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Nice accomplishment Neil, I've never been in Vegas. Played with someone famous?

No, unfortunately no pokercelebs at my tables, mainly hyper-aggressive internet qualifiers... but tons of them elsewhere in the room of course.

I enjoy playing Hold'em in real life for a couple of hours at a time, but if it goes on much longer than that I start to get bored.

I have to say, I really don't see the point of internet poker -- if you can't try to read the other players faces and trade banter with them, it's just not the same game at all.

Two hours is a bit short? I usually need 4-6 hours to rip off my friends!

I prefer live poker too, much more fun. On the net, you have to find other ways to make reads, mainly from betting patterns. So it's sort of more limited, but it's the same game, experience to be made (it's much faster than live, so you'll experience tons of different scenarios in much less time), and some money to make

I play NLHE. I'll join if there's a tourney at Stars.

The highlight of my career was (through tons of luck) qualifying for the Main Event at the WSOP (in Vegas) last year. I only lasted 1 day though

Ditto, only separate layers for separate objects.

Need much more time, Ildu? I can wait longer (I wanna see your work), but for the sake of the activity, maybe we should try to end this within a few days.

[Tuomas]

Voting sounds good.

All entries are very good. I vote for Tuomas - I love Barabarella!

Since the 80's, two filmmakers have dominated Iranian film, Abbas Kiarostami and Mohsen Makhmalbaf, both excellent. I'm a big fan of Kiarostami, you have to see Taste of Cherry (which won the golden palm at Cannes), Close-Up, Ten, Through the Olive Trees. Makhmalbaf's The Silence is very good, Kandahar and The Cyclist also. His daughter, Samira, has also made some good films, perhaps At Five in the Afternoon being the most famous... I prefer Blackboards though. Other well known Iranian filmmakers include Majid Majidi, Baran and The Color of Paradise are safe bets. These are the ones I'm most famliliar with.

These films are most often low budget, minimalistic, quiet, enigmatic. The strict regime rules have forced Iranian artists into a more subtle, symbolic language, which actually has made Iranian films unique and brought international attention.

Thank you, Ildu Out of laziness I've had a tendency of skipping perspective/shading control lately, and things might end up pretty twisted and inconsistent, as in this pic. It often ends up more suited as a concept, communicating mood/situation... with the added naive charm, not unlike the story book style you mention! I remember staring at the fascinating errors in those old pics too

Yeah, why don't you enter too? Would love to see what you'd be thinking up for this!

I'm not at loominous' technical level, but thought I'd post anyway, since I had an idea for this.

Here's some work-in-progress too. Notice the near-perfection of the first sketch!

And finally:

I could have done more with this, but my hand hurts!

The statue is inspired by this painting by Leonardo. It has fallen off a truck.

[Zyndikate]

Time to end this one.

Congrats to Zyndikate! Great background.

All entrants will as promised receive one beer upon visiting Oslo, Norway.

Now make a new one, Zynd!

Voting Time.

I'll give it 24 hrs.

----

About the voting categories:

Idea - The underlying idea to the background. Doesn't
necessarily have to coincide perfectly with the theme of the
week, just strike you as interesting/amusing/inspiring; a place
you'd really enjoy visiting within a game.

Atmosphere - How well the image manages to evoke a certain feeling or mood.

Design - How well the elements in the image are designed,
such as landscapes, buildings, decorations, clouds, doorknobs,
etc.

Composition - How well the elements in the image work
together/are positioned in relation to each other.

Functionality - How well it would work when adding sprites, i
ncluding appropriate walking distances, a good angle for
character sprites, clever walkway solutions, easily understood
exits, etc.

Technique - How well the ideas are executed in form of
rendering.

Anyone is welcome to vote, and it would be
great if all participants could provide their own.
You don't have to vote in all categories, and
if you provide multiple names in a category,
then please be clear about which one is your pick.

NEXT: The night before.

Next: phoenix rises from the ashes

Brass Eye

Chris Morris fan here!
Would like to add The Day Today, and his masterpiece (IMO); JAM

I'm extending this one by request, till the 6th of May (which happens to be my 30th birthday).

That means we will get at least one more entry, by one of the masters of the trade.

Since this Blitz has been so popular (irony), I'm now raising the stakes! Every entrant will recieve one beer, free of charge. You will have to visit Oslo though, but I'll guarantee you'll enjoy the beer!

Now get painting!

Good memory, Drummer. Also, the "best game" is of course silly - records are about measurable things; quantity, size, time. Which makes only 50% of the questions not silly. Or only slightly silly.

Recently the general quality of most new games were discussed, would we want a race for the "largest number of AGS games" record?

Okay, voting...

Very cool! The first cut (through the wall) was amazing. The rest suffers from lacking some basic continuity. It gets very jumpy a times, but it's not too confusing. Funny stuff and solid, inspired horror feel.

GAME SHOW
----------------
Most game shows are incredibly lame. Except maybe some of the Japanese ones. Now, I want to see some designs for a show to spice up the lives of the TV slaves.

Usually these shows are made inside a studio, but there's nothing wrong with taking it outside, anywhere you like.

Any AGS resoultion
At least 2 colors

I give this one and a half week to begin with, if there's less than 3 entries, I'll extend.



About the voting categories:

Idea - The underlying idea to the background. Doesn't
necessarily have to coincide perfectly with the theme of the
week, just strike you as interesting/amusing/inspiring; a place
you'd really enjoy visiting within a game.

Atmosphere - How well the image manages to evoke a certain feeling or mood.

Design - How well the elements in the image are designed,
such as landscapes, buildings, decorations, clouds, doorknobs,
etc.

Composition - How well the elements in the image work
together/are positioned in relation to each other.

Functionality - How well it would work when adding sprites, i
ncluding appropriate walking distances, a good angle for
character sprites, clever walkway solutions, easily understood
exits, etc.

Technique - How well the ideas are executed in form of
rendering.

Anyone is welcome to vote, and it would be
great if all participants could provide their own.
You don't have to vote in all categories, and
if you provide multiple names in a category,
then please be clear about which one is your pick.

Cool, thanks for the votes!

I'll start a new one soon.

It's supposed to be a landlocked body of water, a lake.
Sorry if it was interpreted as the ocean or something.

A few ideas:
- I couldn't figure out where the water was coming from, so I created a lake
- When the sky is so red, the surroundings would be quite affected. So I tinted the scene.
- The cliff edge seemed a bit rough. I also made a couple of cracks for variation.
- Added a new version of the stream at the front. A bit rough this area, but you'd get the general idea.
- Added some definition and details to the castle.

This paintover is messy in places, and I went overboard with the smoothing-tool to speed things up. I don't really like that tool though, brings to many ugly tones in.

For the actual background, I think it's nice and very creative. It's quite a job to pull off a scene like this.  In some places it seems a bit rough though. I think the major problems left are around the grass fields below the waterfall. I believe there should be more hills defined, with darker and brighter shades, not just the hard left-right smoothing. There could be more definition in the foreground to.

EDIT: spelling