Messages

When you guys are over your anti-camping phase, I would be more than happy to organize a get together in Okinawa any year people are interested.  From the main island of Okinawa, we can hop a two hour ferry out to Tokashiki island.  Quiet, sparsely populated, beautiful beaches and snorkeling.  You can bring tents and camp on the beach, or we can rent a tent or two (they're big 10 person tents) in a site just off the beach for very cheap.  (or there are some small, probably cheap, hotels about if you weren't into camping, I guess)  They've got cafes for lunch and dinner, or we can grill out at the campsite.  Since we probably wouldn't want to stay there the whole time, there's also lots of stuff we can do on the Okinawan mainland and my house there has room for plenty as long as you don't mind sleeping on the tatami. 

And since it would be the first time in Japan for most, and since you'd be flying in via Osaka or Tokyo anyways, a few days could be scheduled to roam Tokyo or other parts of the Japanese mainland, but that would turn into the most expensive part of the trip (besides the flight), guaranteed.

It would be an expensive flight for Europeans and North Americans alike, but it would be Aussie friendly...

Just keep it in mind. 

On that upbeat note, it's time for...

PICTURES OF BABIES!

The Wife, Baby, and Me:



My wife with Emi in a kangaroo hat.  We like putting babies in funny hats in Japan.



Foot!



Emi with my sister's baby, Mia.  We're an international family.  Emi is half Japanese half American and Mia is Korean/Mexican/African American.



Hat!



She's cute when she's sleeping, too!



I just put this one in because I was hoping someone would photoshop it so it looks like she's running a marathon:



Yay!

recoMMandations

Nope.  Try again!

Oh, and Cloud is utterly relaxing.

I recommend that if you're going to use the word "recommend" so many times in a post that you quickly check how to spell it.

I also recommend not imposing so many rules on a fun thread.

I also recommend DICEWARS for a good time waster.  It's exactly what a time waster game should be: easy to play, difficult to master.  Randomized everything makes sure that you'll never play the same game twice.  But the AI could be improved just a bit.

Sorry for ignoring your rules.

@nikolas - as I understand it, if two or more people are trying to edit the same sentence, it sends notification to one or both parties asking who should take priority and who should wait to make the edit.  Again, I haven't seen this feature in action.

@Zor - It has the same collaborative abilities as a wiki, but the thing that makes it really useful is the familiar word processor layout and features.  My mom could use this, but she'd be lost trying to format a wiki post.  Similarly, I'm guessing a lot of the less-tech savvy people on AGS would be more comfortable using this than a wiki.

Again, just an inferrence since I haven't used it much myself yet.

Google just released the beta version of writely.com which is basically a word processor that you use online in your webbrowser.  As I see it, the advantage of this is that it is a easy to use collaboration tool and would be a great way to coordinate the efforts of a team making a game.

Multiple people (apparently up to 50) can modify the same document at the same time in real-time.  I haven't done this, but apparently it handles conflicts such as two persons modifying the same part at the same time.

Bottom line: it looks like a simple way of sharing and collaborating on a game document.  A team could share the design document, work on dialogue, share code snippets, and even add image files.  Fast and simple.

So... yeah.  Just in case it helps anyone.  I'm planning on using it at least.

blogged about it this morning

Too obscure?

Mad-Hatter says:
when a kid you knew was supposedly molested, rather than offer him the advice a friend usually does, you laughed at him and said that it wasn't his fault the teacher had a bad childhood,

Mad-Hatter says:
you told that same kid that he now goes to "Bob's School for Girls" with the full expectation of offending him

I'd actually be interested in hearing about the context for this.  I can't seem to think of a way this could be justified.  Kids being sexually abused is not exactly funny.

I just can't understand why you'd be proud of some of these things.

Dude, there are no "Ags people."  The links on those game pages are up to the author to keep updated.

If you can't find a link to a game, PM the author.  It's a fairly simple process.  This will probably get the author to correct the link on the game page.  If he/she doesn't respond, try looking at one of the AGS archive sites such as:

http://aafiles.bicycle-for-slugs.org/

and there's a newer one too, but I don't remember where it is.  I'm sure someone will chime in with it.

If you still can't get a hold of the game, then post on these forums and someone will help you out.

[Has anyone ever downloaded an AGS (or other amateur-made freeware game) and regretted having played it based entirely on it's language, violence, or sexual content?]

If your really want this to gain some degree of wide acceptance, you're going to want to make it as useful as possible.

This means:

A) Consistency.  If you're going to have six degrees on each individual (violence, language, sex, etc.) scale, you need to make it so that the game maker knows exactly how to rate his game.  One man's degree six might be another man's degree four, which will lead to confusion on the player's part.

B) Ease of use.  Again, the six degrees makes it more difficult to understand.  A parent who is unfamiliar with your rating system who stumbles upon a game that uses the system might look at it and think "Here's a game that has a language rating of orange.  I don't mind if my kid plays a game with a couple bad words, but I don't want any F-bombs in there."  Now, this unfamiliar parent can either go to your website to figure out what an orange rating means, or he can save himself the time, play it safe, and skip over the game.

C) Understanding of the target audience.  Who is actually going to be helped by this system?  Are you going for parents who download games for their kids?  Gamers who are particular about the violence, language, and sex that they see in games?  (In my opinion, two quite small demographics.)  What do they want in a rating system (or do they even want one.)

Here's a question to get you started: Has anyone ever downloaded an AGS (or other amateur-made freeware game) and regretted having played it based entirely on it's language, violence, or sexual content?

Personally, I've regretted playing plenty of AGS games for other reasons, but never because of their graphic content and I'd wager that I'm the norm rather than the exception.

Also, I do think that the six severity ratings, for the reasons stated enough are too much.  I think the system would benefit usability-wise from some simplification. 

I'm not sure that amateur games need this, but since no one is requiring us to use it that it's not really hurting anybody.

One thing that strikes me as odd, however, is that your rating system for amateur games is more complicated than the rating system for professional games, movies, tv shows, and music.  Does your rating system need to be this complicated.  I'm certainly not going to use anything on a volunteer basis that requires me to ugly up my beautiful game page with three or four multicolored icons.  A simple single monochromatic icon that displays the games rating, however, I might consider.

PICS OR STFU

I use WordPress on my games wepgage.  I love it.

I can customize it however I like, and the categories are easy to manage.  You can keep some news posts in the "general" section and then have some in more specific game related categories which you can link to from wherever.

For example, here is a link to all the posts about Erin's Spooks:

http://xiigames.com/category/spooks/

The look is easy to customize.  I started with a base template (that looked nothing like mine, but had the basic elements that I wanted) and then worked it out to what you see there which I'm quite happy with.

Let me know if you have any other questions I might be able to answer.

2. I keep getting screwy messages like 'Windows has found 55 errors, go to regfixit.net to get rid of them'. But every time it has a different amount of errors and a different site. It's been doing that since I got the new computer, so I suspect it's something wrong with the way they set the thing itself up, or else a screwy Windows 200 install.

Please notice that these messages are actually Internet Explorer popups.  These are coming from either a website with popup ads or spyware that is on your computer. 

If you actually believed that they were real Windows warnings and you went to regfixit.net and purchased whatever they are trying to sell you, you need to first, feel really dumb for falling for a fake ad that was designed to trick your grandmother, and then second, uninstall anything you got of that site, install adaware, a virus program, and an alternate browser

Then you need to learn some basics about computer and internet use before you continue to use and screw up your computer.

[against]

Dr. Scary, the "problem" you brought up about the universe being a computer computing its own future is, in a way, an argument against free will.  So... yeah...

@SSH:  Of course, there are objects or processes in the universe that follow rules which we will never understand.  But suggesting that there are things that don't follow any rules, whose activities over time are not governed by some sort of laws seems counter intuitive to me.  However, there is no way to disprove that such things exist.

But, for us to have free will, and to actually have the ability to act independently of the chemical and electrical processes (which are strictly governed by rules) in our brains and bodies,lI contend that we would have to have some sort of process in our bodies that was not governed by laws. 

We've studied the human body and the brain quite thoroughly and of course there's a lot of things we don't understand.  But I don't think we've found anything about which it would be appropriate to assume that it doesn't follow any rules.

I believe that if everything in our bodies follow a strict set of rules, then our body is reacting to stimuli in a calculated and mechanical manner... without free will.

In other words, I'm with Helm on this one.

I suggest playing my game Anna for the answer to all your questions.

Geoff, yours are hilarious.

Q: What do a duck and a bicycle have in common?

A: They both have wheels, except for the duck.

Edit:

Oh, and this one which I still enjoy:

Looks like tons o' fun.  I really want to come to one of these ~ittens things some day, but my wife seems to think that my money would be better spent feeding our baby.  Pfff... that woman has no sense of priorities.

Great pictures, CJ.