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Samara Morgan (AKA Sadako Yamamura, Eun-Suh Park) and her latest boyfriend.

150 x 150, 20 colors plus background

oops... when there's 8 days left, and the holiday is on the 18th, and you're on the tenth presently, you're bound to say one instead of the other

But the new year isn't for another 18 days!

A few years back, when I was in college, I met an exchange student from Beijing. She and I were really good friends, and it was starting to be a little more than that, but when she finished college her visa expired and she went home. I've been through another girlfriend and almost gotten married since then, but a year ago she somehow found me on Skype (almost a week after I broke up with the other girl, strangely enough) and we've been talking online every night ever since. In September, I hope to go there and meet her father and see if he'll let us get together. I just went and got my passport application and photos yesterday.

Hrmmm... I had it like that originally... But they always fire directly at you (even when way offscreen) so when a bundle of them get together they would just blow each other up on their way toward you, which would make it ridiculous. Maybe if I made a flag on them that says if you are holding one, the enemy fire will hit it. Then at least you could pass it in front of you like a shield.

Akatosh: publish the source?? It sounds like someone is interested in helping out with the game... I am working on two projects (one of which is yours) and a book right now, and I have another AGS game that is going to take quite a while after Alpha - X... But I will definitely make this a side project.

I'm glad you guys are enjoying it... that's why I published it. It might not be great (if I start working on it again, all those graphics, sounds, and music are going to go) but I think it's fun and, with a little work, could become addictive.

So, no one's figured out the music yet? Here's a hint: C64

So, yeah. Have fun, because I just realized I never programmed a death subroutine. Once your health equals zero, you can still run around blowing away robots to your hearts content.  :o

Nay. It's not even zipped, actually. It's an executable. Give me a minute to upload a zipped version.

EDIT: Have at you. The new link is in the original post, after the link to the executable.

Hey all. Two years ago I dropped my laptop and cracked the screen really badly. I got a new one quickly and haven't messed around with that old one for a very long time. I just found it and was going through some of the files on it when I found this old gem. It's an old game I made a few years ago that I think is really quite cool. It's just a rough skeleton, so right now all you do is fight indefinitely, but that's really all it needs to be cool. I mean, I was sitting there playing it, and I was like "Holy crap! This is so cool! I can't believe I made such a cool game!"

http://esperian.sitesled.com/Psi_Arena.exe

http://esperian.sitesled.com/PsiArena.zip

So anyway, since the game is totally bare bones, let me explain a bit.

-----INSTRUCTIONS---------------------
You are some crazy psionic warrior in the future whose sole job is to fly around in some experimental game show where a swarm of killer robots is constantly trying to kill you. You will die eventually (first of all, because that's what's expected to happen on this gameshow, and second, because I never got around to creating any more of the game), but see how long you can stay alive in the arena.

Controls: up moves forward, down moves back. Left and right strafe.
mouse in the direction you want to face.

Left mouse button fires a ball of psionic energy in the direction you're facing.

Hold left mouse button to raise a psychokinetic shield. you can't do anything else but move while the shield is up, but it can help you move to a more strategic location.

Right mouse button lets you use your psychokinesis to grab objects. This includes the robotic sentries you're fighting and the signs you see floating around your starting position advertising the show. While holding objects (keep the mouse held down) you can wield them like weapons by dragging them across the screen and smashing them into your opponents. You can actually swing the signs around and let go of them to throw them at your enemies, but the robots have thrusters that will let them take control once you have released them.

Hold down the right mouse button while not selecting an item to use your PK in order to build up your psionic energy. The black bar in the bottom right will begin to fill up with blue, and when it is completely filled you will release a giant ball of energy that will destroy any and all enemies it touches. Be careful, as this bar takes a while to fill. You can still fire while doing this, but if you accidentally move your mouse cursor over an object you will grab it and have to start over.

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

i would someday like to start working on this again, as I feel it's really cool and kind of innovative. If anyone's interested, let me know. I'd like to add more characters to play, each with different kinds of psionic powers, new enemies, new levels, bosses, and the addition of a story mode and possibly two player cooperative mode. BONUS: Extreme accolades to the first person who can tell me where the theme music comes from.

So, a chastity shower. I second that.

Never played Xenogears. I drew it with a blood brush I made in Photoshop, then slammed a texture and a light filter on it.

Everyone should probably understand what is going on here... Yosef changed both the sprite and the theme. Before, there was a body outlined inside that shape, and the theme was gangsters of the 1920's. The instruction that says "You may can change the shape" used to say "You may add a hat." Hence the two past entries that seem to have zilch to do with Castlevania/Dracula...

EDIT: Good one, btw, Akatosh... That's what I was going to do...

That would make a truly bad ass game. What are you working on at the moment?

When I was younger, I had a dream that I can't remember right off hand, but it was one of the most surreal and disturbing dreams I've ever had. It incorporated a little girl whose appearance fluctuated rather greatly between a pretty young blonde girl of about ten years old and something rather similar to what you just described. She was trapped in a weblike substance in the basement of this really strange house, and the house was a hub between different realities. It seemed as though the world had been destroyed and this freakish girl was giving the the opportunity to choose a new life for myself. The door that I took led to a huge desert... Tremendously huge, as in, as far as the eye could see. On one side was a tower peeking over the dunes, and on the other, just at the limit of the horizon, was a giant wall.

The remainder of this dream was really long and really weird. It involved traveling to this wall, passing some sort of musical puzzle to open the gate, and finding that there was a lush forest directly on the other side of the wall. This dream became a central chapter in my first book...

You'll be disappointed with Alpha-X, I think...

There is no save. It's short enough to play through in five minutes and there aren't any dead ends, so just play on through.

To get the ball rolling again:

Spoiler

Hit tab to bring up your inventory, then click your lighter anywhere in the darkness.

[close]

And here's a big spoiler, the puzzle after where you got lost before. Only look here if you can't beat the game.

Spoiler

use the handsaw on the chains, and pick up the resultant pile of rusty saw bits and iron. Rust plus iron shavings, in case you didn't know, is the recipe for thermite.

[close]

Spoiler

once you have knocked the book down, turn around and pick up the tennis ball that also fell of the shelf and rolled past you. Cut it open with the saw, then fill it with the shavings.

[close]

Spoiler

hurl the thermite bomb into the furnace.

[close]

I was just thinking up some puzzles and the idea crossed my mind of having my main character come across some kind of time-stopping technology (don't worry, there are no spoilers here, I decided not to use this in my game) in order to stop a missile strike that would wipe out the entire city. When I thought about grabbing what should be the hot-to-the-touch missiles to turn them back on their source and having the text read "They are unusually cold for rocket-propelled missiles," I got to thinking... you wouldn't be able to survive if you could stop all time around you. Heat is simply the result of friction from the vibration of the molecules in a substance. If time were to stop completely, this vibration would no longer exist and the entire area effected by the time-stop technology would be zero degrees Kelvin, AKA absolute zero, and the character would die instantly.

Does anyone else have any cool sci fi that just wouldn't be possible, and why? Or a rebuttal for the one I posted (don't just say "Duurrr, you can wear a special suit that keeps you warm, herf derf," actually have some science to explain it)?

Spoiler

turn around. Something else fell off the shelf.

[close]

Demon: use wikipedia. you'll find it under biastophilia. And, by the way, pedophilia is the proper spelling for American English.

Idea - pm_boy

Atmosphere - gypsy

Design -  gypsy

Composition -  joel

Functionality -  joel

Technique - gypsy

Nice. Much better. Now, you have just a little problem with the folds of your shirt on the right (our left) arm. The arm looks like we are looking at it from the back angle (as in, the elbow is pointing at us). You need to draw where the cloth of the shirt is getting caught up in the fold of his arm opposite his elbow.

A scene from "Suicide Circle," a great novel by Japanese author Sion Sono. This is the opening scene, wherein 54 schoolgirls jump simultaneously into the path of an oncoming train. Add some sprites of shocked people standing around slathered in gore and you've got one of the hardest-hitting opening scenes in a novel ever.



I went for an old-school style, as opposed to most of my hi-res hand-drawn art. I'm not too good at lo-res, (read between the lines: I suck large amounts of buttock), and thus I lost my nerve when it came time to draw the blood and just went with some PS grunge brushes bent into proportion and overlayed with the Darken blending mode.