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You're right, I didn't want to imply that Kirimi said that - I was just pointing it out that that's what's happening. I'm sorry if it came through otherwise.

Your other remark: what I meant was that the handling of the situation from muslim countries is very poor. It's quite obvious that they're offended and that they want revenge (and they aren't trying to be funny.) It's obvious, because they're burning down buildings, posting bonds to kill the artists (it was the *leaders* who did this, so it's an official way of thinking - this is not some angry crowd raising their fists, it's an order for murder!), etc.

So what I meant was that taking a different kind of revenge would actually be more powerful than shooting in the air and throwing rocks (which we do see very frequently.) Violence will  not give a clue to anyone, it'll just make everyone all the more adamant in their views. The Danish newspaper thinks it was right to publish these drawings because of freedom of speech, muslims think it was wrong because of religious beliefs. In their own views they're both right, but that won't solve the situation. The editor-in-chief shouldn't have published the pictures in the first place (because they're poor, unfunny) and muslims should try to understand freedom of speech - that when someone say something offending, the next person from the same country may not agree with it.

Demanding that there be laws against religious tokens won't help, because freedom of speech in the western world wouldn't allow any such restrictions. However, going about a different route may actually help - that's why I said that boycotting is one way to go. And I (again personally) would find some sarcastic/funny reaction a lot more appropriate in the situation.

Boycotting Danish goods (while it's definitely a right of people whe feel offended) shows the utter lack of understanding of freedom of speech: not all Danish people think that those images are good in any way but boycotting hurts all Danish people.

As a sidenote (concerning all religions): I find all religions unacceptable, simply because they require people to accept statements without critically thinking about them. In this case it's relevant, because muslim people are offended because of a *drawing*. Not because someone was actually hurt, shortchanged, etc., but a stupid, bad drawing. They have a right to be offended but I feel that the current events are a bit over the top. And many of them are offended because they're are told to be offended. However, this would be true of any religion, in a different case.

Chuck Norris could kick Bhudda's ass.

God could kick Chuck Norris' ass. General relativity kicks God's ass.

As for boycotting danish goods I'm all for it, 1.its the muslims' right, 2.It shows how serious this is.

1. Yes, it's their right. But they don't have a right to burn down buildings, post a $1 million for killing the artists, etc. I don't see how any of these would be counted as "peaceful".

2. No, this is not serious, this is laughable (sad, too.) Muslims went into a screaming frenzy because of a series of badly drawn, unfunny pictures. Boycotting danish goods is one way to go about it, but the kind of "kill everyone" gut reaction that we normally get from muslim countries when they feel they're hurt is pathetic.

There would be hundreds of actually peaceful ways to counter those drawings (which I think were quite idiotic, with the exception of maybe one. I'd actually have thrown them out, not because of the guy in the drawings, but because they're not funny.)

The proposed actions by muslim countries (start denying the holocaust, make crude drawings of Jesus, etc.) plainly show how these countries are unable to think in a flexible, creative way. What kind of a "revenge" is it going to be to draw Jesus with a broom up his ass? Or doing a prostitute? That's going to be some satisfaction, isn't it? It's pathetic, I hope they were just kidding.

It'd be ten times funnier if they tried drawing the stupid Danish artist trying to come up with something funny, or whatever. If muslims started thinking a bit (instead of boycotting and burning things), I'm sure they could come up with an idea so that half of the world would soon laugh at the Danish newpaper - they'd then think twice to post something as crappy as their drawings.

Now make note: I'm not calling all muslim people pathetic (god forbid, someone would read it and boycott me, too! That would be freedom of speech, after all.), I'm calling the muslim leaders pathetic, because they're actively making this mess.

I can see some people being offended by the drawings (they're quite pitiful pictures), and I wouldn't mind them *peacefully*demonstrating or boycotting Danish stuff, etc. But that's not what's happening and that's ridiculous.

Btw, I only believe in science, so if you want to hurt me, you'll have to start swearing at... say... quantum mechanics.

Does it matter? King's Quest 8 was so bad, even a trip to the dentist would be more exciting than playing that boring, sorry excuse for a game. :-/

Do yourself a favor Snoopy, play some other game, if you can.

Hmm, good drawing, it reminds me of Shadowrun character drawings. I used to play paper-and-pencil RPGs a lot, but nowadays (and here in the States) I don't know of anyone who would play (also in may age group   )

I'd change the hands a bit, they look too manly. Women have smaller hands with smoother curves, not such hard corners. I lack the skill to do any meaingful paintover.

I'm am 15 and i (theoretycly)know more about than you. flame gant get in the supersoaker.
look zor?s picture if you get the idea of invention you see flame isnt stuck to plastik but satrts till mach.
if you fire supersoaker, first gas isnt going in line(DONT YOU LOOK MYTHBUSTERS, THATS WHY YOU DONT DIE WHILE PEEING ON 3-rd RAIL)

You're really smart, Uku! Don't let us stupid unbelievers make you think otherwise. Playing with fire and gas is the way to go, no matter what the people on these forums say. After all, we only make computer games, what could we possibly know that you don't? You're 15, after all.

Just make sure that you say good-bye to your parents and friends before you try your little flamethrower next time.

Too lazy to type

Furious apple. And he's fast, I'm telling ya'!



Next: The hand of fate

Oh, and one last thing...Have you tried the Are You a Good Person Test? I've taken it a few times and it's pretty interesting...

Awww hell, I took this stupid test, got 8 anwers right, but then at #9 I had to admit that I was lying.

Now my only salvation is if physicists are right.

I'm not sure if I understand the problem correctly, so just ignore this if not.

Wouldn't it be a solution to this if the game engine would provide events before and after save/restore/restart? Then the game source would have a chance to set variables to whatever values it needs to. So there would be a BeforeRestoreGame and an AfterRestoreGame event for which scripts could be written.

The game source thus would have a clear notification that a restore is going to happen at that point. The other (After...) could be used to initialize default values to all variables. It wouldn't even matter what the game engine saves, because the game "constructor" would take care of setting all defaults.

This could work well for save and restart as well and the game engine could still do these operations in a delayed fashion.

I hope this is not too confusing...

Oh, maybe I misunderstood. In Flamingo, one can create procedural materials, without any textures, where you specify material roughness, color, reflectivity, etc. It's actually quite good to create some materials and there is no need for presaved texture bitmaps. I'm not sure how 3ds max handles textures, since I never used it but I assumed that he was asking for setting values for procedural materials. One can create metals, marble, wood, etc, using only procedural settings (at least in Flamingo.)

I don't see a way to avoid trial and error: unless there is a downloadable material library with all the settings preset, he'll have to set everything by himself.

I think you'd be better off by using textures and some trial-and-error highlights and reflection. When I started doing 3D, I thought that the renderer's (I use Rhinoceros and Flamingo) material editor is an all-powerful tool that lets me describe whatever material I want, suing physical properties. I don't know about 3ds max, but Flamingo doesn't. It is powerful, but it lets me specify highlights, reflection, a bit of refraction and some material "procedural roughness" only - other settings just concern texture transparency, rotation, origin, etc.

If there is something advanced, using a texture is a faaaar better and easier way to accomplish it. I was quite sorry to learn this, but that's the way it is (at least in Flamingo and some others I know, like Truespace, Poser and Bryce. I haven't used Maya, Softimage or 3ds max, though I wouldn't mind trying the latest max. It's a bit on the expensive side, though.)

If you search google for free textures, you'll find a lot of them. You can download some from www.accustudio.com (you won't be able to use the material libraries, they're for Flamingo, but you can still use the textures that come with the libraries - there are a LOT of them.)

I present you the offspring of David Hasselhoff and the 4-boobed alien beauty:



Next: Fire! Fire!

Nice game, I just finished (?) it, but it crashes during the ending, while talking to the captain of the Crescent Voyage. I have the fixed version.

Nice game, though. 

Heheh, congrats! This was fun to read. I'm thinking about biting Epson these days...

This is an interesting idea ... the original idea for AGS was to make it as much of an "integrated IDE" type thing as possible, and so that once you import an image it no longer relies on the image file still being available.

However for quickly updating sprites I can see the benefit of having AGS automatically grab the image file from disk when you compile the game, to save you having to re-import it every time you change it. I'll have to look at how easy this would be to implement.

This would also be very useful for team development. If sprites don't have to be embedded in the binary game source files, one person can work on coding while other(s) can work on the graphics. When some graphics is changed, it'd be very easy to update. This would ease communication between team members.

To take the idea a step further, I wouldn't mind if room graphics (and areas, regions, etc.) would be stored on the disk as separate files, too. That way, room graphics could be easily updated without the need to reimport the graphics.

When specifying room graphics, a separate file could be used to specify the background, each hotspot, each walkable area, each region, etc. This is what happens now, anyway, just the graphics is stored in the binary source file, not as a separate graphics file. This would mean a lot of files, but it would also be very flexible. (And the current implementation could be kept; in the room editor, a checkbox could be used to switch between the current way and storing data in separate images for each room. So very simple rooms could use the current implementation, complex rooms could store everything as individual files.) I hope it's not too confusing as I explained it.

"Master Chris" is THE team.

Coolest thing ever 



Next: St. Peter decides the fate of Hitler

I appreciate the clarity Pumaman. However I beleive it is time now that we live in the 21st century for AGS to support both the standard icon format (byte swapping) and it's own resource swapping ability for icons such as 48x48 XP alpha blended icons to work.

Cheers.

What CJ meant was that it's a lot of work (fairly complicated, too), to implement putting the icon into your game EXE. Windows can display any icon and a single icon file can hold multiple icon images, but that icon file must be copied into your game EXE at compile time. This is natively supported by Win2K and XP but not by 98/ME. To implement the support for it within AGS, would take a lot of work, which I think would be better spent on new game features for AGS or optimizing existing ones.

I wouldn't mind if CJ puts this feature in for Win2K/XP - if you compile your game on these OS-s, you'll get the hicolor icon in your game and then it'll show up on *any* Windows OS (not just 2K/XP - but you must build your game on 2K/XP.)

I say keep your name. If you love your boyfriend, you don't need to show him this way (especially if he doesn't have strong feelings about it.) In my opinion (with which many people may not agree), you can better "show union" if you hold his hand while walking on the streets, etc. BTW, my wife kept her name and I had no trouble with it.

You shouldn't have fixed the Christmas easter egg, it was a fun (and unique) "feature"