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It would be wonderful if we could attract a few more reader-voters for this fortnightly comp, and I hope no one minds if I bump for a last-day boost?

Yeah, sorry I wasn't being clear: to clarify, I didn't mean discussions with the developers. My nuts n' bolts needs from them will likely be met by the documentary.

I'm thinking more that there's a great opportunity with however many of the 80,000 something backers have actually signed up for the forum to get into what makes the adventure genre work. There has to be some sort of wisdom to be gained from concentrating a niche group into one area like that. But the discussions so far are running very shallow. There's a nascent thread about verb coins there that's four pages in and hasn't really gotten deeper than "Interaction is good, maybe?"

And in other promising threads, a few quality posts are quickly followed either by the "I"ve written Tim Schafer's name on my Trapper Keeper" crowd or the, "What this thread needs is another shoe-on-head joke," mob.

I think I'll follow your lead and stick to the development sub-forum, but access to these discussion groups was one of the things I was excited to plop my money down for.

I should've made a donation to AGS instead. There were some quality posts once upon a time that I think were intended to be a multi-author discussion series on game design -- I'm having trouble finding them now, but I think Vince Twelve's 'Why Your Game is Broken' posts were among them. And this recent post on detective games is a fantastic roundtable of knowledgeable creators and players weighing in on some specific difficult aspects of design.

Those are the kinds of things I'd hoped the masses of backers would be discussing over at DF, and I'm still hoping they get around to it.

Mike's own fault for not robbing corpses. This is why I don't feel bad about him getting shot.

I'm curious as to whether any of you are taking part in the secret DFA backer forums. There have been a few interesting threads there on aspects of game creation, but the forums strike me as being filled mostly with users who seem to be showing off their zany senses of humor, or trying out to be best buds with the Double Fine creators. I'm hoping that as the process rolls on, some of the zanies will fall by the wayside and there will be more nuts n' bolts discussions.

Is it just me?

If you try to input even a fraction of that into the parser, I fear it might explode!

In my defense (I'm going to start every post in this thread with 'In my defense' from now on), I did say to do these over the next few turns!

And also in my defense, last time I put in what I thought was a simple command, we wound up with two gunshot victims!  

Not sure if anyone will recognize this. I verified two things while working on it:

1. My reach, as usual, exceeded my grasp, and
2. I still stink at pixel art.

Well, I didn't do so well with my last round of recommendations, but here's what I advocate for the next few turns:

1. Make sure safety is off on pistol.
2. Enter the room, slowly, announcing that you are doing so as you do so and that you have a gun. Keep gun raised and trained on the T-Zone of the do-ragged gentleman.
3. Say, "Nobody move an inch until we get this sorted." As you pass him (as a sign of trust), advise Mike to put down his gun temporarily while you check on do-rag so he doesn't do anything -- say accidentally shoot you in the back -- in his state of shock. Tell him to use both hands to put pressure on the wound.
4. Approach ol' do-rag, again announcing that you are doing so. Advise him to drop his gun if he's conscious and to move his hand slowly away from it.

5a. If he drops his gun, stop and assess the situation, but do not lower gun.

5b. If he raises the gun, fire at will.

5c. If he is fully unconscious or dead, approach slowly and cautiously until you can place your foot on the gun, holding it to the floor and out of his hand. Push his unconscious body away from the gun. Pick up gun, put in holster (keep other gun in hand). Check body for other weapons, useful inventory. Check pulse. Take his do-rag and toss it to Mike to tie up his leg.

5d. In any other situation, pause briefly for assessment.

Not sure how to put this in terms of a parser though.

Thinking ahead:

6. Assuming everything goes well, ask Mike what we need to do to seal the dome, and do that. If possible, ask questions about the situation, where are we, who are you, who might I be, why are these people invading, etc. We can address this when we come to it, but after disarming do-rag and sealing the dome, I feel this should be priority number one. Especially as we now know that Mike is prone to getting his fool self shot.

High Road to China.

You have successfully stabbed Tom Selleck! All of you Indy fans should check this film out.

I still don't like just abandining Mike, like Eric wanted.  If the situation was reveresed, would we want Mike to abandon us?

In my defense, I thought we were advocating charging into a room against a gunman armed only with a broken pool cue!

Eric got it! Well done.

That was a lucky, lucky guess. It's been awhile since I've seen that one (though I remember feeling it deserved the Best Picture that year).

Here's another from the adventure genre, an under-appreciated, little remembered film:

Winter's Bone?

Oh snap, we have a gun still? I forgot about that. I suppose that changes some things, if not everything!

Out of curiosity, what audio are you planning to have?

I mean I don't feel morally great about doing it, but what are you honestly hoping to achieve by opening the door to a gun(wo?)man?

Do you want to fight them? Because that will get us shot.

Are you hoping to draw the gunman away from Mike, just in case he's not dead? We have dead ends on most sides of us.

I think running in panic is our best and most honest route, but I'm not sure which direction is best.

Haha, you can say, "He won by default." I don't mind.

Disappointed there weren't more entries, but let me think of a new theme and you and I at least can keep passing this comp back and forth!

See, but here's the thing. That's a tiny control room. We've been in it. We just watched Mike go through, door slamming behind him, two gunshots. If we yell, "Mike, are you OK?" the result is going to be one of three things:

1. Mike was the shooter, and is OK. So long as Mike isn't secretly evil, we're OK running away in this scenario. He'll understand. We don't have a gun, and he knows this.
2. Mike got shot at, but is OK, lets us know, and then is finished off by the shooter as we pull the door open. Then we, what? We throw Hot Pockets at them?
3. Mike got shot, is not OK, is in fact dead, and we are opening the door to someone who is obviously an excellent quick shot. Maybe more than one someone.

I think opening the door is the worst possible idea that we could have, no less suicidal than Icey waiting for the water to drown us.

I'm going to let voting continue through Tuesday. Hopefully we can get a few more readers/voters in here!

you hear two sharp reports of a gun inside. You stop in your tracks.

Yaggaggahgaghagdammit. I was going to lobby to get some answers out of Mike with our next turn.

Is there any way to remember the thickness of the door and which way it opens without using a turn? We've just seen Mike go through it, after all. I'm wondering if we might not need to brace that pool cue in the door to save our own life, or if we just need to run again.

Anyone know who has the licenses to Jack T. Ladd and Ysanne Andropath? I enjoyed the second game in that series quite a bit.  I know the Psygnosis Limited properties have wound up in different places.

EDIT: ...By which I mean I was confused and it looks like everything Psygnosis is now owned by Sony.

Haha, I was using Firebug and didn't catch that -- yep, there it is: cellpadding="5". Still, I'd argue that 5px is necessary (keeps text from abutting borders), and wouldn't change the padding.