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It used to be full of broken computer junk but we got rid of most of it yesterday.

Okay, you spin it for a day or two, similar rubik's cube fun or something, but then it goes back to drawer. And stays there.

Haha, not in my case. I love yoyoing, it's such a relaxing thing to do. Comparable to sitting on a big rock by a lake in the summer evening while watching the reflection of the sunset playing on the calm waves.

And learning tricks is fun! \o/

Yeah, I'm still a child and I miss the 90's!

Character.SetAsPlayer();

It's in the manual. You should check it out for more information. Also, I can't see how switching the player character could help you achieve what I think you're trying to achieve.

Well, I decided against buying that Viper thing because of its size. Instead, I ordered one of these: http://www.yoyostore.com/yomhypwin.html

Why that particular yo-yo? It was cheap and got good reviews... I browsed through hundreds of different yo-yos all over the internet and somehow finally this one stood out. Once I get my hands on it, I shall report whether it was a successful bargain or not.

I thought they stopped making yo-yos when the 90s ended 

Yeah, it's shocking how the market's still out there...

They're really cool and you can accidentally hit people in the face with them which is something that every toy should have the capacity to do.

That is why I love 'em so much.

Fuck you all. I never succeded in raising the yoyo  :'(

Aw, it's never too late though! JOIN THE AGS YO-YO CLUB TODAY!

It's been a while since I broke my last yoyo and am thinking of getting a new, better one. Is there a yoyo expert around here? I'm wondering if there's a good brand I should look into or something...

I was looking at this one and it looks quite promising, but probably a bit too big: http://yoyowiki.org/wiki/Henrys_Viper

If anyone has any valid suggestions, I'd be glad to hear them. Keeping in mind that I'm not really willing to put more than around 40 euros on it. I would like a quality one though, since I like yoyoing very much.

Hehe, I liked it. Well done.

I'm bored too. Anybody wanna skype? Or just plain old MSN cyber.

Some of the dialog felt really awkward and the relationships between different characters a bit unreal.

For example

Spoiler

when the main character has to go check out the areas behind the blastdoors, his girlfriend doesn't seem the least bit worried. She actually encourages him to do this.

[close]

I think realistic social interaction between characters is quite important in this type of games.

It could have also used some more dramatic music/sound effects in the most dramatic scenes, to add to the overall atmosphere. Otherwise the audio was good, except that the looping engine sounds kinda got on my nerves after a while.

The unnecessary usage of the word "fuck" didn't appeal to me that much. I can understand it in dialogs but using it in narrative texts seems very unprofessional and it kind of breaks the atmosphere.

I did like how it didn't feel completely linear and the fact that your choices actually affected the story. That's always nice.

The simplistic graphics work well and look nice. The animating wasn't bad either.

All in all, it's not a bad game. I liked it. It just had some flaws which prevented it from being a lot better, even though it shows a lot of potential. I'd like to see more games from you in the future!

Only play the Tetris Ishmael linked to. That is the only real Tetris. I play it all the time. While listening to Obi's Tetris-song. It never gets old.

PLAY TETRIS!!!

I've been looking for Podquest episode 19 everywhere. Neither of the Podquest authors has it and the official download link is broken. If somebody happens to have saved all the Podquests somewhere and happens to have this very episode I would be very pleased if that somebody could share it.

However, I would probably be interested in arriving a few days early / staying a few days late in order to visit the Orlando theme parks, since I've never been before and don't know if I ever will again. So if anyone else is interested in doing that we could potentially have an optional extension to Mittens for doing so.

Sign me up. I was considering this as well, but didn't really want to do that on my own.

Actually that sounds like fun. It's a bit early to say but I might join you guys.

This looks like something I'd have fun playing, as long as the dialog, story and gameplay are appealing. I'm a sucker for simple graphics.

I had no problems with the demo either. And I also don't have a problem with the 3D characters. I think what Ali did in his newest edit works very well!

I'll quite certainly be there. I have a good load of money on me right now, so as long as the accommodation isn't ludicrously expensive I can make it.

To me it doesn't really matter that much where we'll stay either, so I'll leave that discussion for those who care.

I actually do agree with all your points about the advantages of being taught by someone else and learning theory and all that stuff. What I wanted to point out is that starting off with theory is just completely awful and nerve wrecking (and not just in guitar playing), even though theory is very important

I think it's better to start off with the fun part, actually playing stuff, because that is what people want to do with guitars. This is for the sake of getting to know your guitar and getting comfortable playing it, becoming friends with it. After you have done this you can dig deeper into the theory because at this point you're also bound to be more motivated to learn it, unless you want to be stuck with the simple skills you have developed by learning playing random songs.

About the bad habits you mention... I assume you mean stuff like how you're holding the guitar or how your wrist is positioned. I really don't believe that there is one or a few specific ways of holding/playing the guitar. One should, and will play however one finds comfortable for oneself. I believe the guitarists will notice these bad habits if they actually start bothering them. Or at least read about them somewhere, you don't really need a teacher for that.

When you graduate on the school, you ARE a "complete" musician. I am not sure you are when you self-teach yourself.

Now, I have to disagree with this. A school degree doesn't make you any more of a musician than someone who hasn't graduated from such a school. If you know how to play and you do it constantly and understand how music works, you are a musician. And that's that. You wouldn't tell a painter that he's not a real artist if he didn't go to an art school, would you?

So, to sum up what I at least wanted to say: Theory is important and you should learn it. But you shouldn't start off by learning it. That just kills the spirit of playing and enjoying music.

[Edit:]

I've pretty much self taught myself, too. I don't want to be commited to something like guitar lessons. I would feel like I HAVE to play regularly, and that's not what anybody wants, right? I wanna play when I wanna play and that's that. Oh, and then there's the obvious money issue...

I'm lucky enough to know quite a few really talented guitarists, including my father, who always has some tips to give me. Though he's self taught too so his advice isn't always "by the book".

I always tell people who want to start up with guitar that they should start off by learning a few basic chords, then after that move to learning some songs they like. Yeah, some people would say this is wrong and that they should start off by learning theory... But really, who wants that? They'd smash their heads through their guitars soon enough and lose interest. I know I would... It's more fun starting off by learning to play a familiar song.

After that they should look into playing from tabs, fingerpicking and other more advanced stuff. I believe that at that point they will feel that they've learned a nice bunch of things about the guitar. This is the point where they decide wether that's enough for them or if they want to take it one step further. If it's enough, fine. Everyone's happy. If not, they most probably will want to look into some guitar theory and learn the "real" rules of the guitar. At this point the learning will be less forced, since they know some things about the guitar already, and actually want to learn the theory.

That is my view of how it should be done, because that's pretty close to what I've been doing and I'm happy with it.

Edit:

Oh, and to those wondering about which guitar to get. If it's acoustic you want, I am going to recommend the same guitar I have. Why? Because it's cheap and it's awesome and I'm biased. I've been amazingly pleased with it. In its price range it's probably the best guitar I've played so far.

http://www.thomann.de/gb/fender_cd60_sb.htm

There is also an electro-acoustic version of the guitar, which is the one I have. It's twice as expensive though and I've hardly ever had any need for the electronics anyway.

There's nothing left to say but to second what everyone else has stated. Looks promising!

Warning, harsh text about to come.

So, the idea of this game is ok. Not really anything innovative but the concept, as it is, works. Or at least it should. In this case it doesn't.

The controls are really awkward... Half the time you keep bouncing off things completely randomly. Climbing the ladder is difficult because sometimes you end up grabbing it at a wrong x-position and you can't climb up. The bouncy red walls just don't work. I swear, I never got the wall jump to work properly. I guess there's some magical skill that you need to develop to get past it.

The collsion detection is REALLY buggy. Sometimes I end up inside walls or fall through the floor and die. Most of the times I just bounce all around the place, as already mentioned.

And what's up with the game shutting down after time runs out? Why can't I just simply start over? Why do I have to start up the game again? And most of the time I couldn't even see the "Time's up" text because I was holding down a button, which caused the text to just flash by. The first time I was like "What the hell just happened? Did the game crash? Where's the error message?".

The graphics are decent but why is there so much JPG compression visible? The music's not awesome but it's not bad either.

You can also cheat the momentum by running back and forth. That doesn't make much sense to me but that should be easily fixed.

Needless to say, I didn't enjoy this game at all but I do want you to know that I respect you for trying. It's not all that easy programming a physics engine, let alone using the AGS engine. I also hope you don't take too much offence by this, I didn't write it to make you feel like shit but to make you work on the problems your game is suffering from.

Peace and love,
Pablo

[LimpingFish]

Happy birthday to one of the, in many ways, most awesome people around here!

Christian Taite - LimpingFish

I wish there was something I could say that would describe something that you could interpret as a sign of friendship but right now I'm WAY too tired to come up with anything clever/funny enough so I'll just leave it at that. I'm sure you get the idea.

Happy birthday, buddy! Don't worry about getting older. Be happy about getting further away from adolescence.