Messages

Some general mumblings first:
This is all very, very well done, although I have one minor complaint: the texture you have used for the ceiling does IMO not fit in. The overall scene is much to tidy to have such a run-down ceiling. If this is intentional however, I suggest using a larger texture that does not repeat so often...
Another thing: I can't quite figure out what is in the swimming pool...

And now to your questions:
I think that realistic BGs demand realistic characters. Just look at Monkey Island:
Part 1 had quite realistic looking BGs and so the characters were not very cartoony.
Part 2 became cartoonier and so some of the characters began to look goofier, too
Part 3 then went far beyond realsim with the BGs and so the characters changed accordingly.

I guess the best characters to fit in that kind of scenes would look somewhat like HL or CS models...

About the "Lucas Arts feel" I'd say that it's hard to achieve with that kind of BG, since all the classic Lucas games had pixel BGs... but adventure-technical I'd say wide but not too wide opening angles and rather unspectacular (flat) perspectives allow the characters to fit in best.

Most spy- or adware killers check automatically for known "unfriendly" dialers.
Maybe you should consider changing to a service provider like AOL (*hides in his troll-cave to avoid being slapped*), there you have some more control about dialling up and besides their software sometimes has a dialler-preventer built in...

First, thanks a lot for your detailed answer!

Fortunately, I have already made a backup recently...
The HDD is about four or five years old now, so you may be right. But a friend of mine told me that his HDD had recently died and he could at least get past the drives check (Which simply claimed the computer had no HDD anymore), but of course not much farther.
Personally (but I am no expert, so I asked here) I suspect the IDE controller on the main board...
I thought about what you said about the power unit, too: wouldn't it get warm in such a case? And wouldn't you hear the computer (It's a desktop, btw.) trying to spin up the drive just before power failure?

Anyway, if I get my fingers on another hard disk, I'll just try if mounting that one helps...

And should I have to replace the mainboard or even parts of it (although I still hope it won't come to that!), I'll change the power unit, too, just in case...

Isn't *.bik the extension for videos to be played with "binkplay"? I think most commercial games use (or used) the bink codec for their FMVs...
So I guess re-converting to AVI is not what this is intended for...

Btw. I really like the animation for it's simplicisity... The basic idea is somehow reminescent of Dorcan's avatar, though 

Some other things that help preventing that crap from re-installing:
1) Disable ActiveX whenever it's not essential
2) Disable JavaVM or at least get rid of the Microsoft one and replace it by the Sun Java VM
3) Set up a firewall
4) (as already suggested) use Mozilla/Firefox

The power unit itself seems ok and the restart almost always occurs at that distinct point, so I guess we can rule that one out.
As for hard drive checking, I only used the windows standard tools (Scandisk and Defrag) but they didn't deliver any useful info...

Eat THIS! 

Sorry, but what I said also applies to bolts, I guess...
But aren't they a bit big for bolts? I guess even ships don't feature bolts that are thicker than 20-30mm (ca. 8-12")

jrl2222 is right, I guess. I didn't notice the bolts at first glance and was of course referring to the windows (they are called "portholes" when talking about ships, just in case you're, like me, not a native speaker...)

Another thing regarding perspective:

the portholes should appear elliptically distorted instead of circular and they should become smaller with the distance...

Hi,

When I start the computer, it does the memory check and when it comes to detecting the IDE drives, it restarts. This is repeated several times until it works. I wouldn't mind that too much, but
a) it worsenes continuously
b) sometimes the computer restarts while running normally without warning (not overheat related!)

The machine has an AMD K7 (700 MHz) CPU on a VIA Mainboard, BIOS has never been updated so far and I recently replaced the fan of the power unit, because it was dusted so heavily that it stuck and the power unit kept overheating, causing many emergency shutdowns...

Anyone got an idea what the source of this problem is and more important, how I can work around that without replacing the mainboard?

I rememer reading somewhere that the main reason for Hijackers to enter your system is a safety gap in Microcrap's* Java VM.
Download the VM from Sun and you'll be a lot safer...

* I actually had a virus once that did nothing except alter the string "Microsoft" to "Microcrap" wherever it occurred... Kinda funny, that one.

Hi!

I was just wondering why RawDraw is limited to 320x240 res, and whether there are any plans to change this...

Quite a long time ago, I started to play Quake over LAN with some of my friends, making it necessary to find a nick. At first I had nicks like Metalizer, Harvester_of_Souls, Reaper_Man etc. (See a pattern there?)
I didn't like any of them much, so I had a new nick about every two weeks.
One day I woke up and had the word "Isegrim" in my mind... (Happens quite often with me: I wake up and have the solution to a problem I haven't thought about for some time... Anyone else share this phenomenon?)
Anyway, some time after I discovered the band "Finntroll", and on one of the bandshirts there is a troll depicted that looks quite like me...
I found that I sometimes DO feel like a troll and that Isegrim is a rather nifty name for a troll.
And so it stuck...

(Btw. Isegrim is the name of the wolf in german fables...)

for trees there is an even better way: http://www.treemaker.nl/
And for the ground and the wooden planks: use harder bump maps!
Otherwise it's pretty neat... Keep it up!

there is a bridge above the one the guard is on. While standing there, use your gun with "down". When you come down again, lead the guard to the holes in the floor, go up again, shoot again and there you are!

Satan's pitchfork was in Satan's Quest...

If you guys want to see a more or less realistic (and good) hacker movie, look for '23'. It's a german movie, so I don't know if there's an english version, but for a german movie it's really good... Based on a real story, and featuring the "Illuminatus!" conspiracy theory!

But, as for 'Hackers', I found it so bad that I just had to keep watching... (Well, maybe Angelina Jolie helped a bit preventing me from switching off). Reminded me of the somehow similarly crappy 'Tron' (At least Tron had better special effects)

Oh, how many ways are there to do that...

     -----
   / O O \
D|         |C
   \  \_/ /
     \__/
And how crappy I did it...

Next: Your avatar in ascii

>O   /  /
    \ /  /
     CD
      | |
      '' ''

ASCII-Birds are funny by default.
Next: What the AGS-Editor would look like, if displays were still limited to alphanumeric

Like the looks and the idea of it.
Kinda reminds me of Viridian Room
If you haven't played through that, try it out, you sure gonna like it!