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In my humble opinion, the greatness of the six-words story written by Hemingway lies in the fact that you won't actually ever know the meaning behind those words. It's your mind that unravels their meaning and extends them into a novel, according to what your mind tells you in that moment. It reminds me of that old Infocom advertisement.

As far as we know, that child could just have born with larger\smaller feet than usual, so the shoes couldn't fit.

[HIGH SCHOOL MEMORY]May Hemingway have reached the Sublime, according to the Greek Treatise On the Sublime? In this treatise (1st century AD), a style is sublime when "it induces to higher feelings and considerations than its words seem to convey".[/HIGH SCHOOL MEMORY]

What I personally have tried to achieve here was to write up something that could leave thousands of doors open to imagination, while giving a sense of closure at the same time (I'm FAR from being able to do so, btw).

Great work, all of you!

Can't wait! Love the details and artwork.

[Best Character:]

Really good job, guys!

Best Character: Baron - K.W. and Scab can be both a deplorable and funny team!
Best Plot: Sinitrena - Especially the ending: how Chan knows the truth while the other monks don't.
Best Atmosphere: Sinitrena
Best Setting: Baron - You took your time in describing everything, and I thought I could taste the disgusting dust of Gatlinburg, pestled by Penny Tuesdays' dirty shoes!
Best Word Choice/Style: Sinitrena - I find that the dictionary was both simple and efficient.
Best Holiday Destination: Sinitrena - Somehow it feels that the place described in your story could become a "That's an actual place?" on its own

Great stuff indeed!

It's something I'm exploring too, lately (and I was really interested in AGS Crawl) even if I'm trying to sort it out on Game Maker Studio, at the moment. I'm still trying to learn how to code a tile-based procedural level generation.

Just out of curiosity (dumb question, anyway): does the map feature actual ASCII characters printed on the screen or are those image files of those characters?. I've experimented too few with AGS to tell if it's actually possible to print out on screen just like that.

EDIT:

In fact, I'm using 8x8 tiles for the monospace font. I've seen some pretty neat 8x8 royalty free tilesets, but for now I'm going to stick with ASCII, and maybe do my own tiles (optional to ASCII) if I finally decide to make a game out of this prototype.

Ehm... I believe this is the answer

Great work Hobo!

A really interesting experience.  Perhaps not very much actual gameplay but I enjoyed it while it lasted, and those very blocky graphics worked superbly and somehow managed to be quite beautiful at times!

Thanks a lot, Captain!
I agree with you that there's less gameplay than it should, but in the developing process I've understood a couple of design tricks that will indeed serve to this cause

Played it and finished it. Really nice, Dude! Hope it will be eligible!

Thanks a lot JuaniT! Glad that you liked it

And, also, thanks Atelier for letting me in!
Great games everybody! You make it harder than it already is, to vote

A-Mused

A short tale about inspiration and lack of it

[KEYS]
Left Click - Interact
Right Click - Examine
TAB - Read Poem Book

DOWNLOAD

This is my entry for this month's MAGS.

Pixel art graphics are made with Hexels

The few sound effects are programmed with ChucK programming language

Lightweight BASS Template courtesy of Ghost

And a little tribute:

Spoiler

Lester from Another World by Eric Chahi

[close]

Ok, I'm a few hours late.
Feel free to dump it, if I can't be eligible to join since I uploaded it few hours past the deadline!

Here's my game!

A-Mused

[tick]

And tick! The clock stopped right on time (more or less)!

The winner is Sinitrena! Congratulations !

Again, I'm sorry if the theme or how it was structured felt uninspiring and held someone from joining.
Or maybe it's just that busy time of the year (which kinda is, actually).
Anyway, I think to speak for everybody here when I say that I'm up to see what's next

Oh and best whishes to Chef!

Thanks everybody, I'm looking forward to see you on the next round

[Sinitrena]

We hoped until the very last minute for Ponch's entry
Well, bright side is: we have just to wait another compo!

Ok, then! That's it!

First, let me say I'm sorry since I may have chosen a not so evocative theme, which makes me difficult to wrap up significant criteria for voting.

This round showed us the creative efforts of:

• Sinitrena: inspired by an aerial silk performance, wrote a poem as if it was written by the one who may have invented the art form.
• Dualnames: quoted a fictional Alan Moore, about Watchmen's Rorschach.
• Ghost: wrote a short-but-sweet exploding fictional quote by Michael Bay.
• Baron: nailed down what it seems to be a stream of a creative's multiple conciousnesses.

Trying to maintain balance, categories are cut shorter than usual because of the variety (in length and inspiration) of the entries:

Theme: the voted entry really managed to stay true to the theme
Word Choice/Style: whether if short-but-sweet or long and poetic, the voted entry has stood out for its capability to use the right words in the right spots.
Character: if inspired by someone real, the voted character felt true to the original; if made up, the voted character felt real\unique\interesting.

You may cast one vote for each category and each vote is worth one point!
The voting deadline is set on January 23, GMT 11:00AM!

Vote on!
And thanks for joining!

Hello there, fellow wordsmiths!

I'm seriously thinking about if it would be "right" to extend the deadline again. I mean, I don't know if it would be fair to those who didn't join because of the lack of time or those who restrained themselves rushing their entry.

I would agree to extend for just another day (JANUARY 20, GMT23:59) the deadline, but I'd also like to make myself clear that I don't mean any disrespect to anyone and I'm doing it just for the sake of participation

So, let's extend it a day more, hoping that this doesn't make anyone angry!
Anyway, after this it's over for real!

I'm trying to jump in, I only have time until next friday.
Let's see if I manage!

Today is screenshot saturday, anyway

[NEW DEADLINE: JANUARY 19 GMT 00:00]

Well, in past compos, sometimes the deadline was postponed
So I can't see why not do it this time too

NEW DEADLINE: JANUARY 19 GMT 00:00 - This means that the last useful minute to post will be JANUARY 18 GMT 23:59

Oh and since I'm new to this, if it's too much don't hesitate to tell me!

Don't you know there ain't no devil, there's just God when he's drunk
    - Tom Waits, Heartattack and Vine, 1980

Tom Waits: "The line was just... I was just sitting on the toilet, and there was this spider web in the corner, and I lit a match and a cigarette, and I held the match up to the spider and the spider started crawling up the web. So I got the match closer. I opened up a can of beer, drank the beer, tried to decide whether I should burn the spider off his web or let him go on his way... I figured there must be somebody like that up there: has a coupla cocktails every now and then and there's trouble on Times Square." (quote from Tom Waits Library)



Write a story about a work of art in the moment of its conception.
Take a piece from any literature, poetry, music, painting, movie scene, catchy slogan, videogame or whatever work of art you want, both real or imaginary, and write a story about how it formed in the author's mind! If you get inspired by a real work, please insert a reference to it as I did above. I quoted also the author's own words but, of course, it's better if you don't know how it was conceived. Let your imagination go!

Deadline is 15th January 2014, 2000GMT!

Happy New Year, folks!
This is my first topic and I hope I got it right

I really hope you succeed, anyway I've just began playing and spotted that if you try to pick (Le)Chuck the Plant you encounter a bug and the game crashes with the following error:

---------------------------
Adventure Game Studio
---------------------------
An internal error has occurred. Please note down the following information.
If the problem persists, post the details on the AGS Technical Forum.
(ACI version 3.21.1115)

Error: prepare_script: error -18 (no such function in script) trying to run 'hPlant_PickUp'   (Room 1)

---------------------------
OK   
---------------------------

Also, the voiceover seems to end after few lines, I think it's made on purpose, though (EDIT: when you talk to Mr. Martinson he actually says he needs an actor. Sorry )
It's a really nice effort!

Oh my! I'm a primus inter pares!
Personally, I love that we ended with a four way tie everyone's a winner and so everyone's happy!

I should come up with something interesting in the next few days
Thanks a lot for the opportunity WHAM and you fellow wordsmiths!

[kconan]

Character: kconan, for Captain Whiskers. I loved how it appeared to me as a sort of retired "fighter" who still hadn't "the match of his career" and therefore he wasn't ready for retirement yet!
Plot: Sinitrena, definitely a great way to teach a valuable lesson.
Background World: Baron, even without being too much specific in describing the place, everything seemed to be forming in my mind as the characters were pointed out!
Word Choice/Style: Sinitrena, probably the best choice of words for the provided "audience".
Happiness: Baron, the ending let me feel this sensation of happiness as when "everything comes together".

Great stories everybody, best wishes to you all!

[ECHOES OF HAPPINESS]

I am, for I cannot grasp happiness leaving this undone!
(Just re-reading my entry and polishing where possible. I'll update this post)

Ok, this is it! Quite short, but... You know... I hope it gets to the point!

The following is an excerpt from:
ECHOES OF HAPPINESS
15 different points of view about one of the most relative human conditions, impolitely eavesdropped in public places

by B. Larkin

We have now reached the very end of this collection. It has been a great pleasure to me, to have the chance to write down and share all of these different opinions with a wider audience.
I've realized that those places where you can get your belly full and your liver well hydrated are the best places to find people talking about happiness.

This time I was at a local pub. I always enjoyed going there for the great choice of beer, so I saved it for my last eavesdropping session. Quite funny is that this is actually the conversation I found most interesting.

This time we talk about MR. J. and MR. K., two acquaintances who were talking about everything and nothing when, all of a sudden, the topic came up.

As always, I'll transcript the words that I recorded from the conversation. I bolded the words spoken with more emphasis.

MR. J. â€" You see, last year I met this girl. She was really something... Dynamite... A stick of dynamite... A shorty, slim, cute, long-winded stick of dynamite. I started to overthink immediatly after I had my first chat with her! (chuckles)
She spoke very briefly about her previous relationship and so I began to imagine how could it have ended and why but, anyway...
We both lived in the same city, but she lived in the exact opposite part in which I lived. She lived downtown, just near the station, and I lived uptown: antipodes.
I used to walk her home at night and well, I've always found incredibly invalidating that there were no working subways nor buses after midnight. You see, streetlamps were dim, some streets were too wide, some too narrow... Let's say that in the dead of night it kinda doesn't seem a comfy city to walk through.
Now, the distance between my place and her's was HUGE and as sure that I enjoyed her company, each time I had to go back home I was alone, in the dark and tired. And... Well, I felt it.
At first, I used that long walks to collect thoughts and enjoy some specific parts of the city which I couldn't avoid to cross, but that became boring quite fast. I began to think more about the time we could have spent together than, for instance, at how the moon used to shine between two buildings in a specific spot of the city. (chuckles)

MR. K. â€" I'm sorry to interrupt, but have you ever considered driving there by car or... Something else?

MR. J. â€" Of course I did! But I couldn't personally afford to buy a car, neither a used one, actually. But why should I ever need a car when a big city like that one is supposed to give people a chance to move easily between different places anytime? I know that it's sounds like a cliché but, you know, we actually paid taxes! (chuckles)

At this point I want to make the reader aware that the MR. J. wasn't at all angry nor stressed, the mood of the conversation was actually quite playful.

MR. J. â€" Anyway, it was Christmas Eve night and I had one of those far-famed stomach-stretching dinners right at my parents' house. I was in some sort of food-induced coma and I was quite enjoying it, when suddenly my mobile phone rang and showed up her name. She wanted to see me and I was flabbergasted: we weren't actually dating and the last thing I could think of, that day, was her calling me.
I was a bit tipsy and, of course, also excited. So I rushed out of the house and threw myself into the streets, without really knowing how to get downtown since, you know, it was Christmas for everybody, let alone bus and subway drivers! Moreover, I had no bus or subway tickets, so I was really sure I would have walked all the way.
But then I found out I was wrong! E-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g seemed to be up and running like never before, neither in any ordinary day whatsoever! I got into the subway, for once the ticket machine was working fine, took the train and I got there in time. Then, when it was time to go back home I just took the same subway, backwards.

MR. K. â€" And so... You think that one is the happiest day of your life? You know... Dating the girl you were attracted to... like a complete unexpected Christmas present and so on?

MR. J. â€" No, no, no... She was amazing and all, but... That's not about that... You see, I'm not a total lazy ass but that day I realized that, for me, happiness lies in a city that offers you the chance to be where you want to be, whenever you want to, and does it as quickly as possible.

And so, this is it! I had a great time collecting materials (and beers) for this research, with which I'm not at all trying to impose any kind of objective truth about what happiness is and how to achieve it. It just intends to show how many different - and interesting! - things may end up bringing it to you, which I find it to be very engaging!

Last, but not least, I'd like to express all my gratitude to all those impolitely great backers who helped me in funding my project online and to all those who just spread the word about it. If I reached the goal was only thanks to you! You made me very happy indeed!

Darn I missed a couple of rounds, I hope to jump in again at this one!