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The WHAT?

The work of the second-most famous murderer in British history.

Historically it was the first murder within respectable middle-class British society to be utilised as a sensation by the British mass-media thanks to the recent application of Guglielmo Marconi's [then] brand-new wireless telegraph technology, which actually turned out to be key to solving the case. Crippen and his new fiance were on a ship bound for America, disguised very convincingly as a father and his teenaged boy - but the fact that the ship carried a brand new wireless receiver meant that they could be brought to justice whereas before it would have been impossible to catch them.

Prior to this Marconi had actually been on the verge of complete bankruptcy due to multiple spates of bad publicity generated by the Post Master General, Professor Oliver Lodge, noted magician Neville Maskelyne and to a lesser extent Croatia's favourite eeeevil scientist Nikola Tesla - so the murder served to save his business. (A couple of years later the sinking of the Titanic did even more good to his business, so these became Marconi's golden years)

Notably Crippen never actually confessed to the killing and due to the paucity of remains the 'body' (or rather collection of body parts) was extremely difficult to identify. The one break was that Belle Crippen had an appendectomy scar she showed off a lot, and a scar was found in the buried mass of skin. Interesting the remains were preserved and a recent DNA test suggested that the remains weren't those of Belle Crippen at all...

The other interesting detail was that the body was buried under the floor of Crippen's kitchen, yet he continued to live there for about a week after the murder. Several accounts mention a strange smell that the Doctor put down to insufficient ventilation...

I seriously doubt that international members have even slightest clue who that american doctor was or what he did.

Well, I'm an Australian myself, so surely I am an international member?

Also, Disney was such a control freak that he made his employees clock in and out for everything. Even if they just got up to open a window or get a drink of water.

..so they all had a clock at their desks or something? I find that quite cool in it's insanity.

[Next:]

Well, I don't know much about Walt Disney aside from the common stuff - allegedly supported the Nazis, allegedly has his cyrogenically-suspended body buried under the big castle, ordered that nobody with a beard be allowed to work in Disney Land and that all Disney 'characters' in the park be banned from breaking character at any time outside of a certain room.

Howard Hughes liked planes a lot and looked like Leonardo DiCaprio, but when he got older he was so terrified of germs that he shunned all human contact, living in the top of his casino and supposedly stopped cutting hsi hair, beard and fingernails. I think. Damned contemporary history.

Somebody who actually knows what they're talking about please post now.



A couple of throwbacks:

*Apollo 11 had been designed by Wehrner Von Braunn, who has fairly controversial given that he had been an honourary Colonel of the SS and his second-most noted rocket was the V12 missile that killed hundreds of Londoners.

*The first European to land on America wasn't Eric Somebody (he came later) but Lief Ericsson.


Next: The Crippen murder.

Hmm, very well.. going by the name 'The Battle of Lützen' I guess that it would be an armed conflict between two nations within the context of a broader campaign that took place within or around a locale named Lützen, presumably in Germany given the local's penchant for drawing dots over the letter 'u'.

Man, that simulation's looking sweet. Love the character style myself - the look really reminds me of Discworld II.

If nobody else is particularly interested I'd be happy to do the programming - I admit I'm yet to complete a game but I've messed around with all of the AGS features and I've got two short games that are about 50% done. It'd be quite interesting to work on a project where all the graphics have been done, because I actually have the opposite issue where I don't have enough graphical material to make the kind of stuff I want to. One caveat is that I also like writing, so I'll *probably* suggest a fair bit of new dialogue so you should consider whether or not that would get on your nerves.

Also, I hope this project hasn't been anywhere that Vivendi is likely to find it...

Awww, come on, ditch the characters? It's the sole cute-and-fun feature of the current page! Don't you people remember what this page is for?

Australia is also a bit heavy-handed when it comes to games.

The issue is that here the Board of Classification refuses to provide an R18+ rating for games, there's G, M, MA15+ and that's it - I'm not sure if this is refusing to consider gaming and medium that adults can enjoy or if it's acknowledgement that there's no enforcement of any of the classification already in place anyway. A few games don't get released here - I don't think any Postal game's been released here since the first one..

Main controversy is drug-use in games, though, rather than violence. You know 'Med-X' in Fallout 3? That was morphine in the original release, and had to be renamed because otherwise the game would have been banned. The issue is that laws state that no game can depict drugs as having purely positive effects - which is interesting because  F3 has the addiction system built in where your character becomes addicted to drugs and is weakened as a result, and also because of a game called Velvet Assassin where "The game employs a special lifeline if detected called "Morphine Mode". If triggered, a cutscene will play out where the hospitalized Violette convulses and is administered a dose of morphine by a military nurse. Once returning to the game, the game world will temporarily freeze, giving the player the opportunity to execute any remaining enemies. " That has been given rating approval.

So it's a matter of being inconsistent as well as sensitive.

I can't believe you didn't mention the invasion of Russia where he hugely overstretched himself and decimated his army by not ensuring his supply lines... oh well!

*Cough*

even after he promised to he instead went on his terror expedition to Russia, wherein he assembled the largest army ever seen in the world, and preceded to record the greatest number of casualties outside of battle through a brutal forced march. Ironically the political rift with the Tsar of Russia formed after the Tsar followed Wellington's battles and believed the course of the war to be turning.

Small coverage because I'm  only really that familiar with the Western European theatre. It was a campaign rather than a battle, though - of the about three battles in the Russian campaign they were either French victories or inconclusive.

I believe the original army was 100,000 strong (with something like 55,000 Frenchmen and then other units of Swiss, Austrians, Bavarians, Dutch and other then-allies) and just over half made it back.

And to throw back to Wellington again (I can't help it man!) the tactic of burning all the supplies as they retreated had been used by Wellington when he withdrew to Torres Vedras, and its known that the Tsar followed his campaigns very closely. Admittedly it's somewhat more impressive when the crops and stores that you are destroying are actually those of your own nation...

Okay, I'm going to fluff on this and go back one because I have no idea what the Battle of Lutzen even was, but as for Napoleon...

Napoleon had two separate falls from grace, both spectacular and in quick succession, the first in the collapse of his empire in 1814 shortly after the Battle of Tolouse and the second, far more famous after the Battle of Waterloo in ... June (?) 1815. It's a matter that historians will debate a lot, but in both cases a severe underestimation of his chief strategic rival the British commander-in-chief The Duke of Wellington seems to have been one of the biggest factors, although seeds were also sown with his lack of understanding of foreign relations. Napoleon, in his days of obsession of invading England had planned to destroy Great Britain through economic strangling by controlling all the docks and trading routes of Europe and thus forcing a surrender from Pitt. He did achieve mastery of Europe - aside from Portugal, which was England's chief ally.

At this point Spain had been a willing ally of the French and it had been so for decades - but due to the renewed fighting in such close quarters and losses that they had suffered under Napoleon already and pressure from England Spain's allegiance was in danger of shifting. Napoleon saw it necessary to take Spain and Portugal quickly rather than a gradual victory through diplomacy. To achieve his ends, he effectively kidnapped King Joseph at gunpoint and forced him to sign a peace treaty. This did not sit well with the Spanish who launched the first ever sustained guerilla war against his troops, which would cost French armies tens of thousands of troops and make lasting peace impossible.

In 1808, in the Battle of Vimiero, Wellington notably became the first English commander to turn back a French army and win a battle. This was ignored by Napoleon, as the battle was a small affair. However, to the victories of Oporto, Talavera, Busaca and Salamanca more attention should have been taken - Napoleon's major reflex action was to accuse the Marshall commanding Spain at the time of gross incompetence, generally before replacing them with undue haste. Despite his insistence that there was no excuse for losing to the British forces at no point did he actually take control of Spain - even after he promised to he instead went on his terror expedition to Russia, wherein he assembled the largest army ever seen in the world, and preceded to record the greatest number of casualties outside of battle through a brutal forced march. Ironically the political rift with the Tsar of Russia formed after the Tsar followed Wellington's battles and believed the course of the war to be turning.

When it came to Waterloo, Napoleon could indeed have had a great victory - he outnumbered the Allied armies, and succeeded in 'humbugging' Wellington by splitting the British force away from their key Prussian allies and their commander General Blucher who comprised roughly half of the opposing force. However, Napoleon had moved slow - although he forced the Prussians to retreat he did not advance far enough to know their location and he gave Wellington time to select the ideal battleground. Furthermore, he arrogantly assumed that victory was his and actually had his best commanders stationed in France to defend the nation from the Austrian and Spanish armies. His one commander who had faced Wellington personally (which Napoleon had not), Nicolas Soult, was scorned and insulted openly by Napoleon when he offered advice, and morale suffered.

His most famous mistake was splitting his force into two, losing his biggest advantage, so that they could pin down the Prussian army and stop them from relieving Wellington. The problem was that he had no idea where the Prussian army actually was. The entire day went badly from thereon in, to the point where at the end of the day Wellington complained about how easy the battle had been for him. Napoleon clung onto hope until the very end, though, even claiming that the advancing Prussian army was his own reinforcements to his men, to try and rally them for one final charge.

I'm not sure but I believe that Napoleon turned himself in after a month or so in the run, as in the aftermath the Prussian army ran amok allegedly plundering towns all over France.

Sorry, I just wanted my moment in the sun... and I'm sure that there's a few errors there (aside from differences in historical perspective)

[1. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare]

Well, the site I looked at says...


1. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
2. Halo 3
3. Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock
4. FIFA Soccer 08
5. Madden NFL 08
6. Need for Speed: ProStreet
7. Pokemon Diamond/Pearl
8. Assassin’s Creed
9. Super Mario Galaxy
10. Brain Age 2: More Brain Training in Minutes a Day
11. The Simpsons Game
12. Pro Evolution Soccer 2008
13. WWE Smackdown Vs Raw 2008
14. Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games
15. Spider-Man 3
16. Transformers: The Game
17. Mario Party 8
18. Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08
19. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
20. Forza Motorsport 2

By my count that's only three violent games, and I'd argue that they're quite tame compared to Fallout 3 and GTA which is what I gathered this post was really about.

I think an issue may be a large rift between 'gamers' and the actual mass market that makes these best-sellers. Listening to gaming podcasts recently I've noticed quite a lot of snobbery involving the Nintendo Wii and derision of their customer base, but looking at the list above there are a lot of Nintendo and Wii-compatible titles because it is the best possible console for the casual gamer. Because gamers like what they see as 'real games' they tend to ignore those games and ones that appeal to them - high spec RTS and FPS games with hours and hours of replay.

Now, most of the media related to games is of the 'by gamers, for gamers' variety so this snobbery exists and they emphasise their favoured games. So it can often seem like there's nothing out there but mindless gory shooters, but the buying market is a lot wider than a lot of publishers think.

The Monkey Island classics (1 & 2 - the only ones that count in my mind before LucasArts ripped the story from the hands of it's creator) serve the player a tradition. That is to use the background art from a previous game only once.

Erm, so where were the old screens in Escape From Monkey Island? Or are you like me and keep that game out of your personal canon due to its complete destruction of continuity?

Isn't that bg from the end of SQ4?

Hmm, it's hard to gauge now, isn't it?

I bought the Runaway games. In terms of design, they are a long way short of fantastic. In fact, the puzzle design is truly awful in the first game. BUT characters are entertaining and the story is quite engaging as they go - plus production values are high. It looks and feels professional (although gameplay is inferior to many titles on this site) and is fun. I buy it.

I bought Gilbert Goodmate and the Mushroom of Phungoria. The animation is choppy, the voice acting is probably slightly subpar and the cutscenes are very amateur. But the price is low, the background graphics are gorgeous with wonderful music and it's a big game with a lot of crazy characters. Plus, the developers were very up front about being amateurs and trying to keep the game alive so I supported them.

I am going to buy (And I hope I get this right..) Resonance by Vince Twelve (That's right, isn't it?) The graphics are very low resolution, I don't really know the storyline, characters or any idea of what the final experience will be. But I read the blog posts and you think "This guy knows what needs to go into a game!" My mind is made up that this will definitely be a must play.

I didn't even consider DOWNLOADING Simon the Sorcerer 4. Seeing it wasn't by Adventure Soft raised my eyebrow. And then I watched a trailer. Horrible, horrible voice acting that misses the point of the characters and completely unintelligible translation to boot. Graphics were gorgeous. Really outstanding. But they could never, ever be good enough to make that game attractive to me.

Simon the Sorcerer 3D on the other hand has terrible graphics, clumsy interface and can barely even be called a 'stable' build of a game, ranking as one of the buggiest play experiences I've ever had. But great story, fun puzzles, all my favourite characters and a LOT of laughs. I rank that as a great gaming experience, and I even got quite upset at the end. (In a good way)

It isn't a case of everything needing to be up to a certain standard. But the mean quality adding up to a certain level, IMHO.

AGI Studio was superseded years ago by WinAGI GDS

Oh, wow. Somebody should put that on the AGI wiki page -  I had no idea. Will check it out when I'm not downloading on my crappy dial-up connection.

However, tell me more about your old-school tribute - it sounds interesting!

It's just an idea at the moment, and quite vague - not a direct tribute to Sierra but a game based on a fairly obscure British sci-fi named Blakes 7 that was big in the early 80s. Because I came to the AGI games very late and really enjoyed the purity of their storytelling I thought that it would be fun to have a project to try and create a sort of AGI game-that-never-was - in this case the game that you would have gotten if they ever adapted B7 into a computer game at the time.

Yeah, well, the palettes question is due to the fact that I'm a code person, not a graphics person. When I read through the AGS manual I don't 'get' any of the palette stuff at all or anything about how to use it. But I gather that if you specifically limit the palette then your filesize is smaller... and that's about it.

Anyway, thanks for your help. The Emulation Plug-In sounds like the kind of thing I wanted..

ZOMG, abandonware link. Quick, let's erect a fence to keep the burning torches and pitchforks out...

Hmm, I had a look at AGI Studio the other day and, well, it really doesn't seem very user friendly - a lot of internal programs and strange glitches that were generally screwy. I was looking because I was a little interested in the idea of an old-school Sierra tribue with a parser and the basic graphics, but the experience got me thinking - how difficult would it be to make in AGS?

In a roundabout way, how hard is it to implement a limited palette and a text parser into an AGS game?

I wish Santiago luck. I myself tried to encode my own adventure game engine due to my blue cup phobia, and I hope his attempt is more successful.

Seriously, I'd like to thank him for resurrecting this thread, because it is the funniest I've seen here in a long time..

I'd say remakes are frequently better than original games that people would make, because they are professional games and thus have larger scopes and depth of interactivity than a lot of the amateur games you see here. A lot of coding goes into them.

Maybe I'm insane, but I think a graphical remake of the incredibly obscure yet wickedly funny other Douglas Adams game Bureaucracy would be tremendous fun. When I say remake I'm thinking of a game with more puzzles and settings to keep it long and interesting, but true to the original idea which I thought was just brilliant.

In hindsight, I'd have to agree with the planet being a little too Earth-like. It was meant to be a mirror of Earth, but I seem to have ended up looking a bit like Milton Keynes. I plan on tweaking the backgrounds a little to give it a little more of a twist.

What I thought would have been nice was a hologram appearing in the train to read the news, instead of a boring old radio broadcast.

And yes, I do admit, the demo is extremely limited in 'puzzles'. I never really planned on making a demo as such, and the events were supposed to flow quickly into the opening credits, more of an interactive cut-scene than any sort of challenge.

Well, that's good because that's what you've got. An element of puzzle design is working out when the player should be able to progress quickly, after all..

I will admit, I am struggling somewhat to think of puzzles. I think too much of the overarcing plot and storyline, and then realise that the whole game could play out as a cutscene without the player needing to touch a button. I've recently gone back to the old sierra and lucasarts collection to see how the experts did it, but I'm still learning.

If you want any help with puzzle design I'm happy to give you a hand.

Downloaded this a while ago but only got round to playing it this morning - really liked it, especially the way that the whole demo is just the 'teaser' segment of an episode. Also, the way the guard pokes a bit of fun at adventure game convention.

Seeing as it's an alien planet (albeit an extremely Earth-like one) I'd have liked to have seen just a bit of alien technology or divergence in culture evident.

Also, I'm hoping that the simplicity and lack of interaction at the moment is a case of this being the shallow end of the learning curve, rather than the difficulty of the game as a whole.