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Ratings are, and always have been a flawed system of telling people whether a game/film/whatever is good. Good, fun and entertaining is too subjective an opinion to be rated in any way. I guess a more appropriate way would be having 3 cups being the AVERAGE since it is in the MIDDLE. Shit games and awful games (like my masterpiece Gorthor) deserve 1 and two cup ratings. But ratings themselves can be confusing, which I think is why people are having an issue with it. Some ratings consider anything around 50% to be average. Some others consider 70% to be average. It's not an accurate way of telling whether a game is good or not. Do away with the whole thing and perhaps include a small review only. You can still have a list of highly recommended games.

Why else would a highly flawed game like Limey Lizard get such a high rating? In my opinion, the radical user interface detracted from the playing experience, and a walking dead made me rage quit. But that game is rated 4 cups. The rating system is flawed.

I don't really think it is appropriate for such a highly established and recognised community member to be saying 'fuck' in every sentence either, especially when you are trying to argue your point.

Since you mentioned Nanobots, I thought I'd give it a try. In Windows 7 pro x64 it runs like a dream. Using 3-6% of the cpu sounds about right, and so does the ram (Nanobots used 32mb when I ran it)

My first guess would be the virus software, but since you can't disable it (i'm guessing something to do with being a company laptop yes?) then this is something you can't test. It's a decent laptop, there should be no reason it doesn't work. I'd recommend to your company they stop using a 9 year old operating system too.

Definatly try running it in a window.

SpacePirateCaine, I play on many of the servers you do. At the moment, I am Retromaticon, but alot of the time i use a [Team Bro] Bro name handle, for our awesome pretend clan. I thought it was you, I was going to send you a PM some time about it. I'm pretty much limited to playing on aussie servers since any foreign server will give me pings of 200+. I only really play TF2 at the moment.

And Anian is so correct. Most people playing TF2 are only there to have fun and it's not Serious Business. Sure some idiots take is seriously, but they are usually laughed at and made fun of.

Just came back from the cinema, just regular 3D version.

I went in expecting uncanny valley. Sure they aren't human, but still, they were very humanoid. Only one or two slight little things made me realise I wasn't watching real blue tall people on a planet with funky plantlight plants.

Plot, standard extended hero's journey nonsense. Predictable, yes, but who cares, you feel better that you figured out who would die, who would survive, etc. Bad movies give you suprise endings without leaving any clues. Good movies kinda hint at it subtly and you congratulate yourself and feel better for being right. We do like to think we are clever after all.

And... I liked that they didn't use the 3D effect in an OTT way. It was nice and subtle. The way it should be.

Darth, pretty sure I did see blue nipples on the lady navi. What man wasn't trying to see if they could see that? :p

I thought the world of Pandora was very well done indeed. I wouldn't say it was empty, the 'life' wasn't just the animals that populated it, it was the plants as well. Also, adding in too many creatures to keep track of would have been distracting during the latter half of the film.

Increator, did you see the same film as me? The avatar people look nothing like the Khajiit from Oblivion. They kinda look somewhat similar to night elves from WoW, but still different.

Anyway, I enjoyed it, if you didn't, then hype probably got the better of you.

Speaking from the future, you will find the future to be very tiring.

All games except Modern Warfare 2. Asshat Activision.

Yeah, I think everyone got dumped about 15 when the second round of invites went out. I have about 8 to pass out if anyone wants em.

I doubt it. The 1st post by this user is July 2008. Grundy wasn't planning on this then at all. I asked him late last year if he planned to improve BJ2 and he wasn't even planning on doing that. Also, originally when he set out to remake case 2 he didn't plan to do voices.

A good guide to follow would be to make your characters 1/3 the screen height for widescreen, or 1/4 for 4:3. I think this is generally a good guideline to follow. That way, you can construct your backgrounds to fit.

If he's stretching, his left foot would be forward to balance him and right foot back and maybe off the air. Try to twist the body a bit too. It'll do a world of wonders.

Nice, very nice. Like the style you have going there, quite unique. One crit though, I don't really like the shading on the nose or bottom lip. They are areas most likely to have highlights, not shadows. The hatching could be used elsewhere, I do like how it looks, but not where it is on the drawing.

While it is okay, I think the sprite could use a bit more contrast. While it is good to see the black outlines gone, the new much lighter outlines don't really stand out too much.

If you look at Disney stuff (since you are going for a cartoony look), you'll notice how they use contrast effectively between the skin tone and the outlines, and also with other features such as the eyes.



This helps the features of the face look more striking, as at the moment, they are muddy. In addition, adding outlines will help separating the sprite from the background.

You should also take note that your proportions do not look right. While you are allowed to bend the rules, do not take this as free reign to just simply ignore the rules. She is supposed to look sexy, so give her exaggerated hips, lengthen her arms a bit and try give her a more interesting pose. It's dead boring.  I also think her head could be a little smaller.

When doing a 3/4 view, make sure you use perspective. The feet should never be on the same plane as each other.

And now to the initial animation. Ideally the shoulders and hips should roll with the movement. Looks like you are missing a frame on the right foot forward movement. Secondary action is important, it will give more life to your character (ie, the tail) http://www.synchrolux.com/?p=273 Your arm's arcs aren't quite right. Think of them as a kinda pendulum and concentrate on your easing in and out. I know for a 6-8 frame animation easing isn't really that easily portrayed, but getting it right is great. You know what, i am kinda sick of seeing 8 frame walkcycles, but they are the easiest, since you are pretty much blocking out the key poses. You could make her walk a lot more feminine and sexy. Just youtube videos of women walking. Video reference is your friend. A much better friend than tutorials or anything else.

And now link time. If you are interested in animation, go here, it's a treasure trove of information: http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/

Oh i forgot. Asymmetry is your friend. see: http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2008/12/disney-priniciples-twins-bad-thing.html

Well it's a FPS engine (but there is a car you can drive in UT so you can probably copy that system for 3rd person style game), anyway, you can makea  first person adventure game, levers and buttons should be super easy to make and that's basically the only thing you really need for a game...I'm just talking out thin air, but in theory...

Gears of War? that was third person, included cinematics.

This might be a stupid questions, but can an adventure game be made using the Unreal 3 engine, in theory?

Theoretically yes. You can control scene cameras/switching and dialog scenes, cutscenes, event animations (pick up, etc) with Unreal Matinee, add UI elements, control some of the scripting elements with Unreal Kismet, but a lot would have to be hard coded with Unrealscript. Nonetheless, it would be possible, and probably involve the same knowledge as any other graphics engine.

One of the 'showcase' games is a 2/5d platformy type thing. To do a 'point and click' style interface wouldn't be too hard for someone who is decent at programming.

The problem with any of these engines is not programming. It's the art.

I have heard Unity is really good at doing one type of game... but really terrible at others. AFAIK (through testing and others), if you are creating content on the grid using only meshes and not terrain... it's not perfect.

But why use something like Unity when you can use the Unreal 3 Engine? Its free for non commercial use now, has up to the minute features, and has one of the best cinematic editors on the planet. Well it's great if you can make the nice graphics.

Course Erin is listed. The only reason she found this is by Googling herself. :p

Hah, love it Nickel.

I really love this art style, and the tag line has my attention. Very cool stuff.

I love these short games. Short enough to keep my attention. A+

I don't really know much about Macs, but I know Sun's Virtual Box is a free, open source Virtualisation thingy, as opposed to parallels which costs money. As for getting a copy of Windows, if you know someone who has a copy of Windows 7 RC1 or somewhere to aquire a copy of the install disc, then you can still get a product key from microsoft before 21st of this month. Otherwise, after Oct 22 it goes on general sale. Last chance. Works fully til March 2010. I used it before I installed Win7 Pro (students get it earlier than general release fools.  ) No real issues and AGS works perfectly. Even as a Virtual Machine.

Alternatively you could just bootcamp Windows 7. Just remember to get a mouse with more than one button (took me forever to figure out how to bring up the right-click menu on a mac... honestly... gah!), and you will also have to eject the cd/dvd drive manually through windows (For some reason the eject button on the macs is run through software, not hardware like a PC.)