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No updates in almost three years.  Dead website.  I guarantee 100% that this is an abandoned project.

Also, the author does list his email address in that thread.  I hope that you sent him an email and then waited at least a few days before posting this thread.

Let's make some assumptions.

1) There is a god and your religion (this could be anyone, really, not just Mormonism) got it right.
2) He will accept good people into heaven who believe in him and act according to whatever rules the "correct" religion has laid out.

Church (temple, mosque) lets out after the daily services and as two of the church-goers are walking across the street, a giant out of control truck runs them both down (in accordance with god's plan, right?).  They are killed instantly and find themselves at the gates to heaven facing St. Peter or John Smith or who ever's running things up there nowadays.

The gatekeeper is going to analyze both of their lives and choose to deny both of them entrance, accept one but not the other, or accept them both.

He opens both files.  Both men were born into families practicing the one "true" religion.  They both attend church every week.  They adhere fairly strictly to the rules and do a good job spreading the good word.  They're both "good" men as defined by the church.  But there are some differences in their pasts.

One of the men listened to everything his parents taught him, studied the religion in Sunday School and church, and had always followed the fold.  He believed in all the teachings of the religion vehemently and rejected any other ideas that were not in line with the "truth" that he had been taught.  If you asked him why he believed what he believed he would tell you it was because that was what was written in the holy book which contained the one and only true testament of god.  He didn't need to compare it to other religions because, simply, he had been told that the other religions were following false teachings and that was good enough for him.

The other man also listened to everything his parents taught him and studied hard in Sunday School and church.  But when he reached a certain age, he started questioning things.  He realized that there were millions of other people on the planet who all believed in different things, and he wanted to learn about them to make sure that what he believed was correct.  He wanted to at least have enough information to make the choice himself rather than having it made for him.  When he told his parents they were furious.  The leaders of his church warned him that he should not stray from the path.  But he was determined to learn all he could.  He left the church for several years, studying other religions and often attending services.  He visited Jewish temples, talked with Muslim philosophers, and had deep discussions with atheists.  In the end, he examined all the information he had gathered over his five-year absence from his parents' religion and after long contemplation, realized that the god that he believed in and the religion whose teachings rang truest in his heart was his original religion that he had started in.  He went back, but didn't apologize to his parents.  Instead, he explained to him how his travels and studies, though they caused him to briefly stray (he drank some caffeine, prayed to a few different gods, and had even had sex with a beautiful girl), had actually strengthened his beliefs and dedication to the church.  He rejoined and has been a faithful follower ever since.  If you asked him why he believed what he believed, he'd lay out a landscape of philosophy and moral reasoning, comparing intricate aspects of other religions and talking about the nature of god.

Now, the gate keeper is faced with the choice.  Who gets into heaven.  On one hand, the first guy has been a follower his entire life and has never strayed, while the second one took a rather un-sanctioned field trip.  On the other hand, the first guy followed the religion just because that's what he had been told.  He'd never really thought about it.  He wanted to be a good Mormon/Baptist/Methodist/Whatever because of the promise of heaven -- essentially a selfish reason.  The second guy followed the religion because of his philosophical and moral convictions had led him to the informed belief that this was the truth.  He believed because he had studied, reasoned, and considered.

So, obviously, since they're both following the "correct" religion, they stand a good chance of getting in to heaven.  Does the second one get denied entrance to heaven because of his five year excursion?  I would hope not.  That would mean that god doesn't have a sense of redemption.  What would that mean for all of the people that had converted to the religion.  They would have converted under the false promises that converting would save their souls and send them to heaven.

Do they both get in?  If so, then the ends justify the means.  They've both gone out with the same primary result: eternity in paradise.  So following the example of either of them would be acceptable.  However, only one of them went out with my utmost respect, and probably the respect of a lot of others.  We could also ask the questions, of the two, which had the more fulfilling life?

Which of these two lives would you like to lead?

When someone calls you to sell you something, tell them that you died.  If you really want to get into it, pretend you're a detective investigating your death and you want to get the name and address of the person calling.  Treat them like a suspect.  I've heard a tape of someone doing this and it was hilarious.

Alternatively, if you have a lot of free time, just see how long you can keep the caller on the phone without you buying anything.  Ask ridiculous questions, some of them personal.  Maybe tell them that you're selling a competing product and try to sell it to the caller.  They're probably being taped for job reviews, so they can't be rude.  If they interrupt you, tell them how rude they're being.  Ask to speak to their supervisor.  Then try to sell stuff to him.  If the caller has any sense, they'll cross your name off their company's list to prevent any one from having to go through that again.

With the snail mail, it usually will have a postage paid return envelope inside.  If you find one of these, put whatever inside... coupons, scraps of paper, small paper weights, then seal it and mail it back to the company.  They'll be paying for it.  See how long they'll keep it up!

If you turn unsolicited advertising into a game, it won't be annoying anymore!

In Spooks you play a bad-ish girl who also happens to be dead.

There's no real benefit to having premarital sex.

Have fun waving goodnight to your sexually incompatible wife as you climb into your separate bed while your urges spiral out of control driving you to masturbation, fantasies of other women, prostitutes, and finally a messy divorce!

I'm glad I realized my incompatibilities with my previous serious and long-term girlfriend (which led to the afore-mentioned masturbation, fantasies of other women, and messy break up... no prostitutes, I swear!) before our relationship moved into an even more serious stage of commitment.  The issues between us were never emotional or intellectual.  If she and I had decided to remain abstinent until marriage for some reason, I would almost certainly be perfectly miserable by now and I would certainly have never found my wife, with whom I'm both emotionally and sexually compatible.  Oh, and RRRAAAAWWWRRRRR!

Especially considering there is a 40-something member at our church who is also interested in her....

Creepier!

Dissect away Helm....dissect away.

Oooh oooh!  Can I do it too?!

For Valentine's Day I gave this girl...a very...extravagant...display of my affection. [...] Due to the extent of my display, her parents were quite rightly concerned for her well-being.

Creepy!

Also, keep in mind that the download count on the AGS page doesn't accurately reflect how many people have downloaded the game.  That's just how many times some one has clicked on the download link from that page.  Anyone who went and downloaded the game from either the original thread on these boards or any post you made on any other board wasn't counted by the AGS's games page.  The actual download count is probably much higher than that.

And high download count should not be the only goal you have while making a freeware game.  If you think that having a low download count equates to you failing as a gamemaker or wasting your time, then I think your heart is in the wrong place.  Make a game because you want to make it.  Let the commercial authors worry about the number of players.

I read the same book that fred recommends several years ago.  Probably an older edition.  It was a very nice high-level look at both game design and team management.  The architecture stuff is nice too for wanna-be designers who don't know anything about programming.  Obviously, understanding more about what goes on under the hood can greatly improve your ability to design.  However, this book is really just a high-level overview.  I still don't think that there's any better way to learn how to be a designer than to just dive in and design.  Even if it's not going to be made into a real game.  Just writing up a design document can be good practice, and fun!

And on the musician versus programmer becoming a designer front:  If there were some kind of creative-ometer that we could use to compare a random sampling of musicians and programmers, I'd bet on the musicians having higher scores.  Not that creativity alone can make a good game designer.  But it is interesting that I've heard of lots of artist and programmer-turned-designers, I can't off hand think of any musician-turned-designers in the industry.

Oh, and I'm enjoying the blog!  More please!

Someone with some actual business sense should try this again.  Even if it was really small, it could be fun.  Just don't charge an arm and a leg to attend and focus on the fun rather than name dropping yourself as many times as possible.  Also, pay a small amount of money for a webdesigner so the con doesn't feel like a "con", sheesh.  Oh, and get a better name.  I suggest "ConQuest!"

[paid]

xii games is looking for a background artist to fill a paid position on an upcoming commercial adventure-game project.

The game is set in a not-so-distant future when a particle physicist's mysterious and spectacular death sparks a race to find his hidden vault and claim his terrifying new discovery.

The team currently consists of:

• Vince Twelve (Linus Bruckman, Anna) writing, design, programming
  
• Shane "ProgZMax" Stevens (The Shivah, Mind's Eye) character art
  
• Nikolas Sideris (Linus Bruckman, The Forgotten Element) music, SFX
  

We are looking for a talented artist to create 320x240 background images for this lengthy adventure.  This position will be paid.

We will work together to find a style that works for everyone, but the backgrounds should be of a commercial quality.

Some examples of what we're looking for in terms of quality include:

The Blackwell Legacy	Flight of the Amazon Queen	Reactor 09

If you're interested, PM me or send an email to vince@thexiis.com.  Please include a description of any relevant experience and, if possible, a sample background suitable for use in a 320x240 adventure game.

[was]

You thought that the ending you got was the proper ending to the game, which means that the information you collected up to that point worked to convince you that that was the way things should be -- and guess what -- it was the proper ending for that game.  People need to look outside the box sometimes and realize that sometimes there is no 'right' ending, just different ones.  For you, the ending you received (based on what you discovered) was the right one.  For someone else playing that learned a few different things the ending they received was right for them. 

That's how endings should be handled, really, so great!

I definitely agree with this, Progz.  When I talked about multiple-endings not adding to the overall value of the game I was talking about the kind of endings that do just the opposite of what you're describing. 

If a game has multiple endings where a meaningful choice leads the characters to a new ending that is "satisfying" and feels like I played a significant role in guiding the characters to that ending, then nice job, creator!  By "meaningful," I mean not randomly picking up an inventory item halfway through the game, for example.  I mean choices involving the player consciously making a choice about a major plot point and then guiding the characters' actions towards that end.  And by satisfying, I mean it adequately wraps up the story -- could be happy, could be sad, could be somewhere in between.  That kind of an ending would definitely excite me and lend added value to the game.

I would love to see some games that posed moral or philosophical dilemmas and the player would have to decide how to direct the story by guiding the characters' actions.  Maybe you want to stop those bad guys because they're breaking the word of the law, or maybe the cause that they are fighting for is just and you want to join them...  The story would change greatly depending on the player's decisions.  Unfortunately, this kind of thing adds a great deal more work for the developer.

Easier to do are endings that keep the same basic ending, but change the specific fates of certain characters.  Maybe two characters will end up with a romantic kiss.  Maybe someone dies.  The major story arc is the same but the characters' stories can change slightly.  These can be nice, too, and I don't have to bother going back and replaying the game because I've seen the satisfying end to the main story and I feel that the characters ended up in the fates towards which I directed them.

I think this is an excellent idea and I would gladly host Linux-friendly versions of all of my games on my website.  As for the AGS version, I believe that you can see that info on any game by pressing ctrl-v.  I'm on my mac right now and can't test it though to make sure I'm remembering correctly.

When you finish the bottom for the first time, there should be a little message just before the credits start saying  "You've unlocked the English subtitles" on the top half of the screen.  Then, when you start a new game, it has subtitles, so yes, this is expected behavior.  You must've just missed the unlock message. 

Thanks Tartalo (and a belated thanks to Ali)!  I'm glad you enjoyed it! 

And thanks for the suggestions!  Your first suggestion is very valid.  I could have implemented this differently without breaking the visual reminder of which button you have to press, especially since every button press requires significant thought! 

As for the subtitles not working, there aren't supposed to be English subtitles for the top until you finish the bottom.  Likewise there aren't supposed to be Japanese subtitles for the bottom until you finish the top, giving a different play experience for English and Japanese players.  But if you mean that you beat the bottom and still no subtitles appeared on the top, I'm not sure why that would be.  The game remembers which subtitles are unlocked by checking a save file that it makes when you complete one of the stories.  It may be a compatibility problem with Linux as I've never tested it on that platform.

And hey, since this topic is back up here, people who enjoyed the game might enjoy reading a Post-Mortem about the game on my blog:

Part One: Concept
Part Two: Art Production
Part Three: Development

Also, Linus was named "Catch of the Month" in the February issue of Australia's PC Powerplay Magazine:

And it had a little article in the January issue of UK's PC Gamer Magazine:

[/self indulgence]

I haven't played yet an adventure with multiple endings and feel that as an added value.

Err... not even Reactor 09?

This is interesting to me because I just played Reactor 09 all the way through for the first time yesterday.  Previously, I had played only a short bit, but I was told that the game that I'm currently designing has a few thematic similarities so I went through and finished it.  It was an excellent game with great art, story, and gameplay (and dialogue thanks to ProgZ's revisions!) but to answer your question even though it wasn't directed at me, no, I didn't feel that the multiple endings were an added value.

I saw three different endings in my attempts to get the best one (turns out I had to replay the whole game because I had said some wrong things near the beginning) and the first two didn't feel like true endings to the game.  If I had gotten either of those endings and not known from having been told that there are multiple endings I would have been very disappointed in the game.   However, after seeing the true ending, I was quite satisfied.

So for multiple endings to really impress me or add "value" to the game, each one would have to be something that I could walk away from satisfied.  That would give the true feeling of me, as a player, having an effect on the outcome of a story.  If and ending is "Oh no, the bad guy gets away and all hope is lost because you didn't pick up that inventory item a few hours ago"  I don't feel like the game is over.  Instead, I have to go back and repeat the challenge.

If only one ending is a true ending or what I would describe as a "satisfying" ending, then the other endings aren't really endings, they have more in common with death scenes.  "You've failed, hope you saved!  Try again to get the real one!"

If a game had multiple satisfying endings, where I could make meaningful non-arbitrary choices during the game that would end the game in a way that rewarded me for my play style, that would be of added value to me as a player.

Oh, and thanks for the Linus shout out!  (Which had multiple endings but only one true ending...    But then again, as Tartalo mentioned, it's more of a logic/puzzle game at heart!)

I'm the same way.  The shower is my brain storming room.

To hold my interest, I'd like a game to have either an intriguing story, or good puzzle design. Preferably both, of course, but I'm not that picky   Big perks include (1) multiple story paths or different endings; (2) puzzles with multiple solutions; and (3) non-linearity.

The problem with (1) and (3) is that they often result in a weakened plot.  Usually the writer has one idea for the story, and different branches added onto that for various ending or non-linearity are usually just lame.  But the game gets to add two attractive-looking bullet points to the features list so the developer is happy. 

Major points goes to the game designer who manages to weave non-linearity and multiple story paths into a game that don't compromise the integrity of the strong story.  I don't think that I've seen it adequately done, nor do I profess to know how to do it, but I'd love to play that game.

Going to PM because... unnecessary.

[edit]oh sure, edit your post above mine to make this one look pointless...  regardless, issue was worked out in PMs.[/edit]

Maybe that was some of Vince's gay porn.

You've got a weird idea of what constitutes gay porn.   

Seriously though, you were doing so much better at fitting in and now this?