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Haha, I can picture Tennant saying those things in the demo. Zog obviously got his villiany tools from the John Pertwee era.

Don't you just hate it when you notice that, while working slowly on a game over the course of a year, you discover that since starting it six months ago, your skills have increased? You end up finding that the rooms the protagonist starts in are MS Paint messes, but since then the newer ones, while more technically proficient and appealling, no longer match the character?

Or is that just me? It seems like I started by building a model space rocket and of matchsticks, but by the end of it, I lift my welding mask and find that most of enormous booster I've been building on a baikonur launchpad no longer fits with the wooden cargo module.

Nuts to that, I'll start another game!

Well, while we're digging, I might as well contribute. "9.15" is my all-time favourite - it's short, it's easy to get the hang of, and I can guarantee you'll get the ending that makes you look ridiculous the first time you play.

The green one *does* look nicer, I was basing it on my grandad's flight suit, which is why I went for blue. Maybe that's only for bombers or something. Shading's usually been something that's escaped my understanding, so it's good to get a second opinion on that!

It's a good face, I agree. It looks a little like he's leaning backwards, perhaps his head is too far back? Or is this the intention?

I don't get much practice drawing at this kind of resolution, so I thought I'd give it a go for my latest crazy project. Here we have, in all his low-res, 28 colour glory, a USAF pilot in a blue flight-suit. It seemed to be going fairly well to me, until I hit his face that is.





Much obliged for any and all comments!

I dreamt last night that Obama had been assassinated during his inauguration...well, actually, I dreamt my professor coming up to me and telling me my dissertation was now going to need an awful lot of changing, because of such events. *That's* what I was worried about.

Ah, the perils of studying politics.

A Second Face was a brilliant, potential sleeper hit of 2008, so I very much look forward to the story continuing.

Ooh, Reading? Got a local here, then. I'm here at the university, after all. And I'm certain they don't mind people filming up there...if construction sites and demolition workwould help at all, that is. Or depressing, 1950s era academic buildings.

Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, although that was kind of a family effort. We were stuck for ages about how to get the lamp off the exploerer chappy.

Hm, interesting take on it, Lad. That tutorial was helpful too. Lineart *is* among one of my many weaknesses!

I can agree that she ought to have a "sexier" pose. I'm not going for downright nymphomaniac, more just naive, and not quite realising you're not supposed to go outdoors without any clothes on. Lots of potential for idle animations, though! I've made a start at an attempt at sexier pose, but it's not the sort of thing that becomes the standing part of a walkcycle easily

Latest effort:




Also, I've now settled on the wider head, and stuck ears on the front view. Plus, added a little to the mouth on the front to make her seem jollier.

EDIT: Now with 10% more apron!

Wow, very helpful advice!

I suppose something similar to your first silhouette is what I'm going for. This character's not supposed to be particularly old, so isn't quite done developing yet. I've given the front outline a bit of a tweaking, and come up with this as a result...



I may consider modifying it to be under 100 pixels too, since it's not too much to alter at this stage. It would be a bit more irksome to do so if I'd already started animating! I've also started on doing the face for the front view, but I can't decide if the wider or thinner faces looks better. Plus, she looks stern and grumpy, but it doesn't feel like I have enough room to make a smile without it taking up too much of the face.

I've modified the original drawing, and am now attempting to make a front view out of it, but I'm not sure how I am for female proportions. Something doesn't quite seem...feminine enough about it. Can anyone give any pointers to improve the shape, before I start committing to colouring it in?

Very deep there, Le Woltaire. The amount of thought put into this game obviously shows, and makes a very refreshing change from the usual pirates/space/detective adventures that are popular within AGS (not that I don't like them, just that this is very welcome!)

Clever use of puzzles, very nice graphical style. For some reason, I was initially reminded of Alone in the Dark (the first couple). I look forward to seeing where this story goes!

As an intellectual exercise, I've been doodling this...



Aaaand a lower-res one, for in case I decide to make a lower-res game.



And while I'm fairly satisfied with how the head has turned out thus far, it's made me realise how uncertain I am vis-a-vis shading when it comes to lack of clothes - after all, clothes have things like creases. Any comments would be welcome!

My brother with whom I live has decided to get a cat. I'm not going to object, I love them, I'm just concerned it might eat one of the many electrical cables in the house.

Anyhow, he's useless at coming up with names, and since he's soon to become a mother, I've been making suggestions myself - Chairman Meow, Garkov, Jess (what can I say, I liked Postman Pat!), and other things. What would *you* fine folk call a cat? What have you called yours?

Interesting how the response to this has differed from the guy looking for ideas about Christian games...

I guess good old-fashioned anal-sex is less contentious than church?

Ladles and jellymoulds, I present Anthony Hampton, illegitimate son of Elizabeth I's Lord Chancellor Christopher Hatton (therefore justifying my subject line, and not just referring to how much of a pain he's been so far), and protagonist of my latest crazy endeavour.







Before I get any historians crawling up my inaccuracies, this guy is fictional. Just a way of inserting a character into the situation of Elizabethian England in a sort-of high-ish but unacknowledged place.

Well, plenty of things to answer. I shall attempt to clairfy and justify my viewpoint!

How would you have a debate of 2500 people?

Would the Demarchy members have their regular jobs held open for them for a year?

My original concept was to have the demarchy consisting of the entire nation (opt in) capable of voting via local centres, or the internet. I lowered it to 2500 as a compromise between it being too large to be unmanageable, and small enough to at least engage in a large enough cross-section for debate to be representative. Ideally, like Dudeman Thingface says, something like Helios would be brilliant for total consent of the people on any law-based matter.

I can only see two major problems:

1) Define what you mean by experts, I'm afraid you may be making the grave mistake of mixing up intelligence with wisdom (i.e., just because someone may have an infinite knowledge of politics, doesn't mean they know anything about running a country).

2) Also, I can see someone getting into the constitutional council and causing all kinds of havoc (it has too much power in one place). I would suggest dividing it into the 3 groups. One carries out technocracy laws, one checks that the laws are within constitutional reasoning and another group (consisting of the two together) can opt to vote to overthrow (or, as you said, strike down) unconstitutional rules, however, should the vote succeed. They must also get a 60% agreement vote from the demarchy, and if that fails, they can try to get a 70% vote from the technocracy itself.
This more red tape is simply to eliminate someone getting into the council and making a sudden Hitler-esque (that is, extremely fast) rise to power and to remove the ability for a conspiracy group to secretly take over the constitutional council and force their views. (Almost entirely due to the third point).


Other than that, I still partly get the feeling it is somewhat utopic (you don't really have any contingency plans should something go wrong and you assume it will work out, which won't occur unless you have something akin to Deus Ex's Helios (AI construct)).

1) For experts, I'm thinking of a similar model to civil services (I'm probably just a teensy weensy bit biased in favour of their competence, since quite literally everyone in my family works for them!), in that experts are appointed based on their credible track record of success. I don't intend to place academics with little practical skill in charge (such a thing was dreadful for the USSR), but those who have proven their capability in other areas. For example, successful hospital administrators running the department of health, and for certain state-run operations (television, utlities, etc) recruit from the private sector, and run modelled as a business with profit-driven tactics determining their success.

2) That sounds like an interesting division of the Constitutional Council - the function I had intended it for was something akin to the Supreme Court of the USA. Their power to influence/make policy is limited to knowing individuals within the demarchy, and they themselves serve as a national safeguard against abuse of power by either the technocracy or the demarchy.

There's no end to amount of state policing your idea would need.

To have it flawlessly working, it would require hordes of officials/policing agencies checking backgrounds of wannabe-leader school directors, public service tax rates (so monopolist businessmen would not rip off nation). And of course all this nazi system about citizenship and all this bureaucracy/hair tearing discussions enacting laws would need...
We had such a system. Not same, but close. Communist socialism. It worked on fear... of dark torture cells in local KGB house and a neighbor, who would give you up to nearest party member if you had some criticism talk about government while sipping beer together.

Defensive military? Defensive armies get bombed usually, at least, in modern world... I can imagine building tall drones sitting in a city while artillery reduces it to dust. Sorry, our programmers didn't include routines for offense...

Yeah, I live in democratic republic. Our parliament IS your demarchy. All they do is pass laws to goverment. A soap factory owner proposes low import taxes on soap, a russian spy suggests lower budget on defense, etc etc.

It's a damn corrupted mess where "hand washes a hand". So soap tax laws actually go through, especially when deciding minister gets his share of soap profit as "an anonymous support to his party campaign" or simply something to overseas bank account for retirement days. "No direct power" doesn't mean "no remote power". I don't see how your system could escape corruption here.

3) The Constitutional Council

Is your everday CIA, NSA, KGB, FSB... but without less power? One bad sheep here and whole system becomes corrupt.

While system might be nice on paper, people are not...
It's progressive though. Somewhat utopic.

....
Well, my own view is that people are generally stupid, corrupt and easily influenced.
This needs a powerful leader with as little of sub-leaders and bureaucracy as possible.
Absolute monarchy seemed to be most efficient. Not sure how it would work in modern world, though.

I'm not sure I understand why a large volume of police would be required - understandably, and necessarily, there would have to be stringent background checks on those becoming a part of the technocracy, and the demarchy also acts as a means by which members of the technocracy could lose their jobs if the demarchy (representing the will of the people) saw them as not doing their jobs properly, or abusing their positions.

The system is also intended to limit the soap tax problem. Rather than having a "pet" representative in a legislature that certain industries may have acquired by funding their campaigns, by having members of the demarchy randomly selected, it limits the possibility or being quite so persuasive. The larger number of members is also aimed to dilute the effect - especially if, as hoped for in the long term, it can be rolled out to the entire nation.

As mentioned, the constitutional council is aimed at being more of a supreme court, and a means of limiting dangerous populist measures if they violate the constitution, or curbing the actions of the technocracy if needs be.

As for a defensive armed force, the general idea behind it is to make it less of an "army", more a "fire brigade on steroids", performing the emergency response and peacekeeping function that Territorials/National Guard would perform.

I think we both have a concern about the greedy and selfish nature of career politicians and those who make use of them, but whereas your ideal solution is to apply sufficient top-down pressure to limit it, mine is aimed at a "bottom-up" approach, trapping them in the proverbial red tape net before harm can be done.

I have the idea of making a game of a commputist system. It' s like communist, but effective because the decissions are taken by a computer, not the flawable men.

Of course, live in that society is boring and sooner or later there will be a revolution! 

You never know, the Illuminati might be controlling our governments with an evil supercomputer already...*glances suspiciously*


Phew, hopefully that's allayed some concerns.

Part of what I do here at university (aside from sleep and procrastinate on essays) involves forumlating an ideal political system. While many others in my group have taken the rather boring route of some form of representative democracies, and some with the more innovative proto-fascist approaches, I've long been an advocate of a little something called "Technocratic Demarchy". Most of the response I got from the others (who seem in my group to be mostly chemists who are compelled to take at least one humanities module) was of the "nod and smile" variety, nobody wanting to point out anything to improve. Frankly, I think they were bewildered  by the detail I went into that the others had not.

Anyhow, I thought since is the non-adventure bit, I might as well posit it and see how popular it is. After all, few years time, maybe I'll stage a coup somewhere and get to experiment with it. Views from politicians and non-politicians alike welcome!




Political System Proposal - Technocratic Demarchy

Three Branches

1) The Technocracy - Rule by Experts

   - Executive/Bureaucratic fusion
   - Carries out day-to-day runnng of the country
   - operates like a business, with objective peak goals (education shoul have large number of literate children, hospitals should maximise quality of care)
   - experts administrating these fields; experienced hospital directors hired by technocracy to run health service, schoolteachers to run education, etc
   - certain sectors (e.g. public transport, ministry of housing) run as businesses to minimise requirement of tax drain
   - Technocracy does not make laws, rather enacts laws passed by Demarchy, and otherwise ensures optimal functioning of apparatus of state.
   - Has power to send proposed laws back to the Demarchy for modification, e.g. if they're unworkable incurrent form (maximum 3 returns)
   - Appoints 50% of the Constitutional Council


2) The Demarchy - Rule by the People

   - Legislative body
   - No direct power, but proposes laws which Technocracy would enact.
   - Not directly elected; 2,500 randomly chosen every year from all citizens of nation, to prevent buildup of interests and entrenched political movements, provide more representative sample
   - To avoid choosing politically apathetic, "citizenship" is an opt-in affair. You have to agree to it specifically (oath etc) in order to be eligible to be chosen for the Demarchy
   - Debating chamber, also has power to dissolve the senior committees of Technocracy in case of dangerously entrenched opinion
   - cannot be a member of both Technocracy and Demarchy
   - Mandatory minimum attendance of Demarchic sessions
   - Has power to modify constitution with 66% agreement within the Demarchy
   - Appoints 50% of the constitutional Council


3) The Constitutional Council - Protecting the People from themselves

   - Ensures that actions carried out by the Technocracy, and laws enacted by the Demarchy are within the Constitution
   - Half of the Councillors chosen by each "house".
   - Power to strike down laws deemed unconstitutional with Majority of Council's vote, and suspend activities of the Technocracy likewise.




Other features of the system:


Citizens -

   - Opt-in process, have to consciously choose to be "full" citizen, to avoid apathetics being forced into politics
   - Perhaps some form of test to determine suitability for citizenship, such as national service, or completion of citizenship examination
   - If not selected for the Demarchy, they can still vote on issues, once each, at their local government office. The results of these votes is provided to the Demarchy to enable them to make better informed decisions based on the will of the populace


Constitution -

   - Codified document enshrining rights of all people of the nation
   - Basic rights, e.g. freedom of speech, association, thought, religion, etc
   - Newer rights - freedom of information; citizens privy to information on *all* activities of government
             - freedom of media; not just freedom of the press, but a guarantee of net neutrality, and the provision of the national internet as an international haven.
             - right to the bare minimum; the government will provide, at minimum, a place to live, an education, security, health services, sanitation, and the most Godawful (but still technically sufficient) food necessary for keeping citizens alive. Quality of these bare-minimum services to be kept low, to encourage upward development.


National Security Forces -

   - akin to an army, but not with intention of projected force
   - while trained in combat, this will be defensive in intent, or in order to maintain social stability
   - main purpose as emergency response services, to provide firefighting/disaster response support both within the nation, and to others requesting assistance.
   - serves as everything from auxiliary firefighting to auxiliary teaching if needed.
   - combat arm will be as mechanised as possible (drones, missiles and automated sentry guns)
   - complsory national service; since not martial in nature, conscientious objection is not applicable. Position within ambulance corps/firefighters instead.
   - can skip national service if one succeeds in higher education (at least Bachelors degree).