last fifty years...you can't help but absorb it through osmosis.

That's why, in general, I don't really understand white America's (at least those people over twenty years old) current propensity for playing dumb -unless it's a willful ignorance...- when it comes to their country's past relationship with black people. References to it are, have been, and continue to be, literally everywhere.

You know when you learn something new, and then you start seeing it everywhere. (Baader-Meinhof phenomenon.)
That's why.
It was always there, but you never noticed it because you didn't regard it as important, and therefore just blanked it.
Then one day someone tells you it and you can finally see it.

I know this, because I'm one of them.  I never noticed the watermelon thing even existed until a few years ago. Let alone that it was a racist thing.

Calling people dumb, ignorant, or even naive for this, has always come across as being rude to me. Like you're being punished for not being more racist. 
But that's just my two cents on the matter.

Sounds like something a handsome person would say! It was me wasn't it? 

Of course it was you. 

The game will be puzzle complete today. Which means next week I'll be focusing on the spit-and-polish. In other words, text, animations, graphics, ect. Everything that makes a clicking-simulator into a game.

Also, I'm glad to see interest. I was slightly worried people wouldn't like my "B" dimension idea.

[Reality-in-the-Norm]

Reality-in-the-Norm will be my first attempt at a RON game.

Set in a slightly different dimension to the other RON games, Reality-in-the-Norm follows David Jones on a treasure hunt, as you get to witness a completely different take of Reality.

People have said to me on multiple occasions, that you don't need to be an expert in RON lore to make a RON game. So I'm putting that to the test with this (technically still canon) soft-reboot.
And of course there's plenty of references to real RON lore. I couldn't help but learn a few things and include them. And this is supposed to be a "B" dimension of sorts, so there's got to be plenty of similarities.
But I'm hoping that people who like RON games, will still like mine. And that people who have never played a RON game, will consider playing mine.

Screenshots:
[imgzoom]http://twentyquidamusements.thecomicstrip.org/files/ritn/ritn1.png[/imgzoom]

[imgzoom]http://twentyquidamusements.thecomicstrip.org/files/ritn/ritn2.png[/imgzoom]



Current Progress:
Story--  100%
Graphics--  100%
Scripting -- 99.9% (Might be a few bugs I missed.)
Music-- 100%

Release Date:
19th of September, 2019.

I know without a single shred of doubt, there isn't anything more.

That's not really something a skeptic would say, especially not a 100% pure one (i.e. one who questions everything). That's something only a fundamentalist would say.

Looking up fundamentalist, I only get results for people who unquestionably believe in their religion.
I unquestionably believe in nothing. So I understand your point. Skeptics question, they don't believe. Thanks for that correction.

Clearly my definition of skeptic was wrong. 

I know exactly what you mean. My family are a little more eccentric with it though.
There's my dad, who doesn't believe in any religion, but does believe there's a "creator" of some kind.
There's my sister, who believes in anything related to pagans (although she doesn't mention it much nowadays).
There's my brother (who admittedly is 10), who believes in everything.
And then there's my mother, who had a mental breakdown a few years ago, and hid behind religion and Christianity to avoid getting help (she claimed she was hearing the voice of a demonic ghost who was claiming to be Jesus Christ). All this despite not believing in Christianity before the breakdown (like my sister, she was into the pagan stuff). She's a lot better now thankfully. (It took her nearly killing herself to finally receive some help.)
And then of course there's all of my extended family, who are all religious in someway. My grandmother and my aunts (on my dad's side) are Jehovah Witnesses for example.

And then there's me. Who has witnessed all of this. I used to consider myself very open minded, but now... I'm a 100% pure skeptic.
But the thing is, I'm a skeptic who wants to believe there's something more to life than what meets the eye, even though I know without a single shred of doubt, there isn't anything more.
I've noticed a similarity between region, tarot, astrology, ghosts, ect. And I just can't unsee it. But I never preach about how others are wrong, because quite simply, some people need to believe in something to get through the day.

Thankfully, except for that thing that happened with my mother, none of us have ever butted heads. If anything, we've all either had quite meaningful discussions, or avoid the topic entirely, as there's no reason to bring it up.