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I know that, I'm just saying that many games release demos that are produced prior to the completion of the game itself, or are older builds of a portion of said game.

EDIT:
And the whole talk the particular builds of demos is getting off-topic, in any case - I want to hear about your experiences with BioShock, the demo! Are you hyped? Gasping in anticipation?! Think it's going to flop n' drop?! Give us your thoughts.

Also, game demos usually have a tendency to be more "alpha"-versions of the finalize product - in other words, I doubt Irrational decided to make the demo on august 8th and release it on August 13th, so they probably made the demo out of a build they made, say, in February or March, which means that the final product will more-than-likely look better/different.

I would strongly disagree with pretty much that whole paragraph.

The demo is almost certainly created from a near final build of the game by removing all the art/sound/code assets not needed by the demo.  It's a chunk of the whole, not an early version of the whole.  A developer would never release a demo of their soon-to-be-released blockbuster that lacked all the bug squashing, graphical improvements, and general polish that they had done in the past seven months.  The final version that you'll buy in the store will likely be identical to this in every way except for the few ways that they changed it specifically for the demo.

The general public will almost never see a game in it's alpha stage.  Especially since one of the definitions of an alpha release is that it's for internal testing.

You're asuming I'm stating anything in that paragraph as fact. I didn't say that the game was in an alpha stage - I said it it could be towards a more alpha build, wherein alpha can be defined as any prerelease build between design and the product 'going gold', so if the word more prerelease let's you sleep at night, replace alpha with that.

ildu said it himself - the build is recent (although I ran into a few graphical glitches that hopefully will be fixed in the final build). End of story on that, but it still doesn't mean that there never has been a demo released based off a "more pre-release" version of a game.

In any case, I finally got my crappy, crappy XBox to get all the way through the demo yesterday, and the lobby scene right before the end was freaking awesome!

nope, i'm jesus. Because when you've got jesus, why need anything else?

I'm actually hoping Irrational (2K Boston, but they'll always be Irrational to me) makes a patch or mod that adds in multiplayer b/c I would seriously love duking it out in those underwater localities with some buddies. I'm sure that at the very least, if people support Bioshock's release, Irrational will add up loads of new content, possibly even new features and multiplayer.

Where the hell do you get a baby from to do that???

The baby actually turned out to be a revolver (simple mistake  ) - you think it's a baby at first b/c it's in a crib and a crazy, demented soccer mom is talking to it.

I'm am super hyped about this game! It looks awesome! Is the demo anything like the style of the demo video where they're killing the big daddy with the drill? The concept is superb, and the only thing I can tell might bug me is the low poly counts I've seen in the screenshots.

You mean like in the X06 trailer? Well, in one section of the demo, a splicer pisses off a little sister and a big daddy jumps down, throws a chair, punches the f**ker in the face, drills through his chest, and then bashes him into/through the glass window you're standing behind. In other words, hella-f**kin-tight! There's also an entire room where you have to fight a giant mass of splicers - I would recommend hacking a turret you find, seriously. Combat in BioShock is very, very hard.

As for the lo-res screenshots, they're bull. BioShock doesn't look quite like the X06 trailer (seeing as that's a prerendered cinematic), but it's really, really close. Also, game demos usually have a tendency to be more "alpha"-versions of the finalize product - in other words, I doubt Irrational decided to make the demo on august 8th and release it on August 13th, so they probably made the demo out of a build they made, say, in February or March, which means that the final product will more-than-likely look better/different. But then again, I can't really say for sure. Looks fine to me in 32-inch HD!

Also, the game is fought underwater, so I really can't say that there is anything game-wise that I can compare bioshock's graphics to in terms of design. It's like something no-one has done yet...

...

Strangely, I'm getting the feeling that Call of Duty 5 is going to be fought underwater... hmm...

Domino, tell me more about the demo. I'd download the PC demo, but I'd rather hear what the 360 demo is like.

In simple terms, gorgeous and awesome, but it starts out fairly slow at the beginning. Not that it doesn't get faster, but you would think walking into a sheet of flaming debris would kill you outright. Basically, you crash near a huge tower, go down to the city of Rapture, be ambushed by a crazy hook person, get a wrench, beat people with said wrench, get electrical powers, navigate through a glass hallway into which part of the plane smashes into, fight, fight, fight, get a revolver, burn things, fight a load of splicers, and finish the demo! There's more, but I don't want to describe any further than that.

I'm sitting it out for the PC version, and, as a great fan of former games by the team (namely the System Shock games) I have great, great confidence that Bioshock will redefine some standards. I can wait for quality. This is no dis against consoles, it's just that for the life of it I can't comfortably play first-person-games with a joystick. I need a mouse and my trusty keyboard.

I saw their site. I saw some screenshots. I tapped some channels of information, surfed the net. I return in the happy hope that this thing will be all the things Doom3 wanted to be, plus a dozen things more.

Also, I can't resist to link this little thing...

Edit: JBurger, rumor has it a demo will be released first half of September. This is stated by a german pc magazine. Wouldn't bet a vital limb on it, though, for said mag isn't exactly known for precise information.

lol. those freakin' wasps... "And other shit that be freaky." The PC version is going to be $10 bucks less, and Irrational is used to making games for PC b/c of SS and SS2, so BioShock will probably be best on PC. That's my opinion though, some others might like analog control better, I'm fine with either, but I'll probably get it for my laptop, as my XBox is kind of going wacko on me and the XBox version will be more expensive.

BioShock is definately going to be better than Doom 3 - that's a fact!

My 360 is actually kind of broken and freezes up a lot, so I haven't played all the way through the demo. I got to the part where you first get the revolver and then it froze up a little beyond that. I'm definately going to send it in for repairs, b/c it shouldn't be freezing up at all.

The game starts out a lil' slow but picks up and gets really, really awesome, really really fast. I can't wait for the full version (on my PC of course)!!! I checked out the EG article too, sounds like my opinions are proven for more than just myself now!

Gabe: Oh, I remembered. Candy. Candy is delicious.

No, THIS IS DELICIOUS!!
CAKE TOWN!!!
FROSTING!!!
BRUSH YOUR TEEEEEEETH!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNqiSkd1M6k

The BioShock demo just came out for XBox 360 and is coming out for PC. Anybody play it?

I downloaded the demo after a fortnight to my XBox and it was freaking awesome! If you've never heard of BS (under-rock living is quite the way to live, or so I've heard), basically you get into this nasty plane crash into the ocean and are the only survivor. You find this huge, monolithic tower that takes you down about 18 fathoms (i think it's a bit deeper than that - that was just the last measurement shown) to a huge underwater city and you basically proceed to beat and zap the shit out of everything. It's pretty damn amazing in my opinion - you even get to beat a woman with a baby who is a revolver with a pipe wrench! Finally, a wonderous, highly-detailed game that teaches children how to survive if ever they should be lost in a gigantic underwater city! CRAAAAZY-GOOOD!!!

would the patterns change each time?! clickin in all those little clicky-boxes would take forever, man!

My idea is to have a little 'OK' button that when you click it, your computer scans to see if you're a hacker. If you're not, then you shall pass. If you are a hacker, then a cute little text graphic appears saying, "F**k you, I'm banging your wife right now! Just go home or to another locality into which your wife and myself are not present!" And then put in a redneck drinking some beer or something that's animated and spams the McAttacker into DoS oblivion!!!

I see you have an OK button - you're already half-way there!

EDIT: Another thing you could do is spam the identity check with random colors. The offending computer won't know what to process, should it be a bot, and a hacker, with their sharp senses, would be overwealmed by the random, alternating colors and will collapse to the floor, instantly contracting rabies! Glorious rabies!

A big population is helpful but not enough. The circumstances and genes still play a big role. Let's say you have a population of 1000 people with 50 of them being exceptionally smarter than the rest. Now let's say this population is affected by an earth quake. You might think that since there are far more dumb people they have a higher chance of survival. But the 50 smart people might work out better ways to survive the catastrophe while the rest has no clue what to do. The smarter minority reduces casualties using their intelligence while the dumb people might actually kill themselves by accident. Generally I think that being smarter is more helpful in a survival situation, rather than relying on numbers and chance alone.

Well, it still depends on what you mean by smart or dumb people. If a train is moving at 60 mph into a smart wuss, that smart guy will probably die - He'll definately make good time getting to his proposed destination as a greasy smear anyway, so it isn't all that bad. Then again, if the man being hit was a retarded mini-hulk, that train (depending on its mass) would stop for him. Then again, if a nuclear reactor was in a state of meltdown and the only way of getting the core to cool down was to play hacker with SHODAN (the bioshock demo just came out, btw, go download it), I'd probably be more inclined to follow in the steps of the smart wuss.

Then again, if 'mini-hulk' were to be blasted by radiation into 'incredible' hulk... 

For the most part, just look at the Multiple Intelligence Theories - not just one archtype or aspect of human intelligence can be considered a representation of total smart-i-ness in all potential situations.

Please do consider a sequel with the same characters.

That may happen yet, but we've got a super-secret ultimate project in the works right now, so it'll probably be a few years before we make another TGCC. We have considered the option, though!

No, AGS does not support #include. If you want to use an additional script, simply create an extra Script and its header will automatically included into the global script.

I've got four files, the global script, the global header, my_script.asc, and my_script.ash. Do you mean that the header file 'my_script.ash' is automatically recognized by the global script invisibly? I say this because I can't seem to find any indication that the global script 'refers' to my_script.ash in the global script file, so I'm kind of confused as to whether there should be a reference pointing to my_script.asc from the global script and it wasn't made, or if the entire process is invisible and it's just assumed that global script goes, 'hi other scripts! I can see you and use all your functionality automatically. Nifty, eh?'

I'm probably just being a little overcomplicated about this, since I'm learning C++ and the MSVB linker freaks out if other scripts are not #included with and the functions within those scripts are used in main().

Also, autocomplete sometimes replaces my variables with functions while I'm typing, which is getting kind of annoying when I type something like star[blah] and I start typing the left bracket, and wind up with StartCutscene[blah]. It's not a really serious issue and can be easily retyped (differently, though!), but it can get kind of annoying.

I read that the #define preprocessor function can be used in headers. Can the #include preprocessor function in v2.8 also be used? I checked out the included help file, but it looks outdated.

I don't really want to test #include w/o being sure that it's included in AGS's framework (just in case it has to be placed in a certain area or will cause the program to crash)

Or does import serve the same function?

The internet knows everything o_o

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/0440508428/ref=dp_image_0/104-8263355-2973530?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books

Dude, is that cake bleeding or something?! I want that!

Do you think 'murder' will be chocolate or coffee flavoured?

BLOOOD flavored!!!
lol, nah I'm kidding! Murder tastes like coffee.

This is getting spooky now.

It's all piles-among-piles of coincidence, melded into one.

But yes, the ghostly apparitions are involved! FLEEE!!!

Wait, I thought 'false witness' was a type of fruit smoothie...
I guess "Mary's" Old Fashioned Holy Burgers is under new management

I wish there was a hamburger called the Jacob. I'd eat it! (Munch, munch, mmmm... religious blasphemy. graaaaaaawl)

You've got to laugh really haven't you

I seriously have no clue what that means... Is the punctuation right? "You've got to laugh, really, haven't you?" or "You've got to laugh at this, really." Maybe I'm just focusing to hard, I should sleep more - I feel nappy and it's only 4:30 PM here on the east coast!

Is Full Sail an accredited school? It strikes me as a place that's like "Hey! Give us you're money and we'll show you how to make cool shit.."

I'm fairly sure that it is. Wikipedia says that "Full Sail is accredited by the Accrediting Commission of Career Schools and Colleges of Technology, which is a national accreditor of primarily vocational schools and career schools within the United States." Of course, I'd check with the Full Sail offices (I think you can find contact information at www.fullsail.com).

Are you focusing on programming or art or what, Nick?

Mostly Programming. The game development course covers some aspects of game design, like documentation and speechcraft (presenting the game idea), but for the most part it's hardcore drill-n-grill programming, engine development, networking, calculus and trig, the graphics libraries (DirectX and OpenGL), physics, optimising your code, etc. The program doesn't cover art or digital animation (that's what their digital animation and digital arts & design programs are for), so it's kind of a pain trying to relate to team members responsible for drawing and rendering art for your game, as well as for making the art for the game yourself.

I'm in Programmng 1 now, learning the basics of C++, and I credited out of Calculus and Trig (all of those days spent learning under my morbidly-obese freak of a Calc teacher really did pay off, man!  )

Honestly, I love Full Sail! There are only two complaints from me, one of which is avoidable: 1) During peak class hours, parking is very, very hard to find, but that problem is solved by getting there early. Very early! and 2) The laptop's they give you? Piece of s**t! Honestly, the HP's we get are universally considered pure crap by the entire student body. All of the recording arts students get Macbook Pro's with freakin lights in the keyboard! I can see why the GD program uses PCs - we need DirectX, but come on - boot camp beta, people!!! Ah, well... they still get the job done, but it's not like I can run home and run BF 2142, the Sims 2, and BioShock (can't wait!) all at once when I get back to my apartment.

Hey Eric, as for the mysterious programmer of yore, who is he? I would really appreciate it if he came to FS and gave a speech to our class (started July '07, so I'm guessing class of April '09? 21 months.) sometime.

I just started at Full Sail Real World Education this July in their Game Development program, and I'm hella pumped! Anyone else in college now who's just started like me, or is an experienced GPA guru who's been around the college block? Anyone who's planning on going soon? Tell ya experiences, trials and tribulations here, whether in college, preparing for it, or feeling like mentioning your past college experiences? Share them here!
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For me, my two months so far have been pretty good. Full Sail operates on an accelerated program, so a lot of preparation in preparing for each term (where term = one month, totalling about 21 terms if I pass every class) that I, as a student, must handle myself. In fact, first few days of class I forgot to pick up my books and laptop (very, very important to do!) and the schedule can get pretty 'hecktyc.' Parking is usually really bad, too. On a couple of days, I couldn't even find a space! I would scan up and down the rows of cars and find no solace. Eventualy, like 15 minutes later, I'd just give up and park in this little safe-zone located in the parking lot near an Albertsons grocery store (I say safe-zone because there are certain areas in the lot that if you parked elsewhere, you would be towed for around $130! Don't want that, for sure.) Other than that, I've mostly been satisfied with what I've learned so far. It's all part of getting down the 'ed-u-ma-k-tyun', right?