Messages

How about this:

When people submit their games, they could include a banner advertising their game with a link to the game's page on the main site.



Of course, there's no form of quality control so you may end up with some pony-looking banners!

There's something quite poignant about the fact that Leo suffered a massive heart attack in The West Wing - Life imitating Art, but not in a good way.

I must admit I was quite shocked that he was 58 - he looked a lot older, and perhaps that says something about his health in general.

Very sad news indeed.

Pat has died? Dam, he was cool!

And then there's George Best, too. RIP.

My mom always says death comes in threes.

Just heard on BBC News24 that Rally Driver Richard Burns has died aged just 34 after a two year battle with a Brain Tumour - I guess that makes three. 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsport/world_rally/4472642.stm

ITS ALIIIIVVVVEEEE!!

[-- UPDATE 29-07-07 --]

Hi Gang,

Hope everybody is well 

-- UPDATE 29-07-07 --

<Cough>

So, um, Mittens 2007 was great...

Before I start a new thread for the third and probably final Annual, which obviously didn't come out this year (Apologies to those Brittens / Mittens 07 attendees who only came for the freebies  ) I remembered that I still had some unfinished business from last year, and having just found the box of Annuals, I thought I should act on this before too much more time passes.

The Winner of the 'Design a Cover' competition was Limping Fish.  I'll drop you a pm in case you don't see this, but if you want to pm me your address I'll send you out a copy of Volume 1, and Volume 2 which has been 'signed' by CJ.

In the end, I also used an image supplied by 2ma2, so again blah blah pm blah address, I'll send you a copy of Volume 2.

The following attendees are still entitled to a copy of the Annual:

M0Ds
Magintz
- Scotch
Layabout
- Adam & Becky
- CJ
AGA
- Annie (OneThinkingGal and ._.)
- Creed Malay (Davy Malay)
- Dave Gilbert
- Hajo
- Jake (Hotspot)
- Privateer Puddin' (custard)
- spleen (Iqu)
- YicklePigeon

And that should be it for the 2006 annual!

-- UPDATE 10-08-06 --

Ok, so tonight is the deadline for anyone who wants to send in a cover for this year's Annual.  I'll announce the winner at Mittens and organise sending the prizes out when I get back.

To save on space in my luggage I will probably bring the discs out in slim CD cases, and then supply printed DVD covers for people to take back sandwiched between their notebooks / magazines / porn etc.

This appears to be the final breakdown on attendees:

- M0Ds
- Magintz
- Petteri
- Chrille
- Grundislav
- Scotch
- Quintaros
- Radiant
- Layabout
- Farlander & Lorena
- Adam & Becky
- Goldmund & Dominika
- CJ
- Helm
- Mattgoble
- Sinitrena
- Disco
- AGA

Which I make to be 18 (21 if the couples want 1 each  ) - So 25 copies should cover you guys!

- Annie (OneThinkingGal and ._.)
- Creed Malay (Davy Malay)
- Dave Gilbert
- Hajo
- Jake (Hotspot)
- Privateer Puddin' (custard)
- spleen (Iqu)
- YicklePigeon

And 8 attendees to Brittens who won't be in Spain.  Guys & Gals, if you want to PM me your snail mail address I will drop a copy in the post when I get back.

-- UPDATE 09-07-06 --

So the games are coming in thick and fast - many thanks to everyone who has offered the projects up, or said 'yes' when asked!

This year's annual will very quickly fill a CD-R, so I was wondering whether people had a preference to either a DVD-R or multiple CD-Rs?



-- UPDATE 04-07-06 --

OK Guys, there is still time to send me details about your games, music, photos, plugins, modules, whatevers to be included in this year's annual.

As an extra 'thing', I would like one of you talented individuals to design the front for this year's DVD Cover.  (Mods - didn't know whether this should be also posted in competitions & activities?)

The back of the case will included a list of the content of the disc, while the spine will match last year's annual, so entries should be limited to the front, which has a dimension of:

1536x2175 pixels (wxh)

Also, due to the constraints of bringing these discs to Mittens, I might package the discs up in normal CD-Jewel cases and include the DVD Cover artwork on the disc - it all depends on how many copies I need to bring (more on that later).  If this is the case, I can scale & crop the winning artwork down for these cases, although please feel free to also enter a design based around a 12cm square at 300dpi.

Remeber, the main aim is for the DVD Cover artwork, NOT the CD Sleeve

Entries should be supplied as either TIFFs, PNGs or JPEGs (the less compression the better), and emailed to me:

mattgoble is my username, gmail is my account.  Hope that makes sense 

Below is a link to last year's artwork (Not the greatest, I know, but a last minute, late night attempt by yours truly)



What does the winner get?

Whether the 'winner' is coming to either Brittens or Mittens or not, I will send them a final copy of the annual, along with any other 'goodies' I can think of.

-- END OF UPDATE --



I thought I should start this year's submissions for the AGS Annual a little earlier, considering how disorganised I was this year...

For those of you who are wondering what I am talking about, can visit this topic:

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=20863.0

The deadline for submissions will be a couple of weeks before Mittens, or Brittens or whichever 2006 gathering comes first!

In the meantime, please feel free to contact me via PM with submissions and suggestions - I will do my best to contact as many of you as possible, but please don't wait for me as I do have a tendancy to miss out on some of the most obvious games!

All the best

Supposedly, the whole detector van is a bit of a myth - I think they base most of their work on whether your address is registered for a TV when you buy a TV.

With regards to not opening the door, again very true, although a colleague at work was telling me that he was duped into opening the door by a TV License agent posing as someone from Royal Mail.

THEY'RE EVERYWHERE I TELL YOU!!! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES BEFORE ITS TOO LATE !!11!!

Here's an additional bit of info I was told while at uni:

If you house/flat-share with other people, one license covers the entire house as long as the rooms don't have locks on them.  If the tv is behind a locked door, you require a seperate license.  Of course if you don't lock your room, you might not be able to get adequate household insurance.

Im guessing this is something to do with communial areas and seperate tennants...

I'll shut-up now...

I saw this at FrightFest last month, and was pretty impressed.  The storyline is a bit over-complicated, and can be a little hard to follow, but all in all a pretty good movie, and looks the business.

And Iqu, the subs are one of the coolest things I've seen in ages.  They're not normal subs, but animated and 'in character', so that when a character screams "Nooo!" the subs are really big and kind of float off the screem.  Also there's one bit with some blood underwater and the subtitles are blood-red and then they dissolve into the water like blood.

Worth a viewing in my opinion. 

Wow,  didn't know you know had to pay for Foundation courses, but I guess it comes under further / higher education these days.

I was always under the impression that foundation courses were intended to improve your skills to a level 'acceptable' for degree education - Yutzster, can't you even apply for the degree courses?  I thought it was down to the quality of your portfolio?  Afterall, mature students haven't all done art foundations...

The one thing I would say about the Portsmouth plan is to make sure that the two courses are compatible, and that doing the computer course does not put you at a disadvantage for the classical animation course, especially in terms of core skills taught in the first year.

Best of luck either way!

my 2p worth.

I mean a metal shutter like floppy disks used to have - having a gaping hole in such a small disc is kind of asking for trouble don't you think?

Have just been playing with our company psp this evening - mainly getting to grips with the video encoding side of things.

Wow, fantastic screen, amazing picture quality.

But why didn't they include a shutter to protect the UMD disc?

Hey M0Ds,

Reading through everyone's posts, I think all the relevant stuff has been said.  But here are my thoughts as mentioned by everyone else already 

The company I work for now, started in a flat, so the first place you can save money is to scrap the office idea, at least for the time being (we're not working out of a flat now BTW  )

Consider paid freelance work to start filling the company coffers - set up a seperate bank account, and do some sort of accounting records so that when you do go for a loan, the bank can see that you're serious.

Accept the fact that for the first couple of years, until things start to pick up, you will / should pay yourself the lowest possible wage so that you can invest as much as possible in the company - early days are not about ego-stroking wage packets (dotcom bust and all that).

Look at other ways to invest money in 'the company' - fulfilment (sp?) for example.

Here's an idea:

So, you're thinking of going back to uni?  While at uni, you could look into the possibility of selling adevnture games either online, or to the other students (People on film courses may be more interested in the narrative and art direction of adventure games than mindless FPS shooters.)

You turn around to the developer of a competed game - Chrille, GeoffKhan etc and offer to sell their game in return for  a slice of the cash.  You handle the disc duplication, printed parts, packaging etc.  You sell the game for £x - the developer gets half, you get the other half.  You could use E-Bay to set up the shop, or you could set up your own shop with a paypal account and use that to advertise your web design skills.  You could manage other freelance people, set them up with clients in return for a fee.

As they said in "Layer Cake" - the smart business man is the middle man who puts people together.

CJ is of course right - don't let us put you off.  Take baby steps, have a game plan and best of luck.

*couggh* Ags annual *cough*

If you were lucky enough to get one... like me...

*cough* cheers *cough*



Layabout's post was brought to you today by AGS Annual Inc, available at all Mittens and Brittens gatherings this year!

Pipex do this now as well.

By all accounts, BT only supply 2Mbps lines and it is up to the ISP to throttle the line according to what you've paid for. When I visit ADSLguide, I'm told that my connection is 1Mbps (Which is what I pay for), but Windows tells me I've connected at 2.2Mbps.

Great thing was, for the first couple of days I did have the whole 2.2Mbps connection before pipex throttled it back, so I left the pc downloading until the cow's came home 

HillBilly, I use a knife - but that's not a brilliant method either. Perhaps Matt Goble will shed some light on perfick' box designs?

DVD Cases?  Print them with crop marks then cut down with a sharp knife and a metal ruler (Self healing cutting mats are cool  )

For the AGS Annual I made use of the work kit, so they were printed on a Xerox Docu-colour whatsit, two to an A3 sheet, then cut down on a computerised Guillotine 

One of these days I'll get the hang of adding 3mm bleed to covers and then you don't have to be so accurate with your cutting...

I'm just surprised that Chris Jones opened himself up to certain Essebs being able to knock on his door.

Oh don't worry, my flag is only accurate to within 10 miles or so

I decided to change the accuracey of mine to "The George" pub - seemed appropriate 

I find myself disagreeing and agreeing with all of the previous posts at present.

The reassuring thing is that we can spend hours and even weeks discussing these things, while the police make snap decisions.

A friend of mine made the comment today that white guys with guns running around Stockwell (The site of this recent incident) is porbably not that uncommon!

What happend to Jean Charles de Menezes was a tragic accident and I wouldn't want to be the officers who have to live  with their desicion - If I thought I was chasing a suicide bomber and had him pinned to the ground, I would want to make sure for my own benefit, if not other people, that the guy was physically incable of pressing any button.

If I was wrong, I don't know how I would live with myself knowing I had killed an innocent man.  Yes he came out of a block of flats linked with last weeks failed bombings, yes he was wearing a heavy jacket on a warm day, yes he ran when told to stop, but the facts are he turned out to be innocent.

The only positive I can think at this stage is that people learn real quick that if a bunch of guys have guns and tell you to stop, whether they are plain clothes police or muggers, DO AS THEY SAY.  Best case scenario is you're alive but without your wallet...

Kinko is a print shop
Kinoko is a lady just got engaged and wrote Cirque de Zale

Thank you

That's what happens when I hang around in too many DVD CoverArt threads!  :

Two small questions:
1. Is it possible to download an ISO of this CD or something like that?

I had considered the possibility of torrenting an ISO file, but as this was not something I had asked permission to do when requesting permission from the games authors, it was not something I was comfortable doing.

Is this something people would like for Volume 2?

2. How come Cirque de Zale was not included? (I mean, it is a great game with a lot of popularity from almost everybody on these forums, oh, and just curious, I don't want this to sound as a complain or anything)

There was no reason Cirque was not included, it was just an innocent oversight.

About six weeks before Mittens I started this post, asking for people to contact me and give me permission to include their game.  About two weeks before Mittens  I started contacting people directly, and as a whole I worked my way through the AGS Games database.  On first appearance, Kinoko's entry does not list a website, so although I could download the game, I had no way of asking permission to do so.  Since then I've realised that had I clicked on Kinoko's name I could have gotten his website and theirfore email address from his profile, but at the time, with deadlines approaching, it got missed.

Of course I'm more than happy to include Cirque on Volume 2 - things should be easier next time around 

Chrille, If you've got anything you want me to include on Volume 2, drop me an email or PM and we can arrange transfer details.

See first post for update.

Now taking submissions for Volume 2, coming 2006!