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Voting this time was a bit of an adventure for me.  I saw that one-screen and the "ambitious" alternative and immediately went for the alternative, thinking that the other game didn't have a chance.

I was immediately impressed with crave, animations, little scripting tricks, etc.  I didn't find the sexuality really all that meaningful, but then little extras like dringing a stick-figure drink won me over.  And then the x-ray vision.  I thought it was a joke at first, since I couldn't get it to work on that pad at all.  I then checked the manual--no instructions, I guess it's so secret you can't explain how it works in the instructions.  The I read a little more about the game and decide to try out this x-ray feature.  It's a neat idea but I can't seem to read anything without causing great strain in my arm and hand.  It's too frustrating and hardly classifies as a skill or a puzzle.  Also, no music/sound fx makes for very boring gameplay.

So I put down crave and come back the next day.  Still no luck.  I download chalk's quest.  It's cute, though annoying that you can't skip the dialogues (I read faster than the stick-guy does).  The music is appropriate and I like the animation/drawing better in this one.  Then, I make the ultimate mistake.  I finish the game.

Not much of a puzzle, and not enough self-reflexive commentary for it to entirely work as a joke game.  I didn't like that a chalk man could be protected by

Spoiler

although it is unneccesary since the game will be solved the moment you see the scene, I should hide : a chalk umbrella

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--I mean, I get the joke, but I would have liked some way to make the object stronger than ordinary chalk.  However, I do go back into it and after waiting through the slow opening sequence, I enjoy just clicking around at different things.

The game is cute, but too brief.

I try crave again, hoping the "frequency" clue will help.  It's still a lushly illustrated game with some neat tricks, but no matter how I cramp-up my hand, I can't solve the puzzle in which you must read the text on the letter (it says something xxxx, something, but that's all I can see).  Maybe it has something to do with my particular mouse, but it's just not working for me.  That and the fact that most of the nudity really seems entirely supurflous makes it a hard one to vote on.

So in the end, I feel that Crave is a better game with more effort and time put in, and I would love to see a polished version, but Chalk's quest, which feels like a tiny polished stone gets my vote.

But don't follow my trend.  They're both interesting games with good use of the restrictions.  This is one I would hate to influence.

Good work!

You're mistaking a necessary condition (of all jobs) for the requisite condition.  Yes, those fields take work, no, breaking in is not impossible, but a good measure of your success is having connections (or building them), being willing to utterly fail, having resources, and luck (or, if you, as I do, don't believe in luck, random unpredictable conditions).

Often (though not always), the people that break into such fields are hard workers (and even if they aren't they'll tell you they are), but that does not mean that many people who work as hard or harder don't succeed.

The key in my mind is to not set up a "pass or fail" life-plan, but rather plan to do many kinds of work and work on your projects and grander career goals with other smaller goals.  Many great artists did it this way, and until you get lucky AND respected AND skilled enough to get paid a consistant income, you will actually have food and not be depending on your family or gullable life-partner.

Also, from people I know, remember these three mantras:

Rarely is your hobby fun when you're doing it for money.
Rarely is the money good when you treat your job like a hobby.
Hobby work and show-biz are seasonal and/or occasional, even for all but the most famed people in the biz.  Plan on having other fallbacks even if your plan is to be the next Bradd Pitt or Steven Spielburg.

OR:

Join an autonomous collective.  No money worries, no compromising your art and the possibility of overthrowing the entire political system and getting a statue in your honour.

My brother and I came up with a pantheon of "absurd" (not merely "silly") villains and heroes years ago, and I did a few comics.

Of those I drew, my favourite is "Christmas Tree" a giant talking christmas tree.  Everything he did was iconic to the comics.  He appears by shattering through a skylight, pot and all (he has no mouth or eyes or any cartoony features) and immediately demands all the "Mr. Sponge" action figures.

When the heroes confront him he has this incredibly bad line, "Eat ornaments do gooders!"  and shoots a barrage of tinsel and bulbs.  Just fun to do.  Possibly the stupidest idea for a villain I've ever seen -- except for my favourite, below.

My favourite "super" villains of all time though (not just villains, because that makes things far too complex) are a mix between Magneto, the Joker (same reasons as those above, though I mostly know them through descriptions of the novels and comics, and from the movies and cartoons having rarely ever read them), Boy and Girl and the Chairman.

Boy and Girl were invented by my younger brother, and are two percotious children that happen to be insanely powerful.  At one point they turn the creator of the universe into a monkey riding a tricycle.  They can destroy the entire earth in less than a blink, and often do.  Their only weaknesses are that they are easy to distract (with toys or videos or what-have-you) for a few minutes at a time, and that they obey their parents (two celestial beings with no real powers, per se) and their babysitter, the Tower of Evil.

But if he had had more than one appearance in a comic, by and large my favourite villain would have  been the Chairman.  Every panel of his scuffle with Spiderman made less sense taken out of context than the last, and the entire premise blows my attempts at parody out of the water.  You can't parodize this, folks:

http://www.seanbaby.com/hostess/spidman20.htm

Mmm, chairs.


EDIT: Looking again, my favourite bit of that comic is right around panels 4 and 5.  THe more I think about it (my mistake) the less sense any of it makes, from the internal logic of the comic itself, through to the attempt to actually sell cakes.

To add uneccesarily, in a play (theatrical production), there are sometimes 3 visible walls (backstage, and 2 sides).  The audience is watching the play through an imaginary 4th wall.  Same with television (especially obvious with sitcoms).  It is impossible to see the action through a wall, of course, and hear it as clear as we do.  Therefore, when a play calls attention to the fact that it is being perfomed (often by addressing the audience directly), you are "breaking" that imagined fourth wall.   

Incidentally, it isn't "opening a door through the 4th wall", but breaking it -- that wall is broken and is going to take some work if you want to repair it.  Breaking the 4th wall breaks immersion, but sometimes creates a new "4th" wall between the actors as they pretend the wall is broken, their imaginary audience and the actual audience.

I had a big-long post about storytelling styles, but it was messy and mostly pointless.  My advice is to not have A reason to enter the game, but many.  Start off with one perhaps, and then twist it a bit as you go along so as to not have the obvious "premise-game-return to premise for bosses" mode. 

For example, if Susan's son is lost in the house, it makes sense for her to go in and solve a few puzzles/dodge things.  But how long would she be in there before getting out, getting sensible and calling for some help?  Now, a manipulative writer could just keep giving her glimpses of her son to go deeper into the maze, but there are more clever ways to twist the basic plot.  What if she tries to get out but can't--then the mystery would change gears a bit.  What if she finds her son/the treasure/Her father's will but the son came in for something even more important [or] now they can't get out again [or] the son has found a treasure map they can use together [or] there is a voicing calling from deeper in [or] the one item she wanted from the treasure is missing [or] her father has asked her to retrieve something from the top floor.

New twists can be added in at various points, perhaps calling into question the purpose of the whole quest, or pushing back the end-point or adding a new level of complexity.  It's not necessarily very hard, and makes the plot less superficial.

Mine would not be a sequel.  I know that isn't the topic, but hey, why start a new thread.

Basically, it's a RTS between ninjas, pirates, knights, cowboys, space people and cavepeople (riding dinosaurs).

None of these groups would be all that powerful on their own, or at least, each would have their own crippling weakness, and none would have all that many types of units, so gameplay would rely on choosing missions to build alliances with one or more groups, allowing for hybrid units.

For example, the quasi-medieval group have Sorcerers, but have little or no stealth, while the east-asian Japanesque army has stealth but little protection from large space-airstrikes.  You could set up an aliance with them and develop ninja magic and crossover weapons (using gunpowder)/steeds.

The spacepeople have some of the strongest weapons and access to a lot of air attacks, but cannot breathe the atmosphere and thus can be killed easily on missions that require walking on the surface (with weak, exposed air supplies).  With the help of the cavepeople, howver, they'd have powerful dinosaurs and better techniques for hiding a base or finding supplies.  Plus, they could develop cyborg-dinosaurs.

The cowboys have guns and amazing accuracy, but don't have an organized army or anything more than the most primitive air access, making them among the weakest overall, but could join with the pirates, who have similar goals (wealth) and have access both to powerful gun-ships, and flying pirate ghost-ships.  You could then have ghost-riding cowboys with cannon-arms.

Or: space-cowboys/cowboys riding dinosaurs, Caveperson wizards, spacemen with swords or pirates with the stealth powers and weapons of ninjas.

The goal would be maleable, allowing for about 4 possible endings, world peace through mutual alliances, world dominance through your alliance (defeat of the other side), world dominance by turning on all your allies and eventually beating them all with your hybrid technology/magic, or utter and total defeat.  I was thinking it would all take place on a new world in an alternate dimension with all kinds of bizarre and useful resources that each group stumbled into through some inter-dimensional gateway, perhaps all at different times.   Possibly, the cavepeople would have always have been there, giving them a tactical advantage.

Also, one last thing I thought of was how ridiculous the battles could be, with some good animations.  Imagine: You're in your village, with berry collection doing well, and you have   nearly enough of those worthless yellow stones to appease your new ally, when suddenly, the enemy sends in an army of low-flying saucers with bombing ability.  Quickly, you send your wizards to summon a forcefield which effectively neutralizes the bombing, and one of your t-rexes grabs a saucer out of the air with its teeth.  Just about simultaneously you send in Pteredactyl riding knights to joust with the saucers and send cavepeople to the roost to raise more.  The battle is doing well when the spacepeople send in a mothership and begin powering it up over your base.  If they get a shot off, it should nullify the forcefield and kill your supply of wizards, allowing for easy air access.  Plus, an army of spacepeople with accurate compound bows (the kind your allies can't build yet) materialize from smoke and rush the base.  The first fall into your spike traps, but the next have the ability to leap right over them.  Luckily, you do have sword-weilding cavemen, among the strongest ground troops.   If you lose here, you may be pushed into the caves for the next stage, where you should have an advantage, but if you lose there, you may lose the support from the King--and there are rumours of talks with Black Bart...

etc.

* People always tear off the top sheet of a memo pad after writing something on it. However, in order to be fair to you, the player, they press really hard with the pencil, so you know what to do.

While not a bad device since it works / is sometimes useful in the real world, it's very over-used.  I don't know what special techniques PCs have, but I can never make out more than a vague guesstimate of the tablet's prior contents. 

The best use of this is in The Big Lebowski, where it doesn't work at all.  Well, it does *work* I suppose.

EDIT: Ooops, didn't notice the third page, so this comes waaay late in the conversation.

Spoiler

Always use extra letters in your words to come off as a true wordsmith and not a moron

[close]

Walkcycle sketch you say?

WALKCYCLE SKETCH:

MAN: Excuse me, I was wondering if you could complete a walkcycle for me, please?
SALESMAN (suddenly very annoyed):  Pardon me?
MAN:  Er... I mean... a walkcycles?  With legs and arms moving--an animation.  This is an animation studio, isn't it?
SALESMAN:  Oh, yes.  Sorry.  I thought you said, "I demand that you have sex with me right now."
MAN:  Oh... er...
SALESMAN:  I guess it was sort of a silly conclusion to leap to, really.  I mean, it did sound like you said "walkcycle" -- I really don't know why I jumped to that conclusion.
MAN:  Uh, right.  So, uh...
SALESMAN:  I guess it's just I'm a little sensitive, that' s all.
MAN: Ah.
SALESMAN:  Again, sorry.
MAN:  Right.  So are you taking--
SALESMAN:  NO I AM NOT!!!
MAN: Um... sorry?
SALESMAN:  You sick bastard.
(SALESMAN 2 comes in)
SALESMAN2: Something wrong, Jim?
MAN: Um, I just asked if he could do a walkcycle and he keeps--
SALESMAN2:  Ooh, you *are* naughty, I will have to discipline you.
SALESMAN:  Sick! You're both sick!
MAN:  No, look, I'm not looking for sex!
SALESMAN2: You're not?
MAN: NO!
SALESMAN: Well, what did you want then?
MAN:  I want... oh, I just wanted an animation done!
(Sensor walking on)
SENSOR (OFF):  I'm sorry, sorry
(Walking on)
SENSOR (to camera/audience): Stop filming please.  (To players) Right, I am Gene Mundlebeehicks, and I'm going to have to shut down this sketch. (Shows badge).
SALESMAN2:  Well, I hardly think--
SENSOR:  Don't think--don't think eh?  Smut.  Absolute smut.
MAN:  I'm just asking for a walkcycle done.
SENSOR (suddenly very compliant):  Well all right, just once, and he (poining to SALESMAN2) has to watch.
MAN:  All right.
(they all begin to disrobe)

END

Apparently, according to Nelson Mandela's (auto?)biography, when he was in the early stages of freedom fighting, he used to smuggle whole magazines of ammunition and guns under his clothing on planes flying in and out of Africa.

It was certainly doable.

Hmm, it seems I have the wrong definition of "trope" at least in the classical usage (though I am using it how I have seen it among other writers).

Trope is actually any use of figeratives, metaphors, similie, synechtoche (my spelling may be off) that changes the meaning of the word, but that's not how I'm using it here.  Perhaps, instead of "trope" I should have said "archetype" or "type".

Archetype you probably know, but just to be absolutely clear, here is a list from most general and widely used to most closely copied:

Archetype: Broad idea, the original concept from which copies are made.  Joseph Campbell was always obsessed with these, saw them shared  in all societies.  I disupte his research methods, but it was in part his analysis of basic archetypes that led his friend George Lucas to create the film of archetypes, Star Wars.  Basically everything that happens in episodes 4-6 is an archetype.  The hero's journey is the most famous of these among filmmakers.

Type: A generally understood person, or event or whatnot.  Like the older librarian.  We know the type and little more has to be said to recognize them.  So the forlorn prince is a type that may be in the archetype of the hero's journey against an evil foe.

Stock/Flat: An event or a person is one of these if they are basically just a mesh of types and stereotypes with little or no variation.  The overweight schoolyard bully is a type and is often a stock character.  He is flat if he never changes or breaks from the mold in any way.  The quest to find one's father is a bit of a stock quest, and it would be flat if not twisted in some way.

The above are all borrowed, un-riffed ideas.  As we move down the list, though, there are more clearly stolen ideas, if at first unintentional.

Cliche:  In literary terms, this is usually something so overused that it has lost its original meaning.  The stock character of the bully of course has a couple of goons who are afraid of him.  And the hero says "You can't get away with this!" -- what does the villain say?  It's so obvious it is beneath comment.  A lot of sayings are cliche when used in art, such as "A penny saved is a penny earned" --but that is not a cliche in itself.  It's just a saying.  If, however, you used it as the moral of a story, or as a character's realization, it would be cliche (accent over e).  For example.  "It was that day [hackneyed] that David learned that a penny saved is a penny earned [cliche]."  Or if you were to work one into a description, "Jennifer was as cold as ice [cliche], but Jeff played it cool as a cucumber [cliche]" or into a situation "In this puzzle the hero [archetype] must outsmart the stupid bully [stock] to save his girl [cliche]" -- these can all be okay if you're commenting on them--like to have a 50's character, he might actually say "Cool as a cucumber" -- but even then it might be worth riffing a bit.

Hack: Comes from hackney, which originally had something to do with horses, but now refers to something that is used, or over-used.  You can spot a hack comedian or performer because everything they say is funny and none of it sounds like it came from their own experience--it all feels familiar.  It's hack writing to say "The sun came up in a blaze of glory" --it's not quite cliche, but it is over-used.  Hacks sometimes unintentionally use a common idea or theme that is just floating around, sometimes actually steal a line or an image or a way of doing something and then just change it slightly so it isn't plagarism.

Plagarism: One step down further from hack.  You know what this means.  Stolen material, uncredited.   Usually fairly original material ripped off directly.  This is different than a sample or sampling, which just takes a bit and re-contextualizes/decontextualizes it.

Even a plagarized idea can work--many great writers and artists admit to stealing an idea--but most who are truly better than hacks and thieves actually riff quite a bit to create something more original.  They may not call it riffing though.

Excuse my lack of accents over e's.  I don't want to bother with ascii or the character map.

1.  It is important to distinguish between cliche and trope.

It is possible, for example to have a story that is about a princess kidnapped by an evil dragon that is not cliche.  It is not, however, possible to have a story about a helpless princess captured by an evil dragon saved by a handsome knight that is not to some degree cliche.  Even Shrek, which bent the trope, still ended up feeling a little cliche.

2.  Cliches are never good in good writing, unless occasionally when being parodied or commented upon.  However, cliches are occasionally necessary.  Trope are virtually unavoidable, and often desirable.

3.  Popular does not = good, any more than it is equal to bad.  They are two separate concepts.  In adventure game language, we can agree that adventure games are currently fairly unpopular (at least compared, say, to FPS game), but that does not make them not good.  Therefore, unpopular is not equal to bad.  However, in its time, Monkey Island was relatively popular.  Popular is not equal to bad.  I don't want to get into popular but "bad" games, though I would argue there are many.  I'm sure you can think of your own examples.

4.  There is no reason to set your highest sights at the lowest art that exists.  Your game could be the best in the world in some category.  Unless you are Igor or Loominous or someone similar, you're unlikely to ever have the best graphics (in terms of generally appreciated artistic quality).  As has been pointed out, few games have yet made the same level of artistry as the average film or published novel.  Some games have, as I would argue say Grim Fandango (in style, if not substance), Final Fantasy VI (in emotional content if not characterization) and a few others.  But all games are capable of being great expressions of "gameness" (like Tetris, pure beautiful gameplay, or Mario-Kart) or of art (say, for starters, at the 2001 A Space Odyssy level, or Homage to Catalonia, or Pride and Prejudice, or They Might Be Giant's "Flood" or whatever your favourite piece of art is).

5.  It is therefore possible that a great RPG could be made that was not about saving the world (this is a trope [an archetype, actually, ed], not a cliche, in my view) and be great transcendent art.  Terrinigma was one RPG that started to build against the more cliche aspects of saving the world.  It is also possible to avoid many other well-tread realms of game making and create something new and truly "out-there"--Too many writers start from tropes or cliches and do very little to challenge or build on them.  RL & BAT is a good example of "out there" -- though today it is buggy, a little rough (with some weak humour), and it is not everyone's cup of cocoa (here I twist an old cliche), the game pushed enough boundaries and questioned enough Adventure game tropes [archetype!] and cliches to be on my very small list of truly experimentally artistic games.

Myself, I would like to start from tropes [types, I think, possibly archetypes] and then dissolve them, corrupt them and wedge them apart until nothing is left but aspects under a magnifying glass, recursive reflections on a genre, a feedback loop that either must become parody or dark irony, though I have largely failed so far.

6.  That prejudice towards unique art that stands apart from the mass, the culture melange does not exclude one from self-consciously making a genre piece.  It just is meant as encouragement (and self-encouragement) to open up more creative avenues as well.

To sum up:  Cliches almost always bad, tropes [archetypes/types] often unavoidable, but it is possible to collapse them, most easily from the inside than without.

----------------

How to Avoid Cliches

I just wanted to add this edit.  It's a trick I learned in First or Second year creative writing at University, and I've adapted it a bit into a system.  It's pertinent to this conversation so I thought I'd take a moment to share it.

First of all, there is also a distinction between cliche and hack.  Hack (hackney), in my view, is closer to plagarism than cliche, which is closer than trope.  If you have this feeling that something has been done before, it's probably hack.  Hack is often unintended, but is harmful.  If you write something that feels too wonderful to be your own first thought, ask yourself if you've heard of it before, and then ask your friends.  Chances are you saw it somewhere obscure, but they stole it from the muppet show.  Or something.  If everybody's heard of it, then it's cliche.

Anyway, this technique fixes hack, cliche and reliance on tropes.  Take something that could be cliche.  Let's say Princess kidnapped by wily dragon, saved by prince.  A trope with cliche aspects.  Now break it down into its component parts.  This is step one.  You have a kidnapping, a dragon who kidnaps, a princess who is captured, and a rescuing prince.  This next part is called "riffing" according to my prof.  You take one aspect and "riff" off it until you have something relatively new.  I could say shuffle the order and just make the dragon rescue the prince from the wily princess.  But that's more of a simple twist, it could go further.  Robert Munch would make the princess rescue herself from the stupid dragon and then from the stupid prince.  Those Shrek guys would make the prince an ogre and the real prince a monster.  But it could go farther.  What if instead of a dragon, we have a garden gnome.  That's parody.  Okay, what about if we made it a snake.  Say in a garden instead of a castle.  Now that's leaning towards symbolism.  What about if we set it in modern times.

The more you riff, the more you see what alternatives are out there.  You can riff each aspect or the whole idea.  Once you do your riffing, think, "could this work this way."  If not, why not?  Is it just because it's too weird or too original?  Or does it break the tone you want?  If none of those, maybe you're just getting too stuck in pre-concieved ideas.  Really think about what it would mean if the prince was being rescued from a princess by another prince?

So isolate aspects, riff, consider and analyze, riff again.  Decide whether you want something wholly distinct from the original cliche/hackneyed idea/trope, or whether you want something reminiscent.  Once you have a jockey rescuing a german fishmonger and his daughter from their pathological fear of snakes in modern times, you're maybe losing the original idea, but possibly onto something new.

So that's how I was taught to break cliches (though I don't always do it-- because I'm lazy).  Try this one:  "Post-apocolyptic future in  the desert with images of the "big brother" figure on the wall.  An uprising starts from a dark, unwilling hero"  -- what could change here and what would it mean?

Just trying to share!  Sorry if this is too off-topic!

Is it illegal to say, put mp3 of some x song (read Stairway to Heaven) or use music from some famous game?
I mean, it's not like you're gonna sell that game or anything.

I think the point is that the big huge megolithic super company with lasers and robots and a two-headed spider that shoots spiny balls of light that owns the music will not get a profit out of all the people you'd be sharing the music with.  They'd be getting the music for free, which is worse than you making a profit.  If you and they both made  a profit, that would be another matter entirely.

Basically copywrite law is designed to make AOL Time-Warner-Turner-IBM-Microsoft 4000 make money, and anything which doesn't maximize that is illegal.  Except for radio, which somehow counts as advertising.

The human ass doesn't have a metal flap, and it does just fine.

Oh... hang on, never mind.

Now I'm thinking of installing one.

Don't have any insight into your primary question - why don't you just try it and see?

I think I will.  If you don't know of any particular reason it won't work then there can be no harm in trying.

Thanks!

This image is taken off someone else's site, so I'm just linking to it, not putting it in the message itself:

http://bonusweb.idnes.cz/obrazek/ff6psx_10.jpg

It's an example of Mode 7 to sort of bend the landscape in quasi-3d so it feels less flat than a traditional map screen.

That's not the primary question though.  I was just curious if it was possible to make larger screens if you didn't use the pathfinder.

Okay, I'm making a large map that the characters can explore the world from.  I know that the pathfinder can't handle anything higher than that (I also tried to see, and indeed it didn't work).  I only would need a few hundred more pixels to get a nicely-spaced world map, but am concerned about what possible memory problems AGS might run into.  I was thinking that if I didn't allow use of the pathfinder, say if I used arrow-key movement, I might be able to run the larger room, but I don't want to have to set up all that just to find out that larger rooms don't work for other reasons.

So, has anyone done research into rooms greater than 2800 on the y axis (I already have seen that higher values work in the x axis)--are there any problems that are likely to come up, or is it just a pathfinder problem?

I'm talking about a room that's likely going to be 3300 X 3600, ideally.

As a footnote, if anyone working on AGS 3d is reading this, do you think the 3d engine could be applied to a map to give it a bevelled effect similar to the Mode 7 effects on world maps in console RPGs for the SNES, etc?  I'm planning on looking into it eventually, I just was wondering if someone already had some idea.

Okay, I'm at my wits end.  I considered asking for help a while ago, but I thought I could handle it.  I can't.  I'm making a semi-original RPG battle-system, and there is just one event that will not work.  I've tried everything.  The problem could be just about anywhere in the code, so I need someone with a little patience to help me overcome this one bug.  If you like the look and the idea for the game, it would be cool to have an advanced scripter as a consultant--not to have to do very much work, but simply to be there to ask the occasional question.

I doubt anyone will be available, but just in case, some more details might be welcome.  Basically this system builds on the ideas of the FF6/3 active time battle but combines it with some more combat elements.  You can put any character in defence mode, and then, when attacked, you are offered a list of possible reactions, such as counterattack, block or dodge.  I have set it up so characters can attack and do damage and recieve damage, but for some reason, every time I try to change or fix the counterattack system (it has never fully worked), characters attack a non-existant enemy with 0 hit points.  The problem baffles me because I have not, in days been able to find any possible problem.  It's out there--somewhere, and I think I need some help.

I could show lots of graphics, but the main screenshots would all use template/placeholder graphics right now.

Oh, and please contact at bspeers@nospam.uvic.nospam.ca  -- except remove the nospam.

EDIT: Well, after about a week's worth of work, I think I got to the crux of the problem, and that bit is now solved.  Gave me a bit of confidence, and maybe I can actually do this on my own after all

Ah, interesting.  I had the exact same reaction as Naranjas as cinnamon toast is fairly well known and popular over here.

While we're on exceptionally simple desserts, here's one for all who are allergic to chocolate or vegan and who still like peanut butter cups (or who would like them if they weren't allergic to peanut butter).

Take equal parts carob chips (a chocolate substitute that doesn't taste all that much like chocolate in most recipes) and peanut butter (or Tahini or other nut-butter/nut butter substitute if one is alergic to peanuts)-- usually 1 cup of each.  Melt the carob chips over a stove or in the microwave.  Make sure to add just a few drops (as much as a teaspoon at absolute maximum) to soften the carob, otherwise it will scald.  Too much water will absolutely ruin the taste.  Mix the melted carob with the peanut butter (or other similar substance) and throw in 1/4 as much syrup (1/4 cup in this case, of either maple syrup or sugar or what have you -- this will change the taste a lot, so choose a kind you generally would like with the other ingredients).  Mix it all up quickly before it hardens too much (this is a bit of a workout), until the whole mixture looks like one mass of one smooth colour (it may look a lot like very smooth shit, in fact).

Do not eat!  It is waaayyy better when chilled.  Cover the bowl of mixed sweets with plastic wrap or something and place in the fridge for a few hours.  Take out (it should be quite hard) and cut out squares or chips or blocks or whatever you want to eat.

The peanut butter version tastes a lot like reece peanut butter cups but contains no milk products or caffine.

This is easy, the only steps are melting and mixing, and it is less unhealthy than many comparable chocolate desserts.  Plus, it is a huge hit at things like bakesales because it is exceptionally rich. 

You can also add things like oats or nuts or just about any adornment you like once you get the (simple) recipe down.

Thank you, that should be all I need to solve this particular problem.  Very informative.  I still don't understand a damned word of it, but as usually happens, once I start implementing the code myself, it shoud all make sense . 

Thanks a lot, I'm sure I can build a function that works now .

Okay, thank you.  I'm still somewhat ignorant of the terms though, and was wondering if you could clarify.  I think I see how this works, but just need a little hand holding.

What does "bool" refer to here.  I can't find an explanation in the manual.  I assume it stands for "boolean" but don't know if I "have" to use it for any particular reason.

Where does the "break" come from?  I don't know its application here or what it does, and again, can't find it in the manual at all.

Also, what is meant to go in place of the word "this"?

What does the line "if (temp == 10) return;" do? I have never used "return" as a command and there doesn't seem to be any declaration of it -- what does it do?

Otherwise, I think I understand how this function works and can implement it.

Thanks!