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Captions on a postcard please

Passive media are best for conveying the sort of emotions we're used to seeing in...  passive media.

In a cutscene the 'director' has complete control.  Over the timing, over the dialogue, over the camera angle, over the exact moment the music should come in, and (most importantly) over some very specific actions that could not usually take place 'in-game'.

Take the opening to Full Throttle, from the point that Ben and his gang jump over the hovercar.  Suitable rock music kicks in, the camera follows them from behind at high speed, and weaves in and out of them until they reach the front, then the whole angle flips over and we see a dramatic shot of Ben on his bike, then the cool-looking title over his head.  It made the hairs on the back of my neck prick up.  Little of this would have been possible in an interactive section of the game.

I have to go now.  Continue this tomorrow.

I thought I'd better bump this as the excellent Quandary site recently put up this review.

Congrats, Ratracer.  

Why would we need (or want) a new forum for this sort of discussion?  Surely this would fit perfectly into Adventure Related Talk?

One of the main complaints about the AGS forums during the many 'the forums are going downhill' threads in the past was the lack of intelligent discussion here.  And now we want to move intelligent discussion about adventure games into a seperate forum entirely?

As for it being an oldbie-only forum, I think that would be a seriously bad idea, for both oldbies and newbies.

I remember when I was a newbie on the ezboard forums.  I had my own ideas about the nature of adventure games that I was eager to contribute.  I was seeing opinions that challenged my ideas, and forced me to re-evaluate or reinforce them.  I learned a lot from the many other voices in those debates, and when my point of view was complimented by an oldbie, it was a big thrill for me.  I would hate to deny current and future newbies the same opportunity because us oldbies had all gone off to our own, exclusive, serious discussion forum.

As an oldbie, I have even more reservations.  Though I'm attracted to the idea of an oldbie-only forum for general discussion, when it comes to serious discussion about adventure games this is absolutely the last thing I want to see.  I want a mix of oldbie/newbie opinion.  I want the long-considered view of adventure games equally as much as the fresh newly-thought-out view.  I want to know if a newbie has ideas that might jolt me out of my comfortably-settled opinions, because their take on things might be something I've never heard before.  I want to see the enthusiasm about adventure theory that I showed myself when I was a newbie.  And, last but not least, I want newbies to be encouraged and challenged in their thoughts because us oldbies are there to respond, as oldbies were there for me two and a half years ago.

Do we want this forum to be oldbie-only because we believe it will improve the discussions, or because we just want to talk to people that we know already?  If it's the latter, lets just make an Oldbie General Discussion forum somewhere and be done with it.  I strongly believe that to exclude newbies from serious discussion about adventure games is to remove a major source of stimulation and ideas from those discussions.

If we're going to discuss adventure games, lets do it in the forum we have right here, which was made for that very purpose.  We will restore the much-lamented intelligent discussion to these forums, to the benefit of both set-in-our-ways oldbies, and wet-behind-the-ears newbies.

Hmm, these criticisms seem to be coming from the position that 'If it won't be a stunningly good remake, then you shouldn't be doing it'.  Why?  Mhawk's remake isn't going to affect the original, as evilspacefart pointed out.  If you don't like it, just ignore it.  Cool your criticisms, please, and make sure they're genuinely constructive before posting.

Goldmund has already pointed out the shortcoming's of Vel's post, but I must also mention deltamatrix's:

You trying to WOW us with that screenshot makes me regard you as a loser.

Come on - you know this is not appropriate.  Play nice, people.

Now that's two moderators and CJ (er...  Pumaman) who have posted their disapproval of the nature of the criticisms in this thread.  Please get the message.

El Forum Gestapo go loco!  Bang!  Bang!  Splatooie userbrains bandwidth wastor.

Hang on, I thought we were using 'oldbie' and 'newbie' as convenient terms, rather than literal ones.  The point of the forum is to be a gathering place for people who are thoughtful and mature, and don't post too much.  Oldbies are naturally more likely to fit that description, but there's no way that being an oldbie guarantees maturity, or that newbies are all unsuitable.

If someone joined the forums and, over a few months, showed that they were calm, mature, and made thought-provoking topics, I'd hate to think they wouldn't be allowed in the oldbie forums just because they hadn't been here for a year or whatever.

The title can be truthful or ironic.  So, for example:

'A Director's Guide to Getting the Best Performance Out of Lego Men'

by Mods
(truthful)

or...

'The Book of Tact'

by Helm
(ironic)

He's going to get caught in some sticky moral dilemmas.  Presumably, after a few trips, he'll realise that his search for the box is causing these momentous historical events.  So what happens next time he finds himself at the scene of some terrible disaster?  If he knows that seeking the box is going to cause Disaster X and kill lots of people, how can he bring himself to do it?

I strongly second that - the newbies should be able to read the oldbies forum.

On the 'posting nonsense' issue, I think we should just be upfront about it.  Either we say everybody is allowed to post silly things, JoeSmith300 just as much as Las Naranjas, or we simply say it's a privilege of the oldbies forum, but has to be rationed in Gen Gen because of the bandwidth.  I think nonsense posts will be a rare occurence in the Oldbies forum anyway, so there won't be much difference.

Though that depends how you define nonsense, I suppose.


On recruiting members, just get a few obvious oldbies together (the uber-oldbies, as it were), and get them to compile a list of members who should join.  When there's disagreement there could be a majority vote (with more than a majority of 1 needed if you want the forums to be super-exclusive ).  In practice this will probably mirror Goldmund's suggestion closely, but it's a much cooler 'secret-society' idea than his, so it's clearly superior.

Heck, if there's disagreement, the newbie/middlebie in question could even be invited to put their case forward to the panel, for further consideration.

And in future, newbies who've attracted the panel's attention and are a borderline case could be sent a PM hinting that a contribution to the community (a tutorial, review, music, whatever) or just maintaining their good form for a while will get them in.  The thing could be an encouragement for people to get involved in community stuff.

Or to send the oldbies bribes in hard cash, naturally.

His school freaked out over something harmless he did because they thought he was an EEVUUL TERRORISTOR!

Gemen - have you ever seen Bowling for Columbine?  There's a section in that film that shows some of the things that happened to kids who were screwed over by their paranoid schools.  Maybe you could e-mail your story to Michael Moore?

It won't change your life, but it might make you feel a little better that you've added to his knowledge of shit things that happened to schoolkids.

I think Trapezoid is mainly right.  The problem mostly comes from the oldbies' perceptions, rather than actual change in the forums.

'The lowering quality of the forums' threads have been going on for at least as long as I joined, and that was over 2 years ago.  Actually, some things have got better in the forums.  Doesn't anyone remember those 'just testing my signature' threads we used to get?

On top of this, consider that the 'big topics' - God, Evolution, Politics, Morals, blah - have already been covered by the oldbies multiple times, and so of course the threads in Gen Gen will contain less thoughtful discussion now than previously.  This is not because of the influx of newbies, but because there's less thoughtful topics for the oldbies to cover.  When a newbie starts up a thread about God, they even get some oldbies posting, telling them the discussion has been done before and is pointless!

Despite all this, I'm in favour of a second, invitation-only, forum.  I don't believe for a second that oldbies will stop posting in this forum - they don't have a monopoly on interesting topics, and will continue to respond to threads that catch their attention.  Also, it will prove the problem either way - either the (attitude towards) newbies are the problem, in which case the new forum will be a roaring success, or they aren't, in which case it won't.

Plus it might go some way towards removing the increasingly paranoid and humourless attitude in here.  Honestly, I reckon some of the lighthearted threads that turned up in the ezboard forums would be locked within seconds here if a newbie started them:

http://pub6.ezboard.com/fdosuserforumsgeneraldiscussion.showMessage?topicID=960.topic

http://pub6.ezboard.com/fdosuserforumsgeneraldiscussion.showMessage?topicID=998.topic

http://pub6.ezboard.com/fdosuserforumsgeneraldiscussion.showMessage?topicID=1101.topic

I'd go for the clown or the Princess Leah.

Wrong and wrong.  On an average day I look like picture number 6 - the invisible man.

Never trust a woman with blue hair lice.

Let's not get carried away.  Helm's post isn't 'unforgivable' by any means, and it will certainly be unfortunate if such a longstanding and devoted member removes himself from the community for a long period of time.  I like Helm, and respect him, and would hate to see him leave over such a silly thing as this.

Equally, we should beware of double standards.  Helm is a grown man and as much aware of the community rules as any of us.  I don't think his aggressive anti-Yufster post is an inevitable consequence of his love for the community.  And so I'm afraid I cannot agree with the oldbies who have so far posted messages that go some way towards excusing Helm's post, as though it were not really such a bad thing to do, because we must take into account the growing pressure of dealing with newbies...

It was a bad thing to do.  Yufster has started intelligent topics, obeyed the forum rules, and has never intended harm to anyone.  Helm just aggressively and publicly flamed her over a not particularly offensive comment.  This is simply wrong.  There isn't one rule for oldbies and another for newbies.  If you're unneccesarily rude to another forum member, you've crossed the line and deserve censure.

And boy has Helm had some censure in this thread.

Hopefully he will realise that his conduct was not justified, and chalk it down as a lesson to cool down a little before he hits the 'post' button.  Then it would be nice if he decided to stick around rather than deprive us of his stimulating presence for a time.  This place will be poorer without him.

Besides, I wanna see more of his cool art.

I'm sitting in a stream of cool air from a big electric fan.








Plus I'm naked.

Yufster started a lot of intelligent, enthusiastic and within-the-rules threads, that received a lot of similarly intelligent replies.  Despite this, her frequent posting led you to publicly (though politely) ask her to calm down.  Some forum members agreed with this, though others (including me, though I didn't post in that thread), thought it was unecessary.  On hearing that on top of this slight public censure, she'd also been banned from IRC (for what I don't know) she presumably felt a bit hard done by, and so gave a parting shot about the oppresiveness of communism.

But - whoops! - real communism isn't like that.  So her comment is clearly a justification for you to call her moronic, wish for her dismemberment (clearly not seriously, but unpleasantly enough anyway), and say she's not of the 'class' of person you want to communicate with.

I didn't find Yufsters comment moronic.  Heck, I've made jokes about the oppression of communist regimes myself, while knowing full well that this isn't the intention of genuine communism.  To be outraged by her comment rather than brush it off seems a huge over-reaction to me.  Even if it's not, the rudeness you show to another forum member in the message of your post, no matter how angry you are, is clearly out of line.

Helm, I respect you, I find your talent massively impressive and I would be gutted if you left the community over something like this.  Seriously, try to put it in a little perspective and think again.

Intuition test: One of these is me on an average day - but WHICH ONE?

Viewfinder strikes back.

Fatman has arrived:

http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=4485