Messages

I don't really have this problem at work, because my job is to sit on forums. Really. I get paid to just talk to people on various, random forums as long as they're at least somewhat related to computers, internet and webhosting.  But I can go to any board on a forum that's related to my work, so I can sit in the gaming section of a web host forum and chat with people about whatever. It's pretty cool.

- Punch

I had Championship Lode Runner on my C64. It was mad. I love it. I had a lot of fun playing around with your remake. I found a very cool game a little while ago called "N" which is a little like Lode Runner, but with a physics engine built in. It's a lot of fun:
http://www.harveycartel.org/metanet/

I had Wizard of Wor for my C64 as well! It was so cool, becuase I had this 'speech synthesising' add on for the C64 that the Wizard of Wor cart plugged into and then the Wizard yelled stuff at you. It was mad. I can't remember the exact phrases, something about 'my children' or something. All the old games with speech were great.

- Punch

I think the only thing they changed for the re-releases was removing the copy protection and difficulty selection screens from MI2 (Well, in the Monkey Island Madness pack, which I assume is a similar if not identical release to the Mega Monkey pack)

You can still access them (if you really want) if you run the games through ScummVM.

- Punch

3D doesn't simplify flocking or pathfinding.

"AI becomes very powerful when combined with 3D, as it makes it easier to animate characters than with traditional frame-by-frame animation."

Yeah. Because we all know that animation is inherant to AI.

You can have the most intelligent AI on the face of the planet applied to a simple square if you want to. The animation is purely secondary. I guess that they mean interaction animations, in which case 3D can become useful thanks to inverse kinematics, skeletal animations and similar technologies. A character can be made to reach out their hand and touch a certain position a lot more easily in 3D, because it's not an 'animation' as such, it's a mathematical calculation. The same idea of calculation over animation can be applied to many parts of a game, and that's where 3D becomes powerful.

I'm doubting that this would be implimented into AGS with 3D character support, though.

Flocking, pathfinding and random paths are all possible in 2D, as are AI creatures that wander independantly. As far as I remember, PQ1 had cars that drove around the streets on random paths. And if it wasn't random, then GTA's were. Both of these games were 2D.

Not that 3D is a bad thing, it's just that the article didn't really present valid reasoning.

- Punch

I actually finally got a copy of StS3D off Esseb last year.

Oh dear.

I can't believe how truly awful it is. Sure, it was meant to be released a lot earlier than it was, but the graphics were shocking. I don't mind bad graphics in general, but when the character's hands are inverted in a pre-scripted opening cinematic there's something dreadfully wrong. And you can't skip the opening movie. I clicked on 'watch intro' in the menu, assuming it was there because they weren't going to show it to me in-game, and when I started the game the whole boring thing played all over again, with no way to skip. I ended up leaving the room and doing something else while it played itself out.

I got out of the monastery and then had to reformat my computer (for other reasons) and never re-installed the game. Maybe I'll go back to it eventually. One day.

- Punch

Very cool remake. I love Maniac Mansion, so this was a lot of fun.

I noticed a couple of bugs too. If you get to the end of the game too quickly the timed events still happen. So, even though you're standing in the Sekrit Lab with Sandy tied to the bed thing, the cutscene showing Dr. Fred talking to her and saying that he's going to attach her to the brain sucking machine still plays, and she magically disapears from one room and appears in the other.

Similarly, Dr Fred will walk away from the intruder in his lab and play himself a nice game of Meteor Mess while the house's self destruct sequence is activated.

Nice work, though. It was a huge project to undertake, so massive respect for getting it done.

- Punch

Does it come with a lifetime gurantee? 'cause sometimes they skint on the warranty when they give it away for free.

- Punch

Pirate Jack: I realised that he was meant to be taking the piss. He still annoys me, though. I didn't really mean to say 'imitate Irwin's success'. More just 'imitate Irwin'. But I didn't say that. So... yeah. My fault.

And I guess I'm too young, at my tender age of 19, 'cause I don't really know who Glenn Robbins is. I do know that I've seen him before on stuff, though.

- Punch

Edit: He's on The Panel. Now I kind of know who he is. For some reason I never really placed him.

Seagal's not actually that bad a martial artist. He's 6th or 7th Dan in Aikido, which is pretty damned good. He ran a Dojo in Japan for a while. That's fairly impressive. I study Aikido. If you're good at it, you really can kick some serious arse. Unfortunately I'm not very good yet. In theory, Aikido blends with the attack and then basically turns it back onto the attacker, so if you were uber good at it you shouldn't ever be hit. The chances of you being that good are almost nil, but it's a nice theory.

Not that I'm trying to defend Segal's movies or person at all, just that his martial arts, taken on their own, are actually quite good. They just don't lend themselves to the movies very well, because they're not flashy and, in general, don't really seem like they should work. They actually do, though. Honest. I've seen it.

His movies are generally very bad. I hired a box set of his just last week, actually, because I was interested in seeing how Aikido translated to the movies. We had one DVD in, took it out half way through because it sucked and put another one in while a friend was out of the room. He didn't actually notice that the movie had changed. Hurrah. And Seagal always sounds like he needs a throat lozenger.

As for celebrities that I really can't stand... Steve Irwin and Russel Coight. At least Irwin was original, and (to start with) genuinely stupid. Coight just runs around like a knob trying to imitate Irwin's success and expects us to laugh.

- Punch

I just got The Dig a little while ago. Haven't really gotten into it yet. I'm hoping it's good.

I have Stupid Invaders. I didn't really like it. It's got some outstanding moments and quite a few below average moments. And one of those damned 'context sensitive' interface things that just turn off actions if you're not meant to do them. Some of the humour is funny as all hell, while other bits are just frigging retarded. Still, it has some cool quotes that I still remember.

"I'm going to kill you. And you will scream while you die. And then, you will be dead."
"Working inside a giant vacuum cleaner must suck."

What about 'Rent a Hero'. Has anyone else played that? It's kind of cool. And yet kind of bad. Hard to classify. But it has some nice moments and animations.

Or how about 'Agipito's Crazy Adventure'? That thing cost me 50c.  And it was worth it. No more.

- Punch

Hey Kairus, Just realised I haven't been back to comment since I downloaded the game. I have to say, nicely done. I haven't had time to get very far, but it's pretty cool. I reckon Odie's the best done character so far. I love his animations. Very nice.

The only 'bad' thing I've really noticed so far, and this is purely from the point of view of your game fitting in with the Garfield universe, is the occasional 'Goddamn it' kind of comment. The comics have always seemed inanely pure on this front, they tend to say 'Darn' a lot. I dunno, just something I noticed.

But nice work. I'm pleased you got it out. Maybe I should work on finishing my game one day  

- Punch

Who can take tomorrow
Dip it in a dream
Seperate the sorrow
And collect up all the cream?

The Kandyman can

Yeah. Or something. Welcome back man.

- Punch

All those promises... promises that AGS would be free... all that talk of keeping it 'Tell-me-how-cool-I-am-ware'. And then you throw it all back in our faces. Trust, built up over the years, gone in an instant.

I don't think I love you anymore.

I'll be in the corner mending a broken heart.

- Punch

Do you have a firewall running? Because it sounds like the kind of problem you get when you don't have admin access to your firewall and it just blocks programs from accessing the internet.

Norton's will let you choose whether or not a program is allowed access if you are logged in as an admin. I'm not sure about others, because I haven't really used them.

- Punch

Dammit!

2 years I've been waiting for this game.  2 YEARS! Since the first demo was released! And then I stop checking the board for a while and I missed it. Damned copyright infringement laws.

Bad luck Kairus. That's got to suck. Hope someone gets it available somehow, I really want to play it.

- Punch

All of this cartoon nostalgia and three of the most important haven't even been mentioned: Ninja Turtles (If you're around 18 now, you watched that show. It's what happened.) Inspector Gadget (until Disney got their frigging hands on him... I swear they have board meetings to decide the best ways to royally screw franchises) And Dangermouse.

Transformers got lucky with their movie. If you ignore what they did to the series afterwards then it's a pretty stand up effort. I still enjoy watching it. Everything else got screwed. The Turtles movies were... interesting... and Inspector Gadget is better left unthought of. If I had the money I would burn everything Gadget related that came after Disney got their claws into him.

junc: You missed the coolest toys ever! Maybe you never even saw them. Dino Riders. There is no better toy franchise on the face of this planet. Except possibly Gak. Slime is cool.

- Punch

I went to a Matrix Marathon at the Cinema last night. All three films in a row. And I thoroughly enjoyed my time. The first movie (and the trilogy in general) has been over hyped, but Matrix was pretty damned cool. Ignore the fact that the movies aren't really as original as everyone says they are (Yes, Wachowskis, I too watch Asian cinema) and it really was a pretty special movie.

I was disapointed by the second movie when I saw it, but I liked it last night. And I really liked the third movie. I liked the fact that it wasn't pure hollywood predictability, I wasn't expecting everything that happened, and I liked watching it. The trilogy, as a whole, works together nicely.

The only thing that still annoys me is the dependance on the game to give fairly integral parts of story. I'm really going to have to play that stupid thing some time soon.

In short, I liked seeing all three movies one after the other in the cinemas. And we watched Animatrix on a friend's laptop while waiting in line. Good times.

- Punch

So here I come to cunfuse you again

I'm not entirely sure what it's like elsewhere, but here in Australia if you do a diploma and then transfer to a degree then you only get partial credit. So doing a two year diploma will probably mean that you start at around 2nd year uni, not first. I have a mate that did three years at tafe and got a couple of diplomas, and when he transferred to uni he started with 2nd Semester first year classes.

Generally speaking, degrees (or Bachelors, they're both the same thing) are higher qualifications than Diplomas.  Honours are usually offered if you have a credit average in your course. They also often require another year's worth of classes.

- Punch

I noticed something interesting the other day. A lot of scanners come with Photoshop Elements, being a sligtly cut down version of Photoshop. I'm not sure the exact changes. Anyway, scanners are pretty cheap now. Sometimes you can get a scanner with PSElements cheaper than it would be to just buy the software. And you get a scanner thrown into the deal!

I dunno, but it might be something worth looking into.

- Punch

It's also often worth looking into your ISP's service offers. Quite a few of them provide their users with some webspace, around 10mb is typical. It's usually pretty good, and ad free and all. So take a look.

- Punch