Messages

You pretty much hit the nail on the head, Josh.  I think what started my rant was seeing certain games that used "hand-drawn graphics" as a selling point when the quality of the backgrounds weren't very good.

Something got messed up with the new beta.  Here's the deal:

In lieu of messing with SetViewport and all that to make the screen scroll, I had an invisible character called "scroller" who would move and scroll the screen. The script went something like this:

SetCharacterViewEx(BEN,53,4,ALIGN_LEFT);
NewRoomNPC(SCR,13,374,128);
AnimateCharacter(BEN,4,4,1);
SetPlayerCharacter(SCR);
Wait(20);
MoveCharacterBlocking(SCR,90,128,1);
ObjectOn(1);
Wait(1);
DisplayMessage(17);
ReleaseCharacterView(BEN);
NewRoomNPC(BEN,19,155,147);
MoveCharacterBlocking(SCR,332,128,1);
Wait(20);
EndCutscene();
SetPlayerCharacter(BEN);

So, while the animation is playing, the room scrolls, then comes back, etc. It was working fine till I got the latest beta.  I checked in the debug console and it says that SCR starts moving, but then nothing happens. The screen doesn't scroll, the animation keeps playing, and when I hit esc to bypass the cutscene, the game hangs.

I also sketched several Mitteneers at Mittens:

From left to right it features:
[eric], who says "I tire of life..."
"Adam (DarkStalkey), of the coolest hair EVAH!!1!1"
The devil crow
"Andail somewhat sexy"
"Netdrunkey"
"Mark (m0ds) sleeps"
Greycupâ,,¢ "In my day, we didn't have this AGS nonsense! Now tidy your room!"
"Berian is mean, so I draw him chubby"
"OMG! CJ!! He looks weird!"

[EGGIE]

And the winner is...

EGGIE!!!

Here is my desktop.

I haven't changed that background in about 3 years. Something about it is just soothing I guess.

Allow me to be a Grumpy Gamerâ,,¢ and rant for a bit.

Many people throw around the term "hand-drawn" to describe the backgrounds in their games.Ã,  What this usually means is that they have drawn the background on paper, then scanned it in and painted it on the computer.Ã,  Or perhaps they have done all the drawing and coloring on paper.Ã,  In any case, I think we all agree that it implies that some scanning has been done, right? Right.

Now, there are a couple of things that bug me.Ã,  First of all, "hand-drawn" doesn't strike me as a valid term, because everything is hand-drawn.Ã,  Unless you're a pretty darned talented artist that draws using your feet, chances are you used your hands to draw your stuff, even if you did it with a mouse or a tablet in PSP or Paint or whatever.

Second of all, (and maybe this is just me being nitpicky) it bugs me that "hand-drawn" is listed as a feature in games that have scanned backgrounds.Ã,  Something about saying it just makes it seem like the game is going to have amazing high-quality backgrounds, when 9 times out of 10, it's just crummy graphics that have been drawn on paper first.Ã,  Just because a scanner is involved doesn't automatically mean quality. There are plenty of AGS games with scanned backgrounds that are great, but they aren't the majority.

Am I saying you shouldn't scan in your backgrounds? Not at all, in fact I'd love to see more of it. I would be fascinated to see a game that used scanned in oil paintings like MI2 or watercolors or stuff like that.Ã,  But please, if you're going to go through the effort of scanning in a background, I'm going to hold you to a higher standard artistically than if you did it in Paint.Ã,  By no means am I saying that backgrounds done on the computer are inferior, but drawing on paper gives you certain freedoms that the computer doesn't, so make sure you do a good drawing first.

So my suggestions are either or both of the following:

1) If you want to brag about your game having "hand-drawn" backgrounds, please use another term such as "scanned backgrounds" or something similar.Ã,  Feel free to suggest a better term.

2) If all you did was draw a crappy background on paper with no sense of perspective and curly clouds and then scanned it in, please don't advertise your "hand-drawn" backgrounds along with your game.

That is all.

The hurricane is still blowing its way through Gainesville. As a result, school has been cancelled tomorrow as well, bringing the number of days stuck inside the house without being able to leave up to a grand total of 4.

Last night the cable and internet went out around 9pm and they just came back now, which is good cause I think boredom would have driven me to insanity otherwise.

Right, sorry about the delay but inclement weather caused the caption to blow away! Now that I've recovered it, here you are:

Yeah I think us folks that lived through Ol' Andy see every other storm as a moderate gale.  Although, Frances is pretty well-formed, much like Andrew was.

These big storms should have less wimpy names.  It's been said millions of times, but I want my house to be levelled by Hurricane Attila, not Frances. That sounds like somebody's ancient auntie who brings you cookies.

I really hope Frances decides to go somewhere else.  I went through Hurricane Andrew and I'd really rather not go through something like that again.  Even though I'm currently in North Central Florida, my family and house and all are in Miami, so if we get hit, we're kinda screwed.  Anyhoo, we'll see what happens.

Now that the forums are letting me post again, here's Eric:

Having met AGA twice, i would never have guessed he was diabetic.

Well for one thing, he doesn't go around injecting himself with insulin in front of everybody (something which another diabetic friend of mine does, which creeps me out cause I hate needles!)

Some more promotional material, here's a little audio trailer. Voices by netmonkey, music by Ghormak.

http://www.agagames.com/grundislav/bj3trailer.mp3

Okay, it's a bit reminiscent of Haddas' entry, but...

Will that include your videos?  I'm dying to see the German Expressionist film.

The Paranormal Investigator's Handbook is the publication that Ben Jordan ordered which started him off on his career.

It's also the game's documentation, and will provide background information on the paranormal phenomenon you're investigating, as well as offer some subtle clues.

Cool, I'll have to sponge off Grundislav's hard work more often

I did make AGS, you know. 

Anyway, here at last are my mittens photos
http://www.agagames.com/grundislav/mittens04/

[PESTY!!!]

Contest over!!! Since I was supposed to do it this time, but couldn't, Haddas asked me to pick the winner.  So, based on the one that amused me most...I think the winner is...

PESTY!!!

Using my stunning powers of deduction, (and also the fact that AGA didn't switch up the order in which they were taken) I'm going to guess that in order on the page, they are:

Spoiler

AGA, Grundislav, M0ds, MrColossal, Andail, Jess, DaveGilbert, DarkStalkey, jetxl, MillsJROSS, CJ, netmonkey, and Scummbuddy

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