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This isn't about 'winning or losing' it's about actually supporting and encouraging people who, for whatever reason, have strayed from one or more finished games and give them that big push to get something out the door and a sense of completion -- so who cares how far in development they are?

No, I get that. I was just wondering if the format was suited to MAGS, which is a competition, when as you say the topic isn't about winning or losing. If it gets voted it'll make an interesting topic and if it doesn't somebody should start it as its own activity.

Done. 6 and 7 were the main ones I wasn't sure about because I'm fine with either plot or puzzles being rubbish as long as the other's really good. Results should be interesting.

Progz's idea is a good one, but I don't know how suited to MAGS it is because some people will potentially have games they've abandoned after two years and other after two days. It still gets my vote though.

@SSH
Yep, that's correct

@NsMN
You can do what you like to them, you just have no way of telling which way up they are.

The best thing to do would be to piss in the tube

If you kill one of the people with the knife, there'd be more than enough blood...

Alternatively sit around and eat oysters until the puzzle setter gets frustrated and tells you how to do it.

As I did try to ask this before:

Spoiler

"What would the other tribe say if I asked them what the path of Happiness is?"

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Only problem: IT DOESN'T WORK!

Why not?

Spoiler

If the guy's lying he'll tell you the opposite of what the truthful tribe would say, ie the opposite of the right path. If he's telling the truth he'll tell you what the lying tribe would say, ie the wrong path. Either way you take the opposite path to the one he says.

[close]

A man gets into a swimming pool, naked with some man-eating sharks and walks from one side of the pool to the other without being hurt. How?

Spoiler

He's at Seaworld, going through the shark tunnel?

[close]

@NsMn
Is the tube fixed to the floor?

There are an even number of coins on a table, and there are the same number of coins with heads up as tails up. Your task is to separate the coins into two piles, where the number of heads up in each pile is equal. The problem is you are blindfolded and can't tell which way up each coin is facing. How do you do it?

@Stupot
Yes, you have to divide all the coins into the two piles.

@Stupot and NsMn
There can be any number of coins, there's no hidden conditions.

And no, you don't balance them on their edges

5 men and 3 women are in a dark room, no doors and windows, the walls are 1m thick, there's a locked emergency exit. There's a tube in the middle of the room; 2m high, and in this pipe there's a tennis ball, nearly as wide in diameter as the tube.
Hidden in this ball is the key for the exit. The group has: 30 cm of wire, one short piece of wood, one bottle of sand, some shells and a pocket knife. How can the people escape?

Spoiler

Emergency exits will open from the inside even when they're locked?

[close]

Hah, I didn't solve it I just rewrote Crimson's answer . I've seen the puzzle before though.

OK, Googling brings up this one:

There are an even number of coins on a table, and there are the same number of coins with heads up as tails up. Your task is to separate the coins into two piles, where the number of heads up in each pile is equal. The problem is you are blindfolded and can't tell which way up each coin is facing. How do you do it?

I can't get your answer to make sense either, Crim.

He's right.

Spoiler

Both the first and second guys know that the third guy will speak up if they are both wearing black hats (because if they are both wearing black hats there are no black hats left so the third guy will know he's wearing a white one). When he doesn't speak both the first and second guy realise that one of them is definitely wearing a white hat and the other is wearing either a white or a black hat. Because the second guy knows this he also knows that if he can see the first guy wearing a black hat, then his hat must be white. When he doesn't speak up either the first guy concludes that this isn't the case and so his hat must be white.

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Now the puzzle is solved we need another, or it's nonsense from here on in.

Yes, more riddles! Can't think of a good one offhand though.

...uses 800x600 16-bit graphics glory

I thought it was still 256 colour...

[Random suggestion 1]

Random suggestion 1 - can you move your wireless onto a different channel? Tools like inSSIDer will show you what other wifi connections are in your area, and you might find that the channel your router is using is already used by lots of other access points which will interfere with your signal.

Random suggestion 2 - have you tried stopping the wireless zero configuration service? If you're using the built in Windows tool to manage your wireless connections this is the service responsible for connecting you to a network. However every few minutes it also scans all available networks to see if there's a better one it can connect you to. This shouldn't cause disruption, but I've noticed periods of maybe 5 seconds of lag when playing online games over wireless.

Go to Start then Run and type "services.msc" into the box. Scroll down until you find "Wireless Zero Configuration", right-click it and click Stop.

Because the task is responsible for connecting you to a network you'll need to restart it if your connection does drop or you need to connect to something else. If this solves the problem you'll also have to do it every time you start Windows, after your wifi has connected for the first time. Of course if you're not using the Windows wireless manager this probably isn't any good to you.

Ninja edit, but thanks GG

Fun game, though most of them were before my time or I'd never heard of them.

[Edit]

With a little help from my brother (and then you guys) I'm down to one...
New Ones:

Spoiler

8 Rampage
15 Faceoff
27 Super Cobra
32 Birdie King
50 Popeye

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Almost complete list:

Spoiler

1 Call Of Duty
2 Outrun
3 Frogger
4 Homerun
5 ??
6 NBA Jam
7 Flower
8 Rampage
9 Worms
10 Punchout
11 Burger Time
12 Balloon Fight
13 Vanguard
14 Minesweeper
15 Faceoff
16 Stargate
17 Star Castle
18 Golden Tee
19 Dragon Ball Z
20 Halo
21 Discs of Tron
22 Tron
23 Crossbow
24 Shadow Of The Colossus
25 Tiger Heli
26 Burnout
27 Super Cobra
28 Space Ace
29 Boulder Dash
30 Smash TV
31 Silent Hill
32 Birdie King
33 Rtype
34 Missile Command
35 Food Fight
36 Time Splitters
37 Bomberman
38 Golden Axe
39 Double Dragon
40 Bejeweled
41 Donkey Konga
42 Fallout
43 Paper Boy
44 Firetruck
45 Guitar Hero
46 Spy Hunter
47 Joust
48 Asteroids
49 Dig Dug
50 Popeye
51 Golden Eye
52 Sea Wolf
53 Starfox
54 Mousetrap
55 Defender
56 Metal Slug

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Got about 39 on my own, then asked my brother then checked here. Cannot figure out 5 though. It's obviously "Skate", but it isn't. Nor any form of Tony Hawks that I've tried.

Edit
Got it by cheating and looking up the list of skateboard games in Wikipedia. For those who want to know

Spoiler

720

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Ghost! Missed your birthday but I hope you had a good and cake filled one!

I didn't play much yesterday, but I made this...


Ride Cam: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vl42TBDfQ6U

Water slides aren't that hard; the start is a single block of station somehow attached to a swimming pool area (raised decking/paths etc), and the end can be pretty much anything that lands in water (...or not ) of the same area. Slides also have a special ending section with a lip on the end that extends into the next tile, which means you place the end section in one tile then a swimming pool level with it the next tile along. The rest is just like a regular coaster except it needs to drop much more than it climbs. Only problem with pools is that if you try and create slides with exit pools separate from the main pool, people go and swim in them

Yeah, the first was the best. I'd start playing that again if I hadn't lost my discs. I can only find Added Attractions (aka Corkscrew Follies) which is pretty useless on its own.

Had a look at my saved scenarios, but I haven't got anything very impressive. I tend to start new sandboxes instead of adding to one main one.

I think this is the game series I've spent most hours on, by a long way. The original was a classic (Chris Sawyer programmed it on his own almost entirely in assembly language) and its add-ons just improved it. 2 had better graphics and was easier to make better looking parks, but I wish they'd kept the idea of unlocking scenarios rather than have them all open, and the add-ons were uninspiring.

I don't think 3 has the level of strategy that 1 and 2 had, but for sandboxing it's amazing. The graphics are still great and riding the rides looks really good as well. I agree with Mods, the add-ons are essential as well.

Guess I know what I'm going to be doing with my weekend.

I don't the cartoony style of some of the characters. Herman Toothrot stuck out really badly in the first special edition and a lot of the background characters (and Largo) seem to have gone the same way. I always translated Monkey Island's pixels as being realistic, especially with the human-looking close-ups in MI1 and painted backgrounds in MI2, whereas Sam and Max and DOTT were the cartoon games.

Apart from that it looks great. I'll probably end up doing what I did with the first one - waiting until it's really cheap in a Steam sale, playing through the special edition once and deciding that I prefer the original which I now own in a handy digital downloadable format.

Also I really like the sound of commentaries!

Edit: The fact that they've put the new hairstyle on the old Guybrush in the Phatt Island wanted poster amuses me.

Is anyone following the crazy goings on with the new Portal update?

The main action is in this thread which is now getting seriously long. There's a good summary here, but here's the quick version...

- Valve release an update for Portal, with the subject "Changed radio transmission frequency to comply with federal and state spectrum management regulations". There's also a new achievement called "Transmission Received" with the description "..?".
- The radio in the relaxation chamber has a red light instead of a blue one, and the cameras have changed slightly.
- Carrying this radio into the room with the button turns the light green, and morse code is heard. You get an achievement update 1/26.
- Turns out there's now 26 radios hidden in each of the test chambers and in a couple of rooms in the ending. Carrying these radios to certain points plays sound files.
- Radios thrown into the exit fields play a wierd sound file which sounds like it says "Get out of here" at the end.
- People have also hacked the resources and pulled out the sound files (named Dinosaur#) manually.
- Two of the sounds are morse code, which when translated sounding like boot up procedures.
- One morse code sound is an MD5 hash for "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"
- One code is "LOL"
- The other sound files are actually encoded images.
- You can get a series of numbers from the images, which turns out to be another MD5 hash, this time of a phone number in the area where Valve was founded.
- On the phone number is a BBS, which when connected to with a username and password kicks out some ascii art and some other documents linked here.
- The BBS originally gave a message that was something like "use the Backup account to relieve pressure, pressure level high". This has since gone through medium to low.
- People are speculating that there isn't anything more to find yet, and that they might need to wait until the 11th of March (couple of references to 3/11 - the BBS is GLaDOS version 3.11 for example) when Gabe Newell is receiving an award at GDC.

Radios locations and images here.

Fun stuff