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Yup, and you're all screwed.  I heard that Erin hired Clinton Curtis to help SSH program the voting page.

I'm glad you're running it again, SSH.  I thought the awards were handled very well last year!

I would agree with Radiant about renaming the two categories "Best Programming" and "Best Dialogue."

And I would also backup SSH's idea of adding the "Best Innovation" category.  Partially because I think that my game-in-production might have a shot at it, but mostly I think it's good to encourage innovation from the amateur adventure scene.  Though, I don't think it needs to be decided by committee.  I think it could be voted on by everyone.  Unless you think it would work better if chosen by a committee.

Finally, I like the "For your recommendation" thread because it reminds people about games from earlier in the year.  I'd like to see Spooks nominated in a few categories, but it's been nine months since it was released and I wonder how many people have it at the front of their minds.

Great topic!  I have had a great time travel game in mind for a while, but there's no way I'd finish it in a month...

It's the music and video that eat up a lot of space.  Your graphics will compress pretty well when you zip or rar the thing up.  Remember, if your compiled folder is 1 GB, it's going to compress down significantly from that.  My in-development game's compiled folder is 305 MB, but after using rar, it's less than 40 MB.

If your game is planned to be so big and you're currently only at one room and 8 MBs, I'd worry more about making the game than about the final file size.  It's a little bit early to be worrying about that.  If your game is good, it will be downloaded regardless of the size. 

Though it is quite common for people to download half-gig or gig size demos now.  So, I wouldn't worry.  If it's an obscene size in the end, you can distribute it over bittorrent.

You don't need to write "not an entry" on each post that isn't an entry.  People write that when the sprite that they're posting isn't meant to be judged in the competition.  Your post contains no sprite, so it's obviously not an entry.

And in paint, use "Save as" and there's a little place to change the file type.  I think it says "Save as type:"  Just change that to ".gif".

But if you want to make an animation, you're going to need another program since Paint can't save animated gifs.  Use the search function at the top of the page to find one of the many posts about these programs if you're looking for one.

That's funny, I was thinking we should make theatrx's avatar into AGS' welcome screen.

I just passed the two year mark here.  Wow.  In the two years that I've been hanging around here, I got married and had a baby girl.  I bought a house in Japan.  I've travelled around Asia a bit and taken two trips back to the US to visit my parents.  The rest is all working, making games in my (very) limited freetime, changing diapers, and generally having a good time being a husband and father.

My daughter is hell-bent on signing up for these forums as "EmiHalfJap" but I keep telling her not too...

Not that I have anything against dim-witted Honkeys.

I said I have nothing against homosexuals so why would you take it as a insult?

You stupid cracker.

Ahh, I didn't read that far down on the wikipedia page.  But it would also have been funny if he had called it "Steve Irwin's version of a Picasso." 

http://americangirlscouts.org/bbc.com/yabb/index.php?topic=27293.280

Huh? ... Errr?

Looks great Dave.  Good luck!  Aah! Joey just scared me when I was staring at that portrait... 

I'll email you the original version for... say... five bucks...

Well, if there were changes made to them over time, then it would be liekly that differing versions would be extant. The differences in known copies are generally somewhat minor enough to be manual copying errors.

If the currently accepted version of the book of Isaiah or any other book closely resembles the version found in the dead sea scrolls (which I'm not sure they do... but I didn't look very hard, so feel free to educate me), that suggests that no major changes were made after 100 B.C.E.  However, it would not prove that the book was not altered over the four hundred years previous.

The Messianic Prophecies are similarly plagued by problems.  Each one is either A) not a prophecy or not meant by the author to be a prophecy, B) Not-verifiably fufilled (the new testament is not a verifiable source), or C) So vague that it's application to Jesus is unconvincing.

Of course I take a skeptical approach to any supposed prophecy.  If you're looking to believe, there are more than enough stories in the bible to put your faith behind.  But faith, in the sense that it is belief in something without evidence, is required to plug the holes in the arguments.

Those who follow Jesus command to love their neighbors, to love their enemies, and therefore do not participate in war of any kind.

If you really are teaching love, an all inclusive love, including homosexuals, foreigners, Muslims, atheists, and everyone else with a view of the world that differs from your own, then I wish you all the best.  Some people don't know how to do this instinctively and need some direction to help them accept people different from themselves.

Do you love me?

I fail to see how the dead sea scrolls, which were written between 150 B.C.E. and 50 B.C.E. could possibly be evidence that the book of Isaiah was not added to or edited by a third party after 539 B.C.E.  That's 400 years unaccounted for. 

If there were proof behind your claims, surely there wouldn't be so many men and women, better versed in the bible than you or I, who are skeptical of the document's authorship.

I read the prophecies that you spoke of.  Predicting the events of a battle that would take place 200 years after the writing of the passage would be incredibly impressive.  I'm an open minded person who is still unsure about what I believe God to be or not be, and such a persuasive argument might be hugely influential.  If it were substantiated by concrete evidence.

HOWEVER, for a prophecy to be a prophecy, to me, it needs to have three factors:

I) The written prophecy must be clear and unambiguous about what it is predicting.

Most of what you discuss would pass this point. 

II) The events predicted must happen in a way that can be verified by history (I.E. not verified by the same writing that the prophecy was made in).

And again, most of what you discuss is in the (non-religiously-biased) history books.

III) The prophecy must have been verifiably written before the events predicted.

And this is where your prophecies break down.

You can say that the book of Isaiah was finished by 732 B.C.E. but is it a solidly verified fact?  Absolutely not.

Many (I purposefully avoided the word "most" here because I wasn't able to take a poll) biblical scholars believe that the book Isaiah is the work of two or more writers.  These scholars (who are more well versed in the bible's history than me and likely more than you) believe, consequently, that the book was the product of an extensive editing process.  Specifically, they note a visible divide in writing styles after chapter 39, which is where the prophecies that you quote come from.  It is impossible to place a date on the actual writing of the verses that you quote.

So, if we go by TheYak's system of choosing which scenario seems the most likely, I'm going to go with:

5) The prophecies were actually written after the events which you claim that they predict.

It is a logical conclusion, or at least a logical possibility.

So again, I can't describe this as "evidence."  But this is where I would enter faith into the equation.  At least my definition and TheYak's definition and Mirriam-Webster's definition of "faith."  You have faith that these are true prophecies made by Isaiah.  That is to say that you believe that they are true despite not having concrete evidence.

You have not seen the sun rise tomorrow, and yet you have no doubt in your mind that it will because it always has.

This isn't faith.  It has nothing to do with faith.  I don't believe in the sun rising tomorrow because it always has.  I believe that the sun will rise tomorrow because of overwhelming scientific evidence that proves that the Earth, in orbit around the sun, is rotating around its axis and will turn to face the sun and then away from the sun at regular intervals.  This is science.  This is Truth.

Nowhere in the Bible is it suggested that you put faith in anything with no reason to do so.  In fact, the Bible contains many many examples of God's power.  Not just stories of miracles, but prophecies written hundreds, even thousands of years in advance that have come true.  One example of such power is enough to demonstrate Godship, but God went ahead and demonstrated His power this way hundreds of times just for good measure.

Please relate to us one such demonstration of capital-H His power that constitutes any sort of tangible evidence.  Just because it's written in a book, even a really old book (especially a really old book) doesn't make it Truth. 

And let's suppose for a moment that, as you suggest, faith and logic aren't warring room mates, but are, in fact, in bed together.

Since you feel that the examples of God's power in the bible are reason enough to put faith in the Christian God, why don't you have an equal amount of faith in (for example) the Islamic religion?  Both of these religions have books (really old books) that relate many examples of their respective God's power.  Since the evidence supporting Islam is of the same nature of the evidence supporting yours, what makes yours the "Truth?"  Aren't you being a little hypocritical if you claim that the bible is reason enough to believe in Christianity but the Koran isn't enough reason to believe in Islam?

Could it be because faith has little to do with evidence, proof and logic?

And don't get too rosy on Nintendo, Sinsin.  They're greedy little bastards too.  They're a corporation, they're not "only interested in pleasing the world."  They're only interested in turning a profit.  And to do that, they believe that they need to expand console gaming beyond the normal hardcore players.  That's why they're trying to appeal to old, young, male, female, gamer and non-gamer alike, not because of some amazing sense of goodwill.