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Could be all sorts of things, and unfortunately the easiest way to find out is to either replace parts one at a time or take it to a repair shop. You can probably write off RAM issues by taking all but one stick out, trying to boot then swapping sticks if it doesn't start. Presumably you're not getting any beep codes or flashing/different coloured lights when you start it up? It sounds like a motherboard issue to me, but that's just a guess.

Am I reading it right?

Spoiler

Buddy Brick is a heartwarming and fun interactive discussion on the right to life beyond its peak. We are initially presented with two contrasting characters, an elderly woman who spends her time complaining and a happy brick hovering in the air. 'Buddy' brick bears a wide grin on his face and this, along with the opening message instructs us, the player, to approach the situation in a good mood, as depression will cloud judgement of the serious issues ahead.

Buddy Brick's reaction to the old woman's complaints is to fall on her, something that at first seems drastic but, if approached with Bicilotti's suggested good mood, actually makes sense. Buddy is a brick floating in the air and thus the one feat he can accomplish is to fall. Are we to deny him this joy and, if the woman's life is so bad, are we to deny her escape from it? If she does not want her life to end, why does she run towards Buddy? The situation is obviously geared towards mutual advantage.

After the old lady is squashed Buddy expresses his happiness at a job well done. But seconds later he finds himself in the air again, with another lady running towards him even more desperately. Thus it becomes apparent to Buddy and the player that this is Buddy's purpose in life, to free the elderly from their misery.

More women fall - four, five, six - each more purposeful in their movements than the last and each met with a greater sense of success from Buddy. Then the seventh woman appears. Seven of course was a special number in ancient Biblical times, and also resonates in the modern day as well. We have seven days in a week, lucky number seven and seven brides for seven brothers. It is this significant number that Bicilotti uses to teach us our lesson.

The seventh woman is impossible to hit. The woman's desperation to end her life transforms before our very eyes into a bid to keep it, and suddenly we realise the truth. Although the women obviously see problems with the world around them, they are still anxious to give it the best they've got or, as the ending message says, to rule it, and possibly even procreate. After all if it is Buddy's right as a floating brick to fall, then maybe it is also the right of the elderly to complain. It is with this message of hope and tolerance that Bicilotti leaves us, exiting the game and returning us to our own lives, ready to put the lesson into practice.

I for one feel both humbled and honoured to have experienced Brick Buddy, and think that if at least one person were to play it and take the themes seriously, then the world would be a better place.

[close]

Good. Not as good as Casino Royale, but still very good. My main complaint with it was the plot - somehow it seemed more like they were referencing a story rather than telling it in order to fit all the action in. Then again its a while since I watched Casino, so maybe if I saw that again before Quantum I'd pick up on a lot more.

Loved the plane sequence.

It's easy, I hope this helps explain things for you:

I was always taught the internet looked more like it was going to rain any second

Switches and hubs are distinct, but fairly similar, things. A small hub is what Kinoko needs.

Checked my facts and you're all quite right. The standard definition of a switch would be overkill (though it would still work, right?). I guess next time I'll avoid

broad and imprecise marketing term(s)

and just stick with "Get one of them boxes with one hole on the back and lots on the front"

[have]

It's the difference between a Game Over screen and rolling the ending credits. (And DDR is the only game that I know that does both )

Yeah, Laura Bow does that (which is why I was trying to use it as an example ). Basically you play through a night at your friend's grandfather's mansion and gradually everyone around you gets killed off. All you have to do is survive the night, but if you want the full ending you're going to have to some detective work and figure out who the murderer is, where all the bodies are etc etc...

The game does have Sierra's Restore/Restart/Quit bits, but these are always triggered by an action from the player, never by an irreversible inaction. Going right back to the subject of this topic...

How does everyone feel about the old-school adventure games that would make you have to revert to a much earlier save, or start again, if you inadvertantly forget to pick up an item, or you use it on something you shouldn't have had?

...missing an item in Laura Bow never kills the character or gets you irreversibly stuck.... but there are sections you can't do because you don't have an item...
Example: There's some steps going down a secret passage and if you try to go down them without a lamp you fall to your death. This means if you haven't got the lamp you can't go down the steps so you never find the dead body down there and hence don't get the best ending... but you don't have to go down the steps. You'll still get to the end of the night alive and with the credits rolling, essentially the end of the game, but the game will give you a list of the things you did/didn't find. Amongst those will be at least one corpse you didn't find and a secret passage you didn't explore, so you can restart the game with the aim to find a way down the passage and find the dead body.

What this shouldn't be confused with is the standard death sequences...
Example: If you use the shower in the bathroom you're treated to a sequence where a mysterious figure comes into the room and stabs Laura ("Didn't Alfred teach you anything?"). This is either funny or annoying depending on whether you saved/your sense of humour/how much you're enjoying the game etc etc... but you never have to use the shower so its not the type of sequence that mrsix mentioned originally. If the puzzle were At the very start of the game go to the barn and unscrew the door lock (because the barn becomes an inaccessible location after 11 o'clock or something) then at 11:30 you need to take a shower so fit the lock to the bathroom door then you can shower in peace. If you didn't get the lock... restart the game, which is something similar to what mrsix described, I'd call it bad game design. Adding replayability to the game by giving you bad endings - but proper endings with clear suggestions for improvements - if you don't get items could, in my book, be good game design. The reason I brought Laura Bow up in the first place is because that's what it does.

Did any of that make slightly more sense?

[Walking Dead]

Technically, you can still get dead-ends in games these days.

The difference is how you perceive the game. In a first person shooter there is obviously going to be shooting, and because there's shooting you expect your character to be shot at. If you're character is being shot at then you expect to lose health, and depending on the difficulty of the game you expect to die, sometimes very frequently. Because you go into a FPS with that mindset you (generally) blame yourself for saving with 1 health then not being able to get any further. You expected to be shot at and if you didn't prepare for it then its your fault and not the designer's.

In the Sierra classics the old restore/restart/quit dialogue was expected, and it was part of the game strategy to have multiple save files. You expected to die so you played as such. Since LucasArts came on the scene and started making adventure games where you (mostly) could never die or get irreversibly stuck the genre moved on. Nowadays if you play an adventure game you expect not to have to save every 5 minutes, so if you miss something and need to reload you blame the designer.

It boils down to establishing ground rules before you start playing. The other issue is that games have moved on as a whole from being really hard (to keep you playing the same short game over and over) to being perfectly possible to complete so that you'll buy the next one. Nowadays gamers expect the game to 'play fair', which in this case either means making it impossible to die/get stuck or possibly autosaves.

Also people seem to be interchanging terms

I liked the walking-deaths. Let me repeat it so it sinks in. I liked the walking-deaths. The space quest one pointed out before was one of the funniest ones I had ever witnessed

I always thought

Walking Dead
The player cannot progress any further in the game, but is not told this. They are left wandering around the game world until they either abandon the game or have their character killed by a triggered event (e.g. performing an incorrect action or running out of time)

Dead end
When the game ends 'badly'

...? The difference being a dead end is a definite end of the character (usually death) whereas a 'walking dead' character is one that has no chance of finishing the game, yet the game carries on anyway and the player may not realise.

And you'd have to undo/redo it if you move the laptops around (internet cafes, other people's houses etc). Not trying to shoot down SSH's idea, but you'd have to be reasonably confident with configuring network settings if you're going to take either machine away at any point.

4 seperate connections. Btw hub is probably a better word, but I mean the same thing as KhrisMUC

Buy a switch. It works a bit like a router (so you plug multiple computers into one box, which then goes out over one cable) but without being able to connect to the internet itself.

If you've already got a router lying around you might be able to turn off all the internet connection, DHCP, DNS etc stuff and have it do the same thing.

(This is assuming that the guest house already has stuff in place to connect to the internet)

The question is if I can make a game that creates an external .txt file (or similar).

I'm not fully following what you're trying to do, but yes AGS can read and write text files. Look up 'File functions and properties' in the manual (or click here for the online version). You can either read and write strings, integers etc previously written by AGS or (and I guess this is what you'd want) you can read and write raw data, i.e. stuff written by other programs or in notepad.

The main limitation is that you can only read and write to and from the game's folder and the save directory, so you'd have to move any files manually to either of those locations

[never ever]

I think it could work but only in very specific situations, e.g. a shortish game that is specifically geared towards re-playability. Look at something like Laura Bow

I strongly disagree that the dead ends in laura bow somehow "work". Heck, I know people who've played that game to the bad ending and didn't realize it was the bad ending.

I wouldn't have called the endings in Laura Bow dead endings... There were only really three types of ending - get killed by the murderer (which was always due to an action by the player, rather than an omission), get the bad ending by not finding enough clues to work out who the murderer was and getting the good ending (as far as I remember anyway).

To me a dead ending would be either a walking dead situation (the player cannot possibly progress any further, but the game doesn't actually end) or one where the game ends prematurely (You died. Restore/Restart/Quit). Laura Bow does do the second one, but never because you missed an item which is what's under discussion here.

Personally I see no problem with this kind of game where multiple playthroughs are expected. Its all about replayability, and being able to act on information you get later etc etc. Then again if you know people who didn't get this idea, I guess the game design needs some more work

For the record I'm not much of a fan of being killed off in Sierra games for doing some small thing wrong (you opened the cupboard, but someone was hiding in it who dragged you in and killed you), so there are things in Laura Bow that I don't like, but the point of this topic is missing items. I reckon its a good example of a game that treats them well - you will alway get to the end of the night without items and while you won't get the best ending you get hints about how to improve.

Also for the record: walking deads should never ever be used. As other people have said, its just bad game design

I think it could work but only in very specific situations, e.g. a shortish game that is specifically geared towards re-playability. Look at something like Laura Bow which is full of bits you can and will miss on the first play through, yet it works because
1) The player expects to have to play the game several times
2) There is always a 'proper' ending
3) You get hints on how to do better when you reach the end
By 'proper' ending I mean you don't suddenly get killed 2 hours in because you didn't pick up some item in the first 10 minutes. You can get to the end of the story without taking the item, but you won't get the best ending.

In other words missing items are fine as long as...
1) The player understands that the game works this way and that they are expected to (and not severely punished for) miss things and have to replay. Also this isn't a one off instance, the whole game is structured around re-playability.
2) You can get a satisfactory ending without finding the item. The player doesn't get a sudden 'You didn't have item x so you died' and the player is never left at a point where they can't move any further.
3) The ending leaves the player with something to work on. If they rescued the princess but she's sad because you forgot her teddy bear then next time you should work out how to get the teddy bear before leaving the castle. It should be obvious what the player needs to do to get a better score.

Also don't forget about autosaving...

I would say 'Happy Birthday' to Akatosh, but he's made his own thread about it so I'm not going to bother

How about a bit of Aardman?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ta7VHKGuoJY

I found a disastrous, horrific and game-breaking bug whereby the engine still displays "Winner: Best AGS of 2007" as one of the splash-screen messages. Other than that all seems to be working fine.

Happy birthday Ben304!

[Please]

Yay! Thanks to all who voted, and also thanks to Eggie and SSH for providing such good competition. Voting should have been closer in my opinion

I'll be back...

Please make another game with Magical Whatever Girl. The characters really lend themselves to an cartoon adventure game style... and if you don't I'll cry. So there.

Someone should hit OneDollar for using installer

I used an installer to try and stop people doing the old 'run the executable from within the .zip file then complain that it doesn't work' thing (and for a vague attempt at professionalism), but you're not the first person to complain. At some point (probably after MAGS so I'm not accused of trying to sway the vote ) I'll upload a mirrored version that's in .zip format.

Thanks for your review though!

Hi Tina

Spoiler

You need three ingredients to make the fire, but the charcoal isn't one of them. You'll need to find some tinder from somewhere

[close]

Alex because of alkis.org? Alex-Alkis?