Messages

Well done, Snake!

Well, I gave this a shot, but only managed half a room in the single week, so I'm off to the HAROW contest now. Maybe next time...

Ah, but what you fail to realize, Matti, is that if nobody owns guns, and the criminals DO own guns, they will have run of the place, so to speak.

Except that the police still has guns. Of all of the countries worldwide where guns are not as widely available as in the US, most are not in fact run by the criminals.

I'm not condemning the UK for a system that's been in place for so long that they don't really remember an alternative, but the more you read on the subject the more you see that competition in the medical industry would result in faster, better quality healthcare than a standardized system

Not really, because this shifts the focus of healthcare institutions from aiding people, to making money. It means that for hospitals, it will be more profitable to do popular things like plastic surgery or breast enlargement, rather than taking care of the sick.

The right to arm bears, on the other hand...

Seriously though, while as Nacho states the situation really isn't a binary yes/no, I do believe that guns are too easily available in the US and that this causes numerous problems. Michael Moore may be an extremist in the other direction, but some of his points are good.

Copyright issue is getting tougher thanks to the (temporary?) shut-down of the SQ7 remake project.

Wait, what happened here? sq7.org appears to still be in the air...

As noted in the Completed Games forum, the game has been updated to, among others, fix assorted bugs.

http://crystalshard.net/?g=8

Based on the comments in this thread and the H&T forum, I've uploaded a new version of Quest for Yrolg.
(a) This fixes the bugs people mentioned about the first release.
(b) There's now a timer, as suggested above.
(c) Several hints have been added to make the game more accessible.
(d) The music track has been expanded to over twice its original length.

http://crystalshard.net/?g=8

Unfortunately, for reasons beyond the control of the AGS Ratings Panel, Quest for Yrolg will not be featuring in the AGS games database until further notice.

No, not really. Perhaps we should talk on MSN some time, it's easier than PM'ing.

When people choose to add this kind of game to the database (usually accompanied by "My first ever game! I made it to try out AGS! It's crap, but please play it!") they receive the label "Training Game".

You know, this strikes me as a not such a good idea. If the label "training game" essentially means that "this game is bad", then that would be the exact same thing as giving it a one-cup rating.

Giving a game both a one-cup label and a training label is saying it's not only bad, it's so bad that it has to be explicitly stated twice how bad it is - insult to injury, so to speak. And indeed, with a single exception (a game which ought to be in the "short" category anyway), every single training game has one cup. So this extra category doesn't seem to actually help anyone, and it does seem disheartening to whomever gets his games rated like that.

Besides, the more complex the category scheme becomes, the less likely people will actually be able to find what they want. The "game length" tag is meant to, you know, indicate game length (short, moderate, long); not to indicate that "we really think this game is too low quality to be in the database".

IMHO the category "MAGS" or maybe "Games made in competitions" or something should remain since games made with a deadline are different from normal games, and people have different standards for it.
At least as an extra option (like with commercial games) so people can include/exlude them from their searches.

In my opinion, whether or not a game is a "MAGS game" would best be implemented as a checkbox (just like whether a game is "commercial" is also a checkbox).

This is because some MAGS games are short games, some are medium-length games, and some are non-adventure games; if all of those were simply placed in the category of MAGS games, it would not be possible to tell them apart.

It is useful to be able to search for MAGS games; however, I believe it is also useful to be able to search for all non-adventure games, or all short games, and so forth, regardless of whether or not these were made in MAGS.

An ankh is symbolic for... ?

Spoiler

Life! It also radiates necromancy. And there's a corpse around. Guess what happens next...

[close]

To be honest, I think 5 different ratings is too many. The difference between 4 cup and 5 cup games is marginal. We certainly don't need more.

I agree. While I see a clear difference between 3 and 4 cups, there doesn't appear to be a distinction between 4 and 5 except for personal preference, kind of like the pick of the month. This is probably because there's just a handful of 5-cup games total - less than one per year, as it stands.

(edit) I would like to speak (PM) with the person from the rating panel who writes those one-liner "official" reviews for games. While I believe the rating panel has done a good job at cup-rating the games, I find these reviews have a tendency to lack objectivity, and to be overly negative in tone. Since these are (assumedly) written by one person, why is it that this person isn't simply using the "user review" feature like everybody else?

Does anyone have a walkthrough? I looked everywhere!!

Not yet, maybe later. Do you have any specific questions?

Oh, and what people are calling a "mummy" is actually a golem shouldn't make a big difference thouhg.

This is fitting for this month's rules. It's not a MAGS entry since we started it half a year ago, but the irony was so evil that I wanted to point it out

[Quest for Yrolg]

[embed=640,390]http://youtu.be/r-E_62Dsqns[/embed]

Quest for Yrolg

A medium-length adventure game with a twist! Deep within his dungeon, Yrolg the necromancer is about to summon a mighty demon to complete his plans to conquer the World. Three brave adventurers, a warrior, a rogue and a sorcerer, have come to his underground lair to disrupt the ritual and end his reign of terror. Your job is to stop them.



As a lesser minion of darkness, use your wit and guile to lead the heroes into traps and to a nasty demise. Should they succeed, your Master will be slain, and the world shall be covered with flowers and puppy dogs. That must never happen - evil shall prevail!

Download here. This includes a Voice Pack, and translations into German, Spanish, French, Italian, Hungarian, Dutch, Portuguese, Russian, and Turkish.

Thanks to:
* Fizzii, for the graphics!
* Meerbat, for more graphics!
* Justin Parker, for the music!
* Voice acting by Kristyn Mass, Jesse Lowther, Edwyn Tiong, George Exley, and Michael Malconian.

What do people think about this? Should the panel rate commerical games, and if so should they be rated against the free games or on a different scale, comparing them with other commercial titles? Or should the panel simply not rate commercial games?

In my opinion, I see no compelling reason why the panel would avoid rating commercial games, so by all means rate them. And we've had, what, four commercial games throughout the history of AGS? So I don't see why they should be an exception.

As for on what kind of scale - I'm in favor of using one and the same scale for everything, since that is the only way to have a clear outcome. However, this depends on what the panel has been doing for other sub-selections. If, say, MAGS games have been rated on a different scale than, say, Full-length games, then commercial games also deserve a different scale (because people would have higher expectations of them).

[152]

If things are that voluntary why aren't entries deleted once the links are down for a longer period of time? What will be the use of the page if the link doesn't work (anymore)?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe there is an ongoing effort to locate games with dysfunctional links, and host them on americangirlscouts.org. That might help.

According to the database, there's only 26 games with no functional download. (edit) Wait, I can't count. Make that 152 (26 of which have a rating of 2+)

(edit) speaking of which, perhaps somebody from the rating team can post a list of all games that lack downloads in the forum, then the community can probably locate half of those instantly on their hard drives?

This will result in the advantage that games left in the Completed Games Announcement, HOUR games, The MAGS competition or the OROW competition (or maybe any other in the future)

MAGS has its own database which does include all MAGS games to date; Hour and OROW games are in the forum, which technically is also a database. RON also has its own database on its forum.

I'd like to have as complete a list as possible of AGS games here at bigbluecup, and I'd strongly encourage everybody to add their games to it; but if people for whatever reason don't feel like doing that, it's their choice.

We also decided that because everyone seemed to have their own opinion on what a "Medium-length" game was vs a "Full length" one

Ah, that makes sense. People can always use the vote section to point out that "this game belongs in that other category".

Renegade Implementor has responded,

"I've had time to reevaluate things, had already made a decision and was waiting for a reply from bitby when the above situation unfortunately happened on the forum. I'm sorry that I wasn't in a position to deal with it earlier today, but it's the first thing I set upon the moment I got home.

So, yes the game has been added to the site. To anyone who has been under stress during this time, I apologize. It was never my intent to act as some sort of morality barometer or cause anyone duress."

So that's a definite improvement