Messages

Well, the game DOES contain certain amount of racism.

Pretty courageous amount, considered to this - IMO idiotic - minefield-like world we have today.

But EVEN if such a minor thing annoyed me, I'd sent an e-mail to game's creator and nicely asked him to place warning into readme.txt file or into intro sequence, instead of trying to warn whole world by myself, risking to spread bad word about the game. Someone OTHER's game.

Morale of story is:

1) Be careful with making your games
2) Don't be a hippy

[I]

Well, let's say then that I feel offended when someone starts picking (without considerable or at least serious enough - reason) on a nice thing made for people to enjoy, such as an AGS game, which - in this case, was really good and well made.

This didn't sound like putting up a problem and feeling worried about it, with need to discuss it - but more like a picking a fight for no particular reason.

Game didn't give any ratings to right and wrong. It didn't praise racism. Didn't push any kids to join KKK. It just had elements of it, like million things in everyday life has -- such as history book, random WWII game or movie. Or shall I stop taking history lessons, because of my incredibly fragile and weak easily-offendable nerve system?
Hey, maybe we cancel schools, movies, etc?

I think that treating minorities like they were bunch of crying babies from whom we have to hide every sharp object, censor every hardest word and pat their backs all the time without asking if they care about it really, is bigger discriminating than racism itsself.

If someone calls me names I don't like, i punch him into face! Are black/yellow/whatever people worse? Less human than me? Can't handle it by themselves?
Well - I don't think so. Do YOU? Then you're a racist.

Hah.

So I step onto the side of "don't like? Don't play then!" crowd from now on.

Hm.
And agree with Andail.

It's "TeH RocKeT"!
OMG how cute!! 


Ah, and lightless version:

First -
Who gives a fuck?

Second -
How in the hell can anyone be offended by a computer game?
"Oh mom! A bad computer game made me cry showing weird guys in robes saying "niger"! bwaaaah!11!"

No respect!
Weak.Ã, 

[this]

http://www.terran-x.com/al/Tanker.txt

Now - this is why Man invented a Weapon, and not hunting - as I thought - until I saw this.

Yay!
I don't give a heck about Blender, but It's always pleasure to see that free things could rule too. Same thing that we like about AGS.
But I'll stick to 3ds Max 6.

Anyway, the level of 3D graphics (See Shrek2 or Play Syberia 2 for example) today takes away any will to model -- I can't be never, ever good enough to be at least someone on this field...

Two dimensions are more than enough.

I would equip myself with
* www.google.com (for imagery)
* map of my neighborhood (can be found anywhere, i mean real map, on a paper) and maybe some pics taken with digital camera
* spare time

And make whole thing with some 3D software, such as 3ds max and render it all through some cool (and censoring my amateurness) filters to give more realistic effect.

It looks very....
...Prince of Persia?
...Flashback?
...Out of This World (Another World)?
...Ben Jordan, teH paranormal investigator?
...AGI?


I like it!

A bit shitty skin shade color - i'ts too... orange!
A bit too dark blue on some (all minus one?) pants, hard to tell apart from black outlines.

I love the style. Only bad point it has is that all all faces look very similar, it's quite hard to show different faces, all of the difference is based only on clothing and hairstyle-

Otherwise, great pic. And idea too, of course...
Could animating be any easier while keeping lovely characters? I think not.

Can't talk? Aw, damn.
So what?
Skip talking (since it's pointless anyway) and warp to the next level immediately then!

just joking...

Main problem, when it comes to talking, should be picking a topic to talk about. If girl is new (in the situation/area/etc), it shouldn't be too difficult:

girl: "Hi"
you: "Hi! Are you new? Haven't seen you before"

...And it should end up with discussion which reveals some backgrounds. Ask where she lives, which routes does she use to go to school/work/etc and try to match them with yours...

After gathering some valuable information, It's time to make an offer that will hit the ticket. For example:

a) "Would you like to have a walk in a deep, dark forest together?"
b) "You sound almost as perfect as myself! Almost... How about us two produce a little superhuman?"
c) "I want to become a bartender one day. Right now, I'm practicing hard. Would you be so nice and ry one of my special coktails?" *walkthrough: use bottle of pills on coktail glass*

etc...

Just... report 3-4 bugs* in latest AGS version.

* CJ must respond with at least "...well spotted, I'll get it fixed in next version..."

N00b? Newbie? who?!
whoa!

Well, kinoko, it actually WAS like

"So, everyone likes it, huh? What's so damn good about it??".

I mean, whole analysis was based on that. But after that sentence, the conclusion was not instead of what you might think --
"Analysed! See? Nothing so good really. Fuck it!"

...but I meant something more like
"How in the hell did he do that? Hey, we're generating and discussing all the time how to make a popular game and sweat like hell on this and now... He steps against some very basic "rules" and still succeeds. Now, dear AGSers, pay attention, because after analysis is pretty clear that even ONE of basic sides of game would make it really enjoyable if it's well implemented - i.e. If you can't draw of make music, this shouldn't mean that you can't make a really good game. This game was a great example to prove this."

This was the point I'm trying to bring out.

[adventure game maker]

Excuse my language, but fuck analysing it's qualities. The fact is that most people here, like me, sat down, played the game and enjoyed it. I didn't need to think about why, I just know I was impressed by it and I had fun playing it. I think the game was a nice compliment to 5 Days.

Of course...! But from a viewpoint of PLAYER.
But I analyzed it because I (like most of AGSers here) am an adventure game maker too.

And it doesn't happen every day that some AGS game gets so deep attention that people start to perform a surgery on the plot and wondering what, where and how it all was, right?

So, as an AGSer, I analyzed it to understand how Yahtzee managed to get game this far and result brought me to understanding that its strike with characters and atmosphere did almost everything, and really well, while other parts weren't that strong at all!

There's always lot of discussion how should we make adventure games to get people to like them....

So that's a great tip, or a piece of useful knowledge.
And helpful for other game makers, including myself.
Right?

Edit: Weird, ldw hit the "post" button just when I wrote my post, and is talking about same thing...

It's pretty cool!

* Lower the ceiling (make one)
* Rightmost door should be bigger! (because It's closer to the player/camera!)
* Fix perspective of upper edge of the painting (at the left wall) by making it almost horisontal (depends how low your ceiling will be, too!)
* Resave/upload image as GIF (while you have less than 256 colors on picture) or PNG. Then it's smaller, wiser, friendlier, faster and attracts more C&C!
* Read
Smilies and BBCode reference to understand how to put picture directly into your thread. (but not in BMP format of course!)

If it's all done, start texturing(if you intend to - at all), then shading (and placing light sources) and finally add shadows.

[graphics]

Strange.
Here's what I think.

First - what's so special about this game anyway?
Fact that Yahtzee made it, it's a sequel to a cool game or is it about game itsself?

First thing, like for us - human beings, is visual contact. There's nothing too special about game graphics, but it's nicely done and pretty detailed. I'd use a phrase "functional and a bit more". Isn't it?
It has absolutely statisfactionary "critical adventure game graphical elements (hardware)" such as believeable walkcycle,talking animations and non-default GUI gfx. A working plot, some rooms and characters. And some puzzles too.

Now this is all elementary. Game that fails with these should have something really special about it to get so much feedback. This - and everything else - will rely on viewpoint of an average AGSer and AGS game, of course. For commercial games, standards are usually much more higher.

We have now an average game here.

Yahtzee added more things to his game. He added graphical & scripted intro, sounds and background music.
This makes now a fine game.

From this point, things get strange. Strange enough to make me write this crap here, thinking what's so special about it anyway.

Puzzles -- there isn't much puzzles really. And some of them are pretty obivious.
He was ignorant/un-careful/brave enough to include things that may (and usually do) bring players' fun down, such as dying, timed puzzle(s), illogical ones, running through whole gameworld all the time while triggering events located at the edges of the world.
Like many others (almost every adventure game), it had it's "argh! where's walkthrough?!" puzzle too. Too bad that It was also the timed one, and could make character die (you know which one I'm talking about). This makes the problem bigger.

Graphics isn't  that good too. As a "resident" of Critics Lounge, I've seen unskilled people starting with line-box-fill MSPainting and making better gfx after few weeks of heavy practice. And come on, Yahtzee draws pretty well. It all seems just rushed or lazy, because previous game looked much better.

He also tried to script something quite original and made this chase-sequence. It was maybe a nice idea, but he pretty much failed, because this somewhat brave step led to numerous bugs, which are worst things about this (and any other) game at all. And there was not a line anywhere explaining the teleporting skill of the welder...

Plot takes us to the future, and outer space. Does this idea need any comments? Ah. And people start to die. And man starts to investigate. And gets chased by murderer.
Two overused plots in one. Not only in games... turn on TV or pick up a random book.

Plus, he totally screws up the plot with the "twist" IMO and with not providing easily understandable information what's going on, especially to ones who haven't played previous game (or didn't realize what's going on). Unclear is the word.

Despite that my whole overview was based on my logical thinking and may have sounded very critical towards the game, I must confess that I liked this game alot.

Yahtzee's trick was the way he presented the situation and atmosphere in game. How characters actually had a character, though plot's logic was a bit messy.
It's pretty short game, but if it was 2-3 times longer, bugfree and had more "game" content, I mean - things player could control and not the numerous cutscenes only - It would be one of the best amateur adventures I've played.

P.S. This "Dream" sequence/cutscene rules!!!11!!1!

This is my opinion.
Amen.

[man]

Hm. Disturbing, yeah.
Nice shading, but I'd make shade colors few RGB values closer to skin tone. They're a bit too different/contrasty yet.

If it's a overweight hyena-man, I think you overdid the breasts. At least right one is getting too close to overweight hyena-woman , make these dark lines at the bottom of breast longer so they almost meet at the center of the chest, this should do.

* make upper edge of the door more horisontal, to make perspective feel more right.
* add perspective to other things. They're so.... 2-D.
* Color the pic to give any idea what is that all about
* FIRST color/shade your bg, and THEN smudge edges of the pic to give nightmare-ish feel.
* There will be no atmosphere without color. Or - only if you use black very masterfully to shade. To make things look like  photos with 2-color threshold filter. But it's difficult.
* If you start coloring, and keep your dream-theme, I'd suggest you to use mostly the one particular color, like shades of blue, cyan, grayscale or - why not? - shades of RED. Sounds nightmareish enough to me.

Good start. I'd like to see where you land with this.

Yah, of course. Maybe I'll just buy a new house somewhere colder, like North Pole maybe?
No, wait. I think I'll hire someone to run around with blocks of ice 24/7, yep, that's it.
Nah. I'll buy 5 processors and change between them after every 10 minutes. No, hire someone to change them.

Damnit, motheboard and processor both were purchased only 4-5 months ago. There's no way I'm gonna spend my non-existing money for new one just because I can't get the temp down.

Well, performance reduction is a thing I've tested million times, yes, it IS so. More heat, slower CPU "thinking".

How could IDE cables affect processor's temperature?
I think Haddas is right. Yeah, now I recall myself always laughing at the salesmen at the shop where I do my computer shoppings and calling them ironically "typers" because of their ultimate typing speed, (1 letter per 20 seconds) and wondering how someone like that could get a job at computer store.

There's what happened. I laughed at him, he became sad.
Coming home after hard work, head filled with sadness and insults, miserable salesman hit some kid with car. Went to trial and was convicted guilty. Spent 2 years in prison, became gay. Wife left him, took kids and money. It all ended with suicide. All because my impatiency while he typed the check for my processor. Now he's haunting my machine.

Ah.
A believeable explanation and cool story for a freaky adventure game. What was the theme of AGS team challenge again? "mystery"? Damn. I must tell Vel that we should change the plot.

...about the temperature of my CPU.
It's Athlon XP 2200+ ~1.8GHz processor.
Not overclocked, since it's shitty even without it.

But temperature oscillates around 20 degrees Celsius all the time.
When I turn CPU on, it's around 40. After 10 minutes, It rises to 50C.

After a while doing nothing - or if I start anything that gives CPU some work to do - It rises to 56-59C. Which safety - I'm not sure about.

Now the strange part. After reaching 50C, everything goes into "bullet time" and Win XP lags as hell. If I take the cover off from main unit, temp lowers 2-3 degrees. This means that I could efficently use my computer as long as I surf in net or draw. When I start some 3D game or 3ds Max for example, it adds critical few degrees and snail-fest starts.

If I open window (my room's one) or manually make air move over unit, like waving some cloth or something, temp decreases 15 degrees! I have a HUGE fan over CPU, but there's no sign of word "stability". I close unit after reducing the heat to about 45C and... it stays so! What the hell...?

Now, the questions.

Does anyone have CPU like mine?
What's your average temperature?
How much is critical? If it goes to slow motion at 50, isn't it too much already?
What the heck could that all mean?

Ah, another one: Since the fan is freaking huge, I keep power-box (the one with two power cables and a fan inside) outside of the unit, because otherwise it would block half the top of the CPU fan, which is logically taken - bad. So it rests on top of the cover.

From mainboard manual, I read that power-box, with the fan inside it, makes air move inside the unit.
But -

Could that cause instability?
I plan to buy new main unit, a bigger one so I could put powerbox inside too. Maybe that helps.

[minefield]

porn... porn. I have PestPatrol cookiepatrol some time and it scares the shit out of me. There's gazillion  of spyware everywhere, just open yahoo.com and see what cookiepatrol catches just by opening the yahoo main page! Every ad, every banner opens now with "extra" that shits your hard drive. Like a curse.

Internet has became a minefield - it's easier to turn all anti-viruses and adawares off -- it saves some nerves. Of course, until you one day decide to see what you have got in your cpu by the time...

DOOOSSS! I want back to golden days.