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Same one-liners, but actually funny ones, not macho bullshit.
And much cooler weapons... like nuke launcher?

"Lo Wang do super kung fu jump!"

The manic giggle Lo Wang made when the nuke finished arming always made me smile.

- Ponch

Rocket Ranger?

We are brothers, obviously!  I hated doing takeoffs with my Amiga controller, though.

Also, It Came From the Desert.

Yeah, the only downside to the Amiga was the controller. It Came From The Desert (and the sequel) were great games. Talking to folks, putting together clues, flying the crop duster, and playing chicken with the local greasers. God, what a game.

It's that kind of Cinemaware experience that I'm trying to accomplish in Barn Runner -- especially as the series progresses.

- Ponch

An adventure game is all about the story. Full Throttle is one of my all time favorites (except the bit in the Demolition Derby). Great story, good puzzles, and the occasional ass kicking. The more traditional games only hold my interest if they're very funny (Monkey Island) or have a gimmick that really hooks me in (the time travel inventory puzzles in Day of The Tentacle).

Heck, one of my all-time favorite games is Cinemaware's Rocket Ranger. I love that game. Collecting the Lunarium, assembling the moon rocket, slowing the advance of the Nazis, and saving Bettie Page from time to time are all I need in a game. Fist fights, shootouts, and aerial combat are just icing on the cake.

- Ponch

Previously unreleased footage of the mythical Duke Nukem Forever is being released now, and turns out there really WAS a game in development.

A video: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=YLHALVVM

Just watched that video. Damn, that game looked pretty fun. I wonder how much of it was actually finished? Not that there's any excuse for being in development for that many years, but I have to admit, it looked like a game I would have bought.

- Ponch

I started Ullyses once, because my English teacher said it would be 'up my street'...
I think I made it less than a fifth of the way through.

The only people I know who read Ullyses cover to cover are English teachers. I tried to get through it, and had my ass kicked soundly by Joyce. Holy crap was that book impenetrable.

I know one teacher who read all ten books in L. Ron Hubbard's bitter and angry sci-fi epic Mission Earth series just to see if he was man enough to do it. Watching him battle those books to the death* was almost Lovecraftian.

What the hell was this thread about again?

- Ponch
________
* Apparently, that series was so arduous, Hubbard died just after finishing it. Lovecraftian, indeed!

And to those that have played the game through, I can only say that I apologise so very profusely.

Just finished it. Very funny. I can't wait to try it again on Medium Difficulty. Very nice!

I have to admit, I was really shocked by this news. For me, Duke Nukem Forever had become some sort of universal constant, like entropy. Something happening in a way that can't be truly observed but you still sleep well at night knowing that it is happening.

In a world in which 3D Realms is no longer working in darkness on a game that will never see the light of day... Well, it will be a lot harder to sleep at night, won't it? Will gravity fail next? *shudder*

Fortunately, I'll always have Daikatana.

- Ponch

Nobody reads Finnegans Wake. It's the book that everyone sort of literary owns, but no one reads.

I actually did read it. About six years ago. For the same reason I read The Silmarillion -- To see if I could.

I shall never read either again. So amend my earlier statement to "I shall never think about Finnegan's Wake the same way again."

Merry Christmas, Alfred Robbins and Historical League of Bouncy Boxing.

... It is wonderful to fuck a farting woman when every fuck drives one out of her....

I shall never read Finnegan's Wake the same way again.

- Ponch

Hell, both DC and Marvel had to result to retcons on several occasions from having so many characters and story arcs get out of hand, so it's not surprising that RoN would benefit from a tweak here and there .

Crisis on Infiinte RONs! Now all we need is a nice picture of a grieving Michael Gower holding a limp Mika while everyone else looks on. It would be rebootalicious!

Congrats!

I draw everything on big yellow legal pads. Then scan the pencils on a flatbed scanner and use Photoshop to turn it into a finished background.

If I'm doing a background that requires a lot of technical detail or a complicated character animation, then I draw them on plain white copy paper using my old drafting tools on my trusty drafting table.

For a really complicated cutscene (like the one at the end of The Forever Friday part 2), then I'll use a light box.

As for the time involved, on average, the pencils don't take long at all. Most of the Barn Runner backgrounds are drawn at work on my lunch break. The more complicated stuff takes as long as it takes.

- Ponch

So... much... lens flare....

In a strange way, I'm sort of sad to see GeoCities go. Over Christmas, I managed to shock my girlfriend's niece with GeoCities.

She was complaining about how outdated some website looked to her (from the perspective of a fifteen year old, mind you). So I loaded up my friend's old GeoCities page and watched her sanity melt in a very Lovecraftian way.

Her poor fragile mind buckled under the strain of all the spinning gifs, the forever opening and closing mailboxes, and, of course, the devilish "under construction" reminders that littered the still-unfinished page.

That is not dead which can eternal lie (on a GeoCities server, somewhere in Ryleh, of course).

Duel-displayers like myself can have porn open on one screen and your game in the other.

But that's how you're supposed to run every application, right? MS Word on one screen, Barely Legal Japan on the other. Editing the Wikipedia entry on 8 Track tapes on one screen, hard core barnyard s/m on the other. Hell, I can't conceive of how I could put together a Barn Runner game if I didn't have mud wrestling midgets on the screen next to it!

Ouch, SSH. You have a wife and kids, right? I hope you land on your feet.

On the other hand, this might be the perfect time to go commercial with the Princess Marian games!

Well Ponch I tried your attempt might be useful if you could paint over the objects with another color after painting with one.

You mean like changing the color after you've already applied a color? That could be done easily enough. Just remove the integer check that turns off the area once it's been colored in.

- Ponch

Absolutely nothing to do tonight, so I gave this idea a shot. I used AGS 2.72 (because I'm delightfully old school, you see).

http://www.barnrunner.com/otherstuff/Coloring_Book.rar

The file contains both the EXE and the complete build, so you can take a look at the source code and see if what I did would work for you and your project.

Also, the picture I drew for this coloring book contains boobs (I was bored), so consider that before you open the file in front of anyone who may have an irrational fear of the human body.

Anyhoo, hope this can be of some use to you.

- Ponch

Just a quick bit about Disney before we take the plunge into OJ.

The famous Disney signature that's part of the logo -- It's not Walt Disney's! It was done by either one of his animators or by one of his secretaries.

Also, Disney was such a control freak that he made his employees clock in and out for everything. Even if they just got up to open a window or get a drink of water.

Next: the 1969 Apollo moon landing.

Whenever they talk about Armstrong walking on the moon, they always show that same photo. But it's not Armstrong. It's Aldrin. Armstrong was the one who took the photo. And nobody ever remembers Collins. He had the job of staying in orbit around the moon while the other two got to walk around and pick up rocks. (That is, of course, that we assume they actually landed on the moon and ignore the fact that the whole thing is a giant conspiracy!!!1!)

Next up: Crazy Billionaire Potpourri! Howard Hughes or Walt Disney. Take your pick. Who was crazier?