Messages

I'm single, and have been for several years (no exageration). I spent a lot of yesterday dealing with people saying "Find anyone this year? No? Oh," and quickly changing the subject.

That wouldn't be so bad, but I had that conversation about NINE TIMES yesterday.  Most of the time people don't care about my non-existant lovelife, but on Valentines everyone tends to want to silmutaneously talk about it and avoid it. And it gets old.

Oh man, the "evil rock music" lyrics made me laugh.

"Sick dreams are made of fleas
Moldy breath and schoolyard cheese"

What the heck is schoolyard cheese, anyway? And do I really want to know?

And why is "There's no time for your--AAARRHHH!" cited to Proverbs 22:8, "He that soweth iniquity shall reap vanity: and the rod of his anger shall fail?"  The art's kind of cool, but I honestly can't tell if they're satirical or not.

It all depends on how far into creating the game you have to be before it's considered abandoned.

If you count games that were never more than ideas, I've lost count. But games where I've done some work (animations, written the plot and puzzles, etc) there's only been one. Yay me!

I'd advise that if you're going to make the perspective purposefully off, make it REALLY off, with nothing going to the same vanishing points. If you make it only sort of off, it just looks like you made a mistake.

I DO find it interesting that the perspective lines you have created look sort of like the masonic symbol


Conspiracy, coincidence, or too much sugar and not enough sleep? YOU MAKE THE CALL!!!

I don't think they're actually going to make a full version of this one- unlike the trailer for the game, this doesn't have a release date on it. Also, a lot of the shots (the guardians, the "Not tonight he doesn't!" bit, and a few others) just wouldn't work in a movie.

Though I must say, if they DID make a full version for release on DVD or something, I'd sure buy it!

I linked to the movie trailer a few days ago- there's a whole bunch of mirrors here

I have to disagree about the default "this doesn't work" message. Have SOME sort of message, yes, but not a default. It just gets really really annoying to hear the same thing over and over again, and often leaves the player asking "But WHY doesn't it work?"

I only have three real problems with your map.

1. It's flat as a pankake. Flatter, even.  Look at this map from Monkey Island. There is a lot of texture in the land, shown by areas of light and dark. You have a start on it around the river, and you did a wonderful job on the hill by said river- just spread it out.  Also, put some varied colours in the water- lighter near the islands, and darker the further out you get.

2. I'm not quite sure what is going on with the blueish land around the river.  If it's the flood basin, use more green and less blue. Use the sort of dense stippling you have at the edge of the blue closer to the river, it will really clean it up.

3. The different kinds of beaches are kind of cool- just have smoother transitions between them .

My suggestion about the trees is to mix the three styles you have together. Overlap the trees like in the black outlined one, use a variety of colours like in.. the one with a variety of colours, and use some different colours on the ground underneath them, like in the black and dead one.

I just finished playing Kings Quest 4. Finally. After about seven years of trying.

Anyway, at the end of the game a text box popped up saying "Your Secret Code is: RA8N?;5H;.JD"

Does anyone know what this is? It's got me quite confused.

What, minty green walls over orange brick and bizzarre purple latices aren't considered beautiful where you're from?

The best movie-from-an-adventure EVAR.

PEASANT'S QUEST- the trailer

Warning, it's a rather large download.

Also, Mirrors

Well, AGS can only accept 200 characters in a string at a time. So if you were going to do this, you'd end up writing REALLY short entries.

I'd go with coding.

I saw a peanut stand, heard a rubber band,
I saw a needle that winked its eye.
But I think I will have seen everything
When I see an elephant fly.

I saw a front porch swing, heard a diamond ring,
I saw a polka-dot railroad tie.
But I think I will have seen everything
when I see an elephant fly.

I seen a clothes horse, he r'ar up and buck
And they tell me that a man made a vegetable truck
I didn't see that, I only heard
But just to be sociable I'll take your word

I heard a fireside chat, I saw a baseball bat
And I just laughed till I thought I'd die
But I'd be done see'n about everything
when I see an elephant fly.

I love that song.

There's a similar riddle at Dan Brown's website- two of them, actually. There's a bunch of clues designed into the book jacket and the book itself, and you have to send e-mails and check special sites and so forth. Quite nifty.

Your mother dresses you funny!

On to critiques:

1. She needs a nose, not just nostrils.

example of how to do this simply:


It's just three curved lines, but it plainly looks like a nose.

2. She has a teeny tiny neck. The neck is usually about a third of the width of the shoulders, and the head is just barely wider.

3. Turn down the opacity on your dodging. When a colour goes white, you're dodging too light. Hey, that rhymes!

Well, yes. 

But that doesn't explain how I know about dinosaurs and the rotation of the earth and so forth.

Meep. Again I must correct misconceptions. Those clothes actually forced you to stand upright.

The slops (big poofy pants things) are just really poofy pants.  It's completely possible put your knees together while wearing them. The doublet (tight things they're wearing around their torsos) would have metal boning in them to act as a bit of a corset. It's hard to slouch when you're wearing one.

WHY DO I KNOW SO MUCH RANDOM TRIVIA?

I actually checked that, Scummbuddy. She only seems to have released one album, though, and none of the songs have lyrics that seem to fit. Though I admit it's hard to tell from that sample.

This is turning into quite the mystery!

Some of it isn't all that silly. It makes sense to have all your readily available information (stuff that can be found out about you just by going to the town hall and asking nicely) in one database.

But it DOESN'T make sense to have stuff like your commercial spending habits and things like that. That's just weird.

And what the heck were they thinking when they called it "Matrix?" Do they KNOW how many "It is a prison for your mind" references they'll have to put up with?

Something that a lot of "scary" movies seem to have in them is big tension builders that turn out to be a false alarm. This is followed shortly after by a sudden scare (usually accompanied by a loud, sharp, shrill noise). This sort of tactic gets the viewer on edge, lets them calm down a touch (though they're still expecting something if they're a veteran horror viewer) and then hits them with the scare when their guard's down.

It's a tactic rarely used in games, from what I've seen.

Well, this really depends on how you want to scare people. If you want to just have a "shock" scare (sudden noise, makes you jump, heart rate increases, etc) then this is fine.

But if you want to REALLY scare someone (can't be alone, turn on every light in the house, can't sleep clowns will eat me, etc) you really have to depend on atmosphere and tension.  The master of this is, was, and will always be Edgar Allen Poe, and his close second is Hitchcock. Both of them were absolutely brilliant and their stories terrifying. Yay!