Messages

Allrighty then, everybody. Anyone with last minute entries, bring 'em on in. I think it's roughly, like, eighteen hours or so remaining in this comp.

sorry, what's going on there?

I think that's not fake darkness, it's just a low-quality camcorder trying to compensate for the quick change to the dark of the hallway for the light of the room. But, yeah, this sucks. I've seen it before, and the first time, I thought it was just funny. Now, it's a pile of retardation. If I had a computer with a little more power (my laptop is downloading my video at, like, 8 fps) I could make a video better and scarier than this every other hour. In certain cases, I wouldn't even have to use AfterEffects.

Pegasi fly, remember

All of a sudden this comp exploded. Let's see what else we can get !!! Another week and a bit left!

Ha! That's great. I think I'm going to throw together an image myself just to help kick things off a bit, but I think InCreator should win just because 300 is worthy of winning anything. Come on, peeps, let's do this thing.

Which one do you think I'm talking about?



I mean TMNT 2: The Arcade Game for NES. The original TMNT game on NES wasn't that great, but this was one of the best games ever. It was way ahead of anything else they ever did on the original Nintendo console. I did find, however, that holding my thumb horizontally just made things a bit more difficult. And the worst part of the game was that you could only continue mid-level if you had a second player with you.

Say what?

I might as well post the voices I need. If I can't get all of these, I'll either have to do them myself or write them out of cutscenes...

1) Rhys Dryden: I want this one
2) Roger, Rhys' robotic assistant: this can go to Matt
3) Katherine Jackson, the secretary, a girl in her 20's
4) Chief Harris, a gruff man in his early 40's, possibly also me
5) Martin, Katie's brother (possibly no voice needed)
6) Doctor (I haven't designed the character yet, so if anyone wants to play a doctor...)
7) Darren Black, an agent with Bureau 6's homicide department, voiced by Steel Drummer
8 ) His Partner, whose name I forget
9) Zadok Allen, an ex-priest turned SMASH dealer, also Steel
10) Various Paladins, the heavily armored guard of Bureau 7
11) A cleric (priest), played by my real-life friend Aaron
12) Erin, proprietor of Erin's Diner, a woman in her mid-thirties (possibly no voice needed)
13) a strung-out SMASH dealer (possibly no voice needed)
14) A Muto, a SMASH user whose DNA has been altered due to the drug
15) A Feldmanist, a member of a religious cult that believes technology is causing the downfall of man (possibly no voice needed)
16) The Bilderburg brothers, Jonas and Ephraim, men in their late 80's who jointly run the Federated Colonies of New America. They are twins, so one voice should do.

ALSO, I would still like to feature a song by an AGS member in a bar scene. The song can be of any style, as long as it seems like something they might have in the future, and I would prefer something with lyrics.

This movie is edgier, grittier, and darker than any TMNT stuff before (not like this is very gritty at all)

I take it you never read the original graphic novel.

If only they'd make TMNT games as good as the NES ones. Ahh.. those were the days...

Dude! Do you still have blisters on your fingers after all these years from the little slidey move you had to do on the controller between the B and A buttons in order to do your little turtle jump slash? I do. That and jumping between walls on Ninja Gaiden, I believe, are the primary reason my handwriting sucks today.

It may sound stupid... because it is... but I think every friend I had between the ages of 8 and 12 I made while playing TMNT: The Arcade Game.

[ONLY]

Holy crap!

I let this thing get to the end of the fourth page without any updates! Shame on me! As soon as I'm finished with this post I'll go and update the progress report in the first post.

Anyway, month one has passed, and all the backgrounds (50!!!) are completed. I spent this month working on art while listening to the theme song to Battle Royale on constant replay. Half of this next month is scheduled for interaction programming, then the next half for character and item / inventory art. The last full month before it's July 1st release date will be spent programming important sequences and making cutscenes, which I've decided will be voice-acted comic strips. ANYONE WHO WANTS TO DO SOME VOICE ACTING let me know! I need a variety of voices, male and female, so anyone and everyone feel free to drop me a PM. I haven't finished the dialog script yet, so I won't be ready for you for another month, but feel free to let me know you're interested.

Anyone  working on music or animation, I'm going to need most of the work done within 45 days so I can spend the last 15 days inserting your work. If something comes up and you can't do the work, let me know. I already have backup plans just in case, but I would like to know if I need to implement them as early as possible. It will not be much, but I am offering monetary remuneration for anyone who worked on the project with me who want it depending on how many units are sold.

For those of you who don't know, the game IS going commercial. It will sell for something less (probably much less) than ten dollars. I would most certainly appreciate it if you would support a fellow developer. HOWEVER!!!!!!! Anyone who can't afford it or doesn't have a credit card, let me know. (wink wink, nudge nudge, know what I mean, know what I mean?) THIS OFFER IS ONLY VALID FOR FORUM REGULARS!!!!!

Couldn't you emulate using names (ie. tell AGS that "Living Room" is equal to room 5) so you can address it by either the actual number OR use the room name as a "nickname?"

What the beep is a DOMSAV KLS 7I-7C?

[What is a Photoshop Saturday?]

Hmmpph. I always wanted to be the guy who selected a blitz topic. I didn't want to have to because no one else wanted to. Ali asked me to helm this one, since I got an honorable mention last time.

What is a Photoshop Saturday?

Photoshopping isn't drawing a completely new image -- It's editing images to create a new image, such as editing one image or combining several images. The contest usually lasts for a fortnight. Also, you don't have to specifically use Photoshop -- Paint Shop Pro, MSPaint, or any other programs can be used, even Mario Paint.

(I question the possibility of Photoshopping with Mario Paint, but the above is a cut 'n' paste, so...)

Ready for the challenge? Here it is...

Photoshop a scene from your favorite media using scenes from another favorite media!

By this, I mean, take a scene from your favorite movie, television show, or music video, comic book, graphic novel, comic strip, or video game, and use it to show a scene from your favorite movie, television show, music video, comic book, graphic novel, video game, or book.

Take Aragorn from Lord of the Rings, for example, and photoshop him into World of Warcraft. Take Hulk Hogan and make him perform for Amy Lee in an Evanescence music video. Take the characters from Peanuts and show them acting out a scene from Stephen King's "The Stand."

Hopefully, this will be fun. The one rule I'd like to enforce, though, is that there is some sort of image manipulation or compositing and not just an already-existing picture with word bubbles, captions, or subtitles.

The comp will last a fortnight, as usual, from Saturday to Saturday two weeks hence (which actually gives you 15 days).

Ready? Steady? GO!

I've spent the past month working on the backgrounds for my new game. So far, I've got 50, and I still have ten to go. I've devoted half of the next month to character and inventory art, the next month for programming, and the half month after that to draw all the cutscene art, which I've decided will be in a comic book style since the game is based on a comic I drew and distributed in high school. The release date for Alpha - X is supposed to be July 1st, and at my pace everything should be done by then (I can't speak for those of you I've got doing "odd jobs" for me, but that's the date on my contract, so please everyone push for then!).  When the game comes out, it shouldn't be too expensive (4 to 8 bucks at the most), but I still hope everyone would support a fellow indie developer. For those of you who CANNOT afford it, please let me know by email and you'll get a copy of the game for free (this only applies to forum regulars).

I didn't feel like resizing everything, and I didn't want to put too many large pictures here, so this is my favorite of the backgrounds I've done... a government-sanctioned church that teaches the philosophies of Jonas Bilderburg, brother of the president of the Federated Colonies of New America. The black area you see is where the GUI goes...



EDIT: Don't worry about the character passing through the volumetric light... it's a first-person game.

Yeah, I meant reordering them in the list so, for example, all the rooms located in one building could be next to each other even if they weren't numbered that way. I can handle coding room numbers if the room numbers are out of order in the list, but it would make them easier to find if I could reorder the rooms themselves in the list, or put them in separate folders.

I didn't know 2.8 had it's own suggestion thread. I really don't want to post this a second time, as I was really loathe to do it this first time. I'd like to see if any AGSers more respected than myself agree and would like to see these changes as well before I do so.

That's not quite the same... I mean I would like to see a room preview where you could change the FPS while previewing it so you could fine tune the animation. As it stands you have to pick the animation speed, preview, change animation speed, preview, etc... I mean it would be better the way the view animation preview works, although previewing the whole background might be a little more difficult to implement.

EDIT: I also just realized that the fullscreen preview distorts my preview. I'd like to see what my 640x480 background looks like at 640x480, not 1280x800.

Also, as I just was trying to make an animated room and found I actually had to run the game to find out how it would look... it would be nice if you had something like the view preview where you could see a realtime animation of your animating background which changed as you altered the FPS so you could see what it looked like at that speed right away. This would really help people who want to fine tune room animations.

I'm sorry if this has been asked. It's my first time (at least as far as I remember) making a suggestion, so bear with me. I'm sure there's probably a very good reason why this hasn't been done yet, as it seems simple enough.

First: Why can't there be a place to rename rooms in the room's properties, rather than right-click>renaming them in the room editor?

Second: It would be nice if you could reorder the rooms in the room editor. I just spent a month making sixty rooms for my game. Now, I have to figure out which order they need to go in and then import them. It would be so much easier if I could just import them all in the order they are saved and then reorder them by dragging them around the editor view.

Like I said, these suggestions probably aren't worth the 3k of space on these forums they're taking up, but I think it would make things a little simpler for everyone.

Okay, I took a hike for a little while, because the fight between Progzy and MacPhee was a little intimidating... But I'm back.

DG, listen: your argument seems based entirely around the fact that you LIKE Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, Warner Brothers, etc. better than what was around in the 80's. Personally, to quote Hamlet "My gorge rises at (them)." But that's also a matter of opinion. I'll back up my argument, but you'll have to understand that my backup argument is also based entirely off of personal opinion, because you can't base a "which is better" argument about cartoons on fact.

First off, I like South Park. I enjoy how it makes fun of everything (in one episode alone it made fun of Christians AND atheists), and how it makes really good sense about the things it lampoons instead of just mocking them because it feels like it. I like some Family Guy, although for the most part I can't stand Peter or his fat bastard son. I only enjoy episodes starring Stewie and Brian. I enjoy Robot Chicken, Metalocalypse, Harvey Birdman, Tom Goes to the Mayor (even though I used to hate that one), and Aqua Teen Hunger Force is the funniest show I've ever seen in my life. I would murder my children if I caught them watching these shows, but I like them.

However, on the children's cartoons side of things, which is what all this was about (as someone else said, I can't even think about any cartoons for adults in the 80's)... Children's cartoon at the time didn't use only nonstop ridiculous humor that the kids don't even understand (I've seen many a joke on a kids show that my niece and nephew were watching that was totally geared toward the parents watching the show with the kids, but the kids laughed because pants fell down or a strange sound was made or the character suddenly went into an epileptic fit). Shows today pretty much run on the notion that every kid in the world has ADHD and won't be able to enjoy a show for more than eight seconds unless something utterly ridiculous or extremely violent is thrown in. Looney Toons, that classic show from long before either era of which we speak, would get turned down by producers in a heartbeat today because the over-the-top humor is not over-the-top enough, and it doesn't take place on the designated every-eight-second cycle.

Cartoons in the eighties at least tried to give the kids the benefit of the doubt. They contained stories that the kids could watch and enjoy, instead of a series of nonsensical events because that's all they thought they could understand. They contained ongoing stories, which today's children, raised to be morons, wouldn't be able to remember from one Saturday to the next. A lot of them only relied on slight sight gags, like Slimer running into Peter Venkman and sliming him, or verbal gags, like the little end-of-the-show punchline after which all the characters would stand around laughing during a fade to black.

Even the art of the cartoons is different. Back in the day, they spent more time drawing the shows, paid more attention to detail, and made the art more realistic (with the exception of the very older cartoons and the cartoons geared toward the extremely young). Today, every cartoon is a brightly colored blobby. At least Genndy Tartakovsy, who didn't pioneer this art style but brought it to new extremes, had the presence of mind to make Samurai Jack and Clone Wars, the only cartoons I can think of that exist today with actual followable, interesting storylines. (by the way, my opinion is centered solely around American-made cartoons. As ridiculous as the shows may be, Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon are deep and multilevel stories. They're nothing more than marketing vehicles, but that's a different argument).

That's my reasoning as to why cartoons of the 80's were better. But of course, that's opinion. I know you're a funny guy, DG, and therefore funny shows appeal to you. The argument you seem to keep using is "find me one show from the 80's funnier than Family Guy." Well, we can't, because the issues that are funny in Family Guy couldn't have been tackled with the same amount of humor back then... more subjects were taboo, and the censors were out in full force. So, in the end, you like today's shows better because you like humor. I like the 80's better because I prefer a well-written story, and because I think todays shows are purposely dumbed-down for a dumbed-down generation. Opinions all. There's no reason to get so up in arms about my opinion on cartoons. If I went up to a Christian and said "You know, your religion is a bunch of nonsense and hoohaa designed by the Roman Empire roughly 300 years after the death of Christ in order to better control people," then yes, I would expect an argument. I've just offended every religious person in a thousand-mile radius with that opinion. But my opinion on cartoons shouldn't make you flip your lid and call Progzy names.

I love Arthur.

Anyway, just because there are a ton of educational programs doesn't mean kids watch them. They would rather watch stupid programs, because they are collectively stupid. Why are you arguing this? Do you have kids? Are they smart? Good. Thank you for doing a good job raising them, unlike 99% of parents. I've spent years working with kids. When I was a kid, I wanted to grow up to be a programmer, or a writer. Most of the kids I've worked with in my 8 years of experience want to be a Power Ranger or a Super Saiyin.

Maybe you might try not believing research before you start typing random words on your keyboard. Just because the United States releases figures about the quality of its education in order to make itself look good does not mean that it does, in fact, look good. By the way, like I said, I love Arthur, but the only kids I have ever known that watched Arthur without turning it to Nickelodeon's or Cartoon Network's stupidfests are people with parents who actually give a damn. Where do you stand financially? Have you ever lived in government assisted housing? I've worked with kids who live in the ghetto who only even exist because their parents want a tax write off... And there are much more of them then there are of parents who care. When you don't care, you turn on whatever is on the tv so your kid will shut up.

At least the shows of the 80's tried to have plots, and character development, and messages. Today, it's just a series of toilet humor, violence, and over-the-top weirdness so kids will pay attention and not bother their parents.