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It's no big deal, I just thought I would share what I was going through so you could understand who I am a little better.  We are people after all, even if we do hide the fact behind firewalls and computer screens.

Speculum?

It's all good - people get over things.

1. Don't use that kind of language on this forum.

If you're not a moderator, don't pretend to be one.

Neither are you, so don't not pretend to not be one either.

Yeah, get back in the Tech Forum where you ARE a moderator, Gilbot!  

PS, love the triple negative, alex!

What version of AGS are you using jakerpot? Because I reported this a while ago, and CJ fixed it.


PS Love the Gilbot, SSH

I should have said stop not pretending to not be none neither.

And no, I haven't had this hotspot problem...  Everything works for me.

1. Don't use that kind of language on this forum.

If you're not a moderator, don't pretend to be one.

Neither are you, so don't not pretend to not be one either.

Here's my entry.  Presumably it's just ok to post them directly into the thread?  Entry follows:

Grey clouds blanketed the valley as the zippy Zundapp motorbike picked its way gently down the worn dirt track.  Tired and exhausted from the long ride out of middle earth, Gandalf's hands were almost frostbitten.  "Damn it!  I knew I should have purchased some riding gloves at the previous village!  My hands are like fucking ice blocks!" he shouted into the wind with a look of overly adjectived fury.  "Damn Hobbits" he grumbled.  "And damn you God!!!"

"Do not worry about it my brother" said Jesus, jolting gaily alongside in the sidecar.  "I, Jesus, Son of God, shall warm them for you.  It is the least I can do to repay you for setting the groundwork for my father's cultural invasion of Middle Earth."

Jesus's eyes flared a piercing red and laser beams suddenly shot towards Gandalf's hands.

"Fuck! That hurt!" screamed Gandalf.  "By the fires of Mordor I shall cast thee into the pits of..."

A massive lightning bolt suddenly smashed down from the heavens, vaporising the pair into component particles.  A booming chorus of bellicose laughter followed, rending the clouds asunder with their very might.

"From within the torn rift descends a God unseen by mankind for many an age!" shouted a town crier in a distant village as the events unfolded before him on CNN.  "Behold, cast your eyes upon Thor, god of thunder!  He smashes to the ground with a shout, tearing aside the mountains themselves, and slowly, as the dust settles, he rises to his feet."

"I am the God of this world!" Thor shouted defiantly into the wind.  "Let any who oppose me, God or Mortal, come forth now and challenge me to the death!"

"To the death?" said a small voice from below.

"Yes!" Thor bellowed, "To the... hey, who said that!"

Looking down at his feet, Thor could barely see the creature who had spoken.  He squinted against his failing eyesight but still couldn't quite make out the figure who had come forth to question him.

"It is I, Jimmny Cricket."

"Jimmny who?"

"Cricket.  Look...  Don't you know that fighting to the death is a really mean thing to do to someone?  Would you like it if splurk?" said Jimmny, as his head was forced through his intestines by Thor's right big toe.

"Muhahahaha!" laughed Thor, as the story ended.

Alex:
Bio Menace doesn't use the Duke Nukem engine, it uses the
scrolling engine from "Commander Keen: Goodbye, Galaxy!" 

Cool thanks

Hey has anyone mentioned The Lost Vikings yet?

I can't really give much by way of artwork and progress shots at the moment as I am away from home, for the next month at least.  As a result I haven't said anything about the game in the works in progress forum because the rules there forbid me from presenting ideas without substantial supporting material.  I promise as soon as I get home I will put some details up.

In the game you are an office runabout for a magizine, a nobody in the structure of the business but a nobody with some interesting and useful skills.  Anyhow, the idea is to give a kind of creepy, heavy forboding atmosphere to the entrance to the editors office.  It's not supposed to be inviting, it's supposed to be dreaded / met with healthy respect for the power of the editor.  The intercom on the wall to the right of the door is the main mode of communication into the office, if you can find a way around the secretary you may actually get to go into the office.  I don't want to spoil the game too much about what the inside of the office will be like.  I am going for offbeat and cartoony, not cartoony and giggly, if that makes sense?  I might have given the wrong impression of what I was after.

I have never been happy with the water dispenser, thanks for pointing that out, I think I will just get rid of it altogether.  As for the suit of armor, I'll have a closer look at it, maybe moving it forwards or backwards in the scene could make it fit better.

Cheers.

Stereo panning shouldn't be hard to add.  I have programmed a few synthesizers and generally I include a panning, volume and stereo separation knob.

Linear panning is simple.  Use a float value between 0 (left) and 2 (right), with 1 equal to the center point.  When the sound is fully left, the resulting left channel is Left + Right.  The resulting right channel is 0.  Vice versa for the right channel.

With linear panning as the sound moves from side to center it seems to move closer then further away again, peaking in volume/percieved closeness at about 45 degrees.

Circular panning gives a more realistic impression of a sound source moving around your head.  Rather than a linear relationship between pan position and volume / mix of left and right channels, the relationship is nonlinear.  You can use any parametric function to define the relationship but generally an inverse square law ensures the power of the sound remains at the same percieved level as a sound pans from left to right.

Various stereo seperation techniques can be used to give a wider perception of the soundfield than your speakers or headphones can really produce, thanks to some interesting psychoacoustic effects.  A basic technique is to sightly delay the left or right channel by a few milliseconds.  By adjusting the delay you can give an interesting panning effect without changing the power of either channel.

You can make a stereo field greater than 100% panning.  If you invert the left channel and mix it in with the right channel and vice versa, you begin widening the percieved stereo field.  The more inverted signal you mix in, the greater the percieved surround effect.  Combine this with channel delay and circular panning, and you have 3 basic tools for creating more immersive sounds.

Then we could always add HRTF's...

It's a deviancy amplification spiral.  Check it out on wikipedia sometime.  These things happen when the media focusses on certain elements of society with just the right mix of seasoning and sauces.

I write music, my site www.soundportfolio.com has some demos and whatnot.

I also do web design, and I can code, but lately I've been doing more music (most of which hasn't found its way onto my site yet - a web designers site is never finished)...

Arj0n:
Descent was a great game (I felt really proud that I could manouver in full 720 degrees when friends still struggled with doom )

But this one was top down, 2d.   It was quite smooth and bouncy.  I have been searching for it and can't find it.

Also the troll game is so close but I remember the actual game was based in dos in a lower resolution.  Hm, anyway it's not important because...

I just remembered "Bio Menace", I played this one a bit, did it use the same engine as duke nukem?

Well, compared to your first picture at the start of this thread, your new one is a definite improvement and it's not even fully colored yet.

Nice work, I am interested to see where this goes.

edit: Can I just add I really like the way you've animated the development process here...  It would be a good educational tool for anyone reading this thread wanting to make their own rooms

I get you now...  That looks pretty good, the shadow under the sign does make the scene look more believable.

Thanks for taking the time to do this, I will have a play with the original tonight and post my results.

As I am away from home I can't demonstrate it in-game yet, not for a few weeks at least, but I have plenty of time to draw backgrounds

Good stuff, thanks mate.  Glad to see this isn't a forum that will bash a guy for speaking out about icky "feelings"

I would make the vent shaft a couple of pixels wider on the right so it lines up with the invisible but implied right hand face of the locker beneath it - or - move the whole vent right about 2 or 3 pixels.

The tool rack is to the left of the hood above it.  Either move the whole tool rack right or the hood left.

Also, the box directly to the right of the tool rack on top of the other box is wrong on the bottom back left corner...  The back edge should extend down until it meets the top of the underneath box.

Anyway thats just what I see.   I thought the walk behind area was a good idea...  Maybe try it a bit wider too, instea of a pile in the middle, make it stretch across the whole screen from left to right.

That is what I would try.

I've registered an ABN which is free, and have a sole proprietorship for Southern Studios, which I have listed as an IT, Design and Development business.

That's in Australia.

Registering a business over here provides a small degree of protection against IP infringement and lets me operate under that name.  if another company tried to take the name "Southern Studios" I could sue for damages if I felt it conflicted with my ability to carry on under my name however for real protection I would need to get a trademark registered, which is expensive and not worth it unless I am raking in more money.

I can't see those images, try uploading them to a different server.  Moby Games apparently doesn't like direct linking.

Anyway, if it's this "Jetpack" then you're right: http://www.adeptsoftware.com/jetpack/

Funny I thought it had a different name.  I should have just googled "Jetpack game"...  crimmeny.

Commander Keen, Halloween Harry, Kilo Blaster, Duke Nukem...  Yes those were the days.  Jill of the Jungle and Vinyl Goddess From Mars they were OK but girly games.

Who can forget Epic Pinball?



or Raptor Call of the Shadows?



or Rise of the Triad (Ludicrous Gibs!!!)



Or Death Rally



Those are some of my more memorable gaming experiences.  There were others, like Secret Agent: The Hunt for Red Rock Rover which I remember as being quite entertaining.

There was this one game where you were some troll or something and you ran around collecting fruit and jumping up in trees or something.  I really can't properly remember it, but it was weird.  Anyone have any clue what that might be?  I seem to recall the title screen having a bunch of creatures and people running around and jumping etc.

Finally, there was this Jetpack game, not sure what it was called, but the full version came with a level editor which let you build your own levels to jetpack around in...  hmm... 

Things are starting to flood back now...  What was that game where you flew a ship around a maze, shooting turrets, bouncing off walls, a bit like a single player subspace?

Cool thanks for the encouragement Nacho.  This is important to me because I intend to be using AGS for quite some time and want to get along with the people who make it what it is.

Maybe other people don't see me the way I do, but I made a comment about the IRA I self-edited because I realised I was just acting like a dick with no right to make that comment, and in a couple of other threads where I've tried to make some pointless point just a little too forcefully for my liking.  I guess it's my guilty conscience.

10 weeks early is fine these days, it's just the trauma of being seperated from my baby for a week, travelling 400km to be with her, living in a tiny room away from home and our other daughter, not having any money to spare, watching our baby get infections, go pale, start losing her heartbeat, needing injections and tests and cables and all that...  It's a real stressful time.

What happened to my friend was just fucking mad / wrong / wasteful.  He's a couple of years younger and like a brother.  He was helping out a mate when some guy shot him through the heart with a crossbow - the bolt passed through him and landed on the other side of the street.  This happened in a nice suburb, kids were playing in the street,  a person who I had some great memories with is just gone, before I had a chance to do a whole bunch of stuff I was putting off for the future.  It's just a real waste.  The hardest day was the day of the funeral, as I am really closer to his brother, indeed he was a half brother of my brother in law, so he was technically family.  It's just a waste of life...  Our whole family (including his) is still shaken, I'm still angry about it, hence the reason I am sensitive about it spilling over into here and my apologies if it has.

But I am here because I want to try and get on with things and restore some normalcy to my life.