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Doesn't the comic that features the police line-up poke fun at other major religions also (Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism...)?

I'm a bit curious why we haven't heard an outcry from any members of these other religions? Perhaps those worshippers don't read Danish newspapers...or international news...or live around Muslims.

As far as the cartoons go, they're not as far out there as they could be (like some of the bestiality parallels suggested earlier)... I mean, a lot of them pose valid questions. The cartoon of the artist who's scared to draw the picture or the censor bar/niqaab switch. These are a form of social commentary. Even the Mohammed with a bomb in his turban. I would hope a mature person (Muslim or not) could look past the shock value of it and ask themselves, "Why would this cartoonist view Mohammed in such a way? Maybe it has something to do with the way certain followers of Islam have acted..." If a Muslim looks at it then grabs some Molotov cocktails and goes batshit insane, he's inadvertantly proving the cartoonist's point.

Some of them are self-referencing, talking about the newspaper staffs as trying to stir up a reaction, the "publicity stunt" one, or the "it's just a drawing" one.Ã, 

Personally, I think extremists have latched onto this as an excuse to wreak havoc. I'm sure many Muslims are embarrassed to share the same faith these hooligans profess.

Interesting quotes from this Reuters article http://reuters.myway.com/article/20060223/2006-02-23T175457Z_01_L2369100_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-RELIGION-VATICAN-MUSLIMS-DC.html

Saudi Arabia bans all public expression of any non-Muslim religion and sometimes arrests Christians even for worshipping privately. Pakistan allows churches to operate but its Islamic laws effectively deprive Christians of many rights.

"The West has had relations with the Arab countries for half a century, mostly for oil, and has not been able to get the slightest concession on human rights," he [Monsignor Velasio De Paolis] said.

Perhaps you can post two in-game screenshots and an accompanying description as per the rules.

Or maybe you could just update your existing GIP thread (isn't there one?).

Quickie example... I think these better describe a sort of jungle island.

My monitor is calibrated, Fuzzpile. You should check yours. As for the hues, if you're going to only have three colors, you best make the most fo them.

Hahahahahahahahaha......oh, man. I did not expect to see Manny or Glottis in that statement! Mats unintentional sense of humor cracks me up!

I love the low color style you've got there, Chicky. One concern - the orange may be a bit too saturated. I mean, if the majority of the backgrounds is that color, you might want to tone it down so it doesn't hurt people's eyes. To prevent it from looking bland then, I'd bump up the saturation of your mid value color. Also, I wouldn't use black, but a very saturated dark color. I'd make sure all three colors are different hues.

I know this isn't the CL, but let me know if you want me to demonstrate what I mean.

Hope this helps!

Well, this forum does have an age limit.

If someone is under that, and acts like it, too, I think we're entitled to a little fun.

I would never imagine "hope" and "Pandora's Box" in the same sentence...

Wasn't opening that box a bad thing???

I don't think someone who is printing this shit out and hanging it on the wall should be lecturing the rest of us about wasting our time.

Would you think less of it if you didn't know it was made in Paint? Essentially, the main difference (as far as limited palette raster goes) is that the end result in Paint took more time than the end result would in a better pixel program. It doesn't show he has amazing ability, just a lot of patience. I doubt he could do better with a better program.

It's akin to showing off a mediocre painting and saying you spent 3 years making with ground up clay and pollen only using your non-dominant hand. "Wow, amazing" is not my response.

It's sloppy and Opo def has him beat.

The rest of his work has little bearing on that particular work.

How do you figure? I think it's a good indication of his skill as an artist. Seeing no other works featuring figures makes me suspect he HEAVILY relied on reference photos.

Then you get a job in the industry and make the next big game like The Sims or Half-Life!

Isn't AGS exciting?

I just started playing this. I have to say it reminds me a lot of another game...
the personalities and even some of the objects and locations...

I found a few logical problems with the puzzles.

If I can use the bellows on the tax collector's hairpiece, why can't I use it to blow the hat off the pole? Why wouldn't using the hammer on the crab work? Also, Ced says crushing the beans with a hammer is "unhygenic", but using a live crab's claw is so much cleaner??? The coffee making puzzle to sober someone up is pretty trite, but also wouldn't work. A stimulant would not counter a central nervous system depressent. If anything, it would make things worse. You know, like Irish coffee or Vodka and Red Bull.

If Ced isn't the violent type, why does he have a separate interaction for HIT? Needless to say, I haven't been able to use it. If you're going to include it, you might want to make it a separate solution, like a joke. Maybe it's like an automatic solver for any puzzle. Can't get the hat? Try HIT.

I generally like the sprites, although a few things are a bit weird. The light blue moustache, for instance.

EDIT: Just finished it. I liked the ending, it really wraps things up. Not sure how the gargoyle knows about the tax cuts and all, though. Maybe that could be something better told by Victor and Ced. Maybe Victor can mention how much he saved on taxes because of Ced's apprenticeship or something.

Ultimately, it's the artist, not the tools. With a better pixel program, he could've made the same ridiculously (not quite contiguous) large scene in less time. Perhaps even unified a palette/level of detail/artistic style.

It's painfully obvious where the reference pictures where used (citiscape, eel-creature, penguin, mouse, panda, all the video game chars, sniper, and Gandalf).

Very few people could make an image of that quality without copying and pasting even with a high-end graphics tool.

Hmmmm.... I don't know.

For those who bothered to look, the rest of his art is more or less imitations of pre-Raphaelite junk, minus any figures. Still lifes and landscapes -- the bottom rung of the traditional art hierarchy.

Big Brother: Thanks for the in-depth crit. Most of what you said was obvious, as anyone who reads books on how to write would know (active not passive, show not tell, etc.)...

I'm glad you know this. I never said you didn't, just that I'd like to see more of it in your story.

My problem is the four-thousand word limit I have going on. I wish I could spend more time on these things, but in most of the short stories I've read, the descriptions are left to the reader as the meat of the story is dealt with in the limited word count allotted.

I wouldn't worry about the word limit. You have a good 1500 more before you're around 4000. Usually writers will go over their limit by 1000-2000 words, then revise. A story that's too short is a bigger problem than one that's too long.

When I talk about description, I really mean specificity more than purple prose. Your job is to evoke an image in the reader's imagination. For example, "car" is a very open ended noun, while "Mustang convertible" is more specific. The latter provides extra information. It might illustrate something about the character who drives it. Maybe he's a little flashy. Now I no longer have to say "So-and-so was a flashy guy". I can tell the reader this by the details.

Perhaps instead of "He wanted her" there would be a more powerful image to describe exactly how he wants her or what he wants about her. If we're going to be inside Richard's head, you might as well dwell on his obsession more (since he obviously does).

I think some of your analogies ("He burned in his lust for her, secretly brewing inside him like the endless cups of steaming coffee he made all day", "his soul burned away a bit more like the tip of a cigarette being puffed on by some cosmic force urging him to join the ranks of the other sickly uniform members of society") are far too melodramatic. They stand out from the rest of the narrative, trite and overdone. Remember, short and powerful comparisons can be far more impressive than something drawn out and unnecessarily emo.

Dean Koontz is a horrible writer (all around), but especially when it comes to analogies. A few of them in his literary travesty, "The Face", made me laugh out loud. One was something like "The skeletal branches scratched at the grey sky, which lay over the horizon like a bruised and battered boxer's body."

I noticed a bit of ambiguity around the first murder. It describes his emotion when he decided to kill Dave, then continues to describe the deed. Was this how he imagined to do it, or how he really did do it? It's unclear if his decision to kill occurred on the same night he did kill.

I suggest you find a good local writer's circle and perhaps see if your local community college offers a fiction writing class (with group critiques). It's important to get a lot of input on your work. As Faulkner said, "Kill your darlings." I highly recommend Janet Burroway's "Writing Fiction" as a reference.

I read your story fairly quickly, so most of my crits deal with the writing itself rather than the story. Here are some suggestions on how to improve:

(big issues)

- SHOW don't TELL! It's easy to say that "Richard led a lonely life," or some shit, but it doesn't impact the reader as much as if they can reach that conclusion on their own. Your job as a fiction writer is to paint a story with words. Again, the beauty of writing lies with the specifics you add to the story. What clues can you give the reader to develop Richard's personality and depict his emotions? For instance, look at this short paragraph I wrote:

"Jenny swept down the hall past Richard, trailing girlish laughter and perfume borrowed from her mother's boudoir. Richard turned to watch her, absently tonguing the chip in his front tooth. Her cheerful step and the summer breeze from open windows made her hair bounce dreamily. Those auburn tangles -- the color of the cat his neighbor's owned when he was in grade school. He remembered it lying at the base of the driveway, its ribcage deflated. When he nudged it with the tip of his boot, the blood rippled around the tire."

Notice that I give a little backstory, while both developing Richard's character and progressing the narrative. Richard seems like a creepy stalker, but in adolescent way. When he turns murderer, it will be a shock to the reader, but not a totally unfair one from the storytelling aspect. It introduces the cat as a possible parallel to Jenny, and demonstrates how Richard longs for things that belong to others.

- Developing the setting is very important for any story. Coupled with a implied backstory, you can weave realism into your plot. How old is Richard? Where does he live? What does it look like? Neglecting description is a neophyte mistake. I'm not saying you have to make it obvious, like "His name had been Richard for all 16 years of his life, and no one at his middle-class, predominantly Caucasian public school had called him Rich, ever." Maybe just drop more clues, like "During junior year, he noticed Dave and Jenny had moved their desks closer together."

- Pace: resist the urge to speed up the narrative until the parts you wanted to write about more. Keep in mind that the reader, unlike you, knows nothing about the story or the characters. It's easy to forget that a lot of this background information is only in YOUR head.
"Richard was a creepy kid, especially after he killed the person closest to being a friend. Now on to the grisly parts, where he used a wood axe for the murder, which involved lots of mutilation especially around the sternocleidomastoid muscle..."
See what I mean? You want the character to look like the weird one, not the writer.

(smaller issues)

- Try to employ the active voice. Reworking your sentences to feature interesting verbs instead of helping verbs will inject vigor into your writing.

- Eliminate unecessary words. Very, quite, even, just....

- Pay close attention to the beginning and ending of your sentences. Typically, the last word determines the emphasis of the statement. For instance:
"It wasn't altogether unusual or unexpected when he hacked someone up with a wood axe one day." This is a startling revelation, but you downplay it.
“One day, quite expectedly, he took a wood axe from the toolshed and beheaded Dave.” This sentence better captures your reader's interest.

- Many of your transitions seem awkward and choppy. Try reading aloud to streamline the writing.

- The analogy about the maggots and ice cream struck me as totally unecessary. It seemed like you thought you came up with something clever and broke the style just to fit it in.

- The omniscience of your narrative voice detracts from any mysterious element that could otherwise be developed. Mystery is a good way to accentuate the horror of the situation. This story just wasn't scary. It read very matter-of-fact.

- Title: I'm not sure why you would reference Greek lore in the title, since nothing in the theme coincides, other than the axe (which is present in the title also, negated the novelty).

What's so great about the robbery?

I bet they pay extra for skid marks...

Maybe try google image searching pictures of ganstas, rappers, and other posers.

The name reminds me of:
http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/cosmos-cosmic-adventure-forbidden-planet

Wow...it's the LEC Indiana Jones sprite!

I've always thought Christian morality existed more like the scientific "laws" of the universe. When something strays from the "law", a consequence (predictable pattern) is suffered, similar to karma. (Insert verses about ill-gained riches, and money that sprouts wings and flies away, etc.)

Christianity shouldn't be a rulebook that's impossible to live by (the best you can do is get close). There are a lot of Christians that censure those who dance or bowl. Those familiar with the Old Testament realize that God gave the Jews many holdiays (some lasting for weeks, filled with drinking and dancing). I don't think there's anything wrong with celebrating humanity, or expressing your joy to be alive with others. I think that can be done without losing sight of our Creator. (Calvinism directly opposed this, and played upon people's self-righteous indignity, leading to narrow-minded fundamentalism)

It's not so much that every action can either be "moral" or "immoral", but that it can fall within a range of God's will. I say range, because God's will isn't a binary state. It's like a target where there's a bullseye, the ideal mark. But, like a target, it's not either bullseye or out-of-bounds. There are several areas that get closer or farther away. This would be God's grace.

I think as soon as we start saying "such and such" is WRONG, we end up fighting a battle of definitions, something that leads to the religious legalsim exhibited by the Pharisees. They were proud of the fact they had embellished upon the 613 laws of the Torah, specifying exactly what could be done on the Sabbat before it was considered "work" (even as far as restricting how much you could walk on this holy day).

Jesus had a more holistic apporach. He didn't reject anyone because of who they were or what they did. He emphasized the intention (or spirit) of the law, rather than its exact interpretation. His goal was not to prevent us from having fun. but to prevent us from destroying ourselves in the process.

So would God want us to use that vein for heroine? Although the Bible doesn't specifically say anything about smack, I would say probably not. Giving yourself an opportunity for addiction would interfere with other priorities. However, I can't say that heroine use in itself is morally WRONG. God looks at your motives.

Here's a quick paintover to show you how you could convey his personality.

2x zoom, 9 colors?