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I think GenAI is interesting, and I've joined both the FRVR AI Game Creator public beta and the one at Rosebud AI. Both are game creation tools where you prompt for both code, sfx, music, and graphical assets, that you can then modify and mix into your own game. Although it can be frustrating that the AI doesn't always generate exactly what you need, it still feels like an overall stream-lining of the whole game creation process. I've made 14 or so little games over the past few months, whereas working with AGS (or Adobe Animate/Flash or html5 for that matter) that would usually take much longer, but of course also result in more polished games. But the tools are still fun to work with, even if it requires a more relaxed way of thinking about games.

You can try some of my games here, if you're interested: https://beta.frvr.ai/@cspark#created

Most of them are just small hypercasual experiments, but this one, for example, won 1st prize in one of their creator contests:
https://beta.frvr.ai/@cspark/play/BlX8fkcN49

You can also sign up for the betas and try the tools for yourself.

It's hard to balance truly emergent systems in games, which is probably why they're shunned outside of pure sandbox games, but they do occur. For example 'Ancient Domains of Mystery' (ADOM) allow you to plant herb bushes in conway patterns (https://ancardia.fandom.com/wiki/Herbs), and even Minecraft has some of that kind of logic going on. I guess whenever you have a dynamic world where entitites follow their own rules, you'll have to consider the emerging systems, so if you have trees, plants, resources, treasure, or enemies spawning endlessly somewhere, they either have to have limited duration/life, or you need to introduce a countering system that destroys or transforms them. And you have to prepare for weird and unexpected conway effects, like gliders that can dramatically change the environment

Deeply saddened to hear this. ProgZmax was such a kind and helpful person here on the forums, and a very skilled pixel artist.

Interesting discussion, and two-point perspective is perfectly valid imho. Perspective is just one of many artistic choices in an image. A game like Monument Valley https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ustwo.monumentvalley&hl=en_US is a good example of conscious use of impossible/counter-intuitive/Escheresque perspectives (even gameplay-wise.)

Also reminded me of this video of David Hockney discussing use of perspective in an old Chinese painting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrFDGct4kH8 I think many similar perspective tricks could probably be found in games, where it's sometimes important to bend the rules of physics/perception a bit for a better presentation.

Looks good - although I kinda liked the slight see-through effect on the purplish-red version of the hexadome. It just seemed to make the shape more well-defined and interesting to look at. I also think the many straight vertical lines/brush strokes on the asteroid make it look a bit too stylized and artificial.

I like Ben's and Hobo's edits a lot - look like something straight out of Lucasart's indy games. Of course, it might be bit harder to animate them with the added details and shading.

I like how everything reads clearly, but think that a more consistent line-style would make the game world feel more coherent. Something that nobody mentioned so far is that if the trees and landscape features cast long shadows, so should the character. Right now, the light source for the character seems to float somewhere directly above it, while the light source for the trees, rocks, and mushroom seems to be relatively low on the horizon, judging by their shadows.

Wow, nice game. I like the art, and how the learning happens almost inevitably by repetition - although I have yet to complete a whole level after the first 10 minutes of playing :-) Is it a native app, or how did you build it?

Just awesome that something like this is happening - backed it immediately.

Good game, very touching. And the art style just complements the mood of the story very well.

Cerno, last time I heard from the producer, back in May 2012, he said the project was still alive. Although one can speculate how dead the project would have to be for him not to accept my 20 dollar preorder

I think it's a great movie. I recently helped with the Danish subtitles for the May 1st release, so might be slightly biased
Took the survey as well and would be very interested in reading the final essay.

There's also a documentary about Newgrounds in production (think it has been for some years) which I'm looking forward to: http://www.everything-by-everyone.com/

I found this article about isometric projection, which solves the problem with a slightly different formula:

Code: ags

tile_x = (pixel_x/(tile_w/2) + pixel_y/(tile_h/2)) / 2
tile_y = (pixel_y/(tile_h/2) - pixel_x/(tile_w/2)) / 2

Hope it helps - and good job on the demo so far! Are you going to make a full game out of it? Btw. there's also Construct2, which I've been using for rapid game prototyping in HTML5. Not that it deals specifically with isometric projections, afaik.

I played the beta and like the characters and the premise so far. However, I seem to have found a small bug :

Spoiler

After I fixed the recording device and gave it to the owner, I asked her to help out and, as her, went to the bridge. In there, I got stuck when I talked to the captain, because none of the dialogue options ended the conversation.

[close]

I had to support this too - been watching a lot of H.P.Lovecraft-based movies lately, so this is great news. Did you guys play 'The Outsider', featured on Newgrounds recently? I thought it was a decent and very atmospheric little adventure game, based on perhaps one of my favorite Lovecraft stories.

Looks fantastic -  downloading beta now...

Cool, pm sent

I'm looking for someone to help translate the last 15-20 lines of text for a serious game from English to German. Shouldn't take long. If you're interested, please reply here, or in pm. 

What is your general opinion of such a site?
It's a good idea, but not unique. Most game portals or arcades have a social dimension (user profiles, comments, achievements, chat) and a monetization strategy (advertisement, download sales, tipping). It reminds me of Kongregate.com, GameJolt.com, Playthisthing.com, Fizzy.com, ArcadeTown.com, and IndieDB.com.

Would such a site be appealing to you personally?
Yes, if it could get my games in front of new audiences.

Would you join up?
Sure, if it's not too complicated.

What other features would you want to see added if you did join up?
Free game assets library (graphics, music, sfx, fonts).

If you are a developer (or say you were one), would such a site be a useful tool for you to utilize, given there were a large number of members on board?
It depends on the quality of the members. Some communities are great for inspiration, feedback and game design discussions, while some are good for monetizing (because there's traffic). On inspirational sites I'm prepared to make an effort and invest my time, but for the monetization/audience websites I'd much prefer if they grab my game details from a distribution feed and auto-upload it, because I don't have time to register a profile, manually submit the game and engage in discussions on the hundreds of websites that my games are on.

Do you feel that such a site would be able to fulfill the above two goals to both side's satisfaction?
Possibly, but it would take a serious effort to compete with IndieDB and other similar sites.

Battle Chess on the Amiga was epic!

AI for chess is a huge topic. After Kasparov was defeated, the new super computers now play against each other, so you might say chess algorithms are still pushing the boundaries of AI and computer science. It's quite impossible to write a program that solves chess on current hardware (in the sense that it always wins), but it's probably not that hard to write something that plays better than an average player.

The Wikipedia page on Computer Chess is rather good, and as Ryan Timothy said, there's probably tons of source code around.