Messages

As yet another teacher, I think you handled it exactly right.  It's a tricky situation, because on one hand, as you said, the testimony of a 12 year old can be untruthful and  allegations of this nature can ruin a life even if they're proven false.  But on the other hand, doing nothing could have even worse results.  A teacher is an important role to the development of a young person, and being taken advantage of by someone in that position is permanently and seriously damaging.  Someone very close to me was molested in a similar fashion when they were twelve, and more than thirty years later, the memories, long repressed throughout a perfectly normal and successful life, came flooding back and hospitalized this seemingly strong and stable person.  Really awful.

I have to say, the real hero of this situation was the girl who came to you.  I don't think there are many kids out there that age with the strength to do what she did for her friends.  Who knows how brave or how stupid this teacher would have gotten if it had gone on much longer?  It really says a lot about you, too, that she trusted you enough to come to you with such sensitive information.  Well done, Andail.


Edit: As a side note, this kind of person is really affecting the way teachers think and act nowadays.  I somewhere read a comment recently by a teacher in Italy who said that if he were walking down the beach and saw a school-age girl alone and crying, he would turn and walk the other way for fear of losing his teachers license or worse.  And I can completely understand what he's talking about.  It's a bad situation.

Nik!  People are going to think you're telling the truth! ... you are joking, right? 

Ben, if and when I make another video, I'll show off the dialog system for ya!

Holocoz, I'll let ProgZ speak for himself, but Nauris does the backgrounds in Photoshop, and I do some additional artwork in Photoshop and make some special effects in Particle Illusion.

And a big THANKS to everybody else who commented!

I MADE that interface with love and 8000 revisions.  Also, Vince is a slave driver.

Also, Vince has done some extremely creative things with the dialog system.  You will like it.

Who let you out of the dungeon?  Whp-ish!

Thanks everybody for the awesome comments!  I'm sure it'll help keep everyone on the team pumped too!

To answer Peder and Ben, I can't say anything for certain about the distribution methods of the game, but I definitely would want to sell both a download version and a physical CD version, even if it's only a limited-edition kind of deal.  You'll have to ask me again when the release gets (much) closer!

And Ben, sorry I didn't release more of Nik's great music in that video!  If I do another one, I promise to show off more of the soundtrack!

[Click here to get the demo, watch the trailer, and buy the game!]

Resonance is released!

Click here to get the demo, watch the trailer, and buy the game!

xii games presents

[/center]

A particle physicist's mysterious and spectacular death sparks a race to find his hidden vault and claim his terrifying new discovery. The player will take control of four characters whose lives become entangled in the search for the scientist's vault. They will have to learn to trust each other and work together to overcome the obstacles in their way and to keep this new and powerful technology out of the hands of a dangerous organization.

Screenshots: (click for full size)

 

 

 

 

Features:

• Four playable swappable characters
  
• A twisting, riveting storyline
  
• Unique long-term and short-term memory systems
  
• Cheat death by rewinding time
  
• A unique and intuitive interface
  
• All the love and care you've come to expect from an independent adventure developer
  

Team members:

• Janet Gilbert - Programming
  
• Shane Stevens - Characters and animation
  
• Nauris Krause - Backgrounds
  
• Nikolas Sideris - Music and Sound
  
• Vince Twelve - Design, programming, story, writing
  

Cost:

$9.99


Release:

June 19th on WadjetEyeGames.com, GoG.com, and Steam


And more!

Compared to Linus Bruckman, which I kept totally secret right up to release, I'm being very forthcoming with information about this game and its development. (I'm remaining tight-lipped on the story and puzzles though.) So, if you're interested in following the game's production, keep checking in at the xii games blog for more production diaries and information.  And don't be stingy with the comments!

Thanks to my shoe-string budget, all the members of the team deserve some extra payment in the form of recognition for their hard work.  So if you see something you like, be sure to let us know!  I hope you like what you see!

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Oh, well, if Leon already finished... I guess you don't need me any more!    I'll still give the game a go through and let you know if I find any more bugs.

Nobody has complained about the huge boner in ProgZ's avatar.

Sorry, Miguel, I'm still going through this document correcting the typos.  I didn't know you were planning on releasing so soon.  I'll send it to you as soon as I'm done!   

So, if a black hole is nothing more than a point in space, how is it possible to have something "smaller" than that?  I just don't get it... (I've been reading the wiki article on it, and it's all just registering as scientific gobbledygook)

"Mini" black holes are referring to the mass, not the volume, afaik.  Mini black holes have still collapsed under their own gravity, but their mass is less than the mass of the sun.

I actually just read recently that they found the smallest black hold on record at 3-point-something the mass of the sun.  And as is tradition on the internet, I can't be bothered to check my facts or search for the news article I'm referencing. 

I generally agree.  I like to sleep on something before showing it to the world.  Also, technically, I guess I'm supposed to skip Sheehan and send it on to Tuomas now that it's been 24 hours, but I think I'll give him a little extra time, since we've already lost one writer.

I got two funny PMs from people asking me how much money I would be getting from my Linus Bruckman Sellout Edition.  That was great!

Well done CJ!  Let's see: Sony, Mircrosoft... I predict an AGS-Nintendo merger for next year.

April what?  Never heard of it.

Ok, first update!  I've written and am waiting for Rock_chick to PM me her email address which she didn't want to share in the thread.  I'm not really sure how to start a contemporary urban satire, but I've given it my best shot.

The good news is, it isn't horribly inconsistent yet!

The bad news is, this is just the beginning... 

Edit:  Nevermind, Rock_chick got back to me and apparently she lost interest.  I've sent it on to Babar and Jack Shehan.

I hope you're happy with the money. You've disgraced indie developers everywhere.

I'm sorry you feel that way Rui, but the Microsoft Marketplace Approval Committee assures me that the changes are for the better.  And I've realized that if I want to make games professionally, I need to make a few sacrifices.  If that makes me a sell-out then so be it.

I think that when you see my next game, "Resonance," or, as it's now called, "ReZonance XTreme," you'll see that the compromises have paid off.

Vince, please contact me for Linus music. This is news to me and I'm assuming that my music will be ported to XBox as well, right? In which case, since I own the copyrights, I should be in the deal, no?

Please contact me through PM, or e-mail. You know my e-mail.

Sorry Nik, actually, the Approval Committee also stripped out all the music and replaced it with the Halo soundtrack.  Apologies.

Is it time to make this public now?  I suppose I'm allowed to talk about my game, then.

For the last three months, while this has been going through legal channels, a few games have been used for testing the process of porting AGS to XBOX 360.  What Linus Bruckman Sees When His Eyes Are Closed is on track to be the second AGS release on the XBOX Live Marketplace (after Princess Marian X).  The process is a bit of a headache, though.

Upscaling everything to 1024x768 was the first major challenge.  But it only cost around $12,000 in artists fees to cover that.  The real problem comes when the Microsoft Marketplace Approval Committee gets their hands on it.  They're supposed to make sure that all the games meet a certain level of quality, and suggested a number of changes.  For example, instead of the alien wearing a pink speedo, he's wearing a full suit of spartan armor ala Master Chief.  And instead of trying to solve puzzles, he's gunning down an army of aliens.  The two-games-at-a-time thing had to be cut out too, possibly for budget reasons and partially because the Approval Committee thought that it was "too different to be understood by the target market."  I'm sure that all their wise decisions will improve the game greatly.  I haven't actually seen the game since their internal team has been "correcting" it for the past couple months, but I'm sure the end result will be great.

Plus, I get a generous fraction of a percent of the sales.

Contemporary urban... oh dear...

Fact #1 - the previous story was not very coherent
Fact #2 - nothing has been done to address that issue

Fact #3 - Fact #2 is not actually a fact.

We've all discussed what went wrong with the first attempt.  And luckily for us, aside from, perhaps, the American government, most people are able to learn from their mistakes.

Based on the logic that 'when you do X, Y happens, so if you do X again, Y will happen again'

No use practicing anything then, since no matter how many times you do it, you'll never improve.

Plus, we are doing things quite differently this time.  I'm not sure exactly how Andail is going to organize it, but if the story branches into multiple stories, it should be clear based on the stories' results which writers have learned write a cooperative story well. 

I'm excited to see the different ways a story branches, and the more rules, the less room for divergence.

Rule #1: Read the story-so-far very carefully.
Rule #2: Write something that continues the story and is consistent to the best of your ability.
Rule #3: Your contribution must be under 200 words (or whatever limit Andail decides)
Rule #4: You have 24 hours to write and pass it on from the time it is passed to you.


No one is suggesting a game without rules.  There's just no reason to add any more. We don't need to establish a character because one will be established in the first 200 words.  We don't need to outline a plot beforehand because that would stifle the creativity and ruin the whole branching story idea.  We don't need to argue with Emerald because he'll just keep talking and talking regardless of whether or not he knows anything about the topic until you're arguing over the definitions of words.

Depends what you mean by 'chaos'.

Done!

Could you post line 10 of your code and a couple lines around it?

Likely you've forgotten a semicolon at the end of the line or something.