Topics

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25322638/

Hello everybody. I am not usually one to care so much about celebrity deaths, but this isn't just some regular old celebrity. This is George Carlin. Dude was a hardcore legend. Also he was Rufus in Bill and Ted, which maxes out his awesome.

[Restrictions:]

Sometimes monsters can be really scary and they like to spook you! But sometimes they're not scary at all! In fact, sometimes they're downright adorable! So this is the task I set to you all: make me cutey monsters! It can be anything you want, so long as it's a monster and it's adorable!

Restrictions:

Size: None, but nothing more than 300x300 please. Let's be reasonable.

Colors: 32 and a background color (but if you go over by, like, one color, don't fret)

Make me awesome things, please!

P.S. I am gonna be gone for the most part of next week (monday to friday), so I can't make any comments or anything, but I will be around to judge when it's over. Whee.

[Rules:]

Hey hey! I won the sprite jam for my birthday! What a present!

So, I always have trouble thinking up topics for sprite jams, but I think I have a fun one for you all to do. It's something I enjoy spriting, so hopefully you guys will enjoy it too!

Rules:
Dinosaurs!

I prefer useable sprites, but if you feel like doing something elaborate, go for it!

Restrictions:
Max Size:200x200
Max Colors: 256

So have at 'er! YEEHAW.

[The Rules!]

Okay, hello! I have decided to start a thread as a service to everyone here, because that is how awesome I am. So what this is is a thread where you can come and list games that you own that you are willing to trade with other people and also list games that you're looking for. And I don't me warez, I mean actual games that you actually own.
Once you find someone who has something you want to trade for and is looking for something you have, PM them about it. I'd rather keep this thread for the lists only, so discussions and bartering about different games should kept to a minimum and be done privately.
The Rules!
1. No warez: This one should be obvious, but I want to reiterate. If you don't own or if you're not willing to part with the original cd, you shouldn't be trading it!
2. Be honest about the condition: I don't want to have to ask you guys to take pictures of your games to prove that they're playable or anything. If it doesn't work for you, let people know this. If it's got a few scratches, but still works fine, don't worry about it as much.
3. Once you trade, edit your posts! You don't want people to think you still have Full Throttle if you traded it already, do you?
4. Only list things you're absolutely sure you want to trade: Don't cause problems by deciding at last minute you want to keep something. If you're unsure, keep it off your list until you decide.

I can't think of anymore, but I'll add them if I do. You guys are pretty awesome, so I have faith you won't screw this up for everyone else. This is just for fun so that people can get games they've always wanted to play for games they've already played!

So I'll get us started with my lists:
Games I Own:
Full Throttle (I have 2 copies, one with a jewel case, one without)
The Dig (cd only)
The Sci-Fi Collection - Includes: A Mind Forever Voyaging, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Starcross, Stationfall, Suspended, Planetfall, and Beyond Zork - All text games, of course (jewel case only)
King's Quest 6 (Again, I have two copies. One in the full box, one with a jewelcase but nothing else)
Phantasmagoria (Full box, but I don't have to send that if you don't want it)
Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail (jewel case only)
Monty Python's Complete Waste of Time (jewel case only)
Monty Python's Flying Circus Desktop Pythonizer (jewel case only)
Fable (cd only - I have the jewel case somewhere, but I can't find it)
Day of the Tentacle (cd only)
Clue Chronicles (cds only, that's all it had)
Frankenstein - Through the Eyes of the Monster (cd only, that's all it had)
The Settlers II Gold Edition (cd only)
The Mystery of the Druids (cds only)
Pharaoh (it comes in a little beat up box, but it works fine)

Games I'm Looking For:
Grim Fandango
Simon the Sorceror 1
Callahan's Crosstime Saloon
The Space Bar
Stupid Invaders
Also, if you have any System 6 Mac games or Apple II games, talk to me about them. I'm constantly trying to find them!

Sorry for the long post. I hope this works out well, though!

Edit: I forgot to mention, all of my 'cds only' games have nice paper sleeves. As far as condition on them all goes, they're all playable. If you ask about one, I'll tell you pc specs, if it works on XP, and any scratches it might have.

[Theme:]

Sprite Jam Ahoy!

Theme:Downgrading VGA Sprites

I've had this idea for a while to take a VGA game, like Quest for Glory 3, and downgrade it to EGA art. With so many people wanting to "upgrade" games to VGA, I thought it'd be a nice change for those of us who prefer EGA over VGA. So what I want to see is for you guys to take something from a VGA game and turn it into a EGA sprite.

Size Limit:The average EGA size for whatever sprite you're doing. Usually about half the size of the VGA sprite, but I'll leave the sizing up to you guys. I have faith you won't give me 600x600 sprites.

Color Limit: the standard EGA 16 color palette (http://www.permadi.com/tutorial/websafecolor/ Use the 'named colors' as a reference if you need to)

Okay, I think that's it. Even if it sounds hard to you, give it a shot. I hope to see some awesome things!

[Pirates vs. the Third Reich]

What is the Photoshop Contest?

Duh! Isn't it obvious.

Okay, see this link if you don't know:
http://www.somethingawful.com/photoshop/

And for other examples, see here:
http://www.worth1000.com/

The two above websites should give a fair idea of what is involved. Also you can check out the earlier Photoshop contests in this forum.

Note: Photoshopping isn't drawing a completely new image -- It's editing images to create a new image, such as editing one image or combining several images.

Also, you don't have to specifically use Photoshop -- Paint Shop Pro, Gimp or any other equally good programs can be used.
---

So what the hell is the topic this week? Well kids, it is a good one, suggested by our resident ghormak, Ghormak: Pirates vs. the Third Reich!

Don't know what that means? Well, take a look at my example:



Just photoshop any image of a pirate looking to battle or harm anything having to do with the Third Reich. So get to work! Zod commands it!

Lately I've been working on something special to sell to all of my favorite adventure game nerds (that's you dudes!). Now you can preorder your own Nur-ab-Sal necklace, just like Sophia's. I made one in silver for myself, then thought I'd make some for other fans of the game. They'll be cast in bronze, a bright goldish bronze that looks very much like oricalcum. I've already got three preorders, and I'd like to get at least three more before I start casting.

I have a few pictures to give you an idea of what to expect.

Here is mine, without the swirl because I plan on setting stones for it: http://www.sylpher.com/froghaslipstick/pictures/foa_necklace3.png

And here I am wearing it: http://www.sylpher.com/froghaslipstick/pictures/memodellingnurabsal1.png

Here's one of the wax models I've made (this one is Miez's) next to a US penny to get an idea of the size. They're not very large, but they're a nice size for an actual necklace (Sophia must've had a linebacker's neck to hold up that much metal!): http://www.sylpher.com/froghaslipstick/pictures/waxmodel_foanecklace_1.png

Just post here or PM me if you want to be put on the preorder list. I'm making them in lots of 6-8 pieces at a time, depending on how many orders I get. Once I get them cast, I'll contact everyone who's ordered for payment information. It'll be through Paypal. I still need to find out about both national and international shipping costs before I can give you guys prices for that, but I should know by the time I'm ready to recieve payments.

I think that's it. Each order also gets something special with their piece, but you'll have to wait to find out what that is!

Edit: Durrrr, I forgot the price. Without a chain, they're $15 and with a chain they're $20.

The nominees are tallied and the list is in! Voting isn't quite ready to begin, but you can look at the list and maybe play some of the games you haven't played yet!

http://www.sylpher.com/AGSAwards/Prelim.htm

Congratulations to all the nominees! Once voting starts, you'll have two weeks to get your votes in, so start thinking about who you want to vote.Once voting is over, there will be an awards ceremony on IRC to announce the winners.

Edit: Voting has begun! Go here to vote: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/awards.php?action=dovote

[Nomination voting starts today (February 20th) and ends March 6th.]

No joke, this is FOR THE REALS. Yes, the time has come for you to nominate your favorite AGS games for the big awards! Go here: http://www.sylpher.com/AGSAwards/ for everything you'll ever need.

Nomination voting starts today (February 20th) and ends March 6th.

If there are any questions or if you notice anything wrong with the game list, feel free to pm me. If I get a lot of the same kinds of questions, I'll put them up here with the answers for all to see.

So why are you still here? Go and vote already!

Okay, everyone, shut up and listen until I'm finished telling you about how awesome I am.

Today I went out to the ARC Thrift Store, with one thing in mind: I wanted to find an Apple II. Now, I'm a reasonable sort of gal. I didn't expect much. I totally did not expect to find one, especially since it was the first place I looked. But back to the electronics section I went anyway, my little heart filled with hope. Naturally, I made sure they didn't have any NES games I wanted, then made my way into the computers. And upon the shelf, I saw, gleaming like a golden god, an Apple IIc for $30. The tag was blue and today, blue tags were half off! It was destiny, I swear to God, Bitsy. It had no cables, but it had a green and black monitor, as well as the adapter for an RGB monitor. Of course I bought it, as well as a power cable for the monitor and a cable to connect the monitor to the computer. But that was all they had.

I have a feeling that you're all pondering why I brought this up. Aside from bragging, I'd like a bit of help. I still need a power cord for the system itself and I'm also looking for games. I've checked ebay, which didn't have the cord I need. So I'm asking you smarties, does anyone know where I could purchase the cord I need, or maybe even a battery supply, or maybe someone I could purchase them from? Same with the games. I don't have a 5.25 floppy drive on my normal (dead) computer, or I'd figure out a way to make them, so I'm willing to buy Apple II games. If anyone can help me out, I'd be much obliged!

Ch-ch-ch-check it. Make some captions for me, bitches.



Fear!

Here's the same thing without bubbles if you want to add your own or want to do something different: http://www.sylpher.com/froghaslipstick/pictures/captioncontest_nobubbles.gif

Okay, so, we all know I don't start topics all that often. And I must admit this isn't a topic that will launch any interesting debates. But it IS helpful to anyone with the same PS2 problem I had, so don't get pissy!

So here's a story: Once upon a time, we bought a PS2 when it first came out. Life was lovely until one day the PS2 rebelled. "I will not play anymore games for you!", it declared. "Data Read Error! Data Read Error!" So we put it away and bought another one. One who enjoyed playing games for us. We eventually bought another one, as a companion to the new one, so that they could play happy games together.

But all was not well in Playstation Land. The first little PS2 sat, collecting dust like some long forgotten relic, for months and months. Until one day the hero of our story, Pete (that is, me), said "Gee golly whiz, that poor PS2. I want to make it happy!" and so she got on the internet and searched, finding places that would repair it for a lot of money. "This is not what I want, but I will resort to it if I must..." And then suddenly, like a gift from Cthulu, a link appeared!

http://www.tweak3d.net/articles/ps2repair/

Pete was so happy to see that SHE could fix the sad PS2 all by herself! So she followed the step by step instructions and smash bang! The PS2 was fixed!
"I will play your games for you! Gladly!" And Pete and the PS2 lived happily ever after.

The end.

If this story sounds at all familiar, don't fret! This website helped me, and it will help you too!

[Shields]

Oh man, I keep winning these things. I'm sorry I rock so hard, everyone else.

So, last time I did swords and everyone and their mother entered. Which totally rocks. So why break away from something that works, I say! This week's topic is Shields!

Size wise, I'll say they should be...75 x 100 or less, if you want. I require 31 colors to feed my insatiable hunger for colors!

Make them rock awesome, everyone. The more original, the closer to winning you will get.

[swords]

Well now, hello sprite jam contestants! Welcome to this week's sprite jam. I do hope you enjoy it.

Now, as a pirate, I'm a big fan of swords. I mean, who isn't? I mean, I bet secretly Charleton Heston loves him some swords, but he's all "Dude, I love guns!" to hide it. But he doesn't need to hide it. We'll still love him.

So this week's topic is, of course, Charleton Heston. ...Wait, I mean swords. The topic is swords.

The specs must be thus! 23 colors enter, 100 x 30 sized pictures leave! The dimensions can be either 100 x 30 or 30 x 100, doesn't matter which direction, and 23 colors is just the maximum, it can be less. Sure it seems simple, but you can totally get inventive with it.

The more inventive, the better. LET THE GAMES BEGIN!

Avast! I hear tales that I won the last sprite jam. If this be true, it's up to me to start the next!

So, the topic. Well, the obvious choice would be something piratey, but I don't like being that obvious. The next obvious choice is, of course, everyone's favorite baby eater, Gilbot. Sure, we know he's a robot, but what sort? Well, my friends, that's what I'm asking of you.

This week, you will be required to draw Gilbot, how you picture His Royal Robot Badness.

The size will be 150 x 150 pixels. As many colors as you want. And animated. Because how can you have a non-animated sprite jam about Gilbot?

Arrrr, have fun, mateys!

Here is a character from the Bayou part of my game. Her name is Morry and she's an odd voodoun priestess who is also a philosophy professor at the local community college. Don't ask me about the pose. All I will respond with is that it's dynamic. Maybe she got angry at someone (which she does a lot) and is about to throw that crystal ball at someone through levitation. I dunno. I thought it looked neat.



It's fast becoming one of my very favorite pictures. I am most proud of her hair.

<BlueCup> YOW!!  I'm in a very clever and adorable INSANE ASYLUM!!



She is indeed.

Any mention to any sort of disproportional anatomy will make me cry. Just a head's up. If you mention her large eyes, I'll start yelling about how they're fine until someone slaps me. Just another head's up.

Otherwise, yay.

I didn't know which forum to put this in, but this one made the most sense so rah.

Anyway, I need a bit of help with Flash. What I would like to do is to make a button play a movie clip once when clicked and released. As far as I and everyone else I've asked, this isn't possible, but it must be because it'd be stupid if it wasn't. The best I could get is a button to play a movie clip over and over again if you hold down the button and that's probably really irritating to my game players, so any help (before next tuesday, which is when I need my game done) would be greatly appreciated and would earn a name in my credits, right next to Mr. Tom Jones himself!

Okay, I'm finally going to make a topic here explaining the wierd ass game I'm making. Be wary, it's a lot of stuff.

The backstory of the game is this: The player character is Pancake, the name Finneas Jones (a character from my now dead novel) gave herself when she couldn't remember her real one due to raving lunacy. She based the name off of pancake makeup, because she has a crazy obsession with clowns. Because of her clownophilia, she's being kept in an insane asylum called the Crazee House, which is run by a serial killer old man named Hickory St.James.

These evil clowns (which I do realize are a tad cliched, but I promise not to use many evil space clown stereotypes) come to Earth from space and use a ray from their evil clown car to turn everyone and everything in the world nonsensical and insane. Unfortunately for the evil clowns, now that everything around them is insane, the people who are already insane can now function relatively normally.

The game starts in Pancake's room in the Crazee House. There will be several different 'worlds'  that will have no sensible transition between each, due to everything being all crazy, including locations and time. Each world will have one puzzle to finish to get to the next world. Also, I hope to have Pancake's outfit will change for each world, like Kyrandia 2.

I hope to plan out two endings for the game depending on how you have Pancake react to certain people, one ending good and the other not so much. And maybe if I'm feeling up to it, I'll do a Scooby Doo ending. I already have some of the puzzles outlined, I have a ton of production art of characters and backgrounds. I figure I'll get everything planned out and drawn up before I actually begin putting it together in AGS, since I have yet to learn enough of the programming. The intro and cutscenes will be done in Flash, and possibly the backgrounds as well (because every background I've done in Flash has turned out better than the ones I've done in PSP).

I think that's it. I hope that's it. I don't feel like typing anymore.  Because that's a lot of stuff, most of it probably useless to anyone but me. Yarrr.

Edit:
I have now decided that instead of the cliched evil clown I am going to use the cliched evil ninja. Also, the name has changed (because I did not like the original name which I have effectively edited out so no one knows my shame) to "Breakfast".

Progress is slow because I lost all of my previous work in a hard drive format, but never fear! I will never give up on my dear project.

In other pleasant news, OTG is doing me the nicest favor of making some backgrounds for me. So at least the backgrounds will look nice!

July 9th:
I have the front walking animation of Pancake done finally.

Normal:


I'll try to have the rest of the directions done soon enough. And I'll see if I can get a screencap up, too.

July 13th:
Fixed the walking animation. Having some trouble with the rooms, or I would have a screenshot or two finally. I'll try next update.