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Haha that's great!  My original design was a nice big flat screen monitor but I thought to myself, "yeah but we make old-school games... should be on an old-school monitor!"

I considered finding a way to make it flicker like it was operating at 85hz under a florescent bulb but thought that might be pushing it

Many years back I dreamed of a medium-sized white airplane, with a dark blue rear stabilizer, nose diving and crashing into water killing all aboard (at the first part of the dream I was on the plane but when it crashed I was watching it happen from outside).

Two days later Alaska Airlines Flight 261 crashed into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California killing all aboard.  It really creeped me out!  Now people dream of plane crashes all the time (usually in the days/weeks before they get on board) but I wasn't flying anytime soon and the dream was very vivid (I remembered the look of the plane even days after when I heard the story of the crash).  Sure it was probably just wild coincidence... but who knows?

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A few years later, while sleeping, I awoke from a terrible dream that my father had been admitted to the hospital for a heart attack.

The very next day I got a phone call from my mom that my dad was in the hospital (had some chest pains).  He turned out to be fine (not a heart attack but similar symptoms) but it was just like in the dream.  Coincidence?  Maybe...

[one of my experiences...]

I too am not so sure I believe in the supernatural but I have had some strange experiences.  I don't really lump them into the supernatural category I just call them "unexplained".  I have had several of them...

one of my experiences...
A few years back I was sleeping.  It was around 5:30 am and I sat up, wide-awake.  I didn't have any grogginess or any of the normal "shaking off sleep" stuff.  I was wide-awake like I'd been up for hours.  About an hour later my phone rings and I knew what had happened.  It was my dad informing me that my grandmother had died (about an hour prior to his call).  Right about the time I snapped awake.  We had known she was going to die so that's why I knew what the call would be about (because people aren't in the habit of calling my phone at 6am) it wasn't some sense of dread upon waking up or anything.  In fact it wasn't until a few days later that I connected the two events.  In the grief of getting the phone call I had forgotten the reason I was awake.

So why do I lump this into "unexplained"?  Because while I don't really believe in the super natural I do believe there are aspects of life, the world, the universe, that we measly humans aren't in on (yet) or haven't discovered.  Sure there could be a scientific explanation for why I snapped awake so suddenly, in a way I'd never before or have ever since, almost to the minute my grandmother passed away... but I don't know.  It's unexplained.

I do tend to take the rational explanation for things though.  I was horribly sick the week before Christmas and was running a very high fever.  I thought there were bugs all over the ceiling and that my legs were on fire ... I commented on it, but didn't flip out because even in my fever-reduced capacity for logic I still knew that I was hallucinating because 1) I knew I was sick and 2) I highly doubted Tarah would be ignoring either of those things

I take the same attitude Khris has on most of this... Human beings have a tremendous ability to "fill in the blanks" as it were.  See a light in the sky you don't know what it is and immediately it's a viral video of aliens.  It is a UFO but only in the sense that is flying and you can't identify it.  Not little green men from Alpha Centauri!!

So yeah... I'm a skeptic on most of this stuff.  But I also really firmly believe that there are just some aspects of the universe we aren't privy to.  The unexplained...

Firefox 8.0, but now it seems to work again.

I think I was able to duplicate the problem you were having... it wasn't fully loading the page in (my server again!) and the javascript function needed to process the button click wasn't on the page!  So if the page fully loads (Which it now should on the WEG server) it should be working fine!

[UPDATE]

Nope, now the Buy button doesn't work at all for me.

What browser/version are you using (if you know the version)?

UPDATE
I think most of the problems fall back on my server being a tad on the sh*tty side   To circumvent such fecal-like quality we have transferred the site to Wadjet Eye's servers (thanks to the graciousness of Mr. Gilbert)!  Think of my server as a puny 3 year old kid and Dave's is a 27 year old body builder on steroids...

Let me know if there are any more problems!

Hey guys...

I've been making a boat-load of changes the website (most notably converting it from Coldfusion mark-up to plain ol' HTML).  So that explains some of the issues.

- The non-clickable button should be fixed and
- the button now opens in a new window which SHOULD solve the payPal problem and
- the button now causes the window to close
- the date in the footer has been updated as well (that was a coldfusion left-over)

We're working like crazy behind the scenes to keep this running.  Turns out my hosting company is a piece of junk and can't handle the traffic.  Needless to say ol' Darth is now on the hunt for a new hosting provider!!

I have, for now, just put a re-route on the main page that links to the main "purchase" page...

My server should be more than adequate to handle the traffic... I have contacted the hosting company to make them fix it.  If all of a sudden the site was flooded with traffic they might have (falsely) assumed it was a DDOS attack or something and shut it down...

Yeah... well I suppose that's a good thing

I was able to get in from that other link I sent but even that's not working now!

mirror: http://www.twin-design.com/ags/bakesale/ (this is actually where the site is hosted... I'm not sure why the url redirect isn't working properly... I'm contacting the registrar!)

THE BAKE SALE IS UP AND RUNNING!!!
http://www.agsbakesale.com

hehe Ponch you beat me to it

One more thing about the site, it might be an idea to include some sort of Email address, just incase (heaven forbid) that someone purchases the Bake Sale and is experiencing difficulty in their download. The last thing we want is people to have problems and have no where to turn to.

That is taken care of on the BMT side (I believe).  I did setup an email address and provided it to them (through Ponch) which I assumed was what it was for

I have added a link back to the Hints & Tips section (where the reminder used to be) I see no reason they couldn't use the hints/tips here!  I mean, they are all AGS games after all

All the updates go live at noon eastern standard... just a few more hours!!

[Linky, Link]

Regarding anti-piracy legislation, I feel you and I take a pretty similar stand, but just to help understand the average person's mindset, how about some questions? To keep it generic, we'll just use "Media" to mean any form of pictures/video/audio/software/etc. that may or may not be otherwise "protected" under copyright:
...
I just tried to observe my own justifications for items that I may or may not have had to make similar decisions about myself (that's a nice political way of stating it, eh? ). For me, if I have the financial capability then there's rarely a situation that I can think of where I would obtain anything illegally instead of purchasing it legally. If there was then a personal opinion about something being overpriced or the source not being "deserving" of my money might cross my mind.

Rather than answer each question individually I'll just give my take on the situation (which covers most of the questions anyway).

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The notion of "stopping" online piracy is silly.  The name SOPA shows just how misinformed the government is on the topic (and how greedy and deluded are the media companies).  You cannot stop piracy.  It's just a fact of the world we live in and was before the world was digital as well!  You cannot stop it, but you can reduce the amount of it (more on the later).

Go back to the root of the word; pirate.  It conjures up romantic images of peg-legs, parrots and rum, and high adventure on the open seas... It was also illegal and punishable by a gruesome hanging (or even death by exposure) if you were caught.  And yet even today there are still modern pirates on the world's oceans!  It was illegal way back in the day as it is today and yet there were/are pirates everywhere!

It's the same principle with pirating "media".  It's happening and it's not going to stop no matter what they do about it.

The media companies want to label pirates as "thieves" which, once again, shows their greed/ignorance.  It's not stealing.  It just isn't.  If I wasn't going to buy it in the first place what have they lost?  Nothing.  I didn't take something that they cannot then sell.  It's no different than a friend of yours making you a mix-tape back in the 80s. (which the media companies tried to make illegal as well and failed of course).  There is no hard evidence that piracy loses these companies money.  In fact it's been speculated that those who pirate actually buy more 'media' in the end than those that don't pirate.

Why is it not stealing? I make this comparison; my brother bought Uncharted 3 last November.  He played through it and then let me borrow it.  I didn't buy the game but I'm playing it.  Should I be in jail?  I am playing the game that they didn't take my money for.  I'm a pirate!!  Arggghhh!!  It's just a silly notion that has gotten a foot-hold and they aren't willing to see the folly and change their course.

The media companies had it easy for the last century.  The populace was uninformed about their business models and practices.  We simply didn't know anything.  That is no longer the case.  This scares the shit out of media companies (and the government which is why they want so badly to censor the web 'cause they like their citizens to be stupid and mindless sheep that will just follow the herd but let's keep this discussion about online piracy ) and they are doing the only thing their greed allows them to do.  They are attacking!

There is a great TED talk on why SOPA is a bad idea; Linky, Link, It's a tad on the long side, but well worth a listen!

Now, should they simply do nothing about piracy?  Of course not, they run a business and that business runs on money!  They need/want to make money (as do most humans).  But the path they are taking is foolish and fatally flawed.

They are hiring staff to take useless steps to combat piracy.  We'll use video games as an example.  They spend all this time, money and energy to create this new and improved copy protection on their latest game.  This causes the production cost to increase which they, in order to protect their profits, pass on to their customers as a price increase in the game.  So... to fight piracy you screw over your legitimate customers by charging them more money, the pirates will still get the game for free and your new copy protection system will be broken 5 minutes after the game is out by some 14 year old in his parent's basement.  Congratulations!!  You've accomplished NOTHING but screwing over your customers!  Good job!

This method seems to be the only thing these companies can come up with.  It has two effects; 1) It causes them to raise prices which loses them some customers who can no longer afford the game, which sometimes causes them to pirate and leads to... 2) it causes more piracy.

The answer is simple; LOWER YOUR PRICES.

It should be obvious to the media companies that the reason piracy is so rampant is because, duh, it is FREE!!  The economy is shit and you're charging me 60 dollars for a game I can easily get for free??  What do they honestly think is going to happen in that situation?  We/They can say, "yeah but it's 'wrong'" ... it doesn't change the fact that it is happening.  And it's happening because you are charging too much for your product(s) when there is a free alternative.

Loose example;  If they price the game at 60 USD and they sell 100,000 units they pull down 6,000,000 USD.  Lower that price by 1/2 and put the game on the market at 30 USD and they'd sell 1,000,000 units (30,000,000 USD in sales) as they've put the game into MANY more people's affordable price-range!  Half-price equals a 5 fold increase in profits.  Now I'm pulling these numbers out of the air but the idea is sound.

Lower prices = more sales, less piracy.

Now I'm not an expert.  I'm not saying "I know the answers".  I could be wrong (I often am).  But what I do know is that what they are doing (and trying to do) has not, is not, and never will work.  All they are accomplishing is making themselves look greedy and "bad" and are turning the masses against them.

People are 'waking up' and starting to see how these corporations have been (and are) screwing us over!  People are starting to realize that these corporations don't control us, WE control them!  Without us (consumers) they have nothing.  I am optimistic that there's going to be MAJOR change in the coming years as the world slowly realizes the corrupt nature of corporations and rallies against it.  Naive?  Maybe... but I'm still optimistic!

I'm shocked it took 'em as long as it did to nuke Megaupload!  But I'm glad it took 'em that long because they had to follow due process to make it happen.   It was up to the copyright holders to PROVE their case. A glorious (and correct) method that wouldn't be possible if bullshit legislation like SOPA/PIPA were in place!

I would agree there's a bigger issue at play here but my reason for not being worried isn't just because I didn't use MU (I never liked that site) or the 'fed' having power they shouldn't (which they shouldn't).  My reason for not being worried is simple; MU might be gone, but tomorrow 5 more sites just like it will vie for the new #1 spot previously held by MU.  Then our super-smart-corporate-controlled-government can spend another 2-3 years (and several million dollars of tax payer's money) to shut it down and when it dies, the next day another 5 will start the process over.  They just won't learn.

I just don't understand why anybody (govt, corps, etc) would try to fight sites like that (or others like Pirate Bay) ... they will never win.  No matter the laws, rules, guidelines, or gestapos that are put in place they will never stop it.  If they hired 10,000 top-notch people to combat this "plague" they'll still be outnumbered 1,000,000 to 1.

They should try to enact a law that makes it illegal for the earth to spin the way it does and try to force it to reverse its spin.  They'll have a better chance of that happening than stopping sites like MU (or piracy in general).

Haha!  Love it!!

Lots of facebook exposure.. Still wondering about that Blue cup on the website? AGS banner? A link? Any kind of branding for AGS?   :'(

Will update my websites tonight to link to teh bake sale.

I added the blue-cup... have been making so many updates/tweaks in the last few days that one just managed to slip through the cracks!  I've also update it to have a few links back to the forums here (including in the footer).  I suppose we could add a banner in there as well!

Please take discussions that are not about this game into PMs and leave this thread about this game.  Thanks!

I believe the final 'term' of the sale was 6 weeks.

I have updated the thread for you and unlocked it!  Good luck on the production!

Okay okay... you're sneakin' by on a technicality here pal!!

I'm gonna let this slide because the quality of the teaser and the sprites in the [incomplete] backgrounds are stellar and I am in love with the post-WWII era.  (I have a game sitting on the back-burner that takes place in the same era... a murder-mystery-train game).

I swear I've seen that character sheet before too... had you posted it at Deviant art maybe?  I know I've seen it before!