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My wife and I are hopping off this island of ours for our belated honeymoon-ish jaunt around mainland Japan.  Assuming voting ends on schedule, I won't be around for the announcement, but I wish luck to all the competitors.  I'll post my thoughts on each and every game when I get back.

I'm very excited for voting to end, not because I'm excited for the results, but because I can't wait to hear comments and critiques on my game (and all the other games) which, up to this point, have been stifled in fear of influencing the vote.

Good luck to all!

The OROW competition has left a gaping hole in my life, as you can tell by the way I'm pissing away my free time at work...

Larry, Moe, and Curly Vs. Freddy Krueger!



Next:  Shemp!

Thanks, Zor.

Next time I'll speak louder.

I'll add this link just to make sure people see it too.  This new map is intended to help people find their way to work.   I think.

Recently, I picked up a book called "Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai." 

Now, I don't know much about Samurai.  Really, I just know that Kurasawa films are awesome and Tom Cruise was the last of them.  I'm not even what you would call a Samurai enthusiast.  I picked it up to help practice Japanese since the book has the original Japanese on one side and the English translation on the other.  It is the records of conversations with a Samurai-turned-Buddhist priest that took place over a span of seven years in the late 1600's.  It's a series of short passages covering a variety of topics related to what we would call "The way of the samurai" and it's a remarkably interesting read.  Your post reminded me of this book because many passages reflect on life and achievement.

Here are two quick passages that relate:

A certain swordsman in his declining years said the following:

In one's life, there are levels in the pursuit of study.  In the lowest level, a person studies but nothing comes of it, and he feels that both he and others are unskillful.  At this point he is worthless.  In the middle level he is still useless but is aware of his own insufficiencies and can also see the insufficiencies of others.  In a higher level he has pride concerning his own ability, rejoices in praise from others, and laments the lack of ability in his fellows.  This man has worth.  In the highest level a man has the look of knowing nothing.

These are the levels in general.  But there is one transcending level, and this is the most excellent of all.  This person is aware of the endlessness of entering deeply into a certain Way and never thinks of himself as having finished.  He truly knows his own insufficiencies and never in his whole life thinks that he has succeeded.  He has no thoughts of pride but with self-abasement knows the Way to the end.  It is said that Master Yagyuu once remarked, "I do not know the way to defeat others, but the way to defeat myself."

Throughout your life advance daily, becoming more skillful than yesterday, more skillful than today.  This is never-ending.

and:

Human life is truly a short affair.  It is better to live doing the things that you like.  It is foolish to live within this dream of a world seeing unpleasantness and doing only things that you do not like.  But it is important never to tell this to young people as it is something that would be harmful if incorrectly understood.

Personally, I like to sleep.  And I intend to appropriately confine myself more and more to my living quarters and pass my life away sleeping.

Here's a quote from Helm on the first page of this thread.  I quite agree with him.

In action, it was proven that people voted great on all categories on the games they liked. This made the top few games come out with boosted scores across the board, whereas I think it would make more sense for some games to win scripting and graphics, others music etc. This was also the paradigm in the AGS Awards, with Apprentice sweeping most awards ( in my opinion) needlessly. People don't seem to understand the concept of categorical voting on any other level than rewarding the creators for nice 'gaming experiences' on the whole.

A "celebrity death" match:



Next: An unlikely couple goes on a date!

Google is the coolest.  Do they ever stop getting cooler?

http://moon.google.com/

And if you zoom all the way in, you can make an important scientific discovery!!

But it's incomplete.  I've searched everywhere and I can't quite find my new place of employment.

The real reason Bush got re-elected.

ugh... sorry.

Next: A bad pun!

Huge congratulations to Kinoko!!!

So what's the plan re: Japan?  Is he going with you?  He should.  There are a lot of JETs 'round here with spouses or significant others.

Good luck!

Thanks a bunch, SPC!

I was avoiding the AIM solution because they only support video on Windows.  But now I see that in the latest version, you can use AIM video with iChat, which is really cool.  However, I can't seem to find anything on the AIM website about audio and audio interoperability with iChat....  but I'm finding some vague hints about it working on some message boards.

I'm down with the Trillian (and with the hip lingo, apparently) but it's lacking the Mac support.

I think I'll download the evil AIM and see if we can get it working with iChat tonight.

Any people with any other experience or suggestions with this?

My family has grown greatly in the last year and has also spread across the globe and we'd like to find an easy way to link up the ol' webcams and have a good chat (preferably with audio as well as video).  We'd obviously hope for it to be free.  There's also the added hurdle that my parents are Mac users and we would thus have to use a program that supports cross-platform video conferencing.

I was hoping that someone here might have had some experience with this and could offer some advice.

Errr... yeah.  I phrased that poorly didn't I?  HiYah is not my entry...

...

or is it?

Got it, thanks!

I agree.  These are all great, and so different.  I haven't tried all of them yet, but what I have seen is excellent.  Balloon Face was hilarious.  And Kong over Baghdad?  Don't get me started... Also, The Art of Art was charming as hell.  (The music brought back good memories from Ghostbusters! )

One issue:  My copy of the "HiYah" game is not working.  There's no executable.  Just a 0KB file called "THIS GAME CURRENTLY BROKEN" accompanied by a readme, a walkthrough, and the setup files?  What's up?

I'm looking forward to trying out more!

I second the call for a time-zone specified due date and time.

Why, oh why did I spend that beautiful Sunday afternoon snorkelling in the beutiful and warm sea?  ... Oh yeah ... totally answered my own question ...

Now back to coding.

Excellent points, Kinoko.  I wasn't saying that we should support the independent games "industry" (if you can call it that).  I was more in support of a valiant and concerted effort, which is what I see here.  If you slapped a price tag on a P3N15 award winner, I certainly wouldn't be lining up to buy.

Also, by "support" I don't mean "buy" necessarily.  Just support.  "Nice job.  Good luck."  Remember, we aren't (or shouldn't be) the target market here.  We have plenty of free games that come out to satisfy us.  There are those out there who will easily pay $15 bucks for a product like this.  From us, yes, she will get some "sympathy money" (every little bit helps) but it's from those that read the positive reviews, or hear from word of mouth, and don't know or don't care about the underground free adventure games that flow here like water, that will help her recoup her losses.

So, "Nice job. Good luck."  Don't be angry because the game isn't targetted at you. (And I'm not specifically speaking at anyone here, so don't get up in arms).

The question of quality IS an important one, however.  Being a commercial game definitely  requires a bit more attention to quality, and I would agree that the look of the GUI is a major mark against it.  But what I'm looking for is gameplay and story.  And from the reviews, they seem to be all in line.

If the two strikes against this game are length and the GUI (and on painted-over fireplace... THREE!  THREE STRIKES! ...oh bugger, I'll come in again), then it has a lot more going for it than some of the $20 budget priced games out there (not that two wrongs make a right, or anything).

Personally (and this is part of what makes me, and some of the rest of us, more in line with the target market), I pay 16 bucks for a movie ticket (stupid expensive Japan) and more for refreshments for 2 hours of entertainment and thirty minutes of ads.  I'll gladly pay $15 for five hours of fun.  I'd call it a fair trade.  If you wouldn't, "Nice job.  Good luck."

Ghostlady, the game looks great.  I'm hoping that you don't, as you implied, take down the download option.  As soon as I'm done pouring all my freetime into the One Room One Week competition, I'm planning on paying for the download.

I think we should all be supportive of efforts like this.  Especially within our community.  Because one successful commercial AGS could lead to more... possibly one that you are attached to.  I wish you all the best.  I'd like to try to release a commercial game at some point in the future be it AGS or some other engine and any success you can achieve gives me hope.

I was going to try this, but the extra rules are too strict.   

My two cents:

It looks good so far, especially the face, but it's missing the thick black lines that make up a lot of your comic's style.  I'd like to see the thick black lines come back.  I really like the style of your comic.

Your comic looks like it's drawn in flash.  No reason to stop that.  Draw it in flash and bring it into the game.  This has a tendency to leave some nasty white pieces around the edges, but there are ways past this.

   When I show pictures from home that have snow, all my students "OOoooh" and "AAAaaahh."  Some of them have never seen snow in their lives.

...spoiled sub-tropical island brats...