Messages

My favorite part of "Friendly Camp" is when we set up the grills and then make all the little Elementary School kids cook us dinner.

got up the next morning for a 3 day English Discovery Camp where I had an absolute BLAST. Who would have known lawn sledding could be SO much fun?

Who would have known that lawn sledding could help you learn English? (Just kidding, my English camp, which is called "Friendly Camp," consists mainly of snorkelling in the beautiful ocean off the coast of a tiny island...)

I spent the holidays with my wife and new baby.  We had a great time and a ton of people came to visit and, as is the wonderful Japanese custom, give us lots of congratulations money.  I also snuck in a few hours of AGS scripting!

EDIT: Oh, and I made two appearances as a really tall and skinny Santa-san.  One at a Kindergarden and one at a church.  That's always fun.

1. Veronica Mars
2. 23
3. Sashiki, Okinawa, Japan

>>

1. Why do people reverse the 'h' and 'e' of the word "the"?
2. Are people who do that annoying?
3. Don't I have something better to be doing? EDIT: How long should these people be sent to jail?

Nominations and awards will be entirely by pulbic vote if I run the awards.

D'oh!

If reading the thread in detail doesn't convince you to change your mind and opt for the committee nominations, then I'd suggest at least opening a thread for each category to discuss games that deserve nomination.  Perhaps that might slightly help to allay the "omni-nomination" problem that has plagued the awards in the past.  I just hope that the small quality games that garnered little attention will have an equal chance at being nominated for the awards that they deserve.

That being said, thanks for volunteering!  I'm sure everyone will respect any decisions you make regarding the awards.

For example, I found Anna (first OROW competition) far more intriguing than say, the Stargate game

Actually, second OROW competition, but thanks!  And the sequel can be yours for only $9.95!

Jet, having fewer but more generalized awards and having a jury decide on the nominations are two solutions to the same problem.  I see no reason to implement both of them.  I feel that your suggestions change the AGS awards far more than they need to be changed and I see that as a potentially bad thing.

I believe that the chaotic part about last year, and Pesty can correct me if I'm wrong, was the nominations process.  Having everyone write in their nominations and then having to tally all of them was an insanely difficult undertaking for her.  Of course reducing the number of categories would have helped, but I believe the heart of the problem lies in the nominations process.

I feel that your generalized categories are over-generalized.  Story and plot ARE the same thing, or at least close enough, which is why there are not two separate awards.  Story and dialog, however, are completely different things.  For example, while I enjoyed the story of Cirque de Zale, I wouldn't have put it in my top five games in terms of plot.  I WOULD, however, hand it the award for best dialogs without a second thought.  The quality of the script was head and shoulders above any other that year, in my opinion, while the story was... just good.

I also disagree with the idea that the game with the most other awards be awarded the "Game of the Year" award.  This is assuming that a game is the sum of its parts, specifically: a game is the sum of the parts as defined by our award categories.  One game may do everything superbly (graphics, music, gameplay, story, etc.), making an amazing game experience, but then another game with slightly better graphics and music but crappy gameplay and plot could steal the GotY award.  For example Yahtzee's games are always fantastic, but while his graphics are good, they're not going to win awards, and his music is all ripped.  Sometimes the best game of the year is going to be a game of great consistency that does everything well, but nothing best.  If you are going to assume that a game is worth the number of awards it wins, you'd better make sure you have enough categories that are specific and comprehensive, not generalized and abbreviated.

Those are my (really long) two cents.  I hope you can see where I'm coming from.

Having a jury of a few people select the nominees clears up "omni-nominations" and lowers the burden placed upon the awards runner and I agree that it's a good idea.  How to select this jury (or juries if you want to have different people with different specialties choose the different categories' nominees) I guess should be up to the awards runner.  The final vote is, as it should be, left up to the fickle public.

EDIT:

* Vince Twelve waits for someone to make us all feel stupid by saying "Geez guys, the awards are just a little bit of fun... stop taking it so serious."

More awards = more fun, right?

The idea, I believe, is that a small committee of knowledgeable people choose the most appropriate five(ish) "nominees" from the list of games released that year.  This prevents the problem we've had in the past of popular games getting nominated for every category regardless of whether they actually deserve a nomination above other less popular games.

The list of nominees is voted on by the entire community just as it has been every year previously and the winner is chosen by popular vote.

[(Perhaps Best Voice Acting should be considered)]

I hope the P3n1s award isn't making crappy games more common...

I'd hope that people would include videos and voices in their games because they would improve the game experience, not because they want to win an award.  That being said, I'm not against it, in fact I think an award for voice acting might be good.  I just think that's not necessarily a good reason for an award. 

Again, I think the categories that have been used for the last few years are adequate.  Here are last years categories with my few suggestions bolded.

Overall award: Best game

Graphics awards: Best character art, Best background art, Best Animation

Sound awards: Best music, Best sound effects, (Perhaps Best Voice Acting should be considered)

Story awards: Best story, Best dialogs (writing), Best player character, Best supporting character

Game design awards: Best gameplay, Best puzzles (though I think this MIGHT be combined with gameplay), Best scripting (programming)

Other: Best documentation, Best Utility/Application, Best Hour game (though I suggest Best Hour Game get scrapped in favor of Best Demo or Best Short Game, or both!), Best Non-Adventure Game, P3N1S Award, Lifetime achievement

Edit:  I'm aware that some people don't think innovation is so important to the amature adventure scene, but I am not one of those people.  I would like to see a "Most Innovative" award added to the list.

It's a shame there wasn't some way to skip the text boxes, as they really slowed down the gameplay.

press "enter"

Before anyone else suggests something redundant:

There are already categories for best background art, best character art, best music, best sound effects, and best story as well as numerous others.  I personally don't see a reason to have more story-related categories beyond Best Story, Best Character, and Best Supporting Character.  Everyone, to my knowledge, is quite happy with the category selection and only a few category have changed through the years.  So, the categories aren't a big issue.

The issue is with how to do the nominations.  That issue can just be solved by whoever (whomever?) is chosen to run the awards this year.  So, the only real decision that has to be made is who will run the thing... That person can decide to go the comittee route or not and can finalize the categories. 

I say we decide on a person to run the awards the old fashioned way:

* Vince Twelve is not it

or SSH can just do it.

[some]

Yes, it's an entry.  It appears that some of the things in my post were complete fabrications.  Lie's even!

I guess my interpretation of evil is just a bit different from other people's... 

I experienced the same thing. I laughed until I vomited so much I threw up my stomach and had to go to the hospital.

The flaw is even more serious than I thought!

That was brief but fun.  It's a great idea for a game and it's well excecuted.  It has the level of polish that you'd expect from a Yahtzee game.  Because it's so good, I feel that I have to look at it with an even more thorough critical eye.  Especially when there are future chapters on the way that could fix the few, but present, flaws.

Usability wise, the game makes a couple missteps.

1) The auto-save function, while well intentioned, is quite flawed.  The few autosave checkpoints built into the game help to make sure that you don't have to replay too much of the game if you die and haven't saved.  However, Yahtzee should have been a bit more careful with his placement of the checkpoints.  For example, I noticed the autosave feature and decided that I didn't need to save, thinking that it would cover my ass if I died.  After the part in the game in which you

Spoiler

use the bomb to blow up the debris in your way

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you descend down a shaft between two rooms.  When you go down this shaft, it auto saves.  However, I accidentally pressed the space bar near this shaft and fell down, through the checkpoint, to my doom.  The game then auto loads the autosave and I die again... and again... and again...  It was kind of funny.  But probably not something you want in your game.  I had to restart.

2) From a usability standpoint, the controls are a bit wonky.  It wouldn't be too hard to allow the player to customise the controls.  (see Kinoko's GoA demo)  Also, why have two different buttons for jump?  Though you get used to the controls fairly quickly, wouldn't it be more natural to have a combination of left/right and the up button to preform a horizontal jump rather than using a separate button?  It just felt a bit strange to me (totally nitpicking, though).  It's also annoying that the player has to come to a complete standstill before he can do anything (shoot, crouch, jump).  I also felt that the player moves too slowly (it seems you can move faster across the screen by hopping all the way).

3) This is my largest and most easily fixable gripe.  If you're going to make the game keyboard controlled, don't make me switch to the mouse if I don't want to.  It would be quite simple to provide keyboard support for the menus and keypads.  In my game, Anna, you play the game using the keyboard to move the character around.  I considered using the mouse for the puzzle screens, but realized that it was not good desing, from a usability standpoint, to make the user switch controls like that.  Therefore, everything can be done using the same simple keyboard setup.  I would like to see the keyboard control extended to the menus and other interfaces of the game.

Again, I'm just nitpicking an otherwise great game here, but I think with just a few easy fixes, the game could take a few more steps toward greatness.

Due to a recent merger, Christmas shall heretoforth be refered to as "MSN Christmas."  Santa, or as he is now called, "Santa XP" will not enter houses via the chimney, but rather via the broadband MSN connections.  In stead of gifts, he brings security patches to all the good boys and girls.  For all the Microsoft software pirates, Open-source users, and iPod owners, he brings RIAA lawsuits and computer viruses.

I recently got this MSN Christmas greeting that popped up on my screen while using my pirated copy of Windows:

He named it after me and me + 1

Remember, there's two ways to apply an encryption.

Spoiler

The part of the message that translates to "P.S." is written on the fridge as V.E.

We can use the cypher in one way:

(>>>>solve it this way>>>>>>)
V=22; 22x3=66; 66%26=14; 14=N;
E=5; 5x3=15; 15=O;

V.E.=N.O.

Which is nonsense.

OR we can go the other way:

(<<<<<solve it this way<<<<<<<)
P=16; 16x3=48; 48%26=22; 22=V;
S=19; 19x3=57; 57%26=5; 5=E;

V.E.=P.S.

Write out a full alphabet in this manner and you'll see that it translates perfectly, you were probably just applying the cypher alphabet to the regular text and the regular alphabet to the cypher text.

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regarding that little door:

Spoiler

perhaps something in the message we just decoded could help

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Name it Robocop.

Heh heh.

Mr. Hyde, I can completely relate to you on your feelings regarding becoming a father so early in your life.  I'm 23 as well and have just had my first daughter.  I was already engaged, but not yet married, when we found out, so I can't give you advice from my experience on that front, but I do understand all of the feelings you're having regarding becoming a father.

I, too, had intended to hold off on babies until later in life when I was more prepared to care for another life.  I wanted to have a long and happy marriage before that happened.  Y'know, have a lot of quality "just the two of us" time.  But it quickly became a family of three.  I was terrified when I found out.  I regretted.  I didn't want it.  It was an accident.  But then, at some point, you just accept your future and then you can see beyond all the scary things and see all the happiness that is coming your way.

Now that I've seen my daughter, I can't believe I ever had some of the thoughts I had.  She's the most beautiful little poop machine on the planet.

Regarding marriage, I don't think you should get married for any reason other than love.  Growing up with un-married parents would be better for a baby than growing up with married-parents-who-got-married-because-of-the-baby-but- are-now-very-unhappy-and-shift-some-of-that-blame-upon the-kid.  My sister had a baby over a year ago.  She's still with the father, but they are not married because they weren't sure at the time (and still aren't sure) if they were right for each other.  But the baby is bringing them closer together, and their eventual marriage (should it come to pass) will be much more rewarding for it.

Good luck with everything.  Send me a PM if you'd like to talk some more on the subject.

Yeah, sorry.  I meant the inside, not the backside.

full explanation:

Spoiler

The sticky note hints at a way to encrypt the alphabet.  A x 3 = C implies changing the letters to numbers, multiplying by three and then changing back to the alphabet.  (A=1; 1 x 3 = 3; 3=C; Therefore, A=>C) (B=2; 2 x 3 = 6; 6=F; Therefore, B=F)  The looping numbers from 1 to 26 around the edge implies mod 26. (Z=26; 26 x 3 = 78; 78 mod 26 = 0(or 26); 26 = Z; therefore, Z=Z)  Using this code you can decode the message inside the fridge.  Or, you can brute force it which may take more time.

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regarding the second blinky light:

Spoiler

The second blinky light is powered by the red cord.  Can you figure out where the red cord goes and find out how to give it power?

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So yeah, just tell me what you think.

I think that unless it's locked, this is unfortunately going to be a really long thread.

Fluke, you should take a little time to work on your sense of humor. 

Do these make you laugh when you read them?  If so, perhaps there is an audience out there of like-minded people who will enjoy these.  In which case, go post them to a website and see what happens.

If you're really looking for comments and critiques from people in this forum, post them in the Critic's Lounge.  But the bottom line is that posting these here is not going to generate a lot of positive comments.

Good luck.

Spoiler

The sticky note serves as a key to decyphering the words written on the back of the fridge.  If you don't figure that out though, it's perfectly possibly to brute-force solve that message.

Entering the code from the pizza box into the remote control unlocks the fridge.  If you try to open it before entering the code, it will be locked.

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Thanks for playing! Let me know if you need something else!