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I say this again - if you think that my ideas suck, well, I can't force you to like them, neither I want to.
It isn't about my ideas at all. Neither you criticizing them. As far as I understand, ball started rolling from here:

But was it really necessary to say that my humming was annoying? And that the film lacked atmosphere?

Simply tell me why did you ask this, what do you mean with this and what do you expect from people as feedback when releasing something for thousands to see?
What's the whole point of this thread?

Yeah, but what you don't realize is that you don't have to defend anything.
I even didn't attack you in the first place, simply said what wasn't so good IMO. Seeing that you took defense immediately, I tried to explain my criticism and give you some constructive ideas of my vision.

Didn't you notice?

...so I'm just sharing what we learned...

And I never told that anything would be hopeless without anything I suggested. It all ended nicely with...

Just give it a thought.

If you released this to worldwide audience, all you should do is wait for opinions come in and sign autographs.

And then, if you want to learn something from whole thing, compile your own little review from total of opinions, taking notes what people liked and didn't, what to change and how to do better. If you don't, you're just wasting your time.

But seeing your ungrateful and reactive response to any possible C&C, I believe that nobody cares to comment anymore.

"I've never heard anyone do a review of a film and say that they needed more "crazy camera angles"

I think that's exactly how reviews work. Art isn't judged by genres, but movies and often music is. If you make a horror movie and it's has no horror in it at all, every reviewer is going to point that out! And people would say that this horror movie stinks and is not worth watching. Genre, the idea, is what gives the whole point to the thing. Nobody makes a horror movie and says that they don't want any horror, gore or tension in it. It's fucking stupid.
Or if the horror works really fine, it's also said. If you're trying to dodge it all, you will be either said that movie 'didn't have any direction' or worse, 'even makers of this movie had no idea what path were they going to take' and so on.

I took your film as a science fiction (well, WAS IT?!) and simply suggested simple ways I've discovered to bring out or model the theme better. Of course it's what I would have done instead of you and of course it's my opinion. I didn't even suggest you to do so but offered something to move your thoughts along path of more creative approach. Or atleast something suitable to the homemade sci-fi genre. Wake up, it's two guys talking in a room and then performing weird dance outside. This really sounds like a loads of room for improvement, in my opinion!

If you don't want atmosphere, content or anything else for that matter, you could simply use a title of "another stupid art movie only I understand" instead "a short film I made" for this thread. I wouldn't ever bother to look!

But I'm not a movie critic anyway and you don't have to like any of my advice. If you don't care about it, forget about it. It's your movie and your decision. Just stop spitting into my face because I dared to have a bit different opinion as you expected or even be cheeky enough to suggest something. But to be honest for last time I say anything about your movie, you're far from famous Hollywood producer yet, so stop acting like one!

Easiest -- primitive, but sure -- way to determine if you have something evil lurking around is to follow this recipe:

* Start > Run

* type 'msconfig' without quotes, press enter

* Choose last tab, 'startup'

* Now look at stuff that starts up with your windows. There's about pageful of stuff there, try to inspect those and determine what is what. Windows XP in a typical computer by default needs only about 5-10 entries, of which most are usually something to run your video and soundcard (NVidia tray/Ati tray/sound manager of some sort/installed antivirus or spyware stuff/management programs for any USB device you could own, CD write utils, agents), and everything else that has icon near computer clock.

* Find things that look suspicious or unknown to you. VERY suspicious are

1) Things that won't show a path to exe file
2) Things that come from weird folders. Like c:\random\random.exe
3) Things that are on C root. Like c:\systemhelp.exe or c:\123.exe
4) Things that filenames are strange mess of letters and don't seem to mean anything.

This is a bit hard, because almost everything is shortened anyway. But from SOMETHING.
Like, 'nwiz.exe' is 'nvidia wizard' and 'acrotray.exe' stands for 'adobe acrobat tray' etc.
What does 'Sq1ZbvMq.exe' mean? It means that you should disable this from the startup and immediately scan for viruses.

5) Suspicious things are also the strangely correct and 'important' entries. Like c:\help.exe or c:\images\image.exe

Nobody names their programs like this except for creativity-poor virus writers.

6) File path should be easiest way to determine what are you looking at, so don't just stare at .exe file name. If something's in Adobe Photoshop folder, it should be related and is needed, so move on to next one etc.

7) Toolbars, smileys, search helpers, etc. I mean, if you really want and have google or yahoo toolbar installed (god knows why), leave it there, but if there's anything else you don't know, better kill it. Windows itself doesn't need any extra toolbars or search engines installed and a healthy computer doesn't as well. While "CoolWebSearch" might sound cool and useful, it's one of the most annoying viruses around causing more trouble than I've ever had with any other virus.

* Now, since you cannot possibly know all the names, open up google and type unknown ones in. With extension.

What's a 'qttask.exe'? Type it into google or look from neuber.com and you'll know soon that this stands for Quicktime tray icon. That's how you can get info on anything going on inside the machine.

* While all this could sound complicated, as I said, you should have no more than 5-10 entries total. I would even say that if computer isn't filled with junk from end-to-end, 10 entries is maximum you could have.
* Disable everything that isn't okay or not actually installed by your free will.
* Restart and open msconfig again. Suspect heavily anything that you disabled, but has enabled itself again.
* You could also press ctrl-alt-del and check out the names of currently running processes, in 'processes' tab. But that's a bit more delicate matter, many of them are critical system processes and if you mess around, you could crash your machine. Well, no big deal here, rebooting repairs everything.

Now, you should know way better if you have something fishy going on. And take approriate steps to kill it.
All suggested spyware killers are good, I'd also recommend Ewido, since it finds so much others don't. Also, remember that a good anti-spyware or -virus tool runs in well safe mode. Most of the hyped anti-spyware tools don't and that's good excuse to avoid them. Many problems are simply unremovable without safe mode, or too difficult to do so at normal startup. I prefer safe mode always and everywhere.

Ah, and Windows Defender is made of programmer tears, baby skin and dark matter. Avoid it at all cost.

But was it really necessary to say that my humming was annoying? And that the film lacked atmosphere?

Well, because it was. And atmosphere was very low indeed, especially since the movie was very short. In typical movie, everything is laid out in hour and a half or so. If you make a five minute movie, you have to pack some tight content into it or really strong punchline at least. Otherwise it would simply suck.

Youtube is a massive movie portal with numerous films of all kind. Everyone in this mass (mess) tries to stand out somehow, so I presumed that so did you. Because what's the point in making multimedia that nobody cares about? Like boring films?

And won't few pointers help you to make better films?

Did you ask for comments and opinions for your movie or just a pat on the head?

but it'd be great if you could let me know what you think.

Huh?

If you're so confident about the things (and their greatness) you do, why do you ask for comments?
Anyway, I don't feel like continuing this dialog anymore, so let's see what others think.

Ben Jordan: The nameless game

I won!
\o/

I probably won't be able to fix it well without a new screen. Thanks for your comment though, InCreator.

I think you actually can. Simply turn the brightness of the image up a bit for edit. There's quite dark metallic plates at the center, but their edges look almost white on my screen and that's what's screwing up the text. Simply make everything brighter and decrease contrast until white pieces won't stand out so much, then turn all back to dark again. But still, the JPG compression looks too so blurry in places that editing feels pointless so I'd consider making a new background or use cleaner version, saved as PNG if you have it.

EDIT: Tried to reduce contrast, lowered saturation and added some noise to hide JPG blur... Not sure how it would work though. Size became 10 times larger... Not that it matters much at the age of fiberoptics.

http://www.increator.pri.ee/i/critshelp/bg2inc.gif

Don't get so defensive, I've made several films with my friend aswell, and we also had no crew or tech to support it, so I'm just sharing what we learned. You have no idea how much can be done with some improvisation. You can cover a desk lamp with a cloth and point it at actor, and though it's not visible to viewer/camera, it could give extremely cool light effect to the whole movie. I've tried several crazy things, like mounting camera onto radio-controlled toy car and while speaking, using the remote... just try some creativity and you'll get alot cooler scenes. For example, you could take old computer apart, mount one of the fans to a usb cable and put a light behind the fan. Then point it at wall. Maybe put some thread around the fan to make it go slower or simply connect old volume control box from a broken speaker between usb and fan, giving you fan with adjustable rotating speed... then cast it's shadow onto wall in the scene. Instant futuristic hangar effect! Other cables and stuff from computer could be used to decorate the place, and if they're seen only partially, noone could cleary say what's they're for. Just give it a thought.   

AFAIK, true professional code writers use FP or anything similar only to create tables. When I asked why, they responded: "it's simpler!".
Writing code by hand bonds you better to your page and has it's own advantages, but for a beginner, I imagine this as a mess and being lost in your own page code.

I wanted to figure out how beta testing traditionally works with AGS games.
How is it implemented, what is the time frame and form of communication?

What I imagine is create a thread, people PM with their wish to test, they get links to game, they have a time frame of some sort, and they PM or e-mail back with found bugs.

Is this how things should work or is there a better way to handle the testing?
And how much time does it usually need?
Experiences, anyone?

Well, for content suggestion, give people something they could get from you. I mean, if you're creative, give this.
Be it either nice art, pictures, web comics, movies, funny stories or jokes or anything else. Or a tutorial to something you know well. In other words, don't simply make a page of yourself, make it worth visiting.

For easy creation, I suggest Adobe Golive. It's easiest damn thing I've ever used yet.
It doesn't look easy at first, but once you've discovered that quite professional elements and looks are simply a click away, you'll fall in love. Everybody else usually suggest Dreamweaver, which I totally dislike.

Frontpage Express 3.0 is available to download if you're going for simple 'spaghetti', and it's sufficient enough to make a small page, without actually going hard way (notepad way). But this needs a bit of hardcore googleing to find.

I quite liked it!

Some crits and comments though:

* Bearded one - is humming too much. Like he had no idea what the script was.
It feels natural for first 10 times, then, quite annoying.
* Movie lacks atmosphere.

There's surely something you could have done with lights and camera angles. For a sci-fi theme, some strong fluorescent lights could made things into way more mystical and interesting.

As well as eye closeups and other usual sci-fi clichés. I suggest watching intro of movie Cube2:Hypercube, it gives extreme sense of the aura something like you tried to capture. Same goes to Portal game - a simple puzzle game radiates story of something so good behind it that I felt sorry for the game being so simple itself.

What I really did like was camera work. It felt quite professional during dialogue.

What I suggest is using more sound and crazy camera placements. You have 5 minutes, max it out with emotions and power.

Huh. After losing all trust in Valve - my steam account got banned for no reason whatsoever and all they replied was that I have a cheating suspicion... because steam didn't like my dynamic IP -- I decided not to waste money on Orange Box. Installing via internet and only internet is a nuisance alone, and extra automated and buggy gestapo on the account was the last drop. I bought HL2 and Episode One both legally... and concerning episode one, the trouble I went trough to acquire it via some guy in UK (crappy game selection locally here) wasn't really worth the game, neither its price.

As expected, while world plays new games, the stores here are empty again. No salesmen have heard about it, no pre-ordering. I'm not waiting 6 months to either to these morons wake up and game finally appear in stores -- or do whole buying-posting-from-other-country thing again. I doubt it would be worth it neither.

It's not that Russians didn't pirate and crack it already, heh.

Arr!

However, we can blame TV for aiming for the lowest common denominator, rather than attempting to at least educate children. Telling people "hey, it's okay to be stupid" leads to a nation of stupid people.

I disagree. TV doesn't make anyone more or less stupid. If anything, it offers new creative ways to express stupidity.

You watch several programs which use stupidity as humor element. For example, Jackass...
What happens? Are you trying out these idiotic things you just saw? You aren't that stupid, right?

Then again, there's people who do crap like this with or without the show.
They are stupid by default.
You can't blame TV on this. They're just pure idiots. Everyone knows an idiot from somewhere.

* decrease contrast on background and darken it a bit. It's difficult to describe, but right now, reading text gives a headache. Is it the background or these irritatingly sharp metallic thingies around the text, I'm not sure. Still, I'd say it's the background. Also, the background shows shitty JPG compression clearly, especially on edge areas.
* high contrast is eye-tiresome in other places too, such as bright white on bright blue on the main menu buttons. But since it's part of starcraft style, I doubt you'd change them.
* areas where text is on the gray box, look much more readable and friendlier. I like this.

I second the pose suggestion. I second everything else too, but the pose is priority here.
While Eric's templates are nice, seeing that same figure again and again is nothing but interesting.

Same goes to almost everything you drew regarding to face and hands.
There's loads and loads of character sprite threads around Critics Lounge. Why not browse them?
You will find variety of different styles and ways to draw/shade characters. Pick what you like, and add a touch of your own.

Anyway,

* arms should be 3-4 pixels taller
* Everything looks ultra flat right now. Shade pants darker on foot sides, so they'd feel more cylindrical, same to arms

Backrub, eh?

Make sure that you rest well on that vacation, because there's lots of back rubbing ahead.
I liked the one with a chick more to be honest.

Here's your stem. I hope you're happy.

stooirry i did some thing wrong

how do i put a movie in my games i do not how to i have tryed and treyd but nothing

dbz bt 3

omg!  :o
Takes grammar to a whole new lev-- er, dimension.

School violence, what else?

Violence isn't in kids shooting guns, but the things that lead to this.

I remember my 7th and 8th grade, it was hell on earth. If I had access to a firearm at this time, It's quite possible that I would be a piece of statistics. It all starts from kids that doesn't get any physical scolding, I think. I almost never bullied a classmate, because when I was little, my grandpa (and dad, sometimes), took a belt off his pants and gave me this old-school lesson about not behaving and limits to behaving. Almost as my father told me "never attack before physical contact, words don't mean a thing", and it rarely got worse than words... Knowing that being hurt is bad, I rarely did that to anyone else. And all human/children rights activists, eat mud.
I turned out a perfectly normal kid.

There were kids who didn't, and to whom bullying was just an interesting game. There was a girl everybody picked on, and she even made into TV talking about school violence. Fear in replacing "her position" caused no-one to help her. Strongest boy in class punched her into face once and it stays most disgusting view I've ever witnessed. I know that she was desperate enough to go into war against whole city and kill everyone in sight. If she only could. Weird enough, after school, she picked career in security and is a security guard AFAIK.