Messages

  Thats alot of game for a 72-hour production.  Nice work!

  The major sticking point in my argument with the Moon Landing deniers was that they didn't believe a flag can wave in the vacuum of space.  It can if the pole is turned back and forth.  http://mythbustersresults.com/nasa-moon-landing

  I give Armstrong credit for being humble about an amazing achievement that most people wouldn't be humble about. 

RIP Neil Armstrong

The only folks I've talked to (in person) who didn't believe in the Moon landings were Russian.  During the Space Race their government called BS on the first Moon landing, and in-turn started the early versions of the conspiracy theory.  My Dad worked for NASA Langley for 40 years, so I had steam coming out of ears trying to argue with them and eventually gave up.

I love that Buzz Aldrin clip.

Ball is in TTB's court for a video response.

Very cool!  I love "The Thing", and really the whole "isolated research station" setting in general.

  Pixelformer is proving helpful, thanks for releasing this!

Lookup "SetTimer" in the help.  To set a timer where 1 is the ID and 5 is the duration in game cycles:

Code: AGS

SetTimer(1, 5);

and to see if it expired:

Code: AGS

IsTimerExpired(1);

It returns a "True" value if the timer has expired.  As for the second part of your question, sorry I haven't worked with slider controls in AGS before.

  Its a fun little base game you have there.  Hang on to it

  The keys to the Omnibus are in good hands.  Anyone else might wreck it, quite possibly on purpose.

I played it a bit.

Good stuff:

• That set of graphics you are using is fine for this style of game.

• I like the simplicity of the non-battle controls.

• Great base or foundation for building a small RPG.

Other stuff:

• I didn't like not being able to search Owen's body from the start.

• I know its an intro/test quest, but apples should be in places that make sense.

• Changeup the foliage and other landscape scenery with little minor variations so you don't see the same plant and tree every 20 steps.

• This is minor since the game is alpha or beta, but there are a few grammar issues.  For example "catched" instead of "caught".

• Turn-based combat is fine, but the walking back-and-forth and with the Hero and Chucky Cheese taking swipes at each other is goofy.  And if you are going with this kind of combat, add more attack/defend options along with animations.

• William should have a brief animation of casting to and eventually hooking the apple, and if you want to add humor, he dramatically fights the apple like its a big fish.  Or something eats the apple and he fights that, feels bad, and gives one of his from a private stock along with the big fish.

• I thought the Chucky Cheese was hugging William at first, which actually had me laughing so maybe leave it

• Lots of over explaining...For example: "The windmill has been here since..." and "The health potion heals you 50 HP".  Keep that stuff concise and focus dialogue on plot and subplots.

It doesn't matter whether the criticism is nasty and unfair. If you want to get back at a critic (usually a pointless exercise in any case), challenging them by asking what they've created is a bad way to go about it because 1) it's based on a fundamentally flawed premise: that you have to be able to create in order to be able to evaluate; and 2) it invariably comes off as defensive whining.

In those examples the critics didn't have a bodies of work outside of critiques to be critiqued.  Plus, they were unfair (and incorrect reviews) but not really nasty or personal.  Agreed that they were good responses.

I disagree that it is a completely flawed premise.  It doesn't disqualify anyone from having an opinion, but experience helps when evaluating.  For example, the AGS panel is made up of people who have experience with AGS games.  And unless I'm wrong, many of whom have created. 

  Ah, there we go.  The critic in the example has been critiqued.

  Fortunately, I haven't seen the kind of criticism I'm talking about on this board or in my dealings with members off the board.  The IMDB forums (if they are still around) would be a good example of what I'm talking about.  There were alot of personal attacks with no depth or nuance to reviews of actors and movies.

I still disagree! It never matters what they have created. An unfair criticism is unfair regardless of their body of work - what would you do if, say, you felt Steven Spielberg gave you an unfair criticism?

It's okay to disregard or ignore criticism if you feel it is careless and not thought out, but being able to tell valid criticism from invalid criticism is a skill in itself, and getting personal against the critic doesn't help with this.

Lets not stray from what I originally said, which is "particulary nasty and unfair" critiques.  So you want me to create a ridiculous scenario where Steven Spielberg gives this kind of critique to me?  Spielberg says the main character in my story is an idiot and a criminal, and that I wrote him like that because I'm also an idiot-criminal.  So there is the nasty part.  And then Spielberg goes on to say that nobody but classically trained writers should even pick up a pen.  And there we have the unfair part.

I'm not going on the defense, but offense.  So I get furious, staring straight in his eye and fire back, "Oh yeah, what about that one movie..." and then I remember that he is Steven Spielberg.  Pick Uwe Boll or Tyler Perry because I've got nothing on Spielberg.

"...then challenge the critic and ask to see what they have created"

I call foul! You don't need to have created something to be able to rationally critique someone else's work. I have never made a feature length movie, but I could write 2000 words on why Transformers is garbage.

You should have quoted the whole thing because it matters here.  I said a "particularly nasty and unfair" critique.  Are you unfair in your review of "Transformers"?

If someone is nasty, lets say they get personal, and gives an unfair critique then I say its fair game to call out the critic on what they have created.

Lots of folks release games that don't get attention, and in-turn they rarely get reviews from critics.  I think the fact that people found your games worthy of critique (not including "Ur game sux" style critics) is a good thing.  And obviously reviews are very subjective, and so I wouldn't even take a major critique to heart unless a variety of critics point out the same flaw in your game.

If you take a particularly nasty and unfair critique to heart, then challenge the critic and ask to see what they have created.  Some good quotes on taking criticism here: http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/criticism

  The only movie monsters that ever really got to me were the kiddie vampires scratching at the bedroom windows in Salem's Lot.  Visually and otherwise, watching that movie as a kid freaked me out. 

  Pinhead was obviously disgusting, but I actually thought some of his minions were worse.  If I'm realling correctly there is one monstrosity that were twins somehow combined into a deformed creature; that one was kind of disturbing.

  Agreed with the above post, kudos for releasing a game of this caliber as freeware.

  The boxes came out ok as long as you don't look closely, and can ignore the white stuff on the back and side left over from the printing process (had them cheaply made).  I mainly modeled it after the Atari 2600 River Raid box.  Use the Fallout bobblehead for size comparison   Outside of the box (no pun I promise), I'll quietly release a 1.1 version in a month or so that fixes one super-rare error and adds a minor feature.

  Looks like fun, and based on a favorite story of mine as a kid.  I'll download and play it this weekend.   

Ponch: I'm proud that you're proud.

Ascovel: Yes, inordinate amounts of blastin.

  I'm having some retro-style commercial boxes made (along with DVD and a few other things), just for fun and to give out to the folks that contributed to the game.  I'll put up a photo or two when I get them in a few weeks.