Messages

So here we are once again at the front reception hall of Heaven, often known as the 'Pearly Gates'.

St. Peter is waiting at his podium when nearly simultaneously three men show up and, after a disoriented moment walk over to the podium to receive holy judgment. After looking at the three for a moment, St. Peter addresses them as a group.

"Welcome to the Pearly Gates. Unfortunately, we're just about at capacity and though God's scheduling some time to make more space for all of the newcomers, I'm afraid that we just can't accommodate everybody right now. We are only letting in 33% of the people that arrive, even if they're all righteous and deserving of entrance. Of course, this also is subject to our screening process, but if you're good Christians and unless you've committed one of the Seven Deadly sins, we can probably get you a spot eventually. Now, I'd like you all to just take a seat in the waiting room over there, while I interview you each individually."

St. Peter motions the three men to go to a small enclosure with sofas and tables, and a holy newsstand for them to wait. They all sit down, and wait for a little while before St. Peter comes over to them with a clipboard and asks the first of the three men to come with him. The man stands up and follows St. Peter into a small room and is seated in front of a large desk. St. Peter seats himself at the desk and speaks to the man.

"Alright, basically our screening revolves a lot around the way you die. Even if you live well, but die in sin, you may not be allowed in. By that same token, even if you died badly, the circumstances in which you died may help your case. So I'd like you to give me a play-by-play of the way in which you died. So, on your own time..."

St. Peter picks up a pen, puts it to the clipboard and waits patiently for the man to begin. After a moment, the man starts:

"Okay, well I suppose I should begin with the story of what got me into the situation I was in. Picture it - I go to work every day and make money for my wife, to take care of her. We've been married only for a year so we don't have any kids, but soon the plan was to move out of our 9th floor apartment into a nice little house in the suburbs... Anyway, recently I'd been getting the impression that my wife had been cheating on me. You know the signs, she's been distant, secretive... Anyway.

"So I decided one day that I was going to try to catch her in the act. I called in sick to work and decided that I was going to watch my apartment and see if anything happened. So I got in my car, drove around the block, then hid in a coffee shop across the street to wait. And not half an hour after I left, I saw some guy who I'd never seen at the apartment before enter the building, and not long after, saw the curtains in my apartment pulled closed and could swear I saw some shadows of movement from the other side.

"I stormed up the stairs and tried the front door. It was locked, I listened, and could hear the sound of the shower running. I was sure that they were getting ready for... Well, you know. Anyway, I unlocked the door and bust in, trying to find the guy, but couldn't find him. I was sure he was in there, I could see a pair of shoes I didn't recognize in the front hall. So I checked the bathroom quietly, but only my wife was in there. I looked everywhere inside, but couldn't find anyone. Finally, to calm myself down, I went out onto the balcony, and there he was.

"I saw this guy hanging by his fingers right off the edge of the balcony, and when I looked down at him, he looked just as startled as I was. I knew it was the guy. So I went into a rage. I kicked at his hands, stepped on his knuckles and tried to make him fall. He kept holding on tight and wouldn't drop, so I got on my knees, punched his hands, and eventually socked him in the teeth. He fell down the 9 stories, but into a shrub. He looked injured, but I knew he was still alive. So I freaked out, went into the kitchen, dragged the fridge out onto the balcony and tipped it over the edge on top of him.

"A few minutes later, realizing what I had done, I realized that I was a murderer and couldn't bear to live with myself. I got my gun out of the closet and shot myself."

St. Peter sat in stunned silence for a moment, then stood up, showed the man over to a separate waiting room and asked him to wait while he passed judgment. He then went back to the first waiting room, and ushered the second man into the interview room to get his story. Similarly, the man begun.

"Picture it - a man in his prime, finally building up enough money to start his own business as a professional window washer. I got myself some equipment and was just starting on my first building when I realized that buying my scaffold and harness second-hand on the cheap wasn't a great idea.

"Before I knew it, the whole setup had come apart, and I was plummeting to sure death down below. I tried to save myself by grabbing on to a balcony on the 9th floor, and just barely managed to hang on as I watched my stuff fall down to the ground below.

"I tried my best to pull myself up, but just as I managed to get a strong grip on the balcony, some crazy looking guy runs out onto the balcony and spies me below. I was going to ask him for help, but he just started screaming and trying to make me fall. He stepped on my knuckles and kicked at my hands, then got down on his knees and tried to pry my fingers up. Finally, he punches me in the face and I lose my grip. I guess I should consider myself lucky that there was a hedge below me as it cushioned my fall.

"I knew I had broken most of the bones in my body, but I was just happy to be alive. But just as I was counting my lucky stars, and trying to get to my cell phone to call 911, a dark shadow appears over me, and something huge comes down on top of me and I'm crushed to death. The next thing I know, here I am."

St. Peter thanks him, and tells him that he'll get final judgment as soon as he's heard the story from the last man that arrived with them. He takes him to the second waiting room and goes to fetch the third and final man. Similarly, he escorts him to the interview room and asks him to explain the events leading up to his death.

The man clears his throat, then begins:

"Picture it - Hiding naked in a refrigerator..."

Ahoy there, Dualnames;

Well, first-off, It's a good composition - very simple, but it accomplishes what it sets out to do. My major gripe, if anything, with the song is that it's lengthened without a whole lot of due cause in the middle by repeating the same phrase all of eighteen times. You could cut out a fair sample of that track, and fit your drum bit at the end (Which I disagree, it sounds just fine to me - perhaps could be precluded by some other drums elsewhere in the track, however, as it seems a bit tacked on otherwise) without losing much of anything. As it is, the song is generally quite repetitive in the middle.

Now, pardon my uncouthness in pointing it out, but isn't The Eagles's Journey of the Sorcerer generally accepted as the canonical themesong to Hitchhiker's Guide? I don't mind it being replaced, especially in a fan-game, but assuming it's freeware, I doubt Bernie Leadon is likely to beat you about the ears with his banjo for making your own rendition thereof. This track could play well when doing a dramatic reveal of a new spaceship, or something of the sort - perhaps when Arthur and Ford are launched out of a Vogon Airlock and subsequently picked up by the Heart of Gold?

On the topic of midi file versus .ogg - the main issue I see is primarily in the fact that ultimately, if it's simply a midi song, without a whole lot of post-processing done to it to warrant the necessity of converting to high-quality format, the filesize is bound to be unnecessarily large, considering what it is. Unless it's meant to be part of a video.

Anyway, my two cents. Do with them what you will.

Here's a brief list of synonyms for hate off the top of my head, divided by linguistic function:

Verbs:
Hate, dislike, loathe, despise, abhor, disapprove of, detest, disdain, execrate, scorn, spurn, contemn, can't stand, can't abide

Nouns:
Hate, hatred, disapproval, loathing, abhorrence, disdain, grievance

Unfortunately, this is an old sprite that I did a few months ago for the RoN forums, but I thought I'd put it up for inspiration.
Not an official entry.

[ArboriS]

Well, everyone, another coloring ball draws to a close. Thank you to everyone who participated, and I'd like to also extend my wishes for a happy new year to anyone who reads this.

I'd say the turnout for this one was modest, but I'm pretty happy with the way the entries came out. For anyone interested, this silhouette was borrowed from one of my good friends' christmas art, which I will link for you now, here. And to crown a winner for the last Coloring Ball of 2007, I'm going to have to go with our very own ArboriS, for his creativity with the silhouette given - I wouldn't have come up with something like that no matter how hard I tried. And big props to Fyntax as well, for the new take on an old poem. Very groovy stuff.

Thank you everyone, and I'm looking forward to the next coloring ball!

Congratulations, Arboris

[Akatosh]

I'd like to comment on each entry individually for each piece before casting each vote..

Favorite Visual Style (which style is the most visually appealing?):

Akatosh - I know that he mentioned it in his post, so it's a lot better than just ripping the sprites and passing them off as his own, but I just can't condone Akatosh's usage of Advance Wars sprites, barely edited from their original commercial game roots. The sprites that he did do - Santa, in particular, was incongruous with the rest of the visual style, due to a lack of shading, and the background seemed just a little flat.
The JBurger - The artistic style in JBurger's entry is very clean, and all of the characters read well. There's plenty of variation in the elves, suggesting a fair bit of work having been put into the image, while still having the feel of an old side-scrolling shooter. Great stuff.
KhrisMUC - Unfinished, which is too bad. The double-wide pixels and retro colors and look all show a great attention to detail while still giving the image of an old-skool christmas run 'n jump puzzle game. Looking great.

My vote goes to The JBurger for Visual Style.


Best Interface (which interface/gui looks the most fun/creative to you?):

Akatosh - I do like a good double-dragon style beat-em-up. I'll have to say that as the other two went with platformers, this does by default show that you thought of something that the others didn't.
The JBurger - The only one with any type of GUI to speak of, with the simple health and level bars. Good idea, nice implementation. I'd like to see how they actually worked in practice at some point.
KhrisMUC - It's a pity that you didn't do something to show the actual interface for the evil Santa idea. It would've even been fun to see a Doom-style Santa face who shows an increasing level of frustration as he takes too many hits, though I think that would've probably taken up a lot of unnecessary extra space.

My vote goes to KhrisMUC for the interesting idea of the angry Santa.


Badassness(tm) (which entry looks like it would be the most fun to actually play?):

Akatosh - Looks like a pretty standard side-scrolling shooter, along the same lines as Final Fight, Golden Axe etc. with guns. It would be fun to blow up Nazis as Santa Claus, and I can see that as a pretty groovy concept.
The JBurger - Frosty the Snowman with special moves, plowing through the north pole to destroy Santa and his elves. Fun stuff.
KhrisMUC - Again, very neat implementation. I like the scale and the level design - I'd be interested in knowing how it was going to look when ultimately released, but that's just an unfortunate thing about time limits.

My vote goes to The JBurger for the concept of using a broom and a hat for special moves, and the different elf poses denoting more variety in the way you'd need to go about fighting against them.


Best Design (which entry seems to have its elements fitting nicely together?):

Akatosh - Noted before in visual style, the direct rips from Advance Wars (The Nazis) and the hand-made sprites don't really mesh very well. I assume this is what ProgZMax referred to. The actual layout is pretty vanilla, though that's not necessarily a terribly bad thing.
The JBurger - Pretty standard platformer, by the looks of it. I think visually it all looks like it fits really well together, the colors and sprites are all of a similar level of quality and there's nothing that really seems to stand out like a sore thumb that shouldn't. Well implemented.
KhrisMUC - Much the same as with The JBurger, the different elements of the platformer mesh well, though some of the sprites don't read as well as others. I'm trying to work out what the circular things are in the tree... Donuts? I don't know about the spider, but the gingerbread man powerups and so on fit pretty well, I'd say.

My vote goes to The JBurger for strong, consistent artwork.


Most Christmasy (which entry fills you with the spirit of christmas?):

Akatosh - Aside from the main character being Santa Claus, it doesn't really scream 'Christmas' to me. If you'd substituted that one sprite with anything else, I wouldn't have guessed at it being a Christmas game.
The JBurger - Snow, icy mountains, snow-covered trees, igloos, elves, Frosty the Snowman... Everything fits right where it should.
KhrisMUC - I almost think that the level in general could've stood to have a few less 'warm' colors. The tree's green seems more 'early spring' than 'mid winter' to me. I love the candy-cane in the background.

My vote goes to The JBurger for a very obviously Xmas themed game.

Heh, the 'Living in Japan' crowd crawls out of their respective holes to share their linguistic horror stories about the land of the rising sun. May as well add my newest. I really don't take many photos anymore of odd language that I see, but I thought I'd share one I took in Nara when my parents were visiting for my University Graduation.



Not particularly odd at first glance, but I love how a comma can change the entire feel of a sentence.

No Smoking: Do not smoke here.
No, Smoking: I refuse, as I am busy smoking. (Kind of like Homer Simpson saying 'Can't talk, eating.'

It's kind of like the 'Eats shoots and leaves' versus 'Eats, shoots and leaves" sentences. Japan's a fun place to be a native English speaker in.

--This thread addresses even more odd language stuff we've run into in the past.

[Rules:]

Late at night, while everyone is asleep...
A shadow passes through the night...



Who, or what the hell is that?

Color it in, and show me.

Rules:
Color inside the lines, boys and girls
Use as many colors as you need.
Feel free to add a background, if you want.
Enjoy.

Undies and tattoos.
14 colors.

As opposed to doing anything specifically creative, I decided to do just what was meant to be done.

The point is that it was not difficult, and I don't mean 'not difficult for me', I mean not difficult in practice. That's not an attempt to prove that I'm good or anything like that - I followed the steps shown in the tutorial on this page (Thanks again, Renal Shutdown), and that was that.

The composition is inspired by Shadow Beast, and aside from the continents, polar ice caps, clouds and lights on the surface of the planet, I really didn't do anything special. That entire picture was accomplished with the circular selection tool, the polygon selection tool, fill, render noise, gaussian blur, render lens flare, brightness/contrast, color balance and the airbrush tool. And I feel that anyone who is willing to pay a little attention to detail could accomplish exactly the same.

I'm not really a hundred percent sure what you mean by naked games. Are we talking about porn games? If so: essentially, the draw of a pornographic game is that people enjoy watching people have sex - it's a masturbatory aid. This is why the porn movie industry is so popular. Beyond puberty, most people tend to enjoy a good session of bashing the bishop on a fairly regular basis (some more than others), and there are many people who prefer to have a visual aid of some sort.

The porn game industry is taking visual pornography to another level insofar as creating pornography that is not only stimulating, but interactive. Instead of just watching the video and 'clicking your mouse', you actually click your computer's mouse to affect the pornographic environment. It gives the player something more of a sense of involvement, and often provides some form of entertainment value beyond just something you use to get your proverbial rocks off.

Now, there are a fair number of porn games that deal with some very questionable subject matter, including rape, incest, bestiality, scatology, necrophilia and the list goes on. These games (and, admittedly, most porn games of any sort when all is said and done) are looked upon as a big problem, because of the taboos associated with sex of an unusual nature and/or the violence associated therein. I don't really condone or play those games, but they certainly are out there, and there are obviously a large number of people (especially in my country of residence - Japan - a virtual mecca of unusual pornography) who play, enjoy and even would consider them connoisseurs of the genre. It's a profitable industry, so making a porn game commercially generally leads to a fair bit of revenue as well.

Now, why are they funny?

For a number of reasons -  of course. For one, the reasons that were stated before, that sex can be a really funny topic if people are willing to stop taking it so damned seriously. Look at Leisure Suit Larry, that series did a pretty bang-up job of parodizing sexual culture by portraying a complete loser whose one goal in life is to get laid. The humor is generally pretty good, and some of it is even vaguely tasteful. Alien Rape Escape (An AGS game) was another one of those. Good stuff.

Another reason is that a large portion of the porn games available on the internet are of such bad quality that it's hard to take them seriously. The sex scenes are often badly rendered, the voice acting (if present) is often atrocious - which is congruous with the general quality of acting in porn movies that have a plot of some sort, and the situations presented in the games are usually kitschy at best.

Because of the stigma on sex in much of the 'civilized' world, it's a fairly untapped market in the mainstream, but there's a lot of potential for good games that involve sex or sensual/stimulating content. Especially if presented tastefully. However, because it has sex in it, or even just nudity, a lot of games would be considered controversial (even look at the buzz that The Forgotten Element stirred up when it was announced, and that doesn't even present a large focus on any nudity that's implied in the game) if they do. I'm developing a game at present which begins with a dead, naked woman who has committed suicide. Why did I choose that? I felt it was a powerful image, and it sets the tone of the game quite well, I think. It doesn't have anything to do with sex, but I'm imagining that some people will take umbrage to it when it's released, eventually.

Shadowbeast: essentially the point that everyone's trying to get across - in a polite manner or otherwise - is that there are a lot of things that you can do to improve on your image. In a short amount of time, with a program like Photoshop, you can put together a much more convincing image. I used your existing composition to make something very similar, following the tutorials provided on the page that Renal Shutdown posted earlier to make it look a little more 'interesting'.


(I apologize for the lens flare, but this is one of those rare situations I feel it actually does fit.)
Displayed double size to show detail.

This image uses one of the easier resolutions to work with: 320x240 (with black bars on the top and bottom, bringing the image itself to 320x200) It uses only very simple shapes as the base: Three spheres, a few polygons to make my satellite, and a lot of usage of the airbrush tool (around 200 pixel width for shadows on the planet and moons, and one pixel wide for creating my frozen poles, clouds, lights in the dark and continents.

I even animated it (sort of), by making the lights on the satellite blink.

Now, please don't look at this as an insult - I am simply trying to make a point by showing this to you: I did the entire picture in less than an hour, and I don't feel as it would even be difficult for you to accomplish the same. I've never done a picture like this before, so I would definitely suggest taking a look at the tutorials on that page. Learning by reading is really a great idea, I feel. Once you're comfortable with it, spend a little time working on another space scene, and please put it up for us to see. I'd love to see how you improve.

The sprite's looking pretty good, I think. Just remember that when it comes to doing sprite art for gaming, less is often more. If you want to avoid a lot of headaches when animating a sprite, try to cut the color count down: two-to-three colors at a higher contrast per item can usually achieve the effect you want, and save you a lot of time later.

I don't see the smaller sprite as having been a large problem. Yes, you're limited in the amount of detail that you can fit into the character's smaller features, but that doesn't make it any worse. A well-drawn low-resolution sprite can still do what a hi-res sprite can, and be a whole lot more efficient when it comes to animation.


I pushed a few pixels here and there to make her pose a little more dynamic, and took the color-count down from 21 to 8, raising contrast and limiting myself to 2 colors for skin, shirt and pants, one color each for hair and epaulletes. I know her eyes are blue, but from a distance, eye color doesn't show up. Guybrush Threepwood's eyes are blue too, according to the close-ups in Monkey Island, but were represented by a single dark-colored dot, because it would look awkward otherwise. I also managed to save color count by using the same dark tone as the shirt for the eye.

Looks pretty good to me - The one thing that I really notice is that he doesn't really seem to use his cane to help him walk. This may be because he doesn't actually need it, but he should be placing the tip of the cane on the ground as soon as it's out front so that it's on a common point on the ground. It should also be noted that once the cane's on the ground, it should move backward at the same pace as the opposite foot. He's currently scraping it backward across the ground, which though isn't noticeable here, will become pretty evident when you have the animation moving forward.

The actual kinetics and dynamics of the rest of him is great. One small thing, which isn't even actually a real concern: His-belly bounce is pretty realistic right now, but if you want it to look more comedic and elastic, I'd suggest having the belly stay down and go up a single frame each after where you already have it.

The Man Who Saves the World (Turkish Star Wars)

...Whether it's good or not is up to debate, but it is awesome in its own way.

This is me, a self portrait done by hand in pixel.

賊 (Zoku) is the kanji for bandit, also present in pirate.

I'd like to just throw in my two cents on this animation as well - Firstly, as Mr. Colossal said, definitely pay attention to the number of frames you're using to accomplish something. It does stand to reason that the more frames an animation has, the more fluid the motion, but even the human eye can only interpret so much movement at one time, which is why if you move your hand left-right in front of your face rapidly, it looks more like a transparent hand with a lot of fingers than a quickly moving hand.

I noticed, especially when digital animation really started becoming mainstream in 2D cartoons, that they overused their ability to process a lot of frames in a shorter amount of time. I find that a very good starting point for animation is about 10 frames per second. It's choppier than a lot of animation (which generally, as far as I remember, goes between 12 and 15 frames per second). Of course, you can always have a single frame run longer or shorter than others. Not all motion happens at the same speed. Sometimes a short pause in movement can make all the difference between a believable animation and one that doesn't really work.

Another thing to bear in mind at all times is kinetics: opposing forces and natural movement. The biggest problem I see with his animation is that he somehow has the massive strength and agility to lift his perfectly vertical body off the chair without adjusting his center of balance. He just kind of floats up while unbending his knees. I'd suggest having him lean forward to keep his body over the center of his feet - all weight should be evenly distributed around the central point of balance. I threw together a really quick animation to illustrate the point I mean: Note that once he's off the chair, his body weight is always evenly distributed in front of and behind his feet.



I've slowed down the animation a little bit when he's standing to show where I mean.

I wholeheartedly support the creation of Warthogs: LLATPSGOTDPP. I'd even reprise my Drape role, if it were there for me to do.

Sure, Vash, go right ahead - anything I said in this post is for use in your research, so of course you can feel free to quote at will. And for your own personal edification, I'm male, 26 and check my MySpace at the most once a week, often less. It might not be a bad idea as well to ask how important they consider their profiles on/usage of MySpace is. I honestly don't put much stock in it, so my answers are likely much more biased toward a straight 'E' spread.

It may also be a good idea to host this same questionnaire on MySpace itself. You're much more likely to find high representative stats for MySpace users as well, that way (Though I imagine you probably are, already).

In regards to ManicMatt's 'girlfriend' thing - there is definitely some correlation, I think, between perception of the 'top x' for casual users and people who actively groom their MySpace page. In the case of my girlfriend, she doesn't use MySpace, but is actively using Cyworld (Korean community site). Cyworld doesn't allow for reordering people on your friends list, so that's sort of a moot point, but if (for example) she removed me from her friends' list (which would also hide most of her information, blogs and photographs from me), it might cause me some great amount of concern. Especially considering that it is one of the few methods of communication we have while she lives in Korea and I in Japan.

That, I think, stems from the fact that I know when she is actively using Cyworld, she trims her page to reflect real-life thoughts and feelings. In the case of my best friend and I, we aren't really serious about the way we use MySpace, Facebook, or whatever, so it doesn't really make a big difference. So in this case - I can really agree with ManicMatt, and it's as I said, it depends on how you believe the other person uses MySpace.

On a semi-related note, I wonder if you've heard the song 'New Friend Request' by Gym Class Heroes? This whole thread reminds me of it.

[1. Your best friend moved you from first position in their myspace friends list to 5th position do you:]

1.  Your best friend moved you from first position in their myspace friends list to 5th position do you:
E:  (Unperturbed) Not discuss it with them

Though I'm aware that there are certain unwritten rules of MySpace friends lists, apparently, my position on a friend's 'Top x' doesn't really affect me. At present, I am in the fourth position on my best friend's MySpace page though we both acknowledge that we are best friends.  His girlfriend also takes up position 5, beyond me. I have no idea about the method he uses to position his 'top' people, but it doesn't really have much bearing on anything, as far as I'm concerned.

2.  Your 2nd best friend moved you from second position in their myspace friends list to 8th position do you:
E:  (Unperturbed) Not discuss it with them

I have a hard time quantifying the best-ness of all of my friends, really, and I also wonder at the accuracy of this measuring scheme - if someone is your second best friend, does that necessitate that you be their second best friend as well? It seems like I could have a very close friend, who is just perhaps quantifiably below whom I would consider my 'best' friend - but that person considering me their closest friend. Are best friends and second best friends exclusive titles? What if someone was my second best friend, because I didn't have very many friends, but they have many friends that they consider closer than me? It seems pretty natural. So it wouldn't bother me in that case either.

3.  A friend moves you from fifth position, to out of there top myspace friends list do you:
E:  (Unperturbed) Not discuss it with them

I don't honestly even think I'd notice, but even if I did, I can't imagine a scenario where it'd effect me emotionally - if I knew that they place people based on whom they consider to be their closest friends, I may be slightly flattered, but wonder about the people who were 'demoted' ahead of me.

4.  Someone you hang around with at school/higher education deletes you from there myspace friends list do you:
E:  (Unperturbed) Not discuss it with them

Again, this depends on a number of factors - if they were cleaning up their friends list, of course it would make sense - since it's just a school friend, I don't really expect anything in particular. I'm entirely unsure I'd even notice in the first place.

5.  Someone you met at a party the other night and spoke with briefly adds you to myspace and then deletes you the next day:
E:  (Unperturbed) Not discuss it with them

I don't consider casual acquaintances, i.e. people I meet at parties, work, out on the street to have any obligations toward me, especially in an online community/chat site like MySpace.


I think that a lot of these scenarios also have to do with peoples' reasons for moving things on their 'top' lists. Because MySpace doesn't have vertical/horizontal limits for pictures on their photos, I often reorder people on my list from 'tallest' to 'shortest' photo, for example, for aesthetic reasons.

This said, I'm not sure if you're taking such things into consideration, but it might be useful to get more information from the people who take your questionnaire, such as age, time spent on the internet/blogging weekly, gender and so on and so forth. I have a feeling that your research would benefit greatly from knowing these things. Now, if that doesn't matter to you, then it's no big deal, but I imagine that if you get 20 people answering, but 19 of them are over 25, working full time and spend very little time online, your results are going to be very biased toward that demographic. Just food for thought.