Messages

Mister Eraser and the Indelibles?
Vegitmite Q. Haggis and His Assorted Inedibles?
or my personal favorite
Fluke Blake and the Games That Never Were.

Coming up with band names is fun!

- Ponch

I like the little characters climbing over the logo. It's cute.

Just my two cents.

We can do this?!? Just steal someone else's site and host it on your own server? Hells bells! And to think, every month I've been struggling to come up with content to put on my front page when I could have just copy/pasted Aint' It Cool News or FARK and been done with it.

Thank you, Mr. _p for showing me the way!

I usually sketch the story out as a free form comic strip on a legal pad with lots of notes scribbled in the margins.

I used to do this, but I'd always get frustrated by how long it took and just went back to pixelling character concepts while I worked out the basic story in my head....

I spent most of the 90s doing commercial art, and the pressure of making a deadline to make a living helped me to become a fast artist. The "comic strip phase" of pre-production is (for me) the fastest part of the entire game making process.

Plus, I get to refine the character designs as I doodle them over and over again. Also (and this part is key), most of the supporting characters in my story are women. And I like to draw boobies. So this way, I get to draw them a lot.

I stand by my method

- Ponch

Ramones - The Ramones
Mojo Nixon - Bo-Day-Shus!!!
ZZ Top - Deguello
Motorhead - No Sleep Till Hammersmith
Basement 5 - 1965-1980
Johnny Cash - American IV
El Vez - Boxing With God
Ronnie Montrose - The Speed of Sound
Joe Satriani - Flying in a Blue Dream
Los Straitjackets - Encyclopedia Of Sound
Isaac Hayes - Hot Buttered Soul

(My list goes to 11)

I usually sketch the story out as a free form comic strip on a legal pad with lots of notes scribbled in the margins. After that, I work out the dialog of the cut scenes in a format very much like a movie script. Lastly, the details of the puzzles get worked out on scraps of paper. Then I sit down with all three sets of ideas and begin the arduous process of trying to get AGS to "make my game." (It always ends in tears, of course).

- Ponch

Never rule it out, if it makes enough money. After all, they are bringing back I am legend

A sequel to I am Legend? Now that just silly! What sort of nonsense will Hollywood try next? A sequel to Planet of the Apes? What could you possibly do with that? Send another astronaut back? Have some sort of mutants worshiping a bomb or something? Or send the Apes back in time (somehow) to the Planet of the Humans? Madness! Next thing I know, you'll try to convince me Hollywood might be dumb enough to make a live-action version of the Flintstones!

- Ponch

Never read the comic book, so take that into account when you read my thoughts.

I liked it quite a bit. As a child of the 70s/80s, I liked the music choices a lot. 99 luft balloons fit both as a song about the apocalypse and a nice pop choice for Dan and Laurie's first date. Also, that was the first time I've seen Cohen's Hallelujah used in a scene that seemed to fit the message of the song (really, what the hell was that song doing in Shrek?).

Overall, it was a bit too long, but I liked the casting choices. The guy who played Rorschach should get some kind of award. He really embodied the righteous, psychotic hobo that no conspiracy plot should be without. Same with the guy who played the misanthropic yet all-American Comedian. I would have liked to seen more of that guy. His patriotic nihilism was unsettlingly entertaining. But I guess the director needed that extra screen time to get more neon blue penis on the screen. In a non-penis showcasing role, Matt Frewer really shined as the Comedian's old arch-nemesis. Also sans-penis was the girl in the black outfit and the bob haircut in the opening credits. Movie needed much more of her and her girl-kissing, crime fighting ways. Much, much more. It helped offset the rave party glow stick Dr. Manhattan was carrying around.

One of my friends is a big fan of the comic and was distressed that they changed the ending. He explained it to me (in great, nerd-anguished detail) over lunch and, wow, am I glad they went with the ending they did.

Overall, a solid B+. (With extra points because this movie utterly defies becoming a franchise. Too many of those these days. Nice to see a story wrapped up  with a big "The End" when the credits roll.)

Just my two cents,

- Ponch

Ponch - You mean to tell me that you had the oppertunity to make a 1920s Lovecraftian RON... and you DIDN'T?!

HANG AND CASTRATE CONTINUITY MAN, I WOULD HAVE PLAYED AND LOVED EVERY SECOND OF IT, PAUSING ONLY TO MAKE LOVE TO ITS FINELY SCUPLTED ORIFICES.

I wanted to make one, yes. I had a "flapper" style character (who may or may not have been Mika's grandmother -- I hadn't decided), an inept cult using a speakeasy as a front, and a socially awkward cthulu-styled space monster responding to a lonely professor of the occult's personal ad. Love and terror were in the air!

Sadly, it was not to be. But who knows? It might happen one day... when the stars are right! (cue spooky theremin music sting!)

- Ponch

I wouldn't mind having a RoN wiki. You could divide it into two parts. One that's serves as an introduction / overview for gamers new to RoN. And a second, more comprehensive (read: spoiler-riffic) section for developers of future games.

When I first discovered AGS back in 2004, I toyed with the idea of doing a RoN game. But even back then, it was a daunting prospect, trying to grapple with all that continuity.

To avoid these problems, I sketched out a silly, Lovecraftian tale of horror, elder gods, and first dates gone terribly wrong and set it back in the 1920s to avoid the "RoN of Today." But even that raised questions. Would I be riding roughshod over established back story? Had the history of RoN been sketched out to include the 1920s? Was Reality on the Norm even around back in the 20s? Had horrible, tentacled things from outer space visited RoN on a blind date before? Did RoN have a town newspaper? And if so, did newspapers have personal ads back in the 1920s? (Okay, that last one wasn't a RoN issue. I was just too lazy to look it up. We didn't have Wikipedia back then. Okay, maybe be did. But I can't be bothered to Google it.).

After a while, I just chucked it. The sheer, fixed-yet-somehow-anarchic bulk of RoN and its continuity was too daunting. But if we had a wiki for developers (rather than expecting them to play every RoN game ever made - just the sort of sanity-shattering endeavor that Lovecraft wrote about), then other people just discovering AGS might be more eager to dive into RoN that I was.

Just my two cents.

- Ponch

Well, that sucks. HOTU used to be one of my favorite sites.

And what's this about Abandonia having problems? They're like the new version of HOTU. I'd hate to see them go away too.

- Ponch

The last thing this star system needs is another star. Our poor Van Allen belt couldn't take that kind of strain. Plus, night time is romantic and having two stars would mean no more night skies.

Besides, wasn't this the plot of an Arthur C Clarke novel?

The believers in the you tube thread make my head spin.

- Ponch

Whipped this up during my lunch break. All I have here at work is MS Paint, so no fancy photoshopping.

Thanks for making Prick one of the presenters, SSH. I really didn't expect that and it was a nice gesture. Plus it gave me the opportunity to waste time at work today!

- Ponch

"Possibly the most passed-over character ever" indeed!

I kept hoping against hope that Prick would just grab the cup and run for the exit! I was chanting (quietly, so as not to upset my co-workers), "Do it! Do it! Who's gonna stop you? Nelly? She's half the size she was last year! And the androids are all scared of you! Get past Hasselhoff and you're home free!"

Sadly, it was not to be. I can only assume it was because SSH didn't have time to code a big action sequence so close to the deadline.

So congratulations to the winners. And thanks to SSH for going through all this work again. Awesome work as always. And nice kilt, man.

- Ponch

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(I also got a bunch of sound errors when it was over. Is it safe to assume those were gunshots and explosions from the action scene you didn't have time to code?)

Well, I can see the IP address, username and votes of everybody who has voted...

Ah! My privacy!

Personally, I like the AGS nominations the way they are -- for and by AGSers. I'm not sure bringing in "the outside world" would be a good idea. And the new voting page was a great improvement over old way.

As far as the awards go, they serve as a nice center for this community. Every year, the nominations are announced, and we have the very conversation we're having now

And on the plus side, it makes me get off my butt and try some of the games I missed that I'm going to have to vote on shortly. (Luckily, none of my own games have ever made the grade, so that saves me a little time )

Personally, I'm not for making big changes to the way we've been doing this. I like it just the way it is and it seems to work well enough. Sure, every now and then, a game steamrolls all the others. But that happens with other, lesser awards like the BAFTAs and the Oscars, right? When that happens, just shrug it off. We have to set a good example for Hollywood, after all. They look up to us (as well they should).

- Ponch

I'd come to suspect the Chicken Arcade was the cause.

Yeah, because of the campaign codes I'm using this time, I'm trying to make the world "breathe" more. So as the series goes on, lots of little side quests become available (or are locked out) depending on what you did in earlier games. Hopefully, it will add some replay value down the road.

Thanks for playing the game.

- Ponch

I've read that  there is a nitelite in the aircar after it crashes, but I can't find it.

You only come back to the city with the nite lite if you choose to play the forest maze and also play the Night Chicken arcade. Otherwise, it gets lost in the vast wilderness of the BGCZ.

You don't absolutely need it later in the series. An alternative light source will be provided if you don't have the nite lite.

- Ponch

Wet babes and latex, here we come!

Will you settle for a bottle of whiskey, a cheap motel room, and a chain-smoking MILF?

After all, a guy's gotta take what he can get.

- Ponch

Well, that was.... interesting...

I'll try and get a vid on youtube soon. Meanwhile... take a peek here!

Congrats to all the nominees.

Looks like I've got another year of drinking heavily ahead of me again.

- Ponch

Hope there's some kind of game(that's the way the awards were presented last year via game) like last year.

I second that. There was something inexplicably nifty about watching all those characters accept awards. Especially giant Nelly terrorizing all the smaller sprites.

- Ponch