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Nicely done, I'd just like a few things confirmed/answered before I put these up on the site:

Zaidyer - First, are you still planning on working on the left/right template?  Secondly, is the modified Serra templeate for AGS 2.72 the final version?

ProgZmax - When I loaded the template you'd tweaked, AGS told me that it contained data from a plugin or component 'AudioManager'.  I'm guessing that it isn't critical and can be ignored, which will be included in it's description when it goes on the resource page.

Actually, everything in the article can be found on the RoN site, either in the resource packs or one on the pages.  The map is the one done by Relight in 2003 with the 3D buildings replaced with solid shapes.

Given the amount of articles & reviews are of games that've been done by Dave, I have to wonder: how much black-mail material does he have on people?

First off, nice to see that we got some real-life "touch it, it's in a mag" published exposure.  I'll be adding these to the site within a couple of days.  So, yoink.

Anyone happen to know which games they included on their disk?  If it's all from the 2001-2003, there might have been some what wouldn't run on today's machines.

I've updated the ready for animation sheet, (which can be seen here) to include character names.

I'm also putting up the rest of the cast who are stuck in 1st draft status.  These characters, which can be seen here, need improvements before they can be ready for animating.

If anyone wants to take a crack at animating a character for the 1st group, or improve a character from the 2nd batch, please feel free.  Just say which character you're working on so people know the character is being handled.

Game's on the site.  As far as I could tell, the commentary was the only additional content.

They're much better than the first pass, believe me.  No, they're not perfect and there things that still bug me, but they're at least presentable.

I suppose now's a good as time to make an open call: If anyone is willing and wants to improve/adjust these then please feel free.  If people want incentives, we can offer to name a major landmark (a new location or something nameless like the Park) after the artist(s) in question.  It's either that or internet cake, your choice. 

The only version of Phil is in the second row, third from the left in his Llama-man costume.  I can dig up the first draft sprites but they're very crude.

Works for me now.  In other words: fixed.

Thanks.

I've checked the above order against the timeline that I did.  This is how things go:

01 Lunchtime Of The Damned
02 Vengeance of the Chicken
03 I Spy
04 Return of Die Vie Ess
05 The Repossessor
06 The First Stitch
07 The Postman Only Dies Once
08 The Lost Treasure of RON
09 Dead Man's Political Party
10 Hooky McPegleg, Pirate Postman
11 The Underworld
12 The Phantom Inheritance
13 I Spy 2
14 The Unraveling
15 Paranormal Investigation
16 Rend
17 Cabbages and Kings
18 Kittens and Cacti
19 Apocalypse Meow (Chapter One)
20 Defender of RON
21 Purity of the Surf
22 The Spoons
23 III Spy
24 Rock - A True Story

Just a note: (10) HM,PP occurs on the final day of (09) DMPP, so there's a bit of overlap in terms of the timeframe.

If you were going to spend the time on a re-release, why not do your best to improve the game with better story, graphics and puzzles.  You could still do a commentary, but could provide a comparison to which parts you've improved to the original version.

There's also Dosbox, which I've had some success at getting some of the games to run.  This does remind me that the faq needs to be updated with this information.

Since we seem to be in accord, the games will come down on the 15th.  That's just over a week for people to grab them for their collections.

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 Smiley.

Crisis on Infiinte RONs!

Considering the way the DC's been handled for the last five-ten years?  Pass.

I've received a request from DasTobias who would like his following games be removed from the RoN database due to his dissatisfaction of the quality of the games.

The games in question are: Intergalactic Life, Forest on the Norm, Toxically Earth, Intergalactic Life 2.0, Mika's Surreal Dream, It's Just a RON-Game, Easter in RON, Mika's Surreal Dream 2: The Dream Comes True

While I'm willing to accommodate his request, I'd like to hear from the RoN community so the community reaches a decision one way or the other.

I'd recommend Creed's games: Cabbages and Kings, Kittens and Cacti and Apocalypse Meow as a fine example of overarching plot thread.  Each builds successfully upon the last, and is well worth playing.

Although if we can suggest our own games, then I wholeheartedly recommend mine  .

The problem with using characters from other series is that the game becomes focused on them, with the RoN characters having bit parts in their own universe.  Such games never really do justice to either party.  RoN shouldn't be used as a halfway house for neglected adventure game characters.  There is also the issue of copyright as has been mentioned before.

It sounds to me that you'd perhaps find more enjoyment making a LSL fan homage/game rather than trying to shoehorn the LSL and RoN universes together.

While there have been previous games that have used copyrighted characters in the past, it's my understanding that those previous games were submitted without prior knowledge of which copyrighted characters were being used, however you'd have to direct the question of why they'd allow a game with a copyrighted character to be submitted to the person in charge at the time.  In other words: The current administration will not be held accountable for decisions made by previous administrations. 

The biggest sticking point has to do with the movie theater.  From the Baron's dialogue, it appears that the movie theater was misinterpreted as a stage theater and it's ticket kiosk as a simple push-button.  I realize that if there was any confusion, the town map on the site could have been clearer, something which has been done.

The following are some general feelings on the game:
I could live with the reused art, although it is somewhat of a missed opportunity to add some character depth to little/new characters - such as Hank or Vincent Dolby who both work at the Parkview restaurant.

The description of the alley between the Parkview restaurant & Pelboz flowers as "stinking of garbage" is one I find inaccurate as at least one business has it's front door in that corridor and the background of that area was spotless (apart from one alien time machine).  The "shops open onto a corridor between two buildings" is based upon a setup in my city and the corridor is quite clean I assure you, especially as one of the businesses is an restaurant.

I also don't see why the need was felt to remove a business, in this case the Randall Craig & Associates law firm, before anyone had the opportunity to make use of it when there are so many empty buildings/spots on the map to stick an arcade, such as the blue building next to the Parkview restaurant.

Update time - I've gone through and updated the download links.  That means that (in theory) the games are once again available to be downloaded.

There are a few links that don't work of which I'm aware of:
- The German version of Phantom Inheritance - I don't have a copy of this version.  If someone does have it, please let me know so I can replace it.
- The original dos version of The Postman Only Dies Once - Again, I don't have a copy of this version.  If someone does have it, let me know... etc. etc.

The games from 2008 have had their games pages re-added.  There's a slight technical fault that's temporarily preventing me from finishing the pages, however there should be no problem in getting the games themselves.

If there are any links that don't work OR if there was a game from 2008 that hasn't been included yet, pm me and let me know.

Just looking at the map again, it certainly shows just how much empty space the town has - lots of empty lots to put new buildings/businesses.

DC, check your email, I just sent off a few new backgrounds.

The PDFs were generated from PageMaker (I don't have the exact version number handy), and are simple text.  Could/have you tried downloading one and seeing if it's openable/readble when the file is on a hard drive.  I generally find PDFs on the internet slow to open and prefer to have them on a hard drive.

Just an update:  The resource page has been updated and reorganized a bit.  The links should work, in theory, however there are any broken links, pm me and let me know so I can fix it.  There's really nothing new on the resource page - this was just to get everything back up to date.  I'll dig through the files I have and see if I can't find unreleased graphics to put up.

Next I'm going to go through the games pages and get those sorted and see about replacing all game pages that were lost.

Yeah, some links are broken and the resource page is out of date.  Now that the behind-the-scenes systems have settled down, I can get to work on updating and replacing things (which is something I didn't want to do while things were still being worked on).

Changing file names to include dates is easily done and can be implemented in the clean-up update (which will hopefully be sometime this weekend -time permitting).