Messages

You couldn't die from pulling a vase in Maniac Mansion... I think the worst part about maniac mansion was not KNOWING when you'd screwed yourself. You could wander aimlessly for ages, without being able to progress meaningfully because you were stuck. At least, I think so. I got stuck so I never finished it. Or maybe I wasn't stuck. Hm?

Wow, Japan doesn't have summer break from school? Man!

I would hate to not have a (sizable) holiday from school. A week here and there for midterms is great but not enough to work on your own projects and suchlike. However, I think our summer holidays are wayyyy to long. I'd much rather have only a month off school, maybe only three weeks. Why? Well, because it gets boring as HELL, and then you completely lose your ability to study over summer. And that month should be in September, the nicest month of the Irish Calender.

And what is with everybody wearing different shoes? Everybody must wear the same shoes. And blazers! And cravats. And fedoras!

Heil me!

I want to be an archeologist!!!

Okay, no, there are a couple things. I was going to be an animator, I swear to god. And then I realized that, well, programming is good too. And in the future, people will need programmers. But then I didn't want to give up my dream of animation. So I came to a conclusion.

I know where I want to end up. I want to end up in San Francisco, working for Double Fine or LucasArts or That Other Place. What I do or how I get there doesn't matter so much. And it's not like I don't have a whole bunch of time before I get there.

So I'm doing the animation course, AND the programming course.

It's a total of six years. So what? And in the end, I'll be well grounded for a career in computer game design, and as well as that I'll be useful as the rare but useful visual effects programmer, so getting into my choice of career should be even easier.

Irish third level education is actually really excellent and widely available for all, so I figure, take advantage of it!!

And maybe I can take night classes in Archeology while doing my computer science degree.

Well to be honest they all suck, except AitD which was the original and scarey as hell. And you got to see the chicks panties when she high kicked at the end.

The fact it was written in the mid 80s explains soooo much.

Who's Molly Ringwald?

I must have missed the entire beginning of the film. Whoops, blink and you miss it, I guess. Or you know, miss the beginning of the film and you miss it.

I think I did the same for the end of Beneath a Steel Sky. In fairness, they could have disabled game saving for those parts.

Hey... now that you've legally purchased AitD2... that means you can now feel free to download a fully cracked version online!

I actually have a tinyyyy little codebook for AitD somewhere, or maybe even 2. I'm not sure if it's still around but I will have a route around for you. It was tiny and had a bunch of pictures in, if I remember correctly.

Okay. Hm.

This is a dodgy subject because I know a lot of people swear by Sierra and, let's face it; if you swear by Sierra, you swear by death in adventure games.

I guess the way I stand on the issue is this; I've never really thought of Adventure Games as a genre that handle death well. I don't mind dying in FPS's, or in Platformers, or RPGs. It adds to the gameplay, because essentially those games are about survival. Adventures never really struck me as a a genre that required you to survive to accomplish the goal of a level, because for a start, there just wasn't enough interactivity. Not the right sort of interactivity. I admired the way it was done in Full Throttle, but I didn't see that as death so much as I saw it as some kind of more interactive puzzle of some sort.

Sierra games, especially the early ones, if I recall correctly, were keyboard controlled. This gave a slightly different sort of interactivity to the mouse interface, which meant you could do things like run from enemies. However, you could also do a lot of stupid shit like pull rocks on top of yourself and walk off the edge of cliffs. I suppose this gave Sierra games a lot more of an interactive feel to their worlds because there was literally so much to wander around and get lost in, and so many ways to die.

Whereas with LucasArts games, it was more linear. Sure, you could solve the puzzles in any order you wanted for the most part, but the end result was always the same (With an exception of FOA).

I think FOA got the whole Death thing just fine. I didn't mind dying in FOA, because it was far and few between, and you knew when a potentially dangerous situation was coming so you could save.

But for the most part I think that there just isn't enough of the right sort of interactivity in adventure games to incorporate a lot of death. You have to ask yourself; what's the point in dying? In RPGs and FPSs, the dying element gets your blood pumping. You have to fight those bad guys, stay alive for as long as possible, etc. You're there, in the action.

But with Adventure Games the only real dying you can do is by clicking the wrong button, which doesn't really get your adrenaline running unless you're some kind of freak, and therefore serves no purpose but to piss off your player severely when he or she reads a sneering message asking when the last time they saved their game was.

Why didn't you package your games with a little machine that flips people off, eh, Roberta?

EDIT: Yes, linear was the wrong word.. I meant to go back and change it when I thought of the right one, but then I forgot, and then I couldn't think of the word at all.

I remember wanting to live in Japan. Then, I didn't.

I disagree. Seeing as this has been floating around the net for a while, if it was a hoax I'm pretty sure that Chris Columbus would have said something, rather than let people laugh at him.

That sort of shit could ruin a career.

In other news, I was reading the other script available on that site, and despite the amateur layout it's actually a better script altogether... and it's a fan effort. Nice action sequences.

And now that's he's found out that Indiana Jones didn't really exist and is only a fictional character, he's quite willing to die too!

Journal Entry: The Next One

9.45pm - Custard keeps going lumpy.
9.46pm - Ow
9.50pm - m0ds asks if Indiana Jones really existed. He is being serious.
9.51pm - m0ds cries.

Why are we all being so mean to PhilRoberts? I mean, what has he really done to deserve us calling him such horrible, horrible names? I'm not just being rational and kind because my mother is watching what I type right now, either... I really do think we should be nicer to PhilRoberts. So he's done a bunch of stupid shit stuff, and started a whole lot of inane topics... I mean, don't we all like to start inane topics, sometimes? I know I do. Having said that, I think PhilRoberts should be hung, drawn and quartered celebrated for uniting all AGS'ers once again against the evil of n00bies.

Now my mother has gone, so I'm going to tell the truth; PhilRoberts, you bastard, you never answer me on MSN. What the hell is your problem? We're over!

It'd be like that episode of Futurama where you can download celebrities, almost... except imagine, instead of Lucy Lu, Harrison Ford.

Ha ha ha... I had one of those VR helmets... it claimed to be ultra-realistic... it was like pressing your face against a TV while playing the earliest ever version of Ping Pong.

That said, I think that the 3D display could be awesome, once it has a chance to grow a little. You never know.

I couldn't dig up that old Nintendo DS thread... seems to have disappeared. But anyway, I found this!!!

http://www.gmrmagazine.com/article2/0,4364,1486811,00.asp

Imagine how cool that would be! Imagine! Wouldn't it be cool! I mean, okay, so I have this vision of it being incredibly disorientating and irritating... but it's early technology!

Imagine, in a couple years, when you can literally stand next to game characters in their world.

Neat.

Discuss.

EDIT: I'm callin' for a 3D AGS port, CJ!

Journal entry #1:

Emailed a cow, today.

Well thanks, Mark! That's going to go down well with the M0dster Shippers!