Messages

Slouching Towards Bedlam.

It's very good.

It appears to have a few Lorem Ipsums on it. Not that that helps...

Wait, what just happened to your site?

The Republicans generally have opposing thoughts on how america should be run to Democrats. So when a Republican is in office, and when something goes wrong, (It always does) the country will be more biased towards the democrats next election. Most people voted against the Republicans last year, rather than for the Democrats. When the Democrat takes over, he promises to undo the damage caused by the Republican. But something goes wrong, and the country goes republican next election. A republican who promises to undo the Democrat's mistakes... and the cycle continues. The war between the two parties mean nothing actually gets done.

Yes. That is the problem with a two-party system.

Anyway, Bush was different from Clinton, so I'm sure Obama will be different from Bush.

I've played since high school. Back then, it was several times per week, now it's just two or three times per year (drafts, mostly). And who cares that it's nerdy? Vin Diesel plays D&D... (and Bill Gates is the biggest nerd ever, and makes more money than all of us combined!)

Well. . .
There is another walking dead, in that you can put all your money in the broken grog machine before you buy the sword and the shovel, and your in dead man walking.

I'm reasonably sure you can't do that; the machine will break down before you get that far.

[actually]

That's all well and good, but at some point you have to consider what the parties are actually achieving, not just what they're trying to do.

Precisely. We all know where good intentions are used as paving.

Yay for separating logic and programming with SCUMM (and AGS, obviously)

Ironically, Sierra also separated logic from programming, in AGI, SCI and SCIV. But while crashes in AGI games are almost unheard of, SCIV games in particular seem to be rife with them. This may be related to the fact that LucasArts produced (roughly) one game per year, whereas Sierra produced three or four. Perhaps it's a quality vs quantity tradeoff?

Haha, awesome. I had great fun working on the Ben Jordan movie, and would love to help out in whatever capacity you think I'd do best!

Ditto, and really cool idea! Unfortunately I don't live in the UK

What I found really ingenious was the Sense Gnomes puzzle in KQVI.

There's also a Fate Of Atlantis II that hasn't been updated in ages, afaik.

No, that's not the real reason. It's a serious bug that's documented, even in Al Lowe's own page.

Interesting. That's the first good description I've seen of it; general solutions I've read so far were somewhat over the top like "insert the airsick bag into the hair rejuvenator bottle" (and I am quite sure that typing "airsick bag" works even without using "the").

Ironically, from that same page, Al is oh so proud of the way he implemented the maze in LSL3, but neglects to mention that the same trick was used in e.g. SQ1 and KQ3   (heck, the ability to do so is a major feature in how AGI was designed)

this bug made the game crash if I'm right

Almost. That's the message the game (and other SCI games) display when something else causes them to crash. If you've ever seen an AGI game crash (and I have) you'll know that this is an improvement

LSL2 not understanding "bag" as a synonym for "airsick bag"

Well, London is close enough, so I'd be happy to attend.

I'd love to have Brian Moriarty as a guest, although I'm not sure if that's an option.

If the difference between the old and new versions is made obvious enough, couldn't the two coexist?

I think that the old version continuing is fundamentally incompatible with the idea of a reboot (and, mind you, I prefer the former).

- without the use of gamefaqs and/or other help related articles?

Certainly.

Let's see, off the top of my head, KQ2,4,6; SQ1,3,4,5; PQ1,2; QFG1,2,3,4,5; LSL2,5; TSOMI; LOOM; IndyFOA; DOTT; Sorcery101,201; Sorcerer; Enchanter; probably a bunch of others, too.

[Quest for Yrolg]

What, is it that time of the year again? Okay...

Quest for Yrolg

* best graphics (self-explanatory, but with thanks to Elissa and Vladislav)
* best voice acting! (with thanks to James eVolve, Grundislav, Joelpage, Azure, and Notwithabang)
* best player character (you're evil and get to kill the heroes, what more could you ask?)
* best programming (how many AGS games let you put down items everywhere, or have opposing characters walk through multiple rooms in real-time?)
* best unpronouncable name (nuf syawla si sdrawkcab gnitirw!)

Another worst puzzle. The friggin' desert maze in KQ5.... argh!

Imo, definitely clean up the database. Back when I wrote Root of All Evil, it took me quite a bit of time to read all (well, most) of the DB character entires to figure out what other important characters I was missing. The themes are a good idea, or perhaps simply a division between major and minor chars; I estimate the RONiverse has about 15-20 major characters and about a hundred minor ones.

A core team of writers goes against the entire spirit of RON. Now I'm not in any way a RON oldbie, but I suspect this isn't going to fly well.

Removing a bunch of characters with an over-arcing theme event, time shift, or reboot, well, I don't think that's going to work either. For one, it needs a substantial number of games released under the "new" paradigm to gather enough interest (and conversely, you are unlikely to see that number of games until it has gathered interest). For another, how exactly do you plan on enforcing this?

How is MMM a reboot Radiant? Its just a continuation of the Maniac Mansion games created by Germans. This is about Reality on the Norm.

I'm aware. My point is that MMM is, essentially, the competition. Sure, it's a different universe, but both are collaborative design settings, with strongly overlapping target audiences.