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Also, there is WAY too much metal sticking out of the hole. There wasn't that much there to start with, so where did it come from??? You should take J's advice and turn it into a UFO... Or, if the UFO crashed somewhere else and is a part of the game elsewhere, just reduce the metalage... There really aren't too many clouds in the desert, though. Really, there are hardly ever any, except two times a year when we have our rainy "monsoon" season. The rest of the year, the sky is normally very clear.

Other than that, and the fact that the desert is floating a couple inches off the road (alas! I discovered what the black line is there for!!) This is pretty good. I can't draw cartoony-styles no matter how hard I try. And don't let them fool you: I live in Tombstone, Arizona... The desert is wicked flat, just like you've got it. Only, there are really big mountains (remember the "desert" skybox in Half Life??? That was taken in front of the hotel where I used to work)... And quite a bit more roughage. We really don't have too many barrel cactuses, but there are quite a few other types, especially the prickly pear and the Lord's Candle.... And we don't have yellow sand. It's red, even as far east as Roswell.

I suppose this is supposed to be in Roswell, NM: That's only a couple hours away from where I am, and it looks pretty much the same.

(Yes, I've been to Roswell. No, there were no aliens there. Hardcore believers will tell you they recently moved the facility to Indian Falls, CO)

Hey, listen Fluke... Nik was right. It is cool that you are being an active member of the society, and the last thing I'm sure any of us want to do is drive you away. But seriously, now... Check out what people are saying and realize that you need to be a part of the community, not try to say "hey check me out! No, seriously, check me out!!!" I had a friend (vomits upon using word friend in the same sentence as the name:) Matt... He was the clown of all clowns. Everyone hated him. He was a worthless member of society. He refused to get and keep a job (he had been through thirteen in six months once...) and just leeched off everyone around him. One day, he got a true and mighty asskicking, when we were all at a pool hall and he decided to just randomly walk up and grab a cute girl's boob. He was doing it to show off, but we mopped the place with him. Later, I told him the secret to life, the universe, and everything: 42!!!! (no, just kidding) Ever since I explained to him exactly why people pissed on him everywhere he went, and that he needed to learn how to share the world with other people and be a part, not just make believe he was the only person around that was worth anything, he instantly cleared up his act.

My point is this: Be a part. Most of what you do is "Hey, look what I did" or "Hey, look what I'm doing!" If you try to help other people, post interesting links people can use and will enjoy, etc... maybe when you come up with a cruise log more people will say "Hey, cool! Fluke went on vacation! Let's see what he has to say!!!"

And PS: Don't take my above suggestions and do them flamboyantly and constantly just to "get your name out there." People will realize what you're doing and eventually get aggravated. Just be yourself, with a little more effort placed on other people and not just you. Then, you may very well rule several galaxies with your resulting coolness.

Farl's post kicked all manner of bitticks. I totally agree. The one problem is that it would be hard for the moderators to keep up (has it been five days yet? You still can't post, suckah!) or, if they decided to program it in PHP or something, it would take a whole lot of time and trouble for folks who aren't even getting paid to do it.

I think, personally, these "mini-flame sessions" are the best way to deal with it. If someone hears enough times that they are posting stupid stuff, it might eventually get their attention. It hasn't with Fluke yet, but.... ohh, well.

I mean, I've posted some asininity in my day. I have two threads that never got replied to and one just the other day that got locked... Ummm, it was actually today, come to think of it .... I once posted a competition in the competition section before reading the rules that said not to do it. I suck just as much as the next guy... Everyone is capable of doing it. Just not quite so much as certain people.

Yeah, about that chalk game... I actually had almost finished it, and it just was not doing very well. In fact, it sucked. I'm glad I din't make it anyways, because it wouldn't have been able to stand up to Crave.

Didn't harryhouse say he was going to go in, too???

Nik: I thought about that. You can always ALT-TAB, or play windowed, but the windowed thing would take out some of the immersion. You can have AGS open a browser directly to a specified web site, though, can't you?

I've never tried the story competition, so I'll give it a go. Does this story count, since I wrote it to go with the ESPER game? I didn't write it just for this competition...

Well, regardless, here it is. I hope you enjoy it, even if it doesn't count...

http://www.storywrite.com/Story/1540788

You're lucky darth Mandarb doesn't moderate this forum, but I'm sure gil will be just as mean... Listen, go check out the other post you posted already (you double-poster you...) I answered your question.

Okay, we'll wait for you while you're dumping... But you didn't have to tell us about it.

You will shortly get slashed by a moderator, I deem, since you got all crazy and posted this in the other tech forums...

Listen, just do this... it won't even require any scripting: if you click on hotspot 1, then make such and such a variable equal 1. If you click on hotspot 2 and variable such and such equals one, make it equal two, otherwise make it equal zero again. When you click on hotspot 3, and if variable such and such equals two, open the door, otherwise set the variable back to zero...

you can do al that using only the interaction menu, no need to use any scripting at all...

THAT'S RIGHT!!! I have invented a NEW TYPE OF GAME!!!!

Actually, as Solomon says, "There's nothing new under the sun..." There have been other games like it, I guess... In the eighties there was some game called "Who shot the President" or something where you had to find out who really killed Kennedy, and they offered a million dollar prize to the first person who won the game and told them about it... And I guess online puzzle games like NotPr0n and frve-whatever are kind of similar too... Oh well, here goes:

The idea is simple, yet, I believe, quite cool. I am going to make another ESPER game (remember Town on the Edge of Darkness?) where you play a paranormal/occult investigator. I very well may even throw in kind of a character creation system where you can make your own investigator, even though you would probably still only get the one character appearance.... Anyway... here's the catch...

The game would come with a zipped folder. In that folder would be more zipped folders, each of them password encrypted. As you go through the game and uncover evidence, you would get the password to open the folders in question to retrieve the evidence. You may then have to finagle around with it, such as clear or brighten a photo in photoshop or slow down or reverse an audio file, in order to get the evidence you need. You might also get internet shortcuts that will take you to websites you can use to help solve the puzzle, and my own site, www.theespers.org, which has a wealth of information on the paranormal, supernatural, and occult, will have sections devoted to use in the game.

Ã,  Ã, For example: You come across some weird writing in the game at the scene of a murder. You take a photograph of it, and when you do, the game tells you to OPEN EVIDENCE1.ZIP WIH THE PASSWORD/USERNAME ENOCHIAN:TRANSYUGGOTHIAN. You open it to find the photograph, but it is very dark. You then put it into Photoshop (or GIMP, since it's free), to lighten it up, and see some additional letters you would not have seen before. Inside the folder is also a link to the page on www.theespers.org where you can search for the page on occult scriptology. Going there, you find out the script is druidic Ogham and can transliterate it into what the message really means.

Ã,  Ã, So then, I guess my idea is this: rather than having an adventure game with puzzles that don't seem to make any sense (take pink hairbrush and tie rope to it, then swing it from the balcony in order to attract the Flamboyantly Gay Pigeon that will give you the key you need to progress) the game is based on your own intelligence and ability to do research and uncover puzzles.

What do you guys think, and is there anybody with enough faith in this idea to help me out???Ã,  Have you ever seen a game like this, and if so, what did they do that I can avoid? What would you do to make it better, or would you even bother making such a crappy-sounding game in the first place? Let me know.

Shut up!!! (scuttles away all embarrassed)....

HAH!!! That's pretty funny you should say that. I had originally put this in tech questions, since, although it wasn't a tech question for AGS it was a "how do you guys do this" question... A moderator moved me here...

Nips: Get your brother on the phone for me.

Thanks guys, I'll lok into some of these progs...

Harsh. Leave the kid alone (wait, what am I saying...)

And no, I wasn't in a forum for people over 13 when I was 16. dan quayle hadn't invented the internet yet....

Cool. You should post pics and stuff...

But I have one question: How muchneeed a vacation could a 13 year old actually need?

Actually, I noted one thing wrong with the map:

The gate has a path leading away from it into the forest, but there is no path leading up to it... It is kind of situated in a place where there are trees on the inside of the camp. Shave those off a bit and you might be good.

Also, just a suggestion, but you might want to have places connected by dirt roads or beaten paths covered in dead grass... Or something. The camp looks kind of unused right now. And, if it is a labor camp, you might want to draw little tiny shovels and wheelbarrows and quarries and holes and stuff... I don't think anyone would have a bunch of prisoners doing farming.

Hi all.
Ã,  This isn't really a technical question, per se, but I was just wondering: how do you guys do animations? Especially walkcycles (and no one link me to any one of the multitudinous other threads or tutes out there, this is a different question)...
Ã,  In ESPER: Town on the Edge of Darkness, I used Flash MX, but the person whose copy I used has just moved away and I no longer have access to it. Even though he was probably using a pirated copy, I don't want to do that (even though, technically, by using his, if it really was pirated, which it might not have been since his brother was a graphic artist, I WAS), so I guess I'm Flash-less... In Flash, you can use onion skins to compare your frames, and you can set keyframes and actually watch the animtion being displayed, and you can export as a sequential BMP or JPG...
Ã,  Ã, I have DogWaffle, GIMP, and an older version of Photoshop that came with my tablet. I have no idea how to make animations, least of all walkcycles, with them. What do you guys do? Which program do you use? How do you test them out? How do you compare your present cel to past cels so you know how your character should be moving in this frame?
Ã,  Ã, I tried drawing a stationary character and then erasing parts of him and moving them a little bit, but that is really coming out lousy, and it doesn't give you a good frame of reference when drawing over an empty space as to where everything was in the last frame in the place you just erased. Oh, how I long for onion skins in some other program...

Ã,  Ã, Then, I tried making a simple stick figure and then drawing the character in over it. That worked well, and the stick figure was kickass, but then I couldn't get the character to look exactly the same in every frame. From some of the other games I'v eseen, especially Apprentice, BJ, and some of the walkcycles in the Critic's Lounge, you guys can get some really smooth, nice animations....

Ã,  Ã, So please... What's the secret?

While we were on the subject: http://www.callofcthulhu.com/gameinfo/gameplay.html

Looks fun...

Are you sure dead girls can't pop out of televisions? I saw in another forum specifically devoted to the horror genre that people watched the ring and were seeing Samara/Sadako all over the place. Of course, they weren't really seeing her, but they WERE, if you know what I mean. The human psyche is a weird thing. That's why the Ring is my vote for All-Time Scariest Movie. It didn't scare me when I watched it, but it sure did freak me out afterwards...

I'm not sure if Cthulhu F'thagn means anything that is set in stone, but some people say it means either Hail Cthulhu or Come, Cthulhu. The language in question is Nug-Soth, which Lovecraft invented. It's supposed to be a "mother language" that people were speaking before any set language came around. I don't think Lovecraft was a good writer by any means, or august Derleth or any of the others who continued the Cthulhu Mythos. However, I like the stories for multiple reasons...

1. I'm from Providence, originally, around which alot of his stories are set and where Lovecraft himself was from.
2. I think the element of madness is potentially more frightening than any other type of horror... As I said above, your mind can generate things that scare you a hundred times better than any movie director or author can.
3. I study all manner of subjects from religions, cultures, cryptozoology, the paranormal, the occult, and the supernatural. Although Lovecraft was a lousy writer, he was able to catch alot of things that were accurate. He didn't make up the idea of the Mythos, simply the Mythos itself. For example:
Ã,  Ã, -Cthulhu is based on an ancient Sumerian god, whose name, KTULU, appears mistranslated in the King James Bible.
Ã,  Ã, -Nyarlatothep draws comparisons to Pazuzu.
Ã,  Ã, -Yog-Sothoth, "The Gate," is easily comparable to Abaddon/Appolyon, the angel that is supposedly keeper of the abyss who will release the four demons sealed away in the bowels of the earth at the end of time to wreak havoc on the world.
Ã,  Ã, -The Inuit and Algonquin Indians tell of a beast called the Wendigo, which in their native tongue is Ithaquaa.
Ã,  Ã, -Father Dagon, from the Cthulhu Mythos, like Ithaquaa, didn't even have his name changed. He is an ancient Canaanite god, mentioned in the bible many times.
Ã,  Ã, -Dr. John Dee, court magician of Queen Elizabeth I in the 1500's, had a book called "Liber Logaeth," also known as the book of Enoch (not the same as the apocryphal Bible book) which almost directly correlates to Lovecraft's Necronomicon and its summonation of "Great Old Ones and their spawn."Ã,  Ã, 

jet: My point is not that supernatural has anything to do with religion. It is that every religion is supernatural in and of itself, and if people claim to be religious, they should either believe in the possibility of the supernatural or just not believe in their religion. I can probably, if given enough time, come up with a quote from almost every "holy book" in existence that says to believe in the supernatural, yet most religions don't. I can quote about fifty or so passages from the Judeo Christian scriptures that say the paranormal is real, and yet a friend of mine who was going to seminary was recently kicked out after trying to explain he was having supernatural problems. Although the Bible references hundreds of supernatural events, beings, and instances, and although the work of Christians and Jews alike has, for thousands of years, contained grimoires of Kabbalistic and Ceremonial Magick, he was told "The only real demons in this world are drugs and alcohol." My point is, religion doesn't EXIST without the supernatural, and anyone who believes in a religion but not the existance of unexplainable phenomena that might very well be caused by intelligences outside this physical sphere is a hypocrite and a bloody moron.

And in reference to what you had said about the theory with the electricity, etc... According to the law of conservation of energy, Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only moved from one medium into another. People who use the theory you mentioned believe that the electrical impulses in the synapses of the brain are, after death, without a medium in which to transfer whatever their original purpose was. However, since it still exists, these electrical impulses can be converted by anyone entering their sphere of influence into what is known as an "unintelligent," "revenant," or "residual" haunt, where the events which were at one point in time represented by the electrical impulses in question are played back with limited or no interaction with the viewer.

I bet you $50.00 that's an idle animation. Any takers?

Alot of people say that things like Tarot cards and Ouija boards are a way to unwittingly invite evil supernatural influences into your life. I just say that if you don't know what you're doing, it's not even worth your time to screw with them. Tarot cards, despite popular belief, AREN'T really "supernatural..." The whole idea of the cards is to unlock subconscious ideas and to help you better understand what you REALLY think about a problem, deep down. It could take years and years of messing with them to figure out exactly what you are doing. The best deck (read: most popular and widely used) is the Rider-Waite tarot deck. If you really want to use the Cards, I suggest you just go to www.facade.com and let the computer randomize a reading for you. The best way to go is to suggest Rider-Waite tarot deck, Celtic Cross spread, reversals, no significator. They also do rune readings, Stichomancy (fortunetelling by selecting a random passage from some preselected book), I Ching (which is really a type of stichomancy, but more detailed), numerology (finding out what numbers are important to you, such as dates and lucky numbers) and biorythyms (which takes into account your birthdate to find out exactly when your body should be in "tune" with it's physical, intellectual, and spiritual attributes). All of this is REALLY not supernatural, but more about your subconscious thought. Some might even argue that Biorythyms are quite scientific.

Also with the "non-supernatural supernatural" category is dream interpretation. NEVER trust anyone who says they can discern your dreams. They don't understand you and the deepness that is your personality. Dreams are devised entirely within our subconscious, and thus should only be interpreted by you, yourself.

I remember there was a reason for the asthma inhaler, but it's been too long... (get it.... IT's been too long... bwahahaha)...

Sorry for my open blasphemy, Hyde, but I didn't say I didn't LIKE zombie movies.... I just said they weren't scary. As a matter of fact, I really liked the remake of Dawn of the Dead, not because it was scary (which it wasn't) but because it was a good movie. I especially liked the part where they were making a game of killing zombies from the rooftop ("Get that one! It looks like Oprah!" "No, no, get Richard Simmons over there!")...

And you and I are gonna have to compare notes sometime. I'm a little shady on aliens, but I've been studying all things "paranormal" for quite some time, and have pretty much come to the conclusion that I believe in alot of what you said you believed in, and, more importantly, WHY I believe in it... As for filming and getting EVP's, I've been doing that since 1991... You'll get no rotten tomatoes from this direction...